Optimism’s Largest NFT Marketplace Quix Puts Shutdown Plans on Hold

Optimism’s largest NFT marketplace has revealed that it will not shut down after all. The team revealed that a prominent player from the web3 gaming space had swooped in.

Quix, the largest NFT marketplace on Optimism, has announced that it will not shut down its marketplace. The team tweeted on Feb. 28 that a “prominent player from the web3 gaming space” had become involved, saving the marketplace from closure.

Quix announced in November 2022 that it would close its marketplace — with the closure date set for Feb. 28. The team has left it until the last minute to inform users of the rescue.

Launched in December 2021, Quix picked Optimism because of the scalability benefits that the layer 2 scaling solution offers. Popular NFT projects that have had a place on Quix include BoredTown, Oliens, Motorheads, and Ganland. Quix even built the ERC-721 bridge, which is an important part of Optimism’s design.

NFTs experienced a massive surge in popularity since their launch, but 2022 also saw the market decline over time. Quix wasn’t the only platform affected by it, but users will breathe relief that the marketplace will continue to exist.

Quix Comes Back From the Brink

The plans to shut down came as something of a shock to the crypto community. The project did announce at the time that it would open source the code on behalf of the Optimism community, but users nonetheless felt dejection.

The shutdown announcement also mentioned that a token grant would be offered retroactively to contributions and the community until Feb. 28. The team ended by saying that it remained optimistic about the NFT ecosystem’s future, and it appears that the optimism was well-founded.

Quix Suffered an Exploit Last Year

Quix has suffered other incidents that have put a strain on its efforts. In July 2022, it suffered from an exploit that led to the theft of over $100,000 in OP and USDC. It announced that it would refund all the stolen tokens.

Meanwhile, the Optimism network and its OP token have experienced solid growth over the past weeks. The token has grown substantially since the start of the year, rising 135% against ETH. The fact that Coinbase joined its ecosystem helped the token gain 14%. The total value locked currently stands at $1 billion, with the Velodrome DEX being the biggest platform on the network.

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