Why is decentralization a major aspect for an NFT marketplace ?
Recently we probably all heard a terrible story linked to the NFT ecosystem…
Somebody has been robbed his BAYC by a hacker due to a OpenSea security breach caused by centralized servers (February 6th, 2022).
Obviously, for some people (like you, for example) who really believe in a project or in a technology, it is understandable that someone is willing to invest a consequent amount of money in it. In fact, this can be easily confirmed with the rising number of collections/projects that managed to grow their community, their utility and therefore their floor price (either on Ethereum, Solana, Velas or on every other blockchain).
At this point, security becomes the main concern of every investor such as myself. And to guarantee the safety of their investment they have to be careful on two main different things :
- First, the team behind the project. That might sound a bit obvious to you, but sometimes a rug can quickly show up. And if it is the case, the project might become useless and then the value of your assets will decrease. But what can you do to avoid this situation ? Honestly, nothing much… The only single thing you can do is to identify who are the persons behind the project you are interested in and to DYOR about them and their past experiences.
Other than that, once the project has been launched, I advise you to stay informed of the current situation of it. For example, if the team is really working to make things they announced done by providing advancement post, then you mostly have nothing to worry about. - Second, they have to know where and how they are going to store their asset(s). The most secure way to keep it is in a physical wallet like in a ledger for example.
But if you are really aware of which websites you have as “trusted links” (because that is one of the best ways for a hacker to access to your account),
you can store them in what people now use the most : A digital private wallet.
For Solana I would recommend Phantom which is the most common wallet used. And obviously, for the other blockchains I would recommend MetaMask which is the most known digital wallet.
Once investors have followed these two steps, they still have to be careful with how they are going to interact with their assets. In fact, what happened with the BAYC that we talked about at the beginning is only because of the use of centralized servers by OpenSea.
Sadly, for both OpenSea and MagicEden (which are the two mains marketplaces for Ethereum and Solana) they are centralized marketplaces which represent a real security issue for their users.
Let me explain why with a simple example :
(You want to transfer some of your tokens to one of your friends.)
->Would you rather use a service provided by either a company or any type of organisation which is going to act as a middleman for your transaction, or directly send your tokens to your friend’s wallet address?
Well, here the answer seems really obvious because when you use crypto currencies, you surely trust the blockchain system, but what people tend to forget is that this situation can be easily changed with NFTs instead of crypto tokens.
Indeed, having to trust a third party, who will control your assets, can potentially rob you of.
I do agree that these centralized marketplaces have allowed people to discover the NFT technology, but we need to change our habits and start building on decentralized marketplaces to avoid any other unfortunate events like the one we talked about before.
Sparkies is one of the first NFT marketplace that is fully decentralized. Based on the Velas EVM blockchain, Sparkies marketplace uses smartcontracts to make every interaction you do with your assets decentralized. Sparkies only provides “on-chain” tools for you to work with, such as instant listing thanks to the automatic indexer, rarity calculation, many different ways to sell your assets (auction, direct sale, private sale).
Soon, some exciting stuff are also on their ways: fully automated launchpad, NFT bridge and surely many more things so stay tuned !
To me, this is how every marketplace should look like.
PS: Remember that this is only my personal opinion. As always remember to DYOR.
Article written by Comb_Sparkies
