How To Develop an NFT Marketplace?

Over the past five years, one of the fastest-growing sectors in the crypto industry has been the creation and development of non-fungible tokens (NFT). What’s particularly impressive is that this market allows you to earn fabulous sums at minimal costs. In this article, we are going to explore the notion of NFTs, their types and how to successfully develop an NFT marketplace.

What Are Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)?

NFTs, also referred to as “non-fungible tokens” are tokens that can’t be substituted. They are non-interchangeable; non-fungible tokens have unique attributes that make them different from something else.

A non-fungible token (NFT) offers digital ownership of assets based on the blockchain protocol. It can be:

• Digital or multimedia content (image, audio, or video files)
• Investment activities (real estate, registered securities, a share in the company’s profit)
• An item of great collectible value (antiques, stamps, coins)

Unlike a cryptocurrency token, which is issued in bulk and has an exchange rate, a non-fungible token is unique. Its price is determined by the seller or through an auction. At the same time, there are also standard features: NFT transactions are encoded and confirmed using one of the blockchain protocols, such as Ethereum. Thus, the potential buyer receives evidence of the NFT’s authenticity.

What Is an NFT Marketplace?

NFT marketplace is a special service for creating and trading NFT assets. Essentially, it acts as an intermediary between buyers and sellers and has millions of works available for exchange.

For the user’s convenience, the tokens offered for sale may be divided into categories:

• Images
• Audio
• Video
• Copyright

What Type of NFTs Can Be Listed on a Marketplace?

There are many types of NFTs that can be listed on a marketplace—for example, audio, video, images, and much more. However, in order to understand the matter better, let us divide the majority of NFT marketplaces into two categories: universal and niche. The former usually sells all types of NFTs, some of which include artworks, gaming assets and artefacts, media & entertainment content, audio, and even real estate. Niche Marketplaces, in turn, specialises in selling specific types of NFTs—for example,which sells luxury goods like jewellery and bags, or Xtingles, which is a marketplace aimed at ASMR creators.

Traditionally, objects of digital creativity fall into the scope of NFT: photo, audio, and video. At the same time, technically, there is no problem in implementing blockchain technology with any asset or copyright. The main advantage of this approach is a distributed ledger in which information is stored.

The objects of real estate, as well as their lease, may be the item of contracts. In the second case, the purchase of tokens as a real estate renting fee can act as the right to use the object for a certain period. In addition, the transaction history of this token allows you to track the entire chain of tenants. This increases their confidence in the landlord. The main obstacle to the tokenization of real estate, cars, and other popular assets is the insufficient development of national legislation.

How Does an NFT Marketplace Work?

Your user interaction with the NFT marketplace begins once you connect your wallet to the platform.

With an NFT Marketplace, you can easily create, buy and sell your own tokens. Different marketplaces enable different features, so you will need to spend some time studying the framework that works for you, and your NFT is ready to be listed for sale.

Generally, the procedure is the following: you submit your NFT for review, and it is either approved or rejected by moderators. If it passes moderation, your work appears for all marketplace users to see. From now on, they can start bidding their prices for your art, and whoever places the highest bid by the end of the bidding period gets the NFT. The exchange of funds is carried out via your previously linked crypto wallet.

Key Features of an NFT Marketplace

• Dashboard

The marketplace showcase is a user-friendly dashboard. It provides the information on most popular NFTs, collections, items, including current prices, etc.

• Search functions

This feature will help users find specific NFTs and facilitate the trading process. Adding search filters will help users sort the list according to certain criteria, without getting confused by the assortment.

• Add tokens tool

Having this tool in your marketplace will allow creators to add their tokens. The authors will be able to submit their files along with their descriptions such as the title, features, starting price, etc.

• Auction dashboard

This feature allows users to buy and sell tokens on the NFT marketplace. The current bid should also be displayed here along with its status and expiration date.

• Linking a wallet

Wallet binding will allow users to buy, sell and store tokens. In addition, users should be able to choose between the different types of wallets they prefer.

