Salesforce is reportedly moving into NFTs

Salesforce CRM office logo
(Image credit: Shutterstock.com / Jonathan Weiss)

Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) could be about to get even bigger following reports that SaaS giant Salesforce is planning on launching an as-yet unspecific product for the market. 

Exact details surrounding the new NFT Cloud offering are still sparse, but it seems that Salesforce is targeting something similar to OpenSea, the main platform for trading and verifying NFTs (which, of course, isn't very decentralised).

NFT Cloud could help artists host and sell NFTs and could potentially be integrated into Salesforce's other products, which are used by many businesses around the world, especially those who need CRM tools

NFTs for all 

The appeal of NFTs to Salesforce seems fairly clear, as OpenSea recently raised $300 million at a $13.3 billion valuation. For context on the insane growth, the startup raised its Series A round in March 2021, followed by a $100 million Series B round in July 2021. 

One of the fallacies of NFTs, and the distributed blockchain more generally, is that you often need a centralised entity (which, almost certainly, is a company) to validate certain things. 

The silliness (and hypocrisy) of this system was artfully highlighted by Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike in a widely read blog post. Moxie found that, for all the claims of decentralised, many Web3 services rely on APIs from private companies. 

If these companies, which include OpenSea (for verifying NFTs) and etherscan (for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain), go down for whatever reason, a lot of the supposedly decentralised services cease to function. 

The full post from Moxie is well worth reading but it serves to highlight a simple fact: Web3 is in its nascency at the moment and anyone jumping on the bandwagon, as it appears Salesforce might do, could end up with a big slice of the pie.  

Via: CNBC

Max Slater-Robins has been writing about technology for nearly a decade at various outlets, covering the rise of the technology giants, trends in enterprise and SaaS companies, and much more besides. Originally from Suffolk, he currently lives in London and likes a good night out and walks in the countryside.

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