Interview With Alex Salnikov, Rarible Co-Founder

Rarible was the top NFT marketplace back in 2020, followed by NiftyGateway and then OpenSea. They have still been active since then and just recently announced RaribleX a "turnkey marketplace solution tailored for web2 & web3 brands".

They've previously worked with Mattel, Animoca Brands & McFarlane."With RaribleX, we’re leveraging our 4 years of experience, world-class tech, and deep insights from pioneering projects with Mattel, Fox & McFarlane Toys to provide a seamless web3 experience. RaribleX is ready to supercharge your brand's journey into web3."

We spoke to Alex Salnikov, co-founder at Rarible, to discuss more about this.

1. Can you introduce RaribleX in one paragraph?

RaribleX is a one-stop-shop marketplace solution for innovative brands, both web2 and web3. Need a marketplace designed to accommodate an entire metaverse? A platform to sell licensed digital collectibles based on a world-renowned comics IP? RaribleX covers the whole product life cycle, from minting and distributing the NFTs to hosting secondary sales—all under one roof.

2. What is your vision for NFTs over the next few years?

We envision a future where NFTs are as commonplace as emails, while billions of people mint NFTs and engage with their digital wallets daily. NFTs become the preferred method for distributing digital goods and services. That’s what we had in mind while working on RaribleX.Needless to say, those won’t be the NFTs we got used to during the previous cycle. They will be cheaper, utility-oriented, mass produced. There will be many more utility cases beyond just art and PFPs.

3. And how do you imagine RaribleX playing a part in that?

As we get more and more use cases, NFTs will outgrow the ‘one marketplace-fits-all’ structure. RaribleX is designed to facilitate that: a marketplace for a big sports organization selling tickets as NFTs will be a lot different from a marketplace for an art collection. A big established toy brand won’t see the need to sell their digital collectibles on a third party website alongside many other brands—instead, they can have a fully-branded platform where they own user experience, have full control over the revenue stream and possibilities to engage users via custom experiences.

4. Recently, Rarible has focused on creator specific features over other marketplaces. Is this a core ethos for RaribleX?

At Rarible, we have always been creator-first. RaribleX was built with the same ethos, accommodating custom features and ensuring protected royalties on each transaction. The no-code self-service community marketplace builder, which lets any creator create a marketplace in mere minutes and was one of the first things we built as part of RaribleX, would be a good example. Most of the 5000 marketplaces created are hosted by artists.