Roblox CEO “Dreams” of Adding Cross-platform NFTs As Part of Open Ecosystem

Popular gaming platform Roblox could look to add cross-platform NFTs in-game, founder and CEO David Baszucki said.

In an interview with CNBC, Baszucki said that adding cross-platform NFTs in Roblox was “a bit of a dream here.”

“I want to highlight there’s a bit of a dream here about objects and NFTs moving from platform to platform,” Baszucki said.

Baszucki provided a hypothetical example of a famous celebrity such as musician Elton John launching limited-edition capes for charity on Roblox.

“We would imagine someday that those [hypothetical capes] would go off-platform, as an NFT, possibly get sold off-platform, and then come back on-platform,” Baszucki said.

Robux, Roblox’s in-game currency, could also be included in the “objects” part of Baszucki’s statement. Roblox earns hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter selling its own digital currency which players use to purchase items on its closed platform, such as clothing, accessories, or access to exclusive servers in their favorite games.

In its Q3 2023 earnings statement released on Wednesday, the company reported that it had generated $839.5 million in “bookings” during the quarter, a 20% increase from the same period a year ago. Roblox classifies “bookings” as the revenue generated when users purchase Robux.

Roblox is one of the most-played video games on the planet, especially among younger audiences, and its user count is only growing. The gaming platform, which allows users to both play and create their own games, currently has around 70.2 million daily active users as of Q3 2023, while its daily active user count is up 20% compared to November of last year, per CNBC.

In April, Roblox introduced Limiteds, a new category of virtual wearables on its platform that have a restricted quantity for sale and can be resold when users no longer wish to keep them. Each resale of a Limited item results in a 10% royalty fee being returned to the initial creator.

Despite not being NFTs, Limiteds exhibit many characteristics associated with NFTs, albeit without utilizing blockchain technology.

“What we do expect is the creators—whether it’s Elton John or Nike, or someone else making a digital item—that they would play a key role and have a fair amount of control in that process,” Baszucki continued.  

Nike has recently invested in NFTs, having launched a Web3 platform in November last year. The company held a virtual “forging” event last month where NFT holders could order limited-edition Nike-RTFKT shoe NFTs and receive both a digital and physical version of the shoe. Nike-RTFKT non-fungible token collections have generated nearly $1.4 billion in trading volume and $170 million in earnings, according to research data from The Block.