How To Create An NFT Marketplace Website?

By Vladyslav Deryhin
October 13, 2022
20 min read
Table of Contents

NFT-making websites appear here and there at the current moment. Companies and individuals strive to attract clients with new technological features: developers and users like the simplicity of use, safety, and many other aspects. 

Do you consider developing your own or corporate NFT marketplace? Find out how you can benefit from it and will the effort be worth it.

What Is an NFT?

NFT, or a non-fungible token, is a digital asset. It can be sold or bought as any other physical item. A seller establishes the number of purchase copies and a price for one piece.

How does it work in practice? For example, a tattoo artist can sell tattoo templates NFT through website for printing. They can restrict the number of sales, so each sold one will have its value. A creator, in this situation, controls the scarcity level and chooses between a higher price and a higher number of sold copies.

Many industries already apply NFTs widely. It increases the safety level and provides a new concept of independence for creators and companies.

  1. The gaming industry is the most active user of tokens. Some sellers distribute copies of games in this way. Individual gamers use NFTs for in-game purchases. It shortens the way money does and makes the process fair.
  2. Creators of different kinds publish NFT through website for selling their artwork. Fans frequently choose this option to donate and support their favorite artists online.
  3. Musicians sell copies of music albums in this way. If a fan doesn't need a physical copy, they can still support a performer by purchasing an online copy via an NFT making website. It became a vital money source since the pandemic severely hurt the music industry.

These are only a few examples, and the possibilities of using this technology get more comprehensive daily.

NFT Features

How does NFT technology work, and why is it different from regular online sales? It all starts with the concept of uniqueness. Each NFT is a single part you cannot split, resell, or copy without the author's permission.

Buyers are often confused about the cost of NFT. How can a digital asset cost something if it doesn't exist IRL? The answer is the scarcity system. Creators regulate the number of copies they want to sell. It makes each copy unique and then valuable. It is shown in the best way with music albums and artworks.

The next discussable aspect is the purchasing process. Blockchain technology, the basis of tokens, makes it transparent and confirmable. A customer can check whether their NFT is valid via publicly accessible records of sales and money transfers.

The current development of blockchain and token technologies makes the whole system highly compatible. The technology of decentralized ledgers guarantees the impossibility of forgery.

Benefits of NFTs

Why do customers choose an NFT making website as an alternative to traditional payment processes? The first reason is the 100% authenticity. Non-fungible tokens technology allows proving the originality of each sold copy quickly.

The next aspect that NFTs easily prove is ownership. After a customer makes a purchase, the digital asset connects with their account only. One token cannot belong to a few people. It is how the concept of rarity works with virtual belongings.

The next technology that supports trustworthiness is smart contract usage. Smart contracts provide a fair trade under specific conditions, just like the written agreement. This agreement operates in a decentralized way, without third-party involvement. It makes the process independent of anybody except the seller and the buyer.

What Is an NFT Marketplace?

NFT marketplace is a web-based platform allowing users to sell, buy, exchange, and operate with their non-fungible tokens in other ways. These platforms usually have a narrow specialization. For example, they can only sell artwork, music, games, or in-game assets. All NFT marketplaces work with some kind of cryptocurrency.

An NFT marketplace can operate with almost any industry and company, from digital to real-life-based. Even Nike has presented their non-fungible pair of shoes. They named it CryptoKicks and created a design similar to the Dunk model.

The pair of CryptoKicks can be used in a metaverse and worn by a person's avatar. NFT-based shoes are available to the owners of Clone-X avatars who have purchased Monolith tokens from Nike. 

It is only a single example! Ways of application range widely and fit almost any idea.

