Magic Eden Acquires Slingshot: What It Means for NFT Traders

Magic Eden, the leading NFT marketplace, made a big shot on Wednesday by acquiring the decentralised trading app, Slingshot. The acquisition is aimed at moving Magic Eden beyond just NFTs and establish it as a major player in cross-chain trading too. After this acquisition, Slignshot will now be directly integrated into Magic Eden’s NFT marketplace. Decoding the Magic Eden – Slingshot Acquisition NFT participants often need to convert between tokens (e.g., from ETH to SOL or MATIC) just to interact with various NFT ecosystems. With this acquisition, Magic Eden aims to eliminate this friction that comes with using multiple platforms or bridges to swap tokens — a common pain point for users of NFTs and DeFi. Slingshot, which rebranded to its existing name in 2020, is a decentralized trading platform . It allows users to swap crypto tokens across multiple chains including Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, among others without the complicated setup. It means that with the same USD, users can trade all tokens say, BTC, SOL, ETH on all EVM L2s, and more. We just acquired @SlingshotCrypto ! 8M+ tokens. Every chain (Bitcoin soon). No bridges. No CEXs. This is another major step towards our vision of providing the best platform to trade all assets, on all chains. Oh, and Emmy likes green. pic.twitter.com/QmALplzSzB — Magic Eden (@MagicEden) April 9, 2025 To enable cross-chain swaps, it uses a liquidity aggregation engine to allow cross-chain swaps – bringing crypto tokens from multiple DEXs and liquidity pools. And now with the NFT leader, Magic Eden acquiring it, users will be able to made token swaps directly into via NFT marketplace. This will significantly help users quickly acquire the native tokens they need to mint or bid on NFTs. Thus, NFT traders will experience reduced frictions now during on-chain trading as they do not have to worry about wallet, gas fees and trusted bridges. Can the New TeamUp Compete with CEXs? In its press release, Magic Eden clearly stated that it aims to compete with the leading Centralised Exchanges (CEXs), moving the rigid concept of centralisation behind. It will bring AI assisted research to allow users fast and efficient discovery of their preferred token. Further, it will allow users to bring fund from Apple Pay, Venmoe, or Credit Card. CEO Jack Lu announced in a X post that with this acquisition, he aims to bring all the 500M crypto users to on chain by “making crypto easy” for everyone. He also said, “With Slingshot’s chain abstraction tech, we’ll accelerate new token trading features to compete w/ CEXs.” Its competition ambitions can be possible since most CEXs support a limited number of cross-chain pairs. But Slingshot lets users swap across chains quickly without bridging or off-ramping. This can be a huge win for DeFi-native traders. Further, with low gas and zero trading fees, it offers simple login process. However, CEXs like Binance, Coinbase, and OKX still dominate in liquidity and order-book speed. Slingshot aggregates liquidity from DEXs, but can’t match CEXs on slippage-sensitive trades. Nonetheless, the Magic Eden-Slingshot acquisition can significantly work towards reviving the declining interest in NFT trading. With the NFT trading volume standing at mere $4.9 million, the total Q1 2025 trading volume has witnessed a 24% decrease from Q4 2024 (according to Coingecko Data). Last year in November, crypto trading platform Kraken also decided to shut down its Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace. Declining NFT Trading Volume The post Magic Eden Acquires Slingshot: What It Means for NFT Traders appeared first on CoinGape .

Source: CoinGape