BlockBase has been working on several initiatives related to NFTs.

One of the problems that many of the companies that contact us have is that they don’t know which blockchain they should issue NFTs on.

In this article, I’ll try to sort out the points to consider when selecting a chain, and analyze each chain by applying them.

Points to consider

• What kind of business will you conduct?
• User Experience
• Security of the chain
• Ease of development

What kind of business will you conduct?

There are two main patterns of customers who want to conduct NFT-related business.

• Want to sell NFTs of their own IP
• Want to develop a platform to sell NFTs of other companies’ IPs (including individual creators).

In the former case, you should be able to determine your target users, the functions and benefits to be provided to the NFTs, the price and the number of NFTs to be issued.

In the latter case, you may need to assume a wide range of targets, and it may be a good idea to let the users choose which chain they want to use, like our product Chocofactory.

User Experience

• Extent of peripheral services such as OpenSea
• Difficulty of obtaining payment currency
• Gas prices

Extent of peripheral services such as OpenSea
We believe that the best part of NFT is the free experience after purchasing NFT. Of course, the utility of NFTs designed by issuer is also important, but the experience will change depending on the quality of peripheral services, such as where NFTs are displayed and where they are distributed secondarily.

Difficulty of obtaining payment currency
When selling NFTs, there is a question of whether to allow payment in fiat currency with a credit card, cryptocurrency, or both. This should be decided by the target and development budget. However, even in the case of credit card payment, if the user handles NFTs outside of that service, the crypto asset will be required as a Gas fee. How much of a hurdle it is to get the crypto assets for that chain is one of the considerations.

Gas prices
Gas prices vary depending on the price of the currency and the congestion of the network. We need to avoid the experience of buying NFT but not being able to move it because of the high cost of Gas.

Security of the chain

Many people believe that NFTs are valuable because they can carve out a record of ownership in transactions on the blockchain. If the blockchain itself is unreliable, the value of NFTs on that chain will also decrease. Evaluating the blockchain itself is complex, but the decentralized nature of the nodes and the market capitalization of the tokens are indicators to evaluate security.

Ease of development

To issue an NFT, you need to deploy a smart contract. For simple NFTs, there are tools like Chocofactory that allow you to deploy a smart contract with no code.If you want to add your own functionality, you will need an engineer who can develop smart contracts.

Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon can be developed in the same programming language, Solidity, and the difficulty of development is not very high.

Comparison of chains

Considering the above, Ethereum, Polygon, and BSC (plus FLOW) are up for consideration.

Ethereum

Ethereum is characterized by a wide range of peripheral services and chain security (high reliability).
Marketplaces such as OpenSea and Rarible, as well as viewers such as Crypto Voxels are well developed, and many advanced DeFi products such as NFTX and NFT20 are running on Ethereum first.

After all, Ethereum is the most trusted security layer. If you’re going to have your own important assets, you want to have them on a network that is tamper-resistant and stable over the long term, right?

Ethereum is the right choice for NFTs that users are willing to pay high Gas prices for. If it’s an artistic work that’s worthy of being recorded in history, Ethereum would be the choice.

Polygon

Polygon is Ethereum’s Second Layer Network (L2), and as of mid-May 2021, it is gaining users and increasing its token price, mainly for DeFi products.
It is characterized by low gas prices and fast transactions. The cost of gas for the same function is about 1/100,000 compared to Ethereum (for reference only, as it varies).

In addition, OpenSea’s support is a big deal for the NFT industry: not only can it be bought and sold in the OpenSea market, but various applications using OpenSea’s API can be expected to emerge.

On the other hand, the Bridge is cumbersome when dealing with the Matic. Adding a Polygon network to MetaMask is also a hurdle for beginners.

In addition, Rollup, an L2 that uses a different technology than Polygon, is currently under development. We need to keep a close eye on whether Polygon can maintain their current position when many competing L2s come out.

If you are looking to issue a casual commodity NFT, Polygon is a strong choice.

BSC

BSC is a chain operated by the crypto asset exchange Binance. It is gaining popularity for its high APY DeFi.

Binance’s features are also similar to Polygon, and its UX, such as low Gas cost and transaction speed, is superior to Ethereum. The cost of gas for the same functions is about 1/1,000th that of Ethereum.

Currently, OpenSea does not support it, and the official Binance NFT marketplace is scheduled to be released in June.

Binance is much more centralized than Ploygon, but on the other hand, it has its own funding source, Binance, and a leader in CZ, who has led its steady growth so far. How you evaluate it depends largely on your personal philosophy.

Apps on BSC such as PancakeSwap or BakerySwap have their unique taste of design. If you like your NFT to be on those platforms, BSC is a choice.

FLOW

The DapperLabs chain is famous for NBA TopShot, and the Dapper wallet is comfortable, supports credit card payments, and has a pretty good UX.

Currently, I have the impression that there is not much going on except for a major NFT that IP that the official DapperLabs team is working on.

It’s worth considering if you have a major IP that can be heavily supported by the official DapperLabs team.

summary

You may want to consider the diagram as shown. I hope this helps!

Before selecting which chain to use, it’s also important to know what issues you want to solve and what kind of experience you want to deliver with NFT!

We have it sorted out to a certain extent, but it’s difficult to give the right answer because technology and trends change so rapidly in this industry.
In the end, some decisions are made based on the atmosphere :P
We are creating a culture that allows us to decide based on the atmosphere and move forward.

BlockBase is open for development and business consultations. Please feel free to contact us.

We are also building a blockchain learning community. If you want to deepen your technical understanding of blockchain, please feel free to join us!

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