An introduction to NFTs marketplace

There are many approaches to making an NFT marketplace.

Before that, if you want to find out what is an NFT, I recommend you to check this previous article series.

Now, like the physical world, when we decide to go to a store we base our decision on trust. 

I trust that the place I’m going will have what I’m looking for, will meet my quality standards and will be compatible with my budget.

NFTs marketplaces follow the same reasoning. 

In fact, NFTs are technically possible since a lot of time but wasn’t until now that people started to trust and then realize their existence.

This trust is not about “if I can trust that the NFT will work”, it’s about IF I trust the image of the marketplace itself. I can trust the store.

Let’s make an example.

Let’s say John Doe owns a short movie, unique of Charles Chaplin. I’ll tokenize it, and share on my social network that I created the NFT for this movie and I’ll transfer it to anybody interested in paying 2 ETH for it. 

Technically I can do it, I don’t need anything else than an NFT contract that I may or may not own, my wallet public and private key from where I minted the NFT and the associated information to prove that I have the content.

Nobody will buy it.

Why? 

Because nobody knows me. 

Even though I own the content, it’s very hard to give the feeling of trust to anybody out there by showing this through my social networks being just a John Doe.

So, what do I do?

I have two options here. I can build trust or jump on an already trusted person or place.

How do I build trust?

I can start my own marketplace.

This means to make the technical effort of bringing and developing your store, how it’s going to look as well as the NFT contracts needed to sustain on the blockchain the rules you want (by starting with ERC-721 or ERC-1155). 

You can check on this other article on how to build your own NFT.

Awesome! 

I made my marketplace… Am I ready now? 

Well, not yet. 

You need to build your brand, your image. 

You will need to spend time, effort and money on doing the appropriate marketing and promotion. 

In fact, this should be planned way ahead before even starting with your marketplace.

In case you already have a brand, your job is going to be a lot easier but still, you will need to market this new business anyway.

Another way- which is a simpler approach – is that instead of building the entire trust system (brand + marketplace) – and in the best case that you already have a brand – you can just borrow some trusted marketplace like OpenSea, Rarerible, Foundation etc. 

Those places are well known for being NFT marketplaces and rely on us a bit to work only on our content and own branding. 

For this, you can simply go step by step with those platforms (they are switching a bit to Multi-token approach to be less expensive on gas fees) or build your own token (see article here) and then import it for selling on OpenSea or Rarible.

If you need advice on this and other issues related to blockchain technology, do not hesitate to contact us.

Also, if you want to know more information about this and other topics related to blockchain and others, stay tuned. 

Until next time.