  • Gamers are the most active users of non-fungible tokens currently. From purchasing games as they are to exchanging in-game assets, there is a wide variety of options.
    Many NFT games use Pay-to-Win and Win-to-Earn algorithms to encourage users to invest and exchange currency. Here is how Axie Infinity, Town Star, and Splinterlands operate. Try one of them to understand the blockchain better.
  • Another industry that uses NFTs actively is sports. Marketplaces for fans already exist. Performing athletes create virtual cards and pieces of art about themselves. The cost usually depends on their success.
    Some sportsmen, like the fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, sell cards allowing purchasers to meet with the celebrity and receive an autograph. The NBA has successfully turned the card collecting process into virtual reality via tokens.
  • Non-fungible tokens significantly simplify the process of selling & buying tickets. It solves the problem of fakes and eliminates forgery risks. Tokens allow releasing the required number of tickets at once and comfortably regulate sales. Smart contracts technology restricts the overpriced unfair resales by the third party.
  • In the world of art, the process of selling and buying NFT-based artworks imitates the real-life one completely. Tokenized art pieces provide the ability to sell and bid on them, like real auctions.
    They also keep a history of owners and data about creators and ownership. It is even easier than with actual paintings. Copyright protection is crucial for digital artists due to the proof of creation and ownership.
  • The artwork can be not only of the visual kind. Musicians started widely applying NFTs in 2020 when the industry suffered from the Covid-19 pandemic. Tokens improve and change relations between listeners and creators, allowing fans to benefit from their support.
    Unknown musicians, on the other hand, can get popular without third-party involvement. NFTs are less prevalent in the music industry due to law issues and sales specifications. 

In many other industries, sellers and purchasers only start to make a NFT website and discover non-fungible technologies. NFTs are slowly coming to real estate, academia, and fashion sales. The development is continuing right now.

How Does an NFT Marketplace Work?

The architecture of such a marketplace allows different ways of interaction. The seller regularly establishes the token's cost and the number of copies. Then, clients purchase these copies for a designated amount of cryptocurrency. In other situations, purchasers can bid on slots like in an auction.

NFT Marketplace Development

Many companies and individuals can make a NFT website in the last two years. Your business can benefit from it too! It can be an addition to your current project or an utterly new development.

What Is the Cost of Creating an NFT Marketplace: Budgeting

Start with defining the amount of money you will spend and the list of features you will need. After you create a plan and imagine an architecture, you can move to more detailed budgeting and actions.

The first choice is between a ready and a custom NFT marketplace. With a ready-made solution, you will save a lot. It provides you with essential functions and solves the main problems that projects of your kind may have. A custom-built website will cost you much more time and money but will perform specific tasks if your project has them.

The market of blockchain development offers you a wide variety of instruments and professionals who are going to implement your ideas into life. Expect to spend from $30,000 to $50,000 on developing a common platform with various essential functions.

The price may get higher for rare and specific function development. Even implementing a ready-made solution is not a quick automated process. Expect to spend plenty of time on the full-stack development of an NFT making website.

Mapping Goals

Now you know what average sum you will spend to make a NFT website. The next stage is figuring out details about your plan and establishing steps to go through. We have created a short list of possible questions to ask yourself and understand the process better.

What Do You Specialize In?

NFT through website for specific assets, such as NBA card collections or film soundtracks. You can develop a platform for the particular needs of your industry. We have examples of successful narrowly specialized marketplaces. 

For example, users of Sorare only sell and purchase football cards. The platform works as a virtual collecting game in which teams of players participate in matches. The success of each team and a single card will depend on the success of a real-life footballer.

The marketplace co-signs agreements with actual famous clubs, such as Real Madrid, and players, such as Andre Schurrle. Currently, more than 280 teams perform in virtual matches in Sorare.

On the other hand, a platform can be widely applied and multifunctional for diverse types of digital assets. It is more difficult as you don't have a formed target audience, so you have to start selling everything to everyone. 

Catching you from many different platforms won't be easy for users. On the other hand, a more versatile marketplace can attract more users and has many variants of development. How strictly do you want to specialize your platform at the end?

What Is Your Monetization Model?

The next step is to understand how you can earn from your startup. Web services have a few traditional schemes of monetization. They work for NFT marketplaces as well.

