Shopify has partnered with NFT and Web3 app-building platform thirdweb to launch ‘Commercekit’, a new development kit designed for developers to easily build Web3 commerce apps.
Commercekit and Shopify looks to support merchants in building apps that enable new ways to engage with their buyers. Potential uses include distributing NFTs to create customer ‘segments’ for future campaigns. This could mean that loyal customers that hold NFTs could access future items on sale, access exclusive sales or products, as well as pre-sales.
This move could also position selling NFTs as a distinct new product category, creating a new revenue stream for businesses.
The US Census Bureau News revealed that 13 per cent of total retail sales come in the form of e-commerce sales. Web3 could potentially accelerate the growth of e-commerce by providing merchants with new ways to engage their audience, run marketing campaigns and reward customers for their loyalty.
thirdweb explained that it believes the tools used to build Web3 commerce today are “limited and outdated”. It aims for the new ‘Commercekit’ to make building Web3 commerce experiences faster and more simple.
Making ‘smart contracts and Web3 wallet addresses’ essential to commerce
Jake Loo, CTO and co-founder at thirdweb, said: “We’ve spent the last 18 months working closely with Web3 developers and brands interested in building blockchain apps. It became clear that integrating Web3 with commerce had huge demand and we believe Shopify is the best possible partner we could work with to build these tools.
“We’re excited to be combining our best-in-class Web3 development tools with Shopify’s commerce tools, and we truly believe this will kickstart the Web3 commerce revolution.”
In the past 12 months, thirdweb has also grown to over 50,000 monthly active developers using their tools and nearly 10,000 active developers doing over 500,000 blockchain transactions a month.
Alex Danco, director of product at Shopify, also commented: “As a merchant, understanding your customers and finding new buyer segments is mission-critical for running a successful business.
“We’re excited to partner with thirdweb, the fastest shipping team in Web3, to help make smart contracts and Web3 wallet addresses an essential part of the commerce and loyalty toolkit.”
