Have you heard about the New York City-based vending machine that’s dispending Solana NFTs with a credit card – no need for crypto?
Neon: Bringing NFTs to a Vending Machine near you
In the world of NFTs, there are many marketplaces vying to be the go-to marketplace for NFT traders, and every marketplace employs strategies they feel will work best for their reality. One company that stands out in the NFT marketplace space race is Neon.
The world of NFTs is spilling into the real world, and a Solana-based NFT marketplace is at the forefront of this movement. Neon is an exciting company, and investors seem to believe in it as Neon raised $3 million in seed funding in January 2022.
Jordan Birnholtz, the CMO and co-founder of Neon, came up with the idea for an NFT vending machine during summer 2021 with the help of Drew Levine, a Neon Summer intern. This project aims to make the NFT buying process as seamless and stress-free as possible.
Neon also believes that their physical outlet will make it easier for first-time NFT buyers to make their first purchase now; meanwhile, buyers in NYC can approach their vending machine to buy an NFT using a myriad of payment methods, including Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, MasterCard, and Visa.
While speaking about the project, Birnholtz shared the following with Decrypt.co “My thought was that there is no simpler way to buy something than a vending machine.”
Purchasing an NFT: A Broken Process
Ask most people who own NFTs, and they may share with you how daunting a task can be, especially to newcomers. If you’re new or unfamiliar with Web3, it can seem like the entire NFT purchasing process is built to frustrate you.
Most people have to purchase NFTs through cryptocurrency exchanges, transfer crypto to digital wallets, and then go through the hassle of connecting their wallets to an online marketplace. In this simplified process, anything can go wrong, and all that most people have to do is make one mistake before the fractured system makes you regret your decision to try.
It gets even worse; some NFTs require the payment of exorbitant gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain, while others leave you with no choice but to try to make sense of a process involving wrapped cryptocurrency; it’s too much for most people to bear.
How to Access the Neon NFT Vending Machine
If the idea of making use of a physical brick-and-mortar vending machine to purchase your first or next NFT sounds appealing to you, then head over to 29 John St in the heart of Manhattan, New York. The vending machine initially opened in December 2021 when it was soft-launched by Neon, and over the last three months, it has grown in leaps and bounds to the point where the NFT vending machine now operates 24 hours daily.
Neon currently offers two NFT projects through their vending machine; you can invest in a Party Pigeons NFT or a Project Color NFT. There are plans to offer crypto as a payment option for this NFT vending machine soon.
