Nifty Gateway, an NFT marketplace owned by crypto exchange Gemini, announced in January that it would close, describing plans for a bulk withdrawal tool and migration of metadata hosting to Arweave, the company said. The closure followed parent company Gemini's decision to concentrate on its primary financial app.
Nifty Gateway to Shut Down, Offers NFT Withdrawal Tool and Arweave Migration
Nifty Gateway, an NFT marketplace owned by crypto exchange Gemini, announced in January that it would close, describing plans for a bulk withdrawal tool and migration of metadata hosting to Arweave, the company said. The closure followed parent company Gemini's decision to concentrate on its primary financial app.
In 2021, Christie's sold a Beeple NFT for $69.35 million, and Sotheby's sold 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs for $24.40 million, according to the source.
NFTs often use the ERC-721 standard on Ethereum, which records ownership on the blockchain while pointing to separate metadata files containing the work's name and a link to its image or video. These files are often stored off-chain and require separate hosting.
Nifty Gateway's closure update said some NFTs created in 2021 or earlier had records permanently linked to its own servers. The company promised to keep hosting that metadata indefinitely and extended its withdrawal window to April 23. It planned to move descriptive records and media hosting to Arweave, a network designed for long-term storage.
Distributed storage like IPFS can reduce dependence on a single company, but files can be deleted unless pinned, and gateways can fail even when data exists elsewhere, according to IPFS documentation cited in the source.
In a December 2021 discussion published by LACMA, digital preservation manager Joey Heinen and computer scientist Elian Carsenat looked at the software, storage, and ongoing responsibility needed to keep NFT artworks available.
In MoMA's 2016 account of restoring Teiji Furuhashi's Lovers, conservator Ben Fino-Radin described a project that involved obsolete technology, such as MS-DOS and LaserDiscs, requiring the projected images and interactive behavior to function again.
- The source does not state the year of Nifty Gateway's closure announcement, only that it was in January.
- The source does not establish whether all migrations of metadata and media hosting to Arweave succeeded.
- The source does not state whether any NFT artwork was lost due to the closure.
- The source does not state the number of NFTs or collections affected.
- The source does not specify what happens after the April 23 withdrawal window.
- The source does not include a direct response from NFT collectors or artists about the closure.
Read the original at CryptoSlate