Salesforce Inc., the leading vendor of customer relationship management software, announced Tuesday that it is now offering a cloud-based service for creating and selling NFTs, despite sales of the digital assets plummeting.
According to Adam Caplan, who oversees emerging technologies at Salesforce, the new service will be tailored to consumer brands that want to sell NFTs of their products for special access, such as admission to an event, rather than for art or trading value. “The art should look great. But that’s not really the point.”
The company insists that it is a move towards the future, one that came from the curiosity of customers.
Salesforce is seeing interest from CMOs and CDOs who are asking for help entering web3, and we are enthusiastic about bringing new innovations, products and offerings to our customers in a way that allows them to build and maintain meaningful relationships with their customers.
Adam Caplan, SVP of Emerging Technology at Salesforce, told TechCrunch.
Adam Caplan believes the idea is a way to market to customers a service that they might find valuable.
It’s really about utility. And what we mean by utility is as an NFT holder, I receive certain benefits. It could be something in a digital world, or it could be something in the physical world.
Adam Caplan, SVP of Emerging Technology at Salesforce
According to the website of the company, the list of blockchains and wallets NFT Cloud will support in the future is not yet available. In a nutshell, it only says that the platform will tie together data, communities, and wallets and allow users to deploy from a secure, sustainable platform.
SalesForce has long been interested in blockchain technology, a trend that began when the company announced it was working on a blockchain project in 2018. As part of its recent investment round, Salesforce Venture, Salesforce’s investing arm, tagged Samsung Venture in the funding round, investing a total of $35 million into a blockchain company called Digital Asset Holdings.
There are some who have questioned whether it is ethical and ecologically responsible to sell these assets, including 400 employees in February who sent a protest letter to co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor. Caplan insisted, however, that they were doing so in a way which was consistent with Salesforce’s values.