• Rating system

The rating system will help buyers find the most demanded and popular NFTs on the market. A separate rating should be provided for NFT sellers. It can be compiled based on past transactions and the number of positions offered for trade

• Trading history

The NFT marketplace must have a tool for viewing the history of all transactions of a particular user: the number of purchased or sold tokens, their price, total sum, etc.

How to Build an NFT Marketplace?

So, what does it take to create your own NFT marketplace? Considering the growing popularity of mobile platforms in all spheres, you will have to develop both web and mobile versions of the marketplace to reach a larger audience. Before doing so, let’s take a look at our must-do list:

1. You must choose the appropriate programming language: ​​it can be Python, Java, PHP, or any other. The choice depends on your goal—if you made up your mind to create the web platform plus an app, you will have to work with several languages and tools.

When developing, you will also need to choose which blockchain platform you are going to use—for example, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, or others.

2. Explore the possibilities of blockchain technologies based on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, etc., that support smart contracts. You will have to implement them as well.
3. Get ready to master the use of databases and SQL.
4. Investigate on the main standards of smart contracts. Without them, the launch of an NFT marketplace is not possible.

Those are some of the requirements needed to implement a project. In addition, interface elements should be intuitive and user-friendly. Providing a user rating system and qualified technical support is also necessary.

In the future, as the marketplace “promotes” its reputation will work for itself. If you manage to attract eminent content creators, opinion leaders, and media persons as clients, the platform will move up in the rankings.

Key Steps of NFT Marketplace Development

Now let’s consider key steps you need to consider when thinking about how to create an NFT marketplace. Like any complex and multi-stage project, creating an NFT marketplace requires breaking down the entire task into relatively small fragments to save time and money.

1. Development of a strategy for advertising the created marketplace, promoting it in social networks, and creating a crew of partners.
2. The UI/UX design of the trading platform. Without an attractive design, a marketplace will struggle to bring in new users. Therefore, it is worth spending enough time on creating a functional and concise intuitive design. To do so, you can first develop a wireframe and style, as well as create a logo and choose a color palette. The next step is likely to be designing mock-ups and prototypes, which allow you to get an accurate representation of what the product will look like.
3. Practical implementation of the project both front-end and back-end development. It consists of creating the entire part of the platform. At this stage, the program code is written to process requests, create smart contracts, work with crypto wallets, and hold auctions.
4. Testing the finished platform. At this stage, you will have to catch and fix various bugs, crashes, and errors in the program code. The platform can be implemented correctly, but if it’s not designed for a massive influx of users, it can end up with insufficient performance.
5. Deploying the application to the server or on cloud resources. It is necessary to set up the infrastructure for scaling and possible failure in case of future traffic increases. This must be done in advance, as a hurried decision may be ineffective.
6. Implementation of technical support, a help system, and user feedback collection. All this results in a popular platform with a positive reputation.

Development From Scratch or Ready-Made Solution?

You can develop your own NFT marketplace either from scratch or using an already-made solution. If your choice is developing the marketplace yourself, be prepared to immerse yourself in the world of writing code and designing UI/UX, as well as thinking of ways to promote the platform. It is hence natural that this process is time-consuming and requires special skills, some of which may not be accessible to a beginner.

Alternatively, you can choose a different approach: hire blockchain developers who will help you to either build your marketplace from scratch or alter an already existing solution. There are places to hire budget-friendly specialists that will still deliver your product up to your standard, but in this case, you won’t need to spend a lot of time and effort to develop your own NFT marketplace.

Conclusion

In recent years, NFT has evolved from an exotic for enthusiasts and collectors into a promising business area. Although it still targets gamers and digital art collectors, the market has already appreciated the value of tokenizing high-value assets and investments. This process has excellent development prospects. At the same time, competition between marketplaces is also rising. This forms new standards for functionality, service, and user interface. We assume that in the future national laws will be supplemented with clear rules for dealing with NFTs to allow the market to develop even faster.

It requires significant experience and a good grasp of NFT development trends in order to create an NFT marketplace. Your project must be original and desirable to users. This is a young but fast-growing business. The faster your successful start of the project happens, the more tempting prospects it has in the future. That is why the implementation of your ideas must be entrusted to professionals. SCAND team has the required level of experience in developing NFT marketplaces on most popular blockchain platforms used to create NFTs.