Roblox already makes hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter by selling its own digital currency that players use to buy assets running on its closed platform. But the company’s founder and CEO David Baszucki still envisions eventually opening up the Roblox ecosystem so that non-fungible tokens can be used on his platform as well as others.
“I want to emphasize that there is a bit of a dream here about objects and NFTs moving from platform to platform,” Baszucki said during an interview on CNBC when asked about opening up the Roblox platform to interoperability, a concept that is key is down to many people’s hopes for how the metaverse should function.
It wasn’t clear whether Baszucki was suggesting he and his colleagues shared the “dream” of interoperability, but he did offer a scenario he was considering. “For example, we believe that one day… I use the fun use case that one day Elton John will come onto Roblox and make, say, eight or ten really cool one-piece capes and sell them for charity. And we I could imagine one day those disappearing from the platform as an NFT, possibly being sold off the platform and then coming back to the platform.”
With interoperability, digital assets such as NFTs could operate and function across platforms – a departure from the closed ecosystems that currently exist, where an avatar or asset only works for one specific platform.
Baszucki also said that he expects that if allowing interoperable NFTs on Roblox were to become a reality, the creator, be it Elton John or Nike – his examples – “would play a key role and have a fair amount of control in that process.”
Nike, for its part, has invested in NFTs and seen decent results with its Phygital shoe line that allows consumers to buy limited-edition shoes if they own certain tokens it sells.
It may take some time for Roblox to adopt NFTs
This isn’t the first time a Roblox executive has teased the possibility of allowing NFTs on the platform. In 2022, Craig Donato, Roblox’s then Chief Business Officer, mentioned that NFTs would one day work on the platform, almost as if it was inevitable. But he went on to say that the jump into NFTs didn’t seem “super important” at the moment. Donato left Roblox earlier this year.
And as beneficial as it could be for NFT adoption, given that Roblox now has over 70 million daily active users, the lack of urgency will likely continue for a while as the platform continues to grow its user base and make a substantial contribution. amount from the sale of its own currency.
Company reported Wednesday that it had generated $839.5 million in bookings in the third quarter of this year, up 20% from the same period a year ago. Roblox classifies “bookings” as the revenue generated when users purchase “Robux,” an in-app currency.
