In-house NFT Marketplace or NFT as a Service (NFTaaS)? | by TribalScale Inc. | TribalScale | August 2022

by James · August 30, 2022

Written by: Siddhartha Singh, Product Manager, TribalScale

The non-fungible token (NFT) industry has great prospects, which makes NFT marketplace development a good idea for in-house product development. This market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35% over the forecast period from 2021 to 2026, reaching $147 billion. The evolution of NFTs has been rapid, unpredictable and meteoric. In all its growth, one common feature shines through – business applications.

Businesses are struggling to incorporate NFTs and stay relevant in the wave of blockchain, metaverse and Web3 dominating the traditional ways. But having said this, NFTs have already become a mainstream phenomenon. This tendency can be explained by the increasing number of influencers involved, the emergence of new game communities and the growing demand for digital art. When it comes to gaining traction, companies can have their own internal NFT marketplace, or they can leverage any existing NFT as a Service (NFTaaS).

Check out these blogs for more introduction to NFTs and how they work:

For this blog I will explore NFT marketplaces and NFTaaS.

According to Consensys, creatives are choosing to sell their intellectual property on NFT marketplaces, and these NFT marketplaces are growing.

Why is this important? That’s important because online marketplaces are growing to eliminate the idea of ”a middleman.” But there is still something else. In a world where forgeries, copies and doubts about originality exist, the origin and validity of rare works of art can be confirmed. The two best marketplaces where you can create and sell NFTs are OpenSea and Rarible.

Big luxury brands such as Dior, Adidas, Birkin, etc., can also take advantage of NFT marketplaces to highlight and reduce counterfeit sales by using NFT tokens to represent the physical products. It will enhance the rarity while showing indisputable proof of ownership. They can also take it a step further by setting up royalty payments for reselling their products. Prada has already partnered with LVMH to create Aura, a blockchain platform that provides buyers with an NFT token for their product that shows its origin, validity and manufacturing process.

NFT marketplace project development involves defining the functionality of your platform. Here you have to think about both sellers and buyers of digital assets. I have selected the main features of the NFT marketplace that you should consider, at least to stay competitive.

Showcase – The storefront is the most important element of your marketplace. Here you will gather all the necessary information, including offers, a detailed description of each NFT, its owners, prices and price history.

Advanced Token Search – This feature will be useful when your users need to find the token quickly. Here you should divide NFTs into categories like music, photos, videos, etc.

Filters – Filters have a function similar to advanced token search, but they include more categories. This tool will help your users identify NFTs based on more than just their type. There will also be categories like price, creators, asset popularity, new offers, etc.

Creating Entries — Allow users of your marketplace to create listings. These can be general lists or, for example, wish lists. It is good if listings show information about NFTs, such as the asset’s title, tags, price or detailed description.

Listing Status – This feature is important to the NFT creators. Thanks to it, they can keep other users updated with the current status of their digital works.

Buy and bid – No eCommerce NFT platform development is complete without the ability to buy and bid. Make sure you add this option to your marketplace so users can easily buy and bid on NFTs.

Wallet – It would help if you also integrated a wallet into your marketplace. As a result, your users will be able to pay for and manage NFTs without leaving your platform.

Ratings – Implement a ranking system to let users of your marketplace know which tokens are most relevant. This feature will be especially useful for beginners in the crypto field.

Auction – The auction is a fascinating feature even for those users who are not yet ready to shop on your marketplace. This feature helps drive traffic to your platform.

Building your own NFT marketplace solution takes the following steps:

Table of Contents

1. Define your niche

The first thing you need to do is decide on the type of marketplace: universal or niche. A better option is to list different types of NFTs as it will attract a wider audience.

2. Choose your blockchain

Choose the blockchain you want to build your marketplace on. Some of the most popular are Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. As of now, the most popular for NFTs have been Ethereum 2.0 and Flow. You can also make your platform support multiple blockchains simultaneously.

3. Determine the project’s UI/UX design

After deciding on a blockchain and a niche, you can think about NFT marketplace design. Make sure your user interface is intuitive and user-friendly.

4. Implement smart contracts

The meat of the entire marketplace development is the implementation of Smart Contracts, and thus the next step is to develop smart contracts for your marketplace. For this, you need to hire experts who understand regulatory requirements.

5. Secure storage

In this step, you should decide where the creators and buyers of NFTs will keep their assets. In addition, you should ensure that records of all transactions are securely stored on your platform.

6. Integrate third-party services

To build a successful NFT marketplace, you need to integrate payment gateways, crypto wallets, social media and email services. These are the basic tools from third-party providers, but you can demand even more. The number of integrations depends on the company’s needs.

7. Test your marketplace

Once you’ve developed a basic version of the NFT marketplace, test it. In this way, you will correct all the shortcomings of your platform and bring your product to perfection.

8. Start your NFT Marketplace

It is the final phase that involves the launch of your marketplace and its ongoing support. You must constantly improve your platform and adapt it to the needs of your users.

NFTaaS is simply third-party building and managing cloud-based networks for companies that create NFT applications. Under NFTaaS there can be many more services, but ideally you should focus on NFT as a White Label service. Like Blockchain as a Service (BaaS), NFTaaS is still a new development although companies are emerging in the NFT field, and legacy businesses are slowly adopting NFTs. However, the demand for NFTaaS companies and services has not peaked yet and will continue to grow as the Internet fully transitions from Web2 to Web3.

How does NFTaaS work? It follows the same model as BaaS by allowing companies to use cloud-based networks and services to build and manage their own NFT applications. The parameters for which services NFTaaS covers have not yet been set, but there will be a more clear boundary in the years to come with more companies needing these services.

The cost of setting up an NFT application is high and many companies cannot afford to be self-sufficient. For example, a company offering NFT services may require software that helps make payments more efficient. They don’t need to build their network to get it done when they can get the service from an NFTaaS company that offers it in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. Businesses need NFTaaS to avoid operating at high costs.

There are very few NFTaaS companies that help businesses transition to the metaverse by offering a branded NFT strategy for businesses. Services are divided into the following five stages, each with key deliverables ranging from conception to post-launch maintenance.