Hi everyone, this is my homework post for professor @imagen on NFT markets.

INTRODUCTION

NFTs came into existence on the 3rd of May, 2014 and has ever since revolutionized the world of cryptocurrencies as images, audio files and videos can now be minted to store monetary value. It has help reshaped the gaming industries as more crypto games use these tokens to reward players for activities on the platform. Not forgetting, many celebrities all over the world, including artists are diving into the technology to give value to their work. Today, there are platforms which help showcase these NFTs to potential buyers, the most popular (Top 7 Marketplaces reviewed for 2021) include OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare, Mintable, Foundation, MarketPlace and Nifty Gateway.

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Question 1
Describe in depth the Nifty Gateway platform Who are its founders? What market or target is it aimed at?

^{Image source: Airdrop Alert}
Nifty gateway, one of the prominent NFT auction platform was founded by Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster in 2018 after which it was acquired by the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler via their exchange platform company Gemini LLC. The platform auctions very prominent and exclusive NFTs, this include the artwork and music which have been submitted to and curated by the Nifty teams. Hence, you can't find just any NFT on this platform. The Nifty teams regulate what kind of contents are auctioned on the platform to main standard and make sure only the best and most priced NFT are published.

NFTs on the NIfty gateway platform are referred to as Nifties. The platform sells NFTs by Beeple, Grimies LOGIK and other well known artists and celebrities. Beeple has made sales woth $69 million dollars on the platform. Early this year, March 2021, they partnered with the auction house Sotheby's, a British owned company with a reputation for sales of high valued fine art and rare objects to further accomplish the vision of the platform.

Nifty gateway is a custodial NFT marketplace, this means NFTs up for auction are not stored in the user's wallet but on the platform omnibus wallet. Artist have to upload the NFT they intend selling to the platform's wallet via Metamask wallet. This is a red flag to many users as they worry about the safety of their NFT as many centralized blockchain platforms are target to malicious individuals. In march 2021, a small number of users were hacked on the nifty gateway platform, all not having the 2 factor verification activated on their account. Statements released by the auction platform ascertain the security of the platform as it was not breached except for the the individuals password of affected victims which was compromised. The platform was able to reverse all the transaction made through stolen credit card information, this action however had a rather opposite effect as the subject of cryptocurrency decentralization is questioned.

^{Nifty Gateway markeplace}

To create NFT and sell on nifty gateway, intending sellers need to fill a questionnaire and as well complete an interview. It is therefore a bit difficult to sell NFTs on the platform especially if the NFT is not of good value. The marketplace is where all secondary sales are done.

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Question 2
What are ERC-1155 tokens? How do they differ from ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens?

The Ethereum blockchain is home to more than half of all existing and active tokens existing in the crypto world. This is as a result of the favorable standards of the Ethereum network such as the ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 which facilitate deployments of smart contracts. To understand the novel ERC-1155 standard, a foundational knowledge on the previously existing standards is required.

ERC stands for Ethereum request for comment. It is a means of conveying important technical data and requirements to a group of developers and users. It enables all token built using the standard to interact easily with one another. The most popular of the ERC is the ERC-20 standard on which many fungible tokens are built on. When NFTs came around, the ERC-721 protocol was developed to help perform NFT transactions on the Ethereum network. However, the ERC-20 and ERC-721 protocols are not compatible. Also, there are limitations associated with the two protocols which lead to the development of the ERC-1155 standard.

The ERC-1155 is an hybrid standard, an improvement on the previously existing ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards. It is a standard that handles token with multiple functions, hence a token built with this standard can act as if they were built with ERC-20 or ERC-721 standard. One severe limitation associated with the ERC-20 standard is the inability of the tokens built on using this standard to react appropriately with transfer events: For example, tokens become trapped forever in smart contracts when users accidentally send tokens to a wrong or incorrect address- this issue is resolved in the ERC-1155 protocol. Also, the issue of compound transaction of transactions of NFTs associated with ERC-721 protocol has been resolved in the ERC-1155 protocol. Ordinarily, in the ERC-721 protocol, a user is required to send a group of NFTs individually to the same address, this a tiresome and inefficient process as gas fees compounds- however, in ERC-1155, a series of NFTs and Fungible tokens can be transferred in a single operation.

ERC-1155 has a secure token transfer feature which verifies that a transaction is successfully carried out, else it reverts it and the token issuer have his tokens return to his wallet. This means losing tokens as