NFT Infrastructure Moves: OpenSea Acquires Dharma, Coinbase Partners With Mastercard
The market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is off to a strong start in 2022. While this is evident from the increasing number of NFT users and the rising volume of transactions, the recent decisions by some of the industry leaders further strengthen this perspective -- as companies move to make it easier for an average user to buy NFTs.
Just yesterday, major NFT marketplace OpenSea announced the acquisition of crypto wallet startup Dharma Labs, while payments giant Mastercard unveiled a partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase to, as they said, simplify the NFT buying experience.
In an announcement, Opensea said they are acquiring Dharma Labs to accelerate product development, expand safety and reliability efforts, invest in the NFT and Web3 ecosystems, and grow their team.
While details of the deal are undisclosed, a report earlier this month by Axios claimed that OpenSea was in discussion to purchase the initiative for between USD 110m and USD 130m.
Dharma Labs, a nearly five-year-old decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, runs on Ethereum (ETH) and allows users to borrow, lend, and engage with other elements of the DeFi ecosystem.
However, as part of the deal, Dharma’s app will be shut down and its users will be given one month to transfer assets to a different wallet.
Per Devin Finzer, co-founder and CEO of OpenSea, the two teams "share a vision that NFTs will be the cultural focal point of crypto’s adoption for years to come," arguing that "that vision can only be realized if using NFTs becomes easy & delightful for the average person."
Nadav Hollander, co-Founder and CEO of Dharma Labs, will become OpenSea's new chief technology officer, while the platform’s current CTO Alex Atallah will start a new role as a
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