Ebay’s NFT marketplace KnownOrigin just announced it plans to launch a smart contract for artists. Artists can use the new tool to split earnings and earn royalties as co-creators, and it will be automated by a smart contract.
According to the news, users have been testing the beta version of KnownOrigin’s Creator Contract for the past couple of weeks. So far, 84 contracts have been deployed and 250 NFTs have been minted.
Beginning on February 24th, all approved KnownOrigin’s creators will be able to mint work on their own contract for public release. And artists won’t need to be particularly tech savvy, as no coding knowledge is necessary to deploy the smart contracts.
KnownOrigin was founded in 2020 as a boutique community for NFT artists. The most popular collection on the platform is a 27-piece limited NFT collection by XCOPY, which has done 1,523 ETH in sales at the time of writing.
In June 2022, the company was acquired by eBay for an undisclosed amount. According to KnownOrigin’s co-founder David Moore, the Ethereum-based platform “empowers creators” by letting them showcase, buy, sell, and trade “authenticated digital items.”
Since May 2021, eBay has allowed NFT listings on its marketplace, but it has not yet integrated blockchain support onto its platform nor does it currently accept crypto payments or transfers. Nevertheless, the ecommerce giant appears to be treading further into Web3 waters. Its latest Creator Contract for KnownOrigin creators is more proof of that.
New Tools and Features for Web3 Creators
One of the most important aspects of Web3 is the opportunities it presents for creators. KnownOrigin isn’t the only platform to realize that fact and invest in tools and features for artists. At Rarity Sniper, we’ve written about several projects geared towards providing artists with tools they need to succeed in Web3. Here are some of the top stories.
First, early last year, the streaming platform Spotify tested a new feature to let artists promote and sell NFTs on their pages. The feature was made available to a select group of Android users and creators in the U.S. For now, Spotify is not taking any cut of the artists’ NFT sales.
Next, about four months ago, Meta announced it was selecting a group of digital artists to sell NFTs on Instagram. The feature was available to a small group of creators from the U.S., and allowed them to mint NFTs on Polygon and sell them on and off Instagram.
Finally, Dapper Labs studio released a free tool to empower NFT creators and other artists. The Dapper Creator tool will help digital artists, musicians, gamers, and all types of creators build new projects and connect with fans, collectors, and NFT users.
Ebay clearly understands the potential of NFTs and the usefulness of empowering creators to build on their marketplace with their tools. We look forward to seeing if KnownOrigin’s new Creator Contract will attract artists to its platform, especially artists who want to collaborate.