We believe that combining a proven technology like Artificial Intelligence with Blockchain technology may do wonders for the ecosystem, making it much safer and more reliable!
What is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT)?
NFTs are Non-Fungible Tokens, and in layman terms, the data about digital art or collection, video clips of best moments in the sports and entertainment field, gaming skins and collectables, stored in a distributed ledger powered by the blockchain technology.
Why do people invest in Digital Assets (NFTs)?
Probably, the most frequently asked question by most people outside the crypto / virtual world.
The new-age Digital Assets like NFTs have been existing since 2014 and Forbes recently stated that globally, $174 million have gone into NFTs since November 2017. Although the reasons to invest in NFTs are the same as traditional paintings or art forms, there are specific reasons why digital art collectors capitalize on them.
NFTs are tokenized assets which means when you buy a digital asset — art, gif, meme or a video clip, you buy the one and only version of it as the resilient blockchain technology behind NFTs doesn’t allow duplication of the asset.
Purchasers / Buyers of Virtual Lands (Digitally created land spaces) thrive with more liquidity as the land can be rented to influencers or advertisers.
Much like the mainstream paintings and arts, NFTs have their own shortcomings. Here in the digital world, a digital asset (NFT) — image, photo, meme, video clip, music file can be just downloaded in no time and be claimed for ownership.
Some of the forgeries have been viewed seriously in the NFT market places. If you are an NFT collector, then this must be an eye-opener to you.
NFTs and Blockchain — The technology behind
As the name goes, NFTs are Non-Fungible Tokens which are not interchangeable and each NFT represents a unique digital asset — digital art, painting, designer merchandise, video or music clips. Each digital asset, though copied, cannot be claimed as unique. By securing their works as digital assets in the form of NFTs, Artists and creators can have their works copyrighted.
How’s it being kept safe, you may ask. This is where the buzzword among crypto enthusiasts — Blockchain comes into the picture.
A few unique pointers, not the generic ones that are easily available on Google
What Digital Asset Forgery or NFT Scam is in the crypto world and their type?
In the NFT marketplaces, there are many different types of NFT scams.
Some of them are:
1) Fake and Identical Market Places
2) Fake and Identical Digital Artworks (NFT’s)
3) Fraudulent Creators & Buyers
4) Wash Trading on Marketplaces
Seeing issues like forgeries, wash-trading and inefficient asset valuation in the NFT space has driven us to develop our proprietary technologies to provide NFT collectors and traders with the best analytics capabilities possible.
We believe that combining a proven technology like Artificial Intelligence with Blockchain technology may do wonders for the ecosystem, making it much safer and more reliable!
Latest insights from the company and the industry.
What Problems bitsCrunch is trying to solve in NFT Ecosystem with core products?
The NFT ecosystem is plagued by a number of issues, which include asset forgery, wash trading, unfair valuation, unavailability of reliable information, etc.
Due to these issues, fraudulent activity is not uncommon in the NFT marketplaces. Each of the platforms developed by bitsCrunch aims to solve these problems. We want to act as a watchdog supported with AI technology to find out manipulators and their activities in the NFT ecosystem.
Core Products:
Scour – Confront the wash trades within the marketplaces.
Liquify – Quickly assess the fair price for NFT’s.
Crunch DaVinci – Verify whether an NFT Digital Asset is forged or not.
Real-time NFT analytics for marketplaces and portfolio trackers.
What makes BitsCrunch stand out?
Our entire project is aimed at increasing the trust, safety and adoption of NFTs, which makes them the guardians of the NFT ecosystem.
bitsCrunch is also not limited to any single blockchain platform, and solutions developed by them work across Ethereum, Polygon, Polkadot and Avalanche blockchains.
We also share impactful insights from the data source by leveraging the power of analytical systems.
We are already on our mission of securing the NFT Ecosystem. We have already indexed all the NFT on-chain and off-chain data on Ethereum and Polygon since its inception!
Ethereum Blockchain Data:
NFT Assets: 6,22,29,661
NFT Contract_Address: 8,533
NFT Collection: 7,742
NFT Transactions: 8,56,32,409
Polygon Blockchain Data:
NFT Assets: 67,29,594
NFT Contract_Address: 3,685
NFT Collections: 2,697
NFT Transactions: 56,83,004
Currently, we are planning to index the data across different blockchains like Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Solana, and a few other blockchains.
Being an industry expert, please share the process of minting an NFT.
1. Digital Asset Creation
Minting NFTs always starts with the creation of an artwork, music record, JPEG/GIF, or digital collectable. Through observation of market trends and research of NFT marketplaces, it becomes easy to find the right genre of digital asset to create. Currently, there is a plethora of themes like modern art, abstract, political, pixel art, algorithmic art, 3D illustrations, digital photography and many more for creators to choose from.
