Internet-Scale Creativity: The Elrond NFT Ecosystem

One of the most significant contributions of blockchain technology to the internet was the introduction of simple ownership transfer for digital assets. In a space where only “copy + paste” was possible before, blockchain brought “cut + paste”.

This triggered an avalanche of unprecedented use cases for digital assets where true ownership, unstoppable transfers and immutable provenance are essential. While there is a vast amount of domains and business verticals where such properties are important, art and entertainment got a massive head start.

This is why, for the vast majority of internet users, “NFT” is the same as “digital art”, some of which sold at incredible prices, for a total volume of ~$22 billion dollars in 2021. All sorts of artists and brands have become involved with NFTs in one way or another, as the popularity of unique digital assets is increasing.

Thanks to the unique properties of the Elrond Network that enable true ownership and inexpensive transfers for users, inexpensive minting and royalties for creators, and easy onboarding for new devs, the Elrond NFT ecosystem has seen tremendous growth over the last few months.

By The Numbers

More than 223,000 NFTs have been minted on the Elrond Network, and more than 22,000 accounts own at least one of them. This flurry of creativity has been sparked by around 200 NFT projects, with more popping up every day, that have collectively captured the imagination of the Elrond community, mostly thanks to beautiful, cute or funny art.

According to Twitter, some projects have close to 10,000 followers, even though you should know that most of the action is happening on dedicated Discord servers.

According to data aggregated from some marketplaces that record volume, the top 10 projects by volume have generated more than 21,000 EGLD in volume already. While we could not track the total amounts raised by all the projects, some were completely sold out at 1 EGLD apiece, totalling 10,000 EGLD for just one collection, which indicates that the real NFT sales volume is much higher, albeit also harder to index.

Other projects have more advanced use cases for NFTs, offering them as rewards for regular EGLD staking, as a governance mechanism or even for discounts when recharging your electric car.

NFT Tools

The Elrond tools have been updated to accommodate NFTs, which can now be viewed, sent and received in the Web Wallet, and have their own section in the Elrond Explorer, which shows a lot of valuable information.

NFTs are now also available in the Maiar App, where you can manage your NFTs in a very convenient manner.

Perhaps the most exciting NFT tools have been created by the community, so here’s a few of them that stand out:

eMoon (now defunct) was the first NFT marketplace on the Elrond Network that has gained popularity and has enabled NFTs to go on sale on a dedicated website instead of Telegram channels and Twitter feeds.

Trust Market was launched relatively recently but seems to be feature rich, offering its users the possibility to buy and sell NFTs in any token listed on the Maiar DEX, such as LKMEX! Good tutorials for first time artists too.

Deadrare has a neat interface, offers the possibility to track activity per project, and already listed a lot of collections.

In development:

https://elrondplace.io/ is building an NFT launchpad for new collections to make their debut in a fair and decentralized manner, with their implemented tech already successfully used in a number of projects.

https://rarity.market/ hails out of Germany and is ready to launch in the next few days, bringing a neat GUI and design to the table.

https://isengard.market/ is also building out as we speak, with their marketplace already up and running, with several collections available already.

https://www.erdnft.com/ is also making some interesting moves and has an exciting roadmap.

Other notable tools:

If you want to keep up with what’s going on in the Elrond NFT space, make sure to check https://whattomint.io/ and https://elrondindex.io/ to see all the upcoming NFT events.

If you’re looking to do more advanced things with your NFTs, check out the great toolkit available on https://www.elven.tools/

Developers can dig into the details and find all the relevant information here: https://docs.elrond.com/developers/nft-tokens/

Communities:

While there is no single channel or avenue where you can get all the information about all the NFTs, you could get started with this Discord or this Telegram channel.

NFT Outlook

The unique combination of Elrond blockchain technology and Maiar elegant simplicity makes digital assets inexpensive to mint and transfer, easy to trade and fun to own, for anyone, anywhere.

The information collected above barely scratches the surface of the rapidly expanding Elrond NFT ecosystem. Please let us know what other NFT tools we should be aware of and what to include in our next roundup.