Jan 24
How to Build a Better NFT Marketplace Using IPFS!
The world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has been steadily growing over the years, with this decade unleashing numerous possibilities. Such is the power of backing digital ownership and authenticity of virtual assets. Business models such as NFT marketplaces contribute immensely to the NFT ecosystem, facilitating trades worth billions of dollars. As we’re speaking, the NFT market is capped at over US$442 billion, a value the NFT market wasn’t expected to go to during the early days. Today, we will see a new take on creating an NFT marketplace using one of the unique applications helping Web3 to be decentralized.
IPFS: A Revolutionary Web3 Software
If you are into the development scheme of things, you would probably know a bit about IPFS. The InterPlanetary File System is a storage software used to store blockchain entries, such as NFTs, in a decentralized fashion. It came into the limelight as the early day NFT market greatly depended on servers of some kind and “centralized” cloud services.
Also, storing collectibles on-chain was considered unfeasible for most businesses due to the gas costs involved. Although founded in 2015, IPFS went into wider adoption when the NFT market boomed to unimaginable levels during the 2021 bull run.
What Role Does IPFS Have in an NFT Marketplace?
In the case of an NFT marketplace, IPFS has a lot of work to do. We all know that most NFT marketplaces handle NFT items in some manner or the other during transactions. If not, they still have to assist users in storing their NFTs. IPFS aids them in doing so at lower costs and higher decentralization. It also offers other features, which we will speak of in the next section.
Leverage the Power of IPFS on Your Way to Realizing the Decentralized Society for Real! →
Features of IPFS Coming to Play in NFT Marketplaces
- Anti-duplication is made possible in an IPFS-powered NFT marketplace, as only valid NFT data entries are stored, and null or suspicious entries are rejected by the code.
- Utilizing IPFS for an NFT marketplace enhances the performance of the application, as a memory-intensive operation is diverted to a decentralized network of computers, easing the ventures’ burden.
- The cost of hosting NFTs is reduced as the IPFS ecosystem offers optimal pricing schemes suitable for entrepreneurs of all scales to get into the Web3 business space.
- It also provides provisions for cold data storage that aids businesses in holding users’ NFTs offline, preventing possible hacks and other fraudulent actions.
NFT Marketplace in IPFS: The Working
- Selecting the Storage Type
- Creating the NFT Minting Platform
- Minting the NFTs
- Pinning the NFTs
- Deploying Token Contracts to the Test Network
- Setting Up Smart Contracts for the Minting Application
- Deploying the Smart Contracts
- Utilizing IPFS to Store NFT Data
- Fetching NFT Data for Minting or Burning Tokens
Concluding Thoughts
Does an NFT marketplace on IPFS sound sensible? If you ask me, I would scream YES, and so will a fair portion of the NFT community well-versed in the technological scheme of things. Most NFT marketplaces, including the popular ones, use IPFS for storing NFTs in a decentralized manner to stay true to the Web3 ethos while managing costs. If you are an entrepreneur, I highly suggest you use IPFS until, or otherwise, you are ready to adopt on-chain storage, which is still in a nascent stage.
