The NFT market ushered in the second spring? Google brings NFT trading to the Google Play Store

Text: Zhou Ziyi

**Source: **Financial Association

Joseph Mills, product manager of Google Play, Google, announced on Wednesday (July 12) that the company has updated its mobile software market policy to allow game developers to explore new ways to introduce NFT transactions into game apps in the Google Play app store. to go.

According to a blog post, Google will allow app developers to integrate digital assets such as NFTs into games through its Google Play app store.

Google's new policy may send a positive signal: **The NFT market is not dead. **

The NFT market started to be hyped up at the end of 2021, and the first half of 2022 will become an explosive period for NFT digital collections. However, in the second half of last year, with the bankruptcy of the large exchange FTX, not only the cryptocurrency was hit, but also the NFT assets lost favor with the outside world.

According to the latest analysis data from Dapprader, the total transaction volume of the NFT market in the second quarter of 2023 will drop to approximately US$2.9 billion, a quarter-on-quarter drop of 38%. The data also shows that NFT sales in the second quarter of 2023 will be about 18.6 million, a decrease of 9.2% from the first quarter.

Google's New Deal

NFT is called non-homogeneous token, which is a digital certificate based on blockchain technology, which can guarantee the rarity and uniqueness of data in the blockchain network.

Mills pointed out that this new change from Google will allow apps and games on Google Play to redefine “what traditional game users own” and increase user loyalty through unique NFT rewards.

As part of the policy update, Mills also said that app developers must be transparent about their tokenized digital assets, ensure players clearly know the value of NFT at the time of purchase.

Google Play has formulated a set of specifications on gambling, games and competitions, and this policy update on NFT digital assets is also included under this specification.

That said, developers can’t wager or stake NFTs for the chance to win prizes of real-world monetary value, including random in-game items like “loot boxes.”

Usually, the common marketing strategy of some projects in the NFT field is to convince users that purchasing these tokenized assets may bring huge benefits. **And these restrictions by Google can prevent some NFT novices from being deceived. **

Similar to Apple

Google Play expects to roll out the policy to all developers on its platform later this year, and selected some developers to test the user experience under the new policy.

Additionally, Google Play is currently in talks with industry partners to further improve support for the secondary market.

Google's new policy is similar to Apple's previous moves.

In October last year, Apple released guidelines on cryptocurrency transactions in the App Store. Apps can sell NFT and related services, but they need to be purchased through in-app purchases.

Apple has taken a cautious stance on the digital asset ecosystem. In addition to requiring applications not to contain any mechanism to guide users to consume, it also charges additional commissions for NFT transactions, which has also caused dissatisfaction in the cryptocurrency and gaming industries.

Going forward, it is possible that Apple will make adjustments or updates to its existing NFT policy in order to take a larger share of the blockchain-based world.