Engineering Quality Solutions
We barely got the time to absorb such significant digital changes happening around us, and the next big thing is Non-Fungible Tokens.
By Lokesh Dudhat
Last updated on: November 12, 2024
We barely have the time to absorb such significant digital changes happening around us, and the next big thing we hear about is Non-Fungible Tokens. With technology at our fingertips, people can transform their imagination into reality, and NFT is one of them.
Who thought you could wear Gucci sneakers for just $12? Well, no, you can’t actually wear them, but you can buy NFT tokens to wear them digitally. Sounds insane, right?
NFT or Non-Fungible tokens are digital assets that prove authenticity. You can call it a digital copy of real-world items suitable for paintings, music albums, games, and many other things.
People have spent thousands of dollars buying some of the craziest digital art that we could never imagine in the real world.
However, such insane popularity brings a lot of questions, and we are concerned for the people who are endlessly buying these without proper knowledge.
In this article, we will talk in detail about NFTs, their platforms, and the reason for all this buzz.
No, they are not cryptocurrencies.
Non-fungible tokens are a deed of ownership of digital assets. People are using it to monetize their talent and earn some extra cash.
The idea of NFT started way back in 2012-13 as “colored coins.”
It was used in the Blockchain world to prove ownership of various assets, including cars, shares, precious metals, and whatnot. It was later used to denote digital collectibles, including property, company shares, and bonds.
A year later, Kevin McCoy, the first person to launch its NFT, sold his digital art “Quantum” for a lot of money.
Image Source
Further, the trend blew up with more and more people starting to monetize their skills on NFTs.
The information of each NFT is stored in a digital ledger called “Blockchain.” These transactions take place using cryptocurrency as they are built on software similar to NFTs.
There have been times when people questioned if it’s just another scam as everyone could have a copy of the same photo or listen to a recorded song; why actually buy it?
Yes, of course, you can do all of it without spending a penny, but it’s more about bringing the originals home.
Like, if you take a photo of Monalisa, everyone can do that, but can you take the painting home, right?
However, if you have purchased it, you now get the right to do whatever you want with the piece.
And that’s what happens with digital assets as well. You become the sole owner of a one-of-a-kind thing.
Recently, SolGuruz has explored the NFT marketplace and come up with an app that offers the best NFT buying experience with on-point features, including:
Image Source: niftyzone
Another popular buzz in the NFT market is Cryptopunk.
These are 24* 24 pixel art avatars that are sold as NFTs. Cryptopunk started as an experiment by the software company Larva Labs, Matt Hall, and John Watkinson. They wanted to create a platform that could build thousands of unique characters.
The founders primarily wanted to develop an app through the software, but it turned out to be a revolutionary product in NFT. Cryptopunk is stored in the Ethereum blockchain, which allows the code to be processed in the blockchain, and the results will be stored forever.
And once the code is saved in the blockchain, no one, including the developers, can change it.
Right now, there are exactly 10,000 Cryptopunks, out of which 6039 are male and 3840 female. Besides these, some are aliens, Apes, and Zombies. Every punk has its own set of features that make it all quite unique.
Initially, all these punks were released for free, but people quickly claimed it. So, now you have to purchase the punk from others to become its owner.
In 2017, Cryptopunk was sold for 1-34 USD, but now when the whole world is behind NFTs, their prices have gone up to millions. This year in June, we witnessed the most expensive Cryptopunk transaction of $11.7 million to billionaire Shalom Mackenzie.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, plans to transform from a social media company to a metaverse company.
In the sci-fi novel Snow Crash, the term “metaverse” was first coined in 1992 by Neal Stephenson. The book talked about a digital space in the real world where people are digital avatars with buildings, houses, and offices, just like our surroundings.
At that time, we didn’t think this was actually possible until recently when augmented and virtual reality started to gain interaction.
The concept of “ metaverse” is still in the making; the term can be bifurcated into “meta” and “verse.” Meta means beyond, and verse comes from the universe. It is used to describe a virtual environment which is a replica of the real world.
So, whatever we do here can be done in the metaverse world. Plus, with high-end technology and with VR in-built headsets, people will get to feel everything like it’s happening to them in real life.
There is still a lot of work that has to be done in order to make this dream come true.
The virtual world started to gain attraction when investors saw NFTs booming.
Many people today are now interested in buying digital collectibles that they think of as digital assets.
And, even in Metaverse virtual environments, you can trade items as we do in the real world. All these virtual worlds are driven through NFTs, where you make transactions similar to the real world.
It’s like being in multiple worlds and owning digital rights in each one of them.
Metaverse is an architect of the future. With people shifting online, they are looking for more personalized spaces where they have the chance to gain authority and get to live a virtual life, mimicking all the features of the real world.
A prominent example of the virtual world is Decentraland, where the cost of virtual pots is selling for $1 million, which is insane.
Metaverse and NFTs are huge opportunities for creators and investors to monetize their skills by selling digital assets and establishing their ownership over virtual worlds.
Let’s discuss some of the most popular NFT marketplaces where you can trade digital assets-
OpenSea is a global leader in providing Non-fungible assets in various categories, including art, music, trading cards, collectibles, domain names, virtual worlds, sport, and utility.
The beta version of OpenSea was launched in 2017 through Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah. They were one of the early adopters of the crypto world. It is the world’s first NFT marketplace to buy and sell NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
The platform uses smart contracts, where they don’t hold the custody of the digital asset. All the NFTs are directly stored in the Ethereum wallet that needs to connect with the OpenSea website.
