Salesforce is officially getting into NFTs. The customer relationship management (CRM) software maker and Slack’s owner recently introduced NFT Cloud, a one-stop platform designed to help brands and businesses create and distribute NFT assets.
Currently in a pilot phase, NFT Cloud lets businesses mint NFTs using their CRM, and sell those NFTs on their existing commerce site. It essentially allows businesses to jump on the NFT bandwagon without changing much of their workflows in dealing with customer relations.
With NFT Cloud, Salesforce sees its customers utilizing NFTs as a way to drive engagement and loyalty rather than dealing in the world of digital art. While NFTs are more popular as digital artworks, they can also come in the form of brand loyalty initiatives, such as exclusive deals and perks, early access to product drops, community membership, or special admission to real-world events.
In short, functional utility is key here. “The art should look great. But that’s not really the point,” said Adam Caplan, senior vice president of emerging technology at Salesforce, in a statement to Bloomberg. He believes Salesforce’s customers are more likely to use NFTs as a driver of engagement than asset value.
The official website for NFT Cloud doesn’t specify which blockchain platform it uses to mint NFT assets, but it does mention that it won’t support any blockchains using the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus model. This seems to be Salesforce’s response to the outcry from many of its employees back when the company announced its plans to enter the NFT space in February.
Presumably, this means Ethereum is currently off the table, at least until it successfully carries out its plans to fully transition to the more efficient proof-of-stake model. As of now, it’s also unclear whether Salesforce is open to Polygon or other Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions that use the proof-of-stake model.
During the pilot phase, NFT Cloud is only available to limited customers, but Salesforce is targeting general availability for October. If anything, this announcement should prepare us consumers to not feel surprised when our favorite businesses start offering NFTs to their customers.
Source: Decrypt.
