The Soonaverse NFT MarketPlace:
A completely feeless NFT marketplace on the IOTA network. Buyers, sellers, and creators can finally mint & trade NFTs with zero marketplace fees.
The IOTA community is “on fire”
I think we can all agree that it’s an exciting time to be part of the IOTA community, we are at “ground zero” of our NFT journey. Tokenization will usher in a new age of NFTs on the Tangle. Artists in the community are finding their voices and new projects are popping up regularly, each more progressively creative than the next. So, it’s pretty safe to say that we’re “on fire”. BUT what we should really be is a RAGING INFERNO of NFT trading with new projects from every corner of crypto, new communities flocking to us trying to take advantage of IOTA’s feeless network! So, why aren’t we? Well, the main reason we haven’t achieved this is that the network currently does not support smart contracts nor the tokenization framework...yet.
While it's currently possible to mint NFTs through private nodes, the process is cumbersome and we still lack the ability to trade. This poses a problem since people want to do more than just buy their NFT’s, they want to trade them with other people. That’s the fun part of owning an NFT and building your collection. Establishing a floor price for a collection, watching it go up and down, and trying to maximize the value of your portfolio is what makes NFTs so exciting!
The Shimmer network will be the first network that will utilize the new tokenization framework and NFTs, however, the launch date is unknown. The same applies to Assembly…But the community wants this NOW!
Well, if there is anything that the community understands about SoonLabs is that we take WEN / SOON / NOW very seriously, which is why we are proud to present to you our latest announcement. On March 1st, we will be launching a completely feeless NFT MarketPlace on the Soonaverse. NFT sales will be enabled immediately on that date. MarketPlace trading will be opened immediately following the first few sales events.
You heard that right. You’ll be able to trade your NFTs before the tokenization framework goes live! Oh, and have we mentioned that it’s all 100% feeless? No fees for minting, no fees for trading. A completely feeless marketplace on the IOTA network. Something only a platform like the Soonaverse can provide.
New Soonaverse Functionality
Our NFT MarketPlace utilizes a stable, consistent, private architecture, which blends centralized and decentralized technologies to deliver NFT based funding and trading on the existing L1 mainnet. As always, our goal is to establish a clear and well-defined path to decentralization, either through Shimmernet or Assembly once these groundbreaking networks become available.
We will be delivering three new and essential pieces to make Soonaverse Spaces more useful and successful for our members:
- NFT Builder — Guardians and other artist can create NFTs and make them available for sale (both photos and videos will be supported)
- NFT Marketplace — Browse existing NFTs to purchase immediately, or make offers for others that aren’t listed for sale.
- Mint — Seamlessly migrate your NFTs to IOTA L1 once the tokenization framework is deployed
NFT Builder
An artist should be able to focus all their energy into their art. They shouldn’t have to worry about the intricacies of setting up their own NFT launchpad. With the new NFT Builder, artists no longer need to worry about things like IPFS, creating their own smart contracts, setting up a dedicated website, etc. We simplify the entire process, plus you have the added benefit of your work being available within the Soonaverse and the 5,000+ and growing Soonaverse community waiting to engage with your artwork.
The NFT Builder will initially allow artists to choose and upload three different types of NFT collections: Classic NFTs, Generated NFTs, and SFTs.
Classic NFTs are the most straightforward in that you upload your images, they’re all visible right away, and people can browse through your collection and purchase what they like. Simply upload and sell!
Generated NFTs add a little mystery into the mix. The buyer won’t know what their NFT looks like until they mint it. The owner of the collection has the ability to put in a placeholder image for the entire collection to give the buyer an idea of what the NFT may look like, but their mint will still be a surprise. This is the most common type of NFT (it’s what IOTABOTs did).
SFTs (Semi-Fungible Tokens) are a hybrid between the two approaches above. The collection creator can create a classic NFT, but they have the option to multiply them. For example, they can upload 10 images, but each image will have a quantity of 100. This is a relatively new term in the space, but a good real world example of this approach would be baseball or football trading cards.
By default, all initial sales and royalties will go to the space that created the collection, plus the creator has the ability to point royalties to another space. This means that an artist can help a space raise funds via an NFT sale and receive a royalty on both the initial sale and all future secondary market sales for their work. This royalty percentage is fully customizable and under the control of the creator. No additional fees from the platform are involved, unlike other platforms like OpenSea which tax both the creator and buyers.
Another powerful feature we were able to include, since NFTs are fully integrated into the Soonaverse platform, is the ability to apply discounts for the members of your Space based on the amount of XP they’ve earned! Rewarding engaged community members and potentially increasing your membership through promotional offers.
