NFT blockchain infrastructure comparison for developers

NFTs are hot! As a developer, if you want to work with NFTs, you need access to blockchain infrastructure. You can either run your own blockchain nodes or use a blockchain infrastructure provider. There are a few different options on the market today, so how do you decide who is the best one for you? Let’s find out!

TLDR; The best blockchain infrastructure for your NFT project is Tatum. It’s super easy to integrate and provides many additional features that others don’t.

How do they stack up?

Let’s take a look at a side-by-side feature comparison of Tatum, Alchemy, BlockCypher, and Infura. As you can see in the table below, Tatum offers much more and requires much less of developers.

We make it easy for you.

Ease of use is probably the most important factor when considering blockchain infrastructure. Other providers require you have a deep understanding of blockchains — you have to figure out everything yourself or battle your way through complicated documentation. In Tatum, all you need is one API call:

curl — request POST \
 — url https://api-eu1.tatum.io/v3/nft/deploy/{chain} \
 — header ‘content-type: application/json’ \
 — header ‘x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY’ \
 — data ‘{“name”:”NFT_NAME",”symbol”:”NFT_SYMBOL”,”fromPrivateKey”:”YourPrivateKey",”feeCurrency”:”CHAIN”}’

Let’s say you want to create an NFT in your game — a Red Sword, for example. To do it on Ethereum with Tatum, you’d just use an API call like this:

curl — request POST \
 — url https://api-eu1.tatum.io/v3/nft/deploy/eth \
 — header ‘content-type: application/json’ \
 — header ‘x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY’ \
 — data ‘{“name”:”Red Sword",”symbol”:”NFT_RS001”,”fromPrivateKey”:”MyPrivateKey"}’

And that’s it. Your NFT has been created, and you can now work with it. Have a look at our documentation to see the other simple API calls that will accomplish everything you need with NFTs.

And if you want to see how much work this would take with other providers, have a look at this guide.

20 blockchains, one API

Then there’s the question of which blockchain to use. Most blockchain infrastructure providers give you just access to one or two blockchains. Tatum supports over 20 blockchain protocols and brings all of these frameworks together into one simple REST API. This allows you to write the code once and effortlessly deploy it on multiple blockchains. If you ever decide to switch to another blockchain, you don’t have to rewrite your app, ensuring a level of future-proofing that other providers don’t even come close to.

As a developer, you can also leverage Tatum’s interoperability to work with multiple blockchains. For example, you could create an NFT on Celo, a fast and inexpensive Ethereum-compatible blockchain, and recreate it on Ethereum if necessary. You can create multi-chain marketplaces that allow users to choose which blockchain they want to create NFTs on. You could even implement cross-chain functionality in your games, which opens up a world of possibilities for developers and players alike.

Built-in features galore

Having infrastructure, a unified API, and cross-chain functionality is already more than enough to get you started. But these are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Tatum’s built-in features.

Tatum’s off-chain functionality allows for instant and fee-less transactions, which is especially helpful considering how Ethereum’s fees are exploding into the stratosphere. While this feature cannot be directly used for NFTs, off-chain makes a lot of sense for NFT tokenization.

You can also use virtual accounts to merge multiple deposit addresses into one account, providing your users with an uncluttered overview of their crypto accounts. FIAT ledger support is just the cherry on top, allowing you to record all FIAT transactions and utilize Tatum’s built-in order book to process exchange mechanisms. You might not need it, but it’s just a couple of API calls away if you do.

The choice is clear.

We firmly believe Tatum delivers the best possible experience for developers when it comes to blockchain and NFTs. It provides a high level of abstraction, but you can always dive into the specific blockchain language if you need to. You don’t lose any control, but you don’t have to deal with the nitty-gritty details if you don’t want to.

The simple nodes other providers run provide very limited added value for developers. They are difficult to use and require you to spend more effort and time learning to code for each blockchain. They open the potential for unintended mistakes and bugs in your app and are far too impractical for most developers to use in any reasonable timeframe. Save yourself the headache and build your app on Tatum.

So are you ready to get started?

Sign up for a free account here.

Read our full NFT guide here.

And happy coding!

Disclaimer: This article is on Tatum’s blog and has been created by Tatum. Either way, all information has been verified, and we consider it to be accurate. If you find any discrepancies, please let us know in the comments or at hello@tatum.io.

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