ETHDenver 2022: Magic Eden Is On a Mission to Serve Its Community Through a ‘Very Nascent NFT Space’

From ETHDenver, Be[In]Crypto sat down with Tiffany Huang, marketing lead at Magic Eden, which just passed its five month anniversary this week. 

Magic Eden, a community-centric, leading NFT marketplace on Solana, is best known for its seamless product experience, low gas fees, and extremely high trading volume ($27 million), ranking third across all NFT markets, with OpenSea leading at $100 million.

Huang, who was previously a Brand Director for Marriott International Asia Pacific, joined Magic Eden in early October to manage marketing. 

NFTs are still nascent

One of the challenges in carrying on its mission of serving the Web3 community, according to Huang, is that NFTs are still very nascent, especially when it comes to onboarding women into the space. 

Huang referenced that just last week, she spent over an hour with a friend of twenty-years explaining to her how to receive an NFT she wanted to gift her.

“I realized how hard it actually is to navigate the process alone – from getting a Phantom wallet and Twitter account, to going to an index like HowRareIs to be able to shop for an NFT, and then finally, joining a Discord for final approval and verification. I think the challenge to getting more people into space is that NFTs are really nascent. Men are in certain communities like gaming or in subcultures that enable them to get in faster and assimilate into the NFT culture. However, for women, it’s a taller order.”

For many who are looking to penetrate the space, but may not have the sufficient knowledge, resources, and expertise to do so, the Web3 and blockchain space can be extremely intimidating and overwhelming.

“People in this space should buy their friends NFTs, regardless if they’re women or men because the second you gift someone an NFT and tell them how it works, it becomes more accessible to them. At the end of the day, just being on boarded by someone they personally know is a fantastic experience and provides safety from someone who actually knows which projects are blue-chip from some random project off Twitter without any background information.”

Huang’s own portfolio is a “mishmash of random stuff,” which she says consists of sports-related NFTs, Pesky Penguins, Thugbirdz, and a fair number of PFP projects that I have watched over time.”

PFP, or profile-picture based projects have witnessed a meteoric rise over the past few months, thanks to CryptoPunks and of course, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAPC). With many of these PFP projects, the community game is very strong. 

She continued that in addition to some of the NFTs she has in her collection, she also collects others that are more “utility-focused,” such as The High Society (token gated access to sporting events / brands) and Shadowy Super Coder DAO (focused on Solana RPC infrastructure).

What’s the legal?

Initially, Magic Eden faced criticism from its community for seemingly allowing “too many copycat projects,” which were not “distinct enough” from the original project.

These “derivatives” are something Huang says Magic Eden is taking very seriously as it continues to onboard new projects to its platform. “We take this very seriously because we don’t want original creators to feel miffed when they see another collection that closely resembles theirs. We recently hopped onto a call with our lawyers to better understand the community perception surrounding copycats.”

The community perception, according to Huang, is that there are copycats and then there are “good derivatives that are derivatized enough that it feels separate.”

“There was a period of time where our community wasn’t happy, because of the perception that we allowed copycats onto our site. Initially, our rules were that unless it was a direct ‘copy and paste,’ we would put the project onto our marketplace and label it a ‘derivative,’ because it was easy for us to to determine. Under our revised policy, we are operating to be good stewards of this ecosystem, and reserving the right to refuse projects that are copy cats or scams.”

“In the eyes of the law, it’s a binary decision,” she continued. “Is this copyright infringement or is it not? If we follow the law to the tee, it actually doesn’t provide enough context or guidance to make the community happy.”

As the legal landscape continues to open its doors to these conversations, it’s clear that the courts will need to do a much better job in applying their subjective standard of “distinction” and what that means for purposes of addressing the “likelihood of consumer confusion” element necessary to prove in any infringement action.

However, as it stands, judges are reluctant to rule on this either because they don’t fully understand these conversations, or out of fear to be the “first” to come out and put out a potentially new standard, with a possibility of being overruled.

What’s next for Magic Eden?

Huang says that Magic Eden is currently working on its DAO, that will eventually be segmented by different objectives based on where the ecosystem should be heading – whether it’s providing better accessibility for connecting together online or educating individuals to be wiser traders.

“Eventually, there will be certain parts of our website’s homepage that can be voted on, as community voted sections, and I look forward to continuing to open up our marketplace up to the community.”

In her role as a Marketing Lead, Huang says it’s more than just marketing the products across social media – it’s about being proactive in the space and taking the time necessary to speak to the community, specifically taking advantage of Twitter Spaces. 

“I have a lot of admiration for everyone attending this conference, because everyone is building. Usually when you go to conferences, everyone is trying to rub elbows. Here, we all pitch concepts to one another about what can be fixed in the marketplace, which I think is dope. The takeaway is very simple for ETHDenver 2022 attendees – come to Solana and give us a shot. We welcome all of your friends and development teams.”

Be[In]Crypto will be on-site providing you real-time coverage from ETHDenver, highlighting the innovations across Web3 and cybersecurity.

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