The image of one of the most favorite NFT collections offered at OpenSea NFT marketplace – Bored Ape, is well-known to anyone slightly interested in blockchain. NFT trade took the Internet by storm in 2021 enabling users to earn on digital or not digital assets turned into NFTs. This idea of eliminating the intermediaries between sellers and buyers opened up big opportunities for artists, musicians, writers, and others to be rewarded for their achievements online. The NFT craze of 2022 was fueled by big names entering the space: Nike, Twitter, Mastercard, Coinbase, etc.
Thatās why the global NFT market has been exponentially growing recently. It started from $11.3 bln in 2021 and has reached $32 bln in 2023. The prediction for 2030 is $231 bln.
Itās worthwhile mentioning that a secure, scalable, and future-ready NFT marketplace adds to the successful trade by building trustworthiness between sellers and buyers in addition to keeping up with ever-changing trends and user demands, thus having all the potential to become the talk of the town. The present read aims to discuss the stages of NFT marketplace development, what are the required features, and how much their implementation would cost you.
What is NFT Marketplace Solution?
An NFT marketplace is a web3 online platform enabling people to mint NFTs, offer them for sale, connect crypto wallets to enable funds transfers, browse through available NFTs, place bids, and purchase the desired assets. The interest in NFT marketplaces is fueled by the fact that these types of digital assets come as one-of-a-kind which makes the buyer their unique owner. A non-fungible token could stand for literally anything starting from a piece of art, a celebrity autograph to concert tickets, or in-game achievements.
Based on the business needs, an NFT market development company could provide several main types of NFT platforms: open marketplaces, closed or premium ones, curated or non-curated marketplaces, collectibles NFT platforms, and gaming marketplaces. Letās delve into what are the main features of an NFT marketplace.
Key Features of NFT Marketplaces
User-friendly interface
Itās not a secret that web3 is far from being convenient for average users, who are not tech-savvy. NFT marketplaces are not an exception. Thatās why if you want your NFT marketplace to be future-oriented and embrace flocks of users, itās crucial to make the user experience as flawless and enjoyable as possible. The platform must feature straightforward logic and sorting options. Having a straightforward and easy-to-navigate interface builds trust and motivates users to return and continue their customer journey.
Crypto wallet integration
Modern crypto wallets are not only payment means, they are taking the functions of digital assets storage and acting as the entry point to web3 thatās why NFT marketplaces require wallet integration to empower users with encrypted safe storage for their assets in addition to seamless buying and selling experiences.
Secure transactions
Payment gateway integration is an essential part of NFT marketplace development. They should be able to support various payment methods, accept payments in fiat and crypto, flexible and scalable. Moreover, the payment gateway should be secure when usersā credentials are well protected. Of course, the more experienced the NFT marketplace development team is, the better cybersecurity mechanisms will be implemented. A must for such solutions should be auth control for APIs, data encryption, AI-based fraud detection mechanisms, etc.
Smart contract integration
Smart contracts are the driving power of blockchain transactions, including NFT trading. They let buyers and sellers automatically execute transactions and no intermediary’s help is needed. Well-programmed smart contracts provide transparency and security in the zero-trust trading environment. They make sure that buyers get the NFT they requested and that sellers receive the payment for it. Any NFT platform development company introduces smart contracts, but their quality depends on the expertise of the company.
Community growth features
The success of NFT trade has been always relying on the social factor. First, the platforms or artists generate a lot of noise around the collection to be released or the platform deployed. Social influencers are writing about it and only then the sale starts. Thatās why it could be wise to introduce to the marketplace special engagement features which would increase sales and drive involvement. These could be chat rooms, social media integrations, forums, etc, or anything that facilitate usersā integration. Also, it helps to gain usersā loyalty and create an effective network to drive sales.
NFT Marketplace Development
Define the scope and the requirements
Any new vendor who would like to enter an NFT sector should find their niche by analyzing what the target audience needs, what products competitors are offering, or what the advantages and value your startup could bring. NFT marketplace developers could be assisting and providing you with a business plan and the platform prototype.
Choose the blockchain provider
The right blockchain provider is halfway to your success. There are two main options to choose from: either to use a ready-made NFT marketplace development solution from Ethereum, Cardano, Polygon, Binance, or other blockchain platforms or build a network of your own. Due to the complexity of blockchain technology, building a chain from scratch is not a cheap option, on the other hand, the marketplace integration with any of the existing blockchain solutions would cost around $50K as well. Anyway, itās highly advised to pay a bit more but make sure that your platform is a multichain solution thus it could reach a much larger audience.
Develop smart contracts
As we have claimed before, smart contract technology is the driving force of an NFT marketplace thatās why smart contract designing and coding is extremely important. Smart contracts help to mint NFTs and perform automatic trading operations once all required conditions are met. Thorough testing of smart contracts before deployment is vital as it eliminates possible vulnerabilities which could be maliciously exploited.
Test and deploy
There is never enough testing. Moreover, it requires even more testing due to the blockchain’s anonymous nature, because itās decentralized. Whenever any hacks occur, there is not a single chance to find out who is behind and return the stolen funds. Thatās why on the stage of testing a NFT marketplace development company should stay focused on any possible vulnerabilities.
Maintain and improve
An NFT marketplace outsourced to the NFT development company comes with a dedicated team to not only take care of all the needed requirements but also keep the maintenance of the marketplace in action, work with tickets coming from users, and improve the platform infrastructure if requested. At this point, itās better to have a team who has built the NFT marketplace solution from scratch and knows the documentation, as well as the code rather than go with a ready-made integration and then hire a new team to maintain it.
Cost Factors in NFT Marketplace Development
Putting it in a nutshell, an average NFT development project is likely to take up to 6 months based on its complexity and could cost anything from $50,000 to $150,000. If you opt for Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain platforms itās important to know that integration with their complex blockchain ecosystem only will cost you around $50,000 alone in addition to the main development costs. Letās dig into what are the main cost factors influencing the development price.
- Type of NFT Marketplace. The most common option is to build an open NFT marketplace. But if your business requires it, you can build curated, collectible, or games NFT marketplaces. Consequently, the cost of development could grow as high as $250,000.
- Platform Functionality. Basic NFT marketplace functionality includes registration and authorization, minting NFT and listing, filtering and search options, bidding and trading mechanisms, as well as crypto wallet integrations. Integration with DeFi or making the NFT software development blockchain-agnostic also adds to the costs of the development.
- UI and UX. As in any other software development, skilled designers are costly but itās worth paying for their services. As a result, you will get a visually appealing and extremely user-friendly design having high brand recognition potential in addition to optimized user flow.
- Tech team. NFT marketplace development is not an easy task, thatās why it requires an engagement of a development team including a UI/UX designer, frontend and backend developers, a project manager, and a QA engineer. Based on the teamās geographical location the hourly rates will also differ.
- Deadline and Complexity. These are the two factors that could increase the cost of NFT marketplace solution development. The tighter the time frame is, the higher the demand for accelerated development, which affects developersā hourly rate. Also, projects with complex architecture might require more effort from the side of marketplace developers.
Summary
Though NFT marketplace development is a relatively new type of technological solution, itās growing and gaining popularity. More and more users want to enter web3 and reap the financial benefits it offers. One of the examples could be NFT trading. Partnering with the right development company to develop an NFT marketplace solution could help you reach your business goals and bring the product to the market faster. Also, itās better to get a team with deep expertise in product discovery phases as it helps you save your budget and time and get a prototype of the solution ideally tuned to your business goals. To get to know more, please, reach out to us and see how long we will walk together.