Director of Blockchain Strategy discusses APENFT Marketplace mainnet launch and Tron ecosystem

With their sudden rise to fame, many are quickly associating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with luxury purchases for the wealthy. Think about how many stories have flooded the news about investors and celebrities buying NFTs for a million dollars or more. However, these assets are more than a tool for the rich to get richer. Rather, at its core, these assets exist as a springboard to bridge the world to a digital realm, which evens out the playing field for artists and provides a basis for asset ownership for creators.

In the same way that blockchain was brought into the world to democratize finance, NFTs can ensure that top artists and works of art are recognized as pieces by the people, making art something for everyone.

In a recent AMA, Rachel Wolfson, a senior reporter at Cointelegraph, sits down with David Ukryniak, director of blockchain strategy at Tron, a blockchain platform behind the APENFT market. APENFT aims to be the best marketplace for digital assets published on Tron. The platform, launched in April 2022, is built on the Tron blockchain, with support from one of the world’s most widely distributed storage systems, the BitTorrent File System (BTFS). Together, the platform can use zero transaction fees in the initial phase of the marketplace and enable creators to earn extra royalties on subsequent trades. The exchange contains 62,869 NFTs as of April 29, 2022, with some of the most famous collections including InvisibleTronFriends, Cools Cats Tron and TronBullClub, among others.

To give some background, David AMA starts by sharing some more detailed details about the beginning of the project. “APENFT started as the gallery of Tron. It was the first effort to bring traditional artists into the platform and the blockchain, as well as bring new digital native artists, give them a place to show their work, so now it has evolved into the APENFT marketplace. , which enables buyers and sellers to connect, “he shares.

However, the technology on which the platform is based is more than the foundation as a marketplace. When asked more specifically about using Tron as the basis for their platform, David continues, “being built on Tron is extremely low cost for everyone to develop on, as well as being extremely scalable at high speed. It is also very decentralized, especially now that Tron has become a DAO. “

Strength in design

As the discussion progressed, many of the audience’s questions circulated about the competitive advantage that the APENFT market provides compared to other offers.

David calls the BitTorrent Internet Protocol one of them, saying APENFT could be the “first NFT marketplace to exploit this file system.” As a result, with BitTorrent, APENFT can “create a significant level of security for storing NFTs.”

There are a number of costs associated with embossing and interacting with NFTs on blockchains, but APENFT differentiates the platform with zero transaction fees for creators. Although you need TRON’s original TRX token to create your own collection and make purchases in the marketplace – with no transaction fees, the APENFT team focuses on attracting more artists to publish their work and keep more of their income to themselves.

Ultimately, these lower fees are designed to encourage creators to produce the projects by lowering the previously common barrier that larger marketplaces have noticed.

To round off the benefits of APENFT, an audience member asks how the zero-fee platform compares to other offerings, including Nifty Gateway and Coinbase NFT. David returns to the BitTorrent topic to answer this question, explaining: “All of these platforms are primarily Ethereum-based. By comparison, when users build on Tron and go through the BitTorrent Chain (BTTC), they can be on Ethereum (ETH). )), Tron (TRX) and BNB Chain (BNB) simultaneously. ” Then he asks the creator the question and asks, “Why would you limit yourself to being on one chain even though Ethereum is quite large, when you can open up to a much wider audience by being on multiple chains?”

Since the world is largely moving towards a multi-chain future, it makes sense for users to address their entire audience to ensure that the chains are properly connected.

Supports mainstream NFT adoption

As the AMA nears its end, conversations about multi-chains and interoperability lead to questions about how platforms like APENFT can continuously support mainstream NFT adoption. The ability for creators to earn commissions for resale is one of the main components, which can be achieved on TRON by using a standard feature in the smart contract that is responsible for embossing NFT. By using this method to emboss an NFT, creators can also verify published artwork via TronScan, while giving buyers a sense of security with the ability to personally revise source contracts for NFTs they are interested in purchasing.

With a question on the table about how this will develop, David concludes the AMA session by sharing some of the things that APENFT has in stock as the next steps. In his words, “the biggest thing you’re going to see from the market at this point will be rapid growth across the categories of NFTs.” Furthermore, David goes on to elaborate on their efforts from an industry perspective by sharing, “In the NFT world, I think you will see the transaction costs trend towards where Tron is, suggesting that the differentiators in the market will be security, storage, speed and cost.”