FTX Puts a $10 Paywall For Its New NFT Minting Feature

Opening up to the growing artistic marketplace, FTX recently announced the ability to mint custom NFTs directly on their exchange. However, they were quickly forced to place a pricey paywall behind the feature in response to a wave of spam images.

NFTs on FTX Exchange

The new feature was announced by FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried (aka SBF) on Twitter earlier today. His tweet linked to a simple test NFT that he posted on the exchange as a sample. The image– merely a white background with the word ‘Test’ handwritten across it– already has a $2100 bid.

According to SBF’s thread, all NFTs will be cross-chain compatible with Ethereum/ Solana. Deposits and withdrawals will be open within the next two weeks, and by that time, “outside NFTs” will also be storable.

FTX adopting NFT creation and trading is no surprise, given the market’s massive growth as of late. As CryptoPotato reported today, a collection of NFT apes is currently being bid for 19 million dollars.

What’s more, even institutions of ‘higher culture’ are entering the space. The State Hermitage Museum recently launched a premium NFT collection, including the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, with starting bids at 10k BUSD.

FTX Gets Spammed, Immediately Establishes Paywall.

Though the system feature was initially free, it also left it open to abuse. Just 7 hours after his announcement, SBF returned to Twitter, claiming that the exchange was flooded with “a massive number of submissions.” Apparently, “too many” of these images were just identical pictures of a fish, indicating spam.

In hasty response, the CEO established a one-time $500 fee for first-time NFT submissions in order to combat this threat.

Users did not receive this update well. Many were quick to point out that $500 was a rather expensive barrier to entry and that simply minting on Ethereum seemed like a far cheaper alternative at that point.

Soon after, SBF reconsidered his decision and scrapped the $500 entry fee. Now, he has implemented a flat rate of $10 per NFT. With this, he hopes to “reduce fish-related spam while also making [NFT creation] affordable.

FTX will be refunding any users that recently paid $500 to create their NFT. The public seems to be pleased with the development, but whether it is enough to reduce fish spam remains to be seen.