Coinbase Claimed Apple Forced it to remove NFT Transfers

Coinbase claimed that Apple has forced it to remove NFT transfers from Apple's iOS wallet

Coinbase has accused Apple of forcing it to remove NFT transfers from its Wallet app on iOS. On Thursday, the company tweeted that Apple "blocked our last app release until we disabled the feature" because the iPhone maker wanted the blockchain fees associated with an NFT transfer to go through its in-app purchase system, giving it a 30 percent cut.

According to Coinbase, Apple wants a 30 percent cut from NFT transfers but it is in practice not possible to make that happen for a variety of reasons, with one top important being that Apple's system doesn't support paying in crypto. While some NFT marketplaces let you purchase digital tokens using traditional fiat currency like the US dollar, the fee Coinbase is talking about is a different matter entirely. On blockchains like Ethereum, which many NFT projects use, any transaction will incur a fee, which goes to pay the people validating it. The applicable fees are getting collected in cryptocurrencies, like ETH. That is true even if you are trying to send someone an NFT for free.

Moreover, no part of the gas fee goes to Coinbase or the person receiving the NFT. The applicable amount also changes from moment to moment based on a variety of factors, like the price of the cryptocurrency or how many people are trying to get transactions validated. In other words, it's really not the sort of thing that Apple's in-app purchase system is even set up to handle. Despite that fact, it is not necessarily a surprise that Apple told Coinbase that it is not going to keep its NFT transfer system as it was. In October, the company updated its App Store review guidelines to specifically address NFTs with this new addition under section 3.1.1 In-App Purchase

That last part of the bolded section is pretty black and white, but it is surprising that Apple would demand a cut in gas fees. Before Coinbase's tweet thread, I would've guessed that Apple would only demand its in-app purchase system be used in a marketplace situation where people could buy or sell NFTs.