Roblox already makes hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter from the sale of its virtual currency, which users may use to buy items that are compatible with its restricted platform. Nonetheless, David Baszucki, the CEO and creator of the firm, can still see the Roblox ecosystem someday being opened up to enable non-fungible tokens to be used on other platforms in addition to his own.
In an interview with CNBC, Baszucki responded, “I want to highlight there’s a bit of a dream here about objects and NFTs moving from platform to platform,” in response to a question concerning opening up the Roblox platform to interoperability, a notion that is essential to many people’s hopes for how the metaverse should operate.
Though it was unclear, Baszucki did provide a scenario that he and his colleagues had thought about, it seemed as though they share the “dream” of interoperability. “We do believe some day, for example … I use the fun use case that someday Elton John may come on Roblox and make eight or ten one-unit, really cool capes, for example, and sell them for charity. And we would imagine some day that those would go off platform as an NFT, possibly get sold off platform, and then come back on platform.”
Instead of the closed ecosystems that now exist, when an avatar or object only functions for one single platform, interoperability would allow digital assets, like NFTs, to operate and function on many platforms.
According to Baszucki, if the idea of enabling NFTs on Roblox were to succeed, the creator—Elton John or Nike, for example—”would play a key role and have a fair amount of control in that process.”
With its phygital shoe line, which enables customers to buy limited-edition shoes upon possessing certain tokens it offers, Nike has made a considerable investment in NFTs.
Roblox May Need Some Time to Implement NFTs
An official at Roblox has previously hinted that NFTs could be permitted on the platform. Craig Donato, the Chief Business Officer of Roblox back in 2022, made reference to NFTs functioning on the platform one day, almost as if it was inevitable. However, he continued, saying that adopting NFTs didn’t seem “super important” at the time. Early this year, Donato departed from Roblox.
Even though Roblox has over 70 million active daily users, it might be beneficial for NFT adoption. However, as the platform is still growing its user base and making a sizable profit from selling its own currency, there is probably not much of a rush to implement NFT.
In the third quarter of this year, the firm produced $839.5 million in bookings, up 20% over the same time last year, according to a report released by the company on Wednesday. “Bookings” are defined by Roblox as the money made when users buy “Robux,” an in-app currency.
