DeFi

Most Popular NFT Projects: Everything You Need to Know

Published

2 years ago

August 13, 2021

admin

Interest in NFTs grew rapidly. While many NFT projects have had a small fan base since they were first launched, a kind of NFT explosion has emerged in 2021.

Many thought that DeFi would lead to widespread adoption of the crypto world. But the value NFTs bring is much easier to understand for those who are not interested in blockchain technology. So some NFT projects went mainstream. So, what are these projects?

First, if you want to learn about what NFTs are, you can read our Guide to Crypto Collectibles and Unique Tokens (NFTs).

In short, NFTs are unique digital assets that are secured with cryptography. They can represent digital collectibles, game items, pets, memes, and even liquidity provider (LP) positions in DeFi.

Some lesser-known uses include representing the ownership of real-world assets such as real estate and works of art. It is also possible to tokenize high-value items, such as classic cars, and divide ownership of that item among multiple people. In such a case, each person owns a portion of the car.

But to date, the most popular use of NFTs has been for digital items. Let’s talk about them now.

1. Beeple NFTs

You’ve probably heard of this NFT sale. Beeple NFTs are one of the rare instances where an event from the crypto world has caught the attention of a wide audience. Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, turned the art world upside down by selling an NFT for $69 million in ETH. The sale was handled by the Christie’s auction house. Having never sold any prints worth more than $100 before, Beeple overnight became the world’s highest-valued living artist.

What could be the reason behind such a high valuation of his work? Beeple already had a large fan base, thanks to its series where it creates and uploads a piece of art every day. There hasn’t been a day in the last 14 years that he hasn’t done that. The work sold was called “Everydays – The First 5000 Days” and was a collage of the artworks he created in the first 5000 days of his project.

This sale of Beeple is a crucial milestone for the future of digital art and demonstrates that NFTs are not a hype that will fade over time.

2. NBA Top Shot

As of March 2021, NBA Top Shot is one of the most successful NFT projects. NBA Top Shot has the most users of any NFT project, according to Block’s data board. While this data doesn’t take into account smaller and marginal NFT projects, it’s a huge achievement for NBA Top Shot.

In Dabber Labs’ NBA Top Shot project, users can purchase NFT packs of unique digital artworks featuring famous NBA moments.

Where can the success of the project stem from? The influence of the NBA brand is certainly undeniable. Collecting a game that many people are already interested in is easier than selling a digital pet. Another factor could be user experience. NBA Top Shot’s lack of perception of a blockchain product lowers the barrier to entry for many.

Have you ever tried to introduce a friend to the world of DeFi or yield farming and realized that the products are too difficult for beginners to use? While we offer helpful guides for products like MetaMask, there is a long way to go before the user experience becomes easy for even your grandmother.
NBA Top Shot avoids this by moving away from decentralization elements to improve the user experience. It is very possible that many users are not even aware that they are using a blockchain-based product, which in itself can be considered a success.

3. Cryptopunks

Cryptopunks are one of the oldest NFTs on Ethereum. It’s been in use for years and was of moderate interest until the NFT boom in 2021.

Cryptopunks is a project of Larva Labs. It offers 10,000 unique collectible “characters” on Ethereum, all of which are different from each other.

When the project was launched, these characters were freely available to anyone with an Ethereum wallet. In 2018, it was possible to buy a character for an average of 50-100 USD. But in 2021, prices showed a huge increase. As of March 2021, the most expensive piece to date has been sold for 4,200 ETH.

Getting it for free and selling it for millions of liras doesn’t seem like a bad investment. Although being the “first” purchaser of anything usually offers a price advantage, it should be noted that it will not be possible to come across products with such a high profit in the future.

4. Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is a blockchain game where users can raise virtual pets named Axie. You can think of Axie Infinity as a combination of Pokémon and CryptoKitties. Players own these pets, control them and trade them with other players. Players can fight together against monsters while in adventure mode and compete against each other in PvP (player-to-player) competitions.

When we look at its technical infrastructure, Axies uses the ERC-721 standard on Ethereum. The game also includes items and terrains that are all NFT.

Axie Infinity is one of the most popular NFT games on Ethereum. With the launch of the Rhonin sidechain, it is expected that high gas fees will no longer be an issue for players. Want to know more about this game? You can read our detailed article on Axie Infinity.

5. Decentraland

Decentraland is a blockchain-based virtual reality game. Players can develop and trade LAND, virtual lands represented by an ERC-721 token. Each piece of LAND is unique, and LAND owners can choose what content to fill their land with. This can vary from a simple landscape to an interactive game.

Users can buy LAND with the platform’s native token, MANA. In a sense, Decentraland has its own economy. Users can interact with each other in different ways and monetize their activities. But unlike other similar virtual reality games like Second Life, Decentraland is fully controlled by a decentralized group of people.

There is no doubt that digital collectibles will continue to exist. It is even possible to say that NFT marketplaces will become more and more popular.

However, it is highly likely that most NFTs will lose value over a sufficiently long time frame. In addition, liquidity for NFTs works quite differently from the liquidity you are used to in markets like BTC/USD. So you need to take this into account when choosing an NFT.

DeFi

What Exactly Is Arbitrum?

Published

10 months ago

October 25, 2022

Efekan Ozdan

Ethereum is a well-known platform for creating decentralized applications (DApps). However, due to a rapid increase of its users in recent years, the network has been pushed to its ultimate limits, causing transaction costs to skyrocket and widespread congestion.
Some believe that on-chain changes and improvements are the best approach to expand Ethereum, however, others are opting for second layer alternatives.

Although they differ widely in terms of appearance and purpose, one such option, known as Arbitrum, has begun to gain attention.

What Is Arbitrum?