  1. Offer a subscription for sellers and users. This kind of monetization fits projects that already have massive traffic. Users pay a certain sum for using a platform annually or monthly. Subscription is a more common earning strategy for streaming services than for marketplaces.
  2. Apply a commission monetization model. Now it is considered to be the most popular among selling platforms. The point is charging every successful sale and keeping a percentage from each transaction.
  3. Lead fee revenue type. It fits marketplaces based on the bidding process. A purchaser posts a request, and sellers should pay to get their clients.
  4. Product listing is a bit similar to a commission model. However, it allows you to earn for every placed position, not only for successful sales. Think of this if you are dealing with expensive or low-liquid items.
  5. Freemium listing models are not very popular model, but it has certain benefits. Sellers pay for premium functions on your platform, and some basic options are accessible for free.

Some marketplaces and web services combine different monetization models to get a stable income. For example, you can develop paid premium functions and use a commission model by default.

What Makes Your Project Stand Out from the Rest?

Now you have a general concept and understanding. However, you are not the only competitor in this market. How are you going to stand out from everyone else? Clients will only come to you if they like your specifics and see your options as exclusively beneficial. 

Your first step is to build trustworthiness and gain an audience through social nets and targeted advertising. Here are some aspects customers and investors find important while seeing the project.

  • The detailed plan of development. As far as you are dealing with cryptocurrency, people would like to see that you are technology-oriented and good at building strategies.
  • Information about founders. Your clients would likely trust you if they saw your team and the project's founders. Tell more about your vision and why you are into this startup.
  • Comprehensive marketing strategy. Social nets give excellent feedback, but don't forget about e-mail lists, content marketing, and complex SEO strategies. Together they will help you to create awareness around your project. 

Which Protocol Tokens Are You Going to Use?

Protocol cryptographic tokens allow developers to use the underlying protocol service and can be of different kinds. We will name the most popular ones and describe their specifics.

Standards In the Blockchain

The difference between protocols can be not so visible from aside. The primary function of this variety is to provide diversity in interacting with a blockchain. Developers choose a specific protocol according to the use cases they expect to work.

Ethereum

Ethereum is the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. Its creators have developed smart contracts and introduced them to the world of crypto technologies. Ethereum offers three different types of popular standard protocols.

  • ERC-20 is one of the first protocols ever to appear. ERC means the "Ethereum Request for Comments." It helped with standardizing manipulations with tokens, adding new ones to the marketplace platform, and exchanging and deleting them. 
  • ERC-721 standardized tokens are not interchangeable and have different costs. Each pass is related to a single digital asset, so ERC-721 is more about items than currency.
  • ERC-1155 supports interchangeable and non-interchangeable tokens, which is entirely new for cryptocurrencies. While using an ERC-1155 standard, you can create a single, smart contract for fungible, semi-fungible, and non-fungible tokens.

Binance Smart Chain

It is an upgraded Binance Chain protocol. In February 2022, developers revealed the next evolution stage and united these two protocols into one. Its name is BNB Chain, and you can also integrate it into your platform.

Binance Smart Chain is popular among DApps developers because it lowers transaction costs and supports Ethereum-compatible contracts. Another benefit of BSC is the appliance of different protection to eliminate attacks.

The current safety standard name is Proof-of-Stake-Authority. It involves Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Authority technologies. BSC also applies slashing technology to reveal malefactors and eliminate double write-offs. 

Tron

Developers and businessmen highly recommend Tron as a corporate-fitting solution. It is a decentralized blockchain network applying the TRX token. This protocol aims to connect content makers with consumers without a third party. The critical values of Tron are productiveness, openness, and complexity.

The Tron blockchain platform's mission was to store content in a decentralized manner that is economically efficient. Now it has become a standard platform for DApps development. It is worth choosing it because of its trustworthiness and stable position on the market.

FLOW

The price for the FLOW token has risen by 103% after Meta revealed its plans to include NFTs on Instagram. FLOW supports NFT making website and DApps and suits crypto games in all forms.

The benefits of NFTs by Flow are high speed and developer-centric character. It allows the creation of different types of digital assets. We have already discussed the NBA Collection service, which operates on Flow, as CryptoKitties does.

Wax Blockchain

Wax, or Worldwide Asset eXchange, is a blockchain for games and NFT creation. A DPoS safety method allows to exclude the commission and lower the price of each transaction. Since its start in 2017, WAX has gained 12 million active users.

