NFT marketplace Magic Eden acquires Slingshot trading app
Jack Lu tells Blockworks he believes crypto apps are going to win long-term
Magic Eden modified by Blockworks
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NFT marketplace Magic Eden is acquiring trading app Slingshot.
As of Tuesday, the deal has been signed and is expected to close soon, a spokesperson for Magic Eden confirmed to Blockworks. Jack Lu, Magic Eden’s CEO and cofounder, also spoke to us about the deal.
“Why Slingshot, right? The way we would think about it is, if you look at the market today, there was a time everyone was launching L2s,” Lu told Blockworks. “But it was pretty obvious that the market was pretty over it. And our conviction in this cycle — but also over the long term — is [in] the apps. It’s the apps that are going to win and get the most attention.”
Lu explained that he enjoys a number of Slingshot’s features, including what he describes as super-fast trading and the ability to trade across any chain without bridging tokens. He also likes that more tokens are available to trade on Slingshot, compared to a centralized exchange like Coinbase.
Magic Eden is also planning social features for Slingshot in the future.
“Our vision for Magic Eden has always been all chains, all assets,” Lu said. “This is not just an app that allows you to trade memecoins.”
Support for HyperLiquid, XRP, Cardano, Sui, TON and Chainlink is in the works on Slingshot, he added.
Lu clarified that while there might be integrations between Slingshot and Magic Eden in their long-term vision, nothing’s imminent in the short-term. However, there could be a user identity tie-in at some point in the future, where users of both trading platforms are able to see all their assets in one place, under one account.
“We don’t want to create too much interdependency between Magic Eden and Slingshot. [Slingshot is] a really fast team. They ship super fast,” Lu explained.
When asked how much Magic Eden paid to acquire Slingshot, Magic Eden’s rep said both sides of the deal prefer not to share the financial details behind it.
Slingshot’s app is available on iOS and Android, and can be used almost worldwide, including in the US, as long as you comply with its terms of service. It launched in February 2023, according to one of its posts on X.
Slingshot lets users connect Apple Pay, Venmo, PayPal, credit card or debit card to make crypto purchases. It offers a non-custodial wallet for users and is a decentralized app, meaning all swaps occur onchain and users retain custody of their crypto at all times. There’s no option for Slingshot to custody user assets.
Slingshot is a mobile-first app, and has a simplicity to its interface and design that reminds me of Robinhood.
But it has to compete with Robinhood — which has a market cap of $30 billion — as well as other behemoths like Coinbase and Binance. Plus it’s in the ring with DeFi platforms and other smaller crypto trading tools. But Slingshot seems to have an ease-of-use that could make it appealing to crypto newcomers.
The app’s Google Play Store page shows Slingshot has over 10,000 unique user downloads, which means its Android version has more than 10,000 but less than 50,000 downloads (“50K+” would appear as the download count if the app has over that amount).
Magic Eden’s move to expand beyond just NFTs is something other NFT marketplaces have been exploring, as NFT trading volumes stagnate. OpenSea has said it wants to add fungible tokens to its latest marketplace, OS2, to expand beyond just NFTs.
Despite markets being down this year, Magic Eden’s Lu isn’t worried about the broader sentiment and state of crypto because he’s taken a builder’s perspective — a stance execs and devs often take in bear markets.
“Now is the best time,” Lu said. “Right now when it’s really quiet, we actually find it the best time for us to cool our minds and really bet deep on our thesis and build really hard.”
Lu’s interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
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