Magic Eden, the Solana-based NFT marketplace, has expanded its horizons beyond NFTs by acquiring the crypto trading application Slingshot amid a prolonged market downturn that has seen other marketplaces shutter. According to an April 9 update on X, this strategic move now enables Magic Eden to support over 8 million tokens spanning nearly every major blockchain.

The platform stated, “No bridges. No CEXs. This is another major step towards our vision of providing the best platform to trade all assets, on all chains.” With nearly 1 million users, Slingshot gives access to tokens from the 10 largest blockchains using a unified USDC balance, simplifying transactions for its users.

Slingshot is among a growing number of crypto solutions that seek to offer full-chain abstraction. This approach alleviates the typical hurdles users face, such as selecting the appropriate wallet, ensuring sufficient gas fees, finding a reliable bridge, and transferring funds before purchasing the desired token.

Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu hopes the integration would help transition a portion of the 500 million users currently dependent on centralized exchanges toward more crypto-native, onchain platforms. Although Magic Eden and Slingshot will maintain independent operations, Lu emphasized that their connectivity will intensify over time.

Notably, Lu mentioned that in 2024, Magic Eden generated $75 million from its NFT marketplace, and he anticipates that the Slingshot acquisition will further boost these earnings.