Wax has a patented technology that connects NFTs with natural objects and implements cryptocurrency into video games. It is currently at the top in the P2E (pay-to-earn) games industry and has collaborated with famous companies such as Sony's Funimation. 

Solana

Solana is popular on the DeFi market thanks to the high speed of transaction processing, low commissions (only $0,00025 for each), and a trustworthy decentralization level. The critical goal of Solana Labs is to attract 1 billion connected users. 

Solana is the second most popular independent NFT blockchain based on smart contracts, standing right after Ethereum. Its protocol is Burnt. They attracted $3 million of investigations in May 2021. More than 250 projects are currently running on Solana.

High speed allows this protocol to compete with complex centralized systems. The low transaction cost is available thanks to consolidating nodes on a single computer instead of letting each node run on a single computer.

Tezos

Owners apply XTZ-tokens in industries of digital art, decentralized financing, and gaming. The key specification of Tezos is an ability to self-develop and simplify updating of the blockchain.

Smart contracts written on Tezos use the unique Michelson language. Tezos applies an improved Proof-of-Stake algorithm called Liquid Proof of Stake. A self-developing platform can quickly adapt itself to fast-changing technological conditions.

Tezos is currently applied to check financial transactions with minimal trust levels. Another option is to transfer ownership of illiquid assets such as real estate, art, and jewelry. It has already proven its usability for businesses and governmental tasks and continues to develop. 

Stellar

Stellar is a decentralized open-source protocol allowing to transfer of assets between different pairs of cryptocurrencies. Stellar's cryptocurrency is called Lumen (XLM).

All completed transactions go to the public list with free access. The consensus mechanism realization goes with a unique technology allowing to achieve agreement in a few seconds.

Stellar is worth mentioning as it works as a global net for financial operations processing. It can already process thousands of operations per second. While the main problem of tokens is the high cost and long time of transactions, Stellar makes them fast and cheap.

NFT marketplace architecture

Microservice architecture is now the most operable one. The point is to create many independent services that are not connected tightly but still make the app work. In this case, a single bug in one of the services won't make the whole app break down.

As a result, developers can fix the bug without re-deploying the whole architecture and save hours. Companies with a worldwide reputation, like Netflix or Uber, are using this architecture successfully.

What Features Do You Want to See There?

There are a few undoubtful qualities that attract clients to new marketplaces. Think of improving them in your project.

  • Liquidity shows that your tokens can be traded and are useful for their owners. Your NFTs should be easy to exchange for others and become practical parts of the market.
  • User-friendliness attracts even beginners and helps them to start dealing with cryptocurrencies from zero. With a specific effort, beginners can become a large part of your audience and clients.
  • Filtration options help users search for certain kinds of NFTs they want to trade and simplify their use. Consider a crypto wallet integration to make your platform client-oriented.
  • Decentralization is the primary feature of all NFT blockchain projects you should develop. Companies shouldn't keep information centrally. Instead, you should keep the data on the network of connected computers.
  • Security measures should be severe so customers understand you care about their data. Also, the information about transactions should be accessible and transparent.

Which Technological Stack Are You Going to Implement?

Working out a technological stack involves all main technical characteristics besides the standard protocol. We suggest some main details you should consider at the development stage.

Storage Platforms

Choose a platform to keep all NFTs of your NFT making website. There are trusted and popular platforms like Pinata, Coinbase, Filecoin, Metamask, and others. Some have connections with certain currencies which may provide additional features for your project.

NFT Standard

As we already mentioned, many standards exist, and each one has benefits. The most popular ones are ERC-721 and ERC-1155. Discuss the suitable choice with your developers and come to a consensus.

Blockchain Platform

The blockchain platform will be the basis for your marketplace. Most of the standards in the blockchain connect with platforms. Ethereum has the most considerable popularity among developers for its' trustworthiness and high-security level.

Other popular variants are Tezos and Flow. They are comfortable and developers will have fewer difficulties supporting the workable state of the environment.

Front-end Frameworks

The choice of the front-end framework depends on your developers' skills and the expected needs of a platform. Here are the possible variants.

