Developing an NFT marketplace has been lucrative to different blockchain enthusiasts, start-ups and entrepreneurs. Graphics, trading cards, short videos, virtual artworks, domain names, and other physical assets (material or intangible) that can be converted into digital assets can be represented by an NFT token and exchanged in NFT marketplaces.
NFT marketplaces are developed on blockchains like Solana, Cardano, Binance, TRON, Polkadot, etc. For the time being, we will be focusing on Cardano in this blog. Before that, let us take a brief look at what exactly Cardano is all about.
Cardano is a third-generation blockchain that functions as per the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm. This platform has been built to eliminate scalability, sustainability and interoperability problem points. Cardano has an immutable ledger technology that safeguards all the details of the transactions and eliminates the scope of cyberattacks on NFT marketplaces and fraud transactions. It is highly suitable for building high-stake applications and can function responsively to innovations. Cardano differs from other protocols as it does not use exponential energy to increase performance and block addition.
Now that we know Cardano’s fundamentals let us check out what makes a blockchain enthusiast choose Cardano over other platforms for NFT marketplace development.
Why should one choose Cardano for NFT marketplace development?
Cardano offers the following benefits for NFT marketplace development:
- Increased traffic in an NFT marketplace degrades system performance, and Blockchain cannot manage increasing traffic due to its lack of scalability. Cardano achieves great scalability by addressing transaction per second, network bandwidth, and data storage concerns.
- Its proof-of-stake consensus method guarantees fast transactions.
- It divides the network into subnetworks using a method known as RINA, which reduces the bandwidth required by each node.
- It employs pruning, contraction, and segmentation techniques to address the data storage issue.
- As honest participation holds 51% of the stake, the proof of stake consensus process promises to deliver a high-security environment. New iterations and security experts continue to improve the protocol’s security.
- Cardano guarantees rigorous ownership tracing and keeps detailed data identifying the genesis or history of Cardano NFTs.
- It has a well-designed business strategy that makes money in various ways.
- Because it is open-source and incentivized, it attracts community participation for continuing protocol development, ensuring its long-term viability.
- Cardano’s interoperability is another major virtue, enabling several currencies to coexist and circulate freely across numerous chains.
- It is a scalable and technologically adaptable chain based on facts, using specific smart contract platforms such as Plutus and Marlowe, and provides better throughput at reduced transaction costs.
Now that we know the benefits Cardano provides in the context of NFT marketplace development, let us understand the process of NFT marketplace development on Cardano in the next section.
How to develop an NFT marketplace on Cardano?
By deploying your NFT marketplace on Cardano, you can offer the creators and collectors of NFT from around the world an opportunity to avail the primary and secondary markets for trading their digital assets via NFTs. Cardano-based NFT marketplace facilitates direct trading between the sellers and the buyers without any intervention of any intermediary.
Define targeted niche
The first stage in creating an NFT marketplace is defining the platform’s intended niche, such as digital artists, audio-video content creators, gaming fanatics, or collective participants.
Set up prerequisites for Cardano
NFT marketplaces are built on a variety of blockchains. If you decide to build a marketplace on Cardano, you must first establish ownership of the Cardano node; this is one of the criteria. To construct an NFT platform on Cardano, developers must understand the Cardano-Command line interface.
Define user roles
For optimal user experiences for creators and traders, it’s critical to define the user roles before building the UI of your NFT platform.
Smart contract development, auditing, and integration
The next stage is to create smart contracts that specify the conditions of a sale between a buyer and a seller and to store the codes for the digital self-executing contract in the Cardano network. Marlowe, Plutus, and Haskel are the three particular development languages that can be used to create smart contracts on the Cardano platform. Each language has unique characteristics. Therefore, you can use any language for your smart contract based on your needs.
Wallet integration
All transactions in the Cardano NFT marketplace are typically done using ADA, the platform’s native cryptocurrency. Integrating the Nami Wallet will make it easier for buyers and sellers to use NFTs. However, you can choose to incorporate other crypto wallets to cater to a larger clientele.
Integrate features
The Cardano NFT marketplace supports several features. There is no restriction for feature integration, even if incorporating essential market features like storefronts, wallet integration, bidding choices, and search filters are required to make the marketplace function.
Test run for the client.
Run thorough property-based testing on many Cardano-specified test nets to verify the code’s accuracy, and then deploy it on the mainnet to allow for widespread participation. During client testing, the platform is rigorously optimized.
NFT storage
To store the off-chain NFT data, a strong NFT storage solution is required. There are several decentralized storage systems available, and one prominent one is IPFS, which allows authors and NFT marketplace operators to store data in a decentralized manner.