2. Buying Cryptos for Trading
Step two — buy cryptocurrency! Ethereum is the most widely used platform for NFT trading so that would mean buying Ether coins should be next on the checklist. They can be purchased from any popular cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase, Binance or CoinDCX. To mint a piece of digital artwork, it can cost around $70–100 depending on the platform. Once it sells, there will be a ‘gas fee that can vary based on the demand and number of transactions on the blockchain. To ensure enough funds to pay this gas fee, you’ll need some Ether coins.
3. Creating and Setting Up a Non-Custodial Wallet
Wallets are the bank vaults for cryptos, and possibly the make-or-break component of the blockchain system. As a rule of thumb, you would need a wallet to access the platform, manage the balance and sign off on any transactions — be it crypto exchange or NFT minting. On-chain platforms eliminate the need for storing the account details of users, securing the platform thoroughly. There’s two parts to every wallet — a public address and a private key. A public address is like the mailbox outside your house where letters can be dropped off, and a private key is the mailbox key that’s used to open and take the letters out.
A variation of traditional crypto wallets, non-custodial wallets allows you complete control of funds in your wallet and lets you access the “seed phrase”. This is a randomly generated 12-word combo that enables access across various platforms and backs up the wallet. Non-custodial wallets can greatly help drop your NFT minting costs as they wipe out the third party between you and your crypto, and are turned off when not used. Coinbase, ZenGo and Metamask are popular non-custodial wallets that can serve your NFT minting ventures.
4. Selecting the NFT Marketplace
The quintessential part of NFT minting is selection of the right marketplace. Choosing a specific digital market to sell depends on multiple factors, but mostly it’s about ease of use, inclusivity, royalties offered, accessibility and popularity. It’s also possible to mint and NFT in one marketplace and sell it in another. The most used marketplaces are OpenSea and Rarible, but let’s take peek into some of the A-listed ones:
OpenSea: Quite possibly the biggest NFT marketplace, OpeSea houses a ton of assets like art, trading cards, digital photographs, virtual reality, sports collectibles and more. Can you believe it has over 200 categories and 4 million items? The marketplace collects 2.5% of all sales that take place in it, one of the lowest among major players. Buyers are not charged any service fees, and OpenSea allows for change in cryptocurrency while selling items. Colloquially called ‘the eBay of Blockchain’, OpenSea gives users an option to sell upto 30 items in one shot.
Rarible: Affordability and security are the keywords of popular NFT marketplace Rarible, that lets you buy and auction off digital art. The platform runs on the Ethereum blockchain and embeds inside an NFT asset’s code a full history of owners and transactions, which helps in excellent traceability. Rarible also has its own native cryptocurrency RARI through which users can submit and vote on proposals to change rules and regulations within the ecosystem. In June, Rarible announced in June that it’s secured a pocketful of funding through Series A investors.
Binance: Coming from the crypto domain, Binance has become a premier marketplace for NFTs recently, with digital collectibles, gaming, music, sports paraphernalia and virtual art. It has an intuitive platform that is smoothly designed to provide traders an easy, transparent and profitable experience with NFTs. Binance NFT also shares the same account system as Binance.com, which is good news for Binance crypto users as they can seamlessly slide into NFT offerings.
5. Creating the NFT in the marketplace
Most NFT marketplaces have made it quite simple to mint NFTs. Let’s take OpenSea for example: on the platform, there would be a ‘Create’ button that prompts you to sign in to your Metamask wallet. You will be asked to digitally sign a message on your wallet to confirm ownership of the address. Once your wallet is connected and you confirm your selection, you get into your OpenSea dashboard. Click on ‘Create’ on the ‘My Collections’ page and then upload a high-resolution file of your artwork. Give it a name, description and external links if any and proceed to create. And that’s it!
6. Selling Your NFT
Creation of an NFT ensures that you are the rightful owner of that asset — this information is recorded on the blockchain and acts as public proof of the asset’s creation details. When a buyer is interested in going ahead with its purchase, she offers you a bid through the marketplace (subject to the rules of that individual platform). At this point, you could accept the bid or wait for other bids to come in, just so that you don’t miss out on a big-ticket value. When you accept the bid, the trade will be registered on the blockchain and ownership of the NFT will be transferred to the buyer. Of course, the identity of the new owner and details of the transaction are logged in as well. Whatever crypto you’ve made on that transaction can be converted into fiat money through crypto exchanges.
Source: Business World
