NFT Marketplace Development Relies on a Smart Contract Protocol

As the NFT subject continues to attract more and more people around the world, we thought about how we can help you benefit from this trend. One of the best options is to create an NFT marketplace, where people can buy and sell NFTs. So we put together a complete guide to developing an NFT marketplace to help you find out where to start. Hope you find this insightful.

Many are now interested in the topic of NFT. According to NonFungible.com, the total value of NFT transactions in 2020 increased by 299% compared to the same period last year. If you are not a creator or a collector but want to somehow benefit from NFTs, you might be thinking about creating an NFT marketplace. In this post, I will show you two ways how you can do it.

NFT marketplace is a decentralized platform that allows you to store and trade non-fungible tokens. Lots on such a platform can be offered at a fixed price or sold through an auction. Most NFT platforms require buyers and sellers to have crypto wallets for carrying out transactions. There are different types of NFT marketplaces. On some marketplaces, you can sell and buy a variety of NFTs, from domain names to works of art. Such platforms enable everyone to turn their assets into NFTs and start making money on them. Examples of such platforms are Rarible and OpenSea. Other marketplaces are more niche and are created for buying/selling certain types of assets. For example, Valuables allows you to sell and buy tweets only.

NFT platforms operate on the basis of smart contracts (i.e. self-executing contracts). Each token contains unique metadata recorded in its smart contract. To build an NFT marketplace, we need to create a token protocol, usually on the Ethereum network. This is a special group of smart contracts that ensure the implementation of the functionality of trading platforms. Then, this protocol integrates with the marketplace system.

You can find some ready-made tools for building non-fungible token marketplaces. For example, OpenSea offers an SDK that allows you to create such a platform using OpenSea's infrastructure, but with your design on the top.  The SDK allows you to create ERC-721 or ERC-1155 (semi-fungible) items. Also, the good news is that you don't need to deploy your own smart contracts. This toolkit greatly simplifies the NFT marketplace development process with ready-made blocks. However, If you don’t have a technical background, it will be quite difficult for you to do it yourself. 

If you want more advanced marketplace functionality, you will need a custom NFT trading platform development. The main difference between the development of such a project from the usual one is the back-end part. You need to create a smart contracts protocol where all the logic of the application is laid down. The thing is NFT marketplace is a decentralized platform, so most of the data is verified on a blockchain. For instance, Ethereum allows the network to run certain scripts to make an app decentralized, so most of the backend logic is transferred to the decentralized part.  

This option gives you more freedom to choose features and to provide a unique user experience for marketplace users. Of course, for this, you need the help of blockchain developers, who have experience in creating blockchain protocols and smart contacts.