Finally, the last piece to the puzzle was integrating the Firefly and TanglePay wallets in order to validate addresses that will be receiving funds from NFT sales. There’s a new section in all spaces called “Your wallet” with a button to “Verify wallet.” Before a space can create a collection, they must have a validated space wallet. This validation process is fully automated and involves sending a small amount of IOTA to an address to verify that the space owner has control of the keys, and then that amount is automatically sent back. After that, the space is eligible to create NFT collections and receive royalties.
Please note that at this time, once an address is validated for a space, it cannot be changed. We did this for security reasons, so a rogue guardian can’t change the address without anyone knowing until it’s too late. We’ll introduce a feature in the future that enables guardians to vote on changing the validated address.
NFT Marketplace
This is where things start to get interesting in the IOTA Community. We now have a place to create a market for our NFTs. There will be a page for Soonaverse members to browse all available NFTs within the platform. It will provide basic filtering options and ordering.
From the discover screen you’ll be able to click on any collection that you might be interested in and view specifics. There’s a section for the collection to write about their purpose and what makes their collection unique and special. After a little light reading, you can then click into each individual NFT.
When you’re looking at the actual NFT, you’ll be able to see all of the system info (address, IPFS info), properties, and stats that the creator inputted. Additionally, you’ll be able to view a full timeline history with a link to a Tangle Explorer to see all of the transactions related to the NFT on chain.
If an NFT is listed for sale, then any member within the Soonaverse will be able to click the “Buy now” and purchase it for the specified price. If an NFT you really want isn’t listed for sale, then you have the option to make an offer. All offers will be held in a time locked escrow account (maximum 7 days) and can only be unlocked by the seller accepting/denying the offer or the time lock period ending.
The best part about all of this is that all payments and offers are done over the Tangle using IOTA as the currency. Your IOTA will no longer need to remain idle after staking ends.
Of course, what’s the point of buying NFTs if you can’t show them off? Once an NFT has been purchased, it will show up in the member’s profile:
Visitors viewing your profile will be able to purchase your NFTs if you’ve listed them for sale or they can put in offers for NFTs you haven’t listed for sale. Your Soonaverse profile now becomes an art gallery for the world to see. In a future release we may even implement a dedicated webpage or web3 component that you can embed on various platforms and sites. Similar to how you embed tweets from twitter into your profile or where your NFTs are shown on a wall or a background of your choosing.
Mint
One of the most important parts of this entire system is our “mint to mainnet” function. What exactly does this mean? It means that any NFT on the Soonaverse will be able to use the platform’s mint feature to choose which network they want to migrate to. You can choose to either port over to Shimmer or the IOTA mainnet once the tokenization frameworks go live.
Now NFTs projects don’t need to worry about the technical complexity of migration. If they minted their collection on the Soonaverse we will have everything ready for them when the time comes.
This isn’t just limited to collections that were natively minted on the Soonaverse. This goes for all NFT projects that have already been minted. All a collection owner needs to do is migrate their project to the Soonaverse before the mainnets go live with tokenization. After their collection is available on the Soonaverse, they will be able to leverage the Soonaverse mint feature and take all of the worry about migrating to either IOTA or Shimmer.
Project Timeline
The NFT MarketPlace (Builder) will launch on March 1st, 2022. The first campaign will be our own NFT sale. More information on that sale will be released SOON.
Trading on the NFT Marketplace will go live within two development sprints from the launch. (So, sometime in March)
Mint to mainnet is dependent on the release and implementation of the Tokenization framework. The moment the system can safely support this function it will go live on the Soonaverse.
Our devs have worked closely with the IF, partners, and contract teams to make the entire Soonaverse a platform that thoughtfully combines network safety and stability TOGETHER with future compatibility with IF technology.
In other words, as soon as it’s SAFU, we’ll go there together with you. Please be sure to read up on our entire approach for DAO creation, Reputation, Marketplace, LaunchPad and our SOON token in our Litepaper.
The Soonaverse NFT marketplace is the next step in our evolution towards becoming the premiere decentralized platform for communities, enabling the seamless creation, management, and interoperability of DAOs, projects, and groups. We want to provide all of the tools needed for a DAO to operate to its fullest potential.
We look forward to seeing how the community utilizes these new features and hope it helps projects struggling with funding to now have an easy and intuitive way to connect with their communities and bootstrap themselves to accelerate their development plans. For members we hope this gives you an opportunity to engage more with our platform through your NFT collections. For creators, we want this to be an opportunity to take back control and be free from the constraints of fees, exactly what the IOTA protocol was designed to do.
See you all at the Soonaverse NFT Marketplace on March 1st!