It is one of the layer 2 solutions that enhances the capabilities of Ethereum smart contracts by increasing their speed and scalability while also providing extra privacy features.
The platform is meant to make it simple for developers to run unmodified Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contracts and Ethereum transactions on a second layer and at the same time taking use of Ethereum’s superior layer 1 security.

It’s designed to address some of the current Ethereum-based smart contract’s problems, such as inefficiency and high execution costs, which have harmed the Ethereum experience for users and frequently make transactions costly.

DeFi

NFT Gas Prices: What Are They? Getting To Know Ethereum, Gas, And Gwei

Published

10 months ago

October 24, 2022

Efekan Ozdan

What exactly is ETH Gas?

The Ethereum network uses the Gwei as a unit of gas. Miners need gas to process transactions, which is one of the main differences that seperates Ethereum from other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

“How much gas you’ll need depends on the size of the contract you’re aiming to complete and how quickly you want to complete it.” The price usually reduces if you’re patient enough to wait for a transaction to finish. Both NFT art makers and collectors benefit from understanding this idea.

If we want to have a look at the technical side, Ethereum’s native currency, ether (ETH), is used to pay gas fees. Gas costs are expressed in Gwei, which is an ETH denomination — one Gwei equals 0.000000001 ETH (10-9 ETH). Instead of claiming that your gas costs 0.000000001 Ether, you may say that it costs 1 Gwei.

Why is there Gas?

The gas in Ethereum is a crucial regulator that prohibits spamming the network. All Ethereum computations push the security measure to its limit. Gas limits, which are paid for with each computational execution, have the mission to ensure that bad individuals do not exploit unsorted amounts of processing power to become de-facto coders on the Ethereum network and corrupt the future they worked hard for creating.

Why Gas is so important for NFT arts and artists?

Gas has two sides to it. When gas costs are rising, it is difficult for uprising artists to generate, mint, and even purchase other works. Some artists try to include the cost of gas into their paintings (which indicates that they are ready to lower the cost of their art, to make their art easier to buy.) This creates a catch-22 because the art’s perceived “worth” is reduced when collectors are deciding whether or not to spend 25-57 percent of the overall purchase price on gas. Artists aiming to build a reputation for themselves face a difficult situation in this regard. On the other hand, artists might overcharge while selling their work (paying higher marketplace and gas costs) in order to get their work published before they have built a reputation for themselves to be able to charge that much.

Overwhelming and Absurd NFT Gas Cases

We’ve seen gas costs exceed the cost of a piece of art being created in some cases, leaving artist in a very difficult situation to put their work online. Actually, making it impossible for the artist.

Solutions for NFT Gas

Allow the NFT Artists to have more power when their work is minted. Many marketplaces only let artists to create something at the very moment they click mint. Artists should be able to choose how long they want to wait for network congestion to clear before publishing. This is already implemented in NFTGateway (As far as I know). The painting isn’t minted until it has been bought during a drop. The art might not appear in wallets instantly, the transaction might take 24 hours. While we haven’t experienced such a long wait, we have seen up to two-hour waits for costly drops expectations.

The User receives back any unused gas

Finally, it’s essential to emphasize that not all transactions use the total gas supply. This should be better stated, and we’ll need to undertake further studies to find out what proportion of gas is returned on average. However, you’re essentially accepting to a maximum amount of gas fees that you’ll pay to complete the deal.

DeFi

What is Play-To-Earn (Play2Earn) All About? Begginer’s Guide

Published

1 year ago

March 3, 2022

Efekan Ozdan

The play-to-earn business model promotes the idea of an open economy by rewarding players who contribute to the metaverse’s value.

Play-To-Earn (Play2Earn) games are a type of gaming in which a platform allows players to earn any type of in-game property that can be transferred to the real world assets that has value like money.

Play-to-Earn Crypto Gaming: Begginer’s Guide

Video game business models have evolved to a whole new level as technology has become more widely accessible to the public. Before, people were able to play games only in certain gaming areas on arcade machines. With a bag full of quarters, gamers would compete for the highest score. But, as technology advanced, games were introduced to our smartphones, PCs, and gaming consoles such as the PS5, Xbox, and others.

What Is Play-to-Earn Gaming?

In the blockchain ecosystem, a new game paradigm known as play2earn is currently being seen around the world. It effectively allows participants to profit from their participation in games. By participating in the in-game ecosystem and earning assets for their contributions, players create value for other gamers and developers. Coins and accessories that have been tokenized on the blockchain are examples of digital assets. As a result, blockchain games and the play-to-earn business model support each other effectively.

Play to Earn Games

Axie Infinity is an excellent example of a play2earn game. Axies are charming animals that players buy, breed, and combat for rewards in this game. Each Axie is a non-fungible token (NFT), which means it’s a unique digital collectible. There is an entire economy within the game (There is a world known as Lunacia).

Users can use their in-game tokens, Smooth Love Potion (SLP), and Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) to buy land and breed Axies in Lunacia. In addition, these tokens are not just useful in the game, they are also useful in real life.

Play-to-earn games, such as Axie Infinity (AXS), are already assisting people all over the world (particularly those who live in countries affected by the current pandemic severely) earning a significant amount of money. People in the Philippines are making $1,500 to $2,000 per month playing Axie Infinity as a hobby, according to estimates. A good number of people in Vietnam have also given up their full-time jobs as a result of these games, which pay well.

Lost Relics, Splinterlands, CryptoBlades, DogemonGo, and Sorare are some of the other NFT games.

In 2021, the NFT market will have topped $2.5 billion in revenues, and this figure is expected to rise rapidly as new NFT games hit the market. The rise of NFT is leading to a new era of revenue streams in the blockchain world, and it won’t be long before it overtakes every other major business.