  • React.js is a SEO-friendly and speedy framework that allows the creation of attractive user interfaces with ease. It also supports Facebook and focuses on the app's components.
  • Angular.js is an open-source framework and comes from Google. Apps developed with Angular are easy to test and highly viable. It is super helpful for HTML development.
  • Vue.js is much easier than Angular to deal with. Its abilities might be more fundamental than advanced, but the simplicity makes the development process faster. Also, it has a smaller size.

Non-fungible Tokens Marketplace Back-End Example

Back-end development includes solving basic tasks such as storing user profiles, proceeding with transactions, choosing the payment method, etc. After creating a back-end structure plan, you should understand technological features and how to move forward to the next development stage.

NFT Marketplace Back-End

  • Blockchain: Ethereum, Tezos
  • Token standard: ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, BEP-20
  • Smart contracts: EVM, BSC VM
  • Frameworks: Laravel, Cake PHP, Express JS
  • Languages: JavaScript, Python
  • Databases SQL: Oracle DB, PostgreSQL
  • Databases NoSQL: Neptune, MongoDB, DynamoDB
  • Search engines: Sphinx
  • DevOps: WS CodeBuild, Terraform

Non-fungible Tokens Marketplace Front-End Example

Back-end makes your platform run stably, with all required safety and functional specifics. The front end makes it comfortable for users' interactions. Also, the suitable front-end characteristics make a platform dev-friendly. It helps to improve the speed and the quality of development and teamwork.

We advise you to choose program frameworks as far as they provide a project with:

  • safety;
  • the economy of time;
  • scalable code.

UI/UX Design

When all technical stuffing is ready, it comes to focusing on the visual part. Front-end development involves creating a non-fungible tokens marketplace. Think of the impression and values you want to translate. An NFT platform should look understandable and beginner-friendly. At the same time, it should show trustworthiness and a serious approach. In which way would you like to show that?

NFT Marketplace Front-End

  • Programming languages for web: Angular, React, and Vue.
  • Programming languages for mobile: Java for Android, Swift for iOS.
  • Architecture: MVVM for Android and MVC, MVP, MVVM, and VIPER for iOS.
  • IDE: Android Studio and Xcode for iOS.

Testing

Now you've worked out both technical and visual parts of the platform. How would you know it works properly? Only testing will help you with detecting problems and eliminating them. Testing may require a few stages to figure out every single situation. It will provide a smoother start.

Security Audit

Suitable security measures will provide trustworthiness to your NFT marketplace. The security auditing process is similar to the smart contract auditing we explained.

Auditors can also consult you about cross-border transaction issues. It is crucial that while cryptocurrencies become more popular and experience governmental regulations, you must follow them.

Marketplace Launch and Support

Now it's time to show your project to the world. How would this process look? You can come to launching and releasing differently.

  • Continuous integration is easier for developers in a technological way but less comfortable for clients. It lets the team detect current and potential problems during the integration stage.
  • In another case, you can launch a project simultaneously instead of going through different iteration stages.

Of course, developers don't stop their work after launching the platform. They must work great for a smooth workflow, especially at the start. When the number of users grows, A development may need additional help. Also, a team should work on regular updates.

Off-the-shelf Tools VS Custom NFT Marketplace Development

Off-the-shelf Tools

Off-the-shelf tools mean ready-made software templates that have essential functions already worked out. It simplifies the development process and saves time on certain stages. Also, it makes your platform more economical. 

On the other hand, it won't provide you with the unique features that your project may require. Of course, some parts of the architecture will be custom, but the whole construction will be standardized.

Custom NFT Marketplace Development

Creating an NFT marketplace is not an easy job. Custom development is even more complicated and time-consuming. On the contrary, you will receive an ideally functioning platform that suits all your specific needs. A custom approach is also more attractive for clients tired of traditional and standard templates.

Creating an NFT marketplace from zero is a big deal. Also, as with any other project, it takes time to succeed. It is an excellent experience with many stages of work and incredible feedback. It is worth trying if you think you are ready.

No matter what way you select, try out RPC Fast to connect to any available blockchain and get the first-class infrastructure for your project
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