OpenSea has over 200 categories of digital assets and more than 4 million NFTs. Buyers can only pay using Ethereum tokens.
KnownOrigin came up in 2018 and was founded by David Moore, James Morgan, and Andy Gray. The platform has over 1000 artists, 11000 NFTs, and 7000 editions to make a cumulative sales of $1.3 million.
The tagline of KnownOrigin is “Authenticate, showcase, and sell rare digital artwork.” You will indeed find some hidden gems on the KnownOrigin platform.
KnownOrigin thrives on blockchain technology. It uses a combination of smart contracts and ERC721 (non-fungible tokens) to ensure the highest security.
However, KnownOrigin charges a 15% commission on each transaction, which is relatively high compared to any of its competitors. The platform only accepts payment through cryptocurrency, so you have to create a crypto account to purchase any NFT.
NiftyGateway is a great platform for buying and selling NFTs. The brand collaborates with top artists to onboard some hidden gems that are limited edition and are of the highest quality.
New collections are dropped once every three weeks, only for a specified time period. Unlike other NFT selling platforms, Nifty also accepts payment through credit cards for people who are uncomfortable or don’t have a crypto account.
However, a major issue of NIfty is acting as a custodian marketplace, where the digital asset is stored on the platform and the buyer’s wallet.
This created a problem for buyers who did not set up their two-factor authentication, and the hackers could withdraw NFT just by signing into the website without having to go through a blockchain transaction.
MakersPlace is another very popular NFT marketplace where you can buy and sell digital assets. The platform has been active since 2018 and was founded by a tech entrepreneur, Dannie Chu.
If you are someone looking to buy cheap NFTs, the MakersPlace would be a great option. It has a varied collection of rare and authentic digital art. MakersPlace has many awesome creators, including Dmitri Cherniak, Yura Miron, Dreamonaut, and many others.
Every digital art present on MakersPlace is secured through the Ethereum blockchain for authentication.
To buy any digital asset, you will be charged a commission of 15% by MakersPlace The platform accepts payments through your credit card and PayPal, so you don’t necessarily need a crypto account to process transactions.
Rarible is a newly launched platform in 2020 by Alexei Falin and Alexander Salnikov. It is a digital space where creators can, and buyers can collaborate to buy and sell NFTs. The art pieces can easily be created on the platform without needing any prior coding language.
Recently, Rarible also launched a governance token called RARI. It gives people the right to vote on proposals like managing fees and managerial proposals. Unlike any other token in the crypto space, RARI is not endless. There are only 25,000,000 that are shared in a manner that maintains the overall Rarible infrastructure.
Rarible charges 2.5% of every sale on both sides of the transaction. To make any transaction on the platform, you must have an ETH crypto wallet. Rarible does not accept credit cards or PayPal for their payments.
Mintable is another excellent platform to mint, buy and sell digital assets. It was founded by Zach Burks in 2018 as a safe platform to encourage people to invest in NFTs. You will find a lot of NFTs, including game items, music, templates, videos, and other collectibles.
This NFT marketplace is based on the Ethereum blockchain and accepts deposits via both credit cards and cryptocurrency. However, Mintable’s transactional fees are pretty expensive. It charges 2.5% for normal items, 5% on gasless items, and 10% on printables.
Unlike any other NFT marketplace, Mintable supports 50 free listings to encourage digital artists to start creating and earning through cryptocurrency.
AsyncArt was launched in January 2021 by Conlon Rois. This NFT marketplace has over 1400+ digital artwork pieces available either in singles or bundles. It is an extremely safe platform where sellers can tokenize digital art pieces based on the ETH blockchain technology.
One of the most interesting things in ArtSync that differentiates it from all the other NFT marketplaces is enabling masters and layers. Any digital piece is a collaboration of various components. So, most buyers trade the entire digital piece; however, in Artsync, you can only buy a specific part of the art piece.
So, masters are the owners of the entire art piece, and layers are for buyers who just want certain individual parts of the master image. That means multiple people can own one digital art piece.
Investing in layers gives you the benefit of having ownership without spending a lot of money.
However, the biggest drawback here is not seeing who you are collaborating with. If you want to sell the digital piece, but the other owners disagree, then the sale cannot be made unless the buyer is only interested in your part.
NFTs are definitely the next big thing in technology. In the coming years, we can see some of the biggest inventions in the history of mankind. But, for now, you must invest in crypto-based digital arts to get into the lead and experiment with the latest trends. SolGuruz is a top-rated flutter app development company in India. Learn more about app development costs in 2024 and read our ultimate guide on why you should develop apps like NFT Marketplace or similar concepts in Flutter.
Our expertise is in working with the clients as a team, starting from the requirement and continuing until it gets deployed and delivered. In short, we provide end-to-end support, starting from requirement to maintenance support. Let us know if you are looking to hire an expert Flutter developer to build your MVP development.
Written by
Lokesh is a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at SolGuruz, a senior technical consultant with over 10 years of experience in exploring the horizon of the software development industry. He has worked closely with startups and enterprises, mentoring them in engineering their tech solutions. With a hands-on experience of 10+ years as a developer, he has delivered solutions using a wide range of technologies such as iOS, Android, Angular, Node, RTC, React, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Python, and many more. At SolGuruz, we believe in delivering a combination of technology and management. Our commitment to quality engineering is unwavering, and we never want to waste your time or ours. So when you work with us, you can rest assured that we will deliver on our promises, no matter what.
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