Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go and Ingress, is to close its Trading Post line of NFT trading cards.
Niantic is to shut down Trading Post, a web3 project connected to Ingress – the company’s second best-known augmented reality game after Pokémon Go.
Launched in late 2022, Trading Post was pitched as a digital playing card marketplace in which users could create and trade their own “Ingress Bio Cards” as NFTs. Trading Post was developed by SpotX Games, a Miami-based start up purchased by Niantic in May 2022; the Trading Post NFT venture was announced a few months later, with the intention of “connecting Ingress Agents around the world through digital Ingress Bio Cards.”
As picked up by web3isgoinggreat, Niantic announced Trading Post’s closure on 10 April, bringing the whole venture to an end after less than six months of existence. The move was announced on Ingress’s community forum, with a post stating that Trading Post is to shut down on 9 June.
“Trading Post was an experimentation effort to explore the world of digital collectibles,” the post goes, “and while we believe that web3 has the potential to create meaningful experiences in the future, we plan to shift focus to other priorities.”
The post then goes on to explain to users that they have 60 days to download the cards the already own, and that they have 30 days (as of 10 April) to trade and create new cards.
“Ingress has long been a place where new ideas incubate, and we want to thank our Ingress agents for participating and sharing valuable feedback,” the post concludes. “You showed us how closely knit the Ingress community is – a core principle unique to Niantic games.”
The community response to the announcement has, glancing through the replies, been roundly positive so far. “Awesome,” one Ingress player wrote. “NFTs and crypto are scourge on our society and bring no value what so ever! It’s a cesspool of scammers, scalpers, speculators and grifters. Ingress community needs none of that!”
Niantic’s next big project is Peridot, a successor to Pokémon Go that involves the breeding and care of fantastical creatures that definitely don’t look at all like Pokémon. Last year, Niantic senior producer Ziah Fogel said that NFTs were an “interesting idea and something that we’re obviously looking at.”
Time will tell whether Niantic will indeed add NFTs to Peridot, or whether it’ll quietly drop the idea.
For its part, The Pokémon Company recently put up a job listing for a web3 expert with a “deep knowledge” of “blockchain technologies and NFT, and/or metaverse.”
Pikachu and Snorlax NFTs may yet show up on a blockchain network near you soon.
Read more: NFTs and video games: no flippin’ thanks?
