Candy Digital, which started selling Major League Baseball (MLB) NFTs in the fall, finally launched its trading venue on Jan. 15.
And the appetite for sales was fairly robust.
The Galaxy Digital-backed non-fungible token marketplace, which announced its partnership with the MLB in June, posted $2.7 million in weekend sales, passing $1 million in trade volume within the platformโs first eight hours of launch.
The trading volume, for now, rivals that of Dapper Labsโ NBA Top Shot, which has seen roughly $2 million in sales each day of January, a representative told CoinDesk. The sales figures offer another glimpse at an NFT market that has surprisingly weathered a general downturn in crypto prices from 2021โs frothy highs. OpenSea, for example, saw its highest volume month ever in January while ETH sagged 15% over the same time period.
Candyโs MLB marketplace runs on the Palm blockchain, which the company tapped for its low transaction costs. While Candyโs debut Lou Gehrig NFT co yllection was released on Ethereum, still boasting a 4.5 ETH (roughly $14,400) floor price on the popular secondary market OpenSea, the platform sees the networkโs gas fees as unsustainable to its business model.
โIf youโre selling products for $20 or $50, dealing with gas costs and transaction speeds on [Ethereum] mainnet is an issue, and the gas costs on Palm are close to zero,โ Scott Lawin, CEO of Candy Digital, told CoinDesk in an interview.
Read more: Galaxy Digital-Backed Candy Digital Launches, Inks Debut Deal With MLB
Itโs a sentiment thatโs become common in todayโs NFT landscape, with non-Ethereum marketplaces on blockchains like Solana and Flow finding their niches among largely non-crypto-native audiences. (Many of which, like Candy, only accept fiat currency.)
Product plans
Lawin says the platform is preparing to launch โeight to ten different types of NFT productsโ with MLB over the course of next year, ranging from high-value, limited-edition drops to utility-based momentos without much secondary market potential.
โWe have a thesis that there is no one-size-fits-all,โ Lawin said. โAnd so weโre building, as I said, these ecosystems of products that appeal to lots of different types of collectors.โ
Investors seem to agree with the conceptโs potential, having backed the platform with a $100 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation last October.
Read more: Fanatics-Owned Candy Digital Raises $100M From Insight Partners, SoftBank
Candy Digital is majority-owned by the sports retailer Fanatics and backed by entrepreneur and NFT staple Gary Vaynerchuck.
Fanatics recently acquired Topps, a major player in the physical sports collectibles market, for a reported $500 million earlier in January. Topps has dabbled in the NFT space with digital collectibles in the style of its trading cards on the WAX and Avalanche blockchains.
