Development of NFT marketplaces

At the end of 2021, the NFT project market grew by 300%, and many large NFTs are sold at auctions for millions of dollars, for example, Beeple’s collage “Every Day: The First 5,000 Days” cost the buyer $69 million. In addition, this area is actively supported by celebrities who tokenize their music, paintings, videos and other creative items, which makes the NFT industry even more attractive for investment.

NFT itself is a digital token that represents ownership rights to physical or virtual assets. Unlike cryptocurrencies, it is not fungible. This means that no two NFTs are identical and one token does not equal the other. Therefore, they cannot be used as a means of payment in retail outlets or for trading on crypto exchanges. Instead, NFT marketplaces are used to buy and sell them.

An NFT marketplace is a blockchain trading platform that allows you to store, sell and buy non-fungible tokens. Moreover, the functionality of such a service allows users to create their own NFTs. To do this, special smart contracts add metadata to each new asset and prescribe all the necessary parameters, including the name, inseparability and address in the blockchain. After that, such NFTs can also be put up for auction at a fixed price or auction.

For a client, an NFT marketplace looks like a regular online store, but from a technical point of view, it has much more extensive and complex functionality. Here are the most important features to implement:

• Registration and authorization. To be able to buy and sell tokens, the user needs a personal account with the integration of a crypto-wallet.
• Showcase. Provides a person with all the information about the lot: price, description, rating, purchase methods, etc.

• Search and filter system. Functionality with which the user can quickly find the token or section of interest to him.
• Lot publication. The process of listing NFTs for sale should be quick and intuitive. To do this, you need to carefully consider the user path.
• History of transactions. A separate section in which the user can view the history of buying and selling NFTs.
• Ratings. Visualizes how much marketplace users sympathize with individual NFTs or merchants.
  Push notifications. They will help inform users about the appearance of new products in selected sections, bid increase at auctions and other important events.
• Support. Like any trading platform, an NFT marketplace should be equipped with a section where the user can solve any technical issue.

Step 1. Collecting information and analytics

First of all, the development team studies the requirements of the customer and conducts a market analysis. This is necessary in order to ensure the technical feasibility of the project even before the start of production.

In addition, at this stage, you need to answer several fundamental questions:

• Who is the target audience of the project?
• How exactly will token trading be carried out?
• What functionality needs to be implemented?
• What is the platform monetization model?
• Which token protocol will be used: ERC721, ERC1155, BEP-721 or BEP-1155?
• What blockchain will the project be built on?

Step 2. Technical documentation

When all the necessary information is collected, the technical documentation of the project is developed. It specifies the requirements for the NFT marketplace, the technology stack that will be used in production, the production plan, security parameters, and other important information. Based on the created document, the cost and the planned period of the project implementation are calculated.

Step 3. Design

At this stage, business analysts, together with designers, design an effective user interface architecture, a logical navigation system and mockups of individual pages, with a description of the placed functionality. Thus, a kind of framework of the trading platform is formed, taking into account the likely user paths.

Step 4. Design

The appearance of the NFT marketplace plays an important role, since it forms the first impression of a person about the project. Therefore, it is extremely important that the design inspires confidence, is convenient and easy to understand.

Step 5. Frontend Development

The frontend is an external part of the trading platform that receives user requests, transfers them to the server for further processing, and displays the result in a format that is comfortable for perception. In addition, this part is responsible for the reliability and performance of the interface. The technological stack of a frontend developer may differ, depending on the specifics of the project, but the most commonly used are:

• For the web – JavaScript programming language and frameworks React.JS, Vue.JS.
• For Android apps, Java, Kotlin, and the Flutter SDK.
• For IOS apps, the Swift language and the Flutter SDK.

Step 6. Backend and smart contracts

The most voluminous stage of production, within which the server part of the platform is created, which is responsible for the logic of the entire project. In addition to the basic functionality, developers need to program the work with the blockchain, smart contracts and crypto wallets, as well as implement a reliable auction mechanism.

Stack of technologies for the implementation of the backend part:

• Blockchain – Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain.
• Smart contracts – Ethereum Virtual Machine or BSC Virtual Machine.
• Programming languages ​​- Python, Java, PHP.
• Frameworks – Django, Flask, Laravel, Yii.
• For mobile development, as well as in the front-end part, Java and Kotlin for Android and Swift for IOS are used.

Step 7. Testing

After the technical development is completed, you need to make sure that the platform works correctly and in accordance with the original plans. To do this, the project is transferred to the QA department, where its multi-level testing is carried out. If errors are found, they are submitted for revision to responsible specialists, and then re-checked.

The development of functional NFT marketplaces and other high-load blockchain solutions is one of the main specializations of AVADA MEDIA.

To implement such projects, our company has already formed teams of specialists with experience in working together, thanks to which we can guarantee high quality and speed of product implementation.