Shopify is launching a suite of blockchain commerce tools for merchants

by Arthur · February 11, 2023

Crypto-friendly e-commerce giant Shopify has launched a suite of blockchain commerce tools to improve the user experience of its web3-focused stores hosted on the platform.

Shopify blockchain team designer @ryancreatescopy announced the move via Twitter on February 9, noting that “we’ve launched some new tools to help you build tokengating apps for Shopify sellers.”

In particular, advanced crypto wallet connectivity features and application programming interface (API) “token gating” tools have been highlighted. The latter has been in early access beta mode since June 2022 and was previously only available to a select number of merchants.

With tokegating, all applicable Shopify merchants can now set up their stores to dictate which token holders can and cannot access exclusive products, NFT drops and perks.

The tool verifies user eligibility via their connected wallet, and is touted as a convenient way for NFT sellers to reward specific users or add exclusivity to specific products.

In terms of extended crypto wallet support, Shopify has integrated Sign-In with the Ethereum SIWE protocol led by the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and the Ethereum Foundation.

SIWE essentially enables secure user login and authentication of Ethereum accounts and ENS domains without giving away private identifiers to third parties such as names, phone numbers and residential addresses.

The subject of private user information has been a sore spot for Shopify in the past. In April 2022, a group of disgruntled users filed a class-action lawsuit against the firm and hardware wallet vendor Ledger regarding a hefty leak of user data originating from the duo back in 2020.

Related: Ethereum’s Shapella Transition Is ‘On The Horizon’

ENS Labs community spokesperson @sadaf.eth highlighted the SIWE integration with Shopify via Twitter on February 9, linking to developer docs explaining how to build the tool into Shopify stores, much to the delight of some in the Ethereum community.

Lfggg pic.twitter.com/sjfptLkPwL

— broke.eth (@Melvininho) 10 February 2023

“The StatementGenerator prop allows you to customize the statement that appears in a Login with Ethereum message. The function receives the address of the wallet connected to it, so you can expand and customize your message statements to better fit your brand,” it says that in the document.

At this stage, when a merchant connects to the SIWE feature on Shopify wallet connect, it appears that users will be able to click a “sign in with Ethereum” button to connect their addresses via SIWE’s partners such as Coinbase, Fortmatic, WalletConnect, Portis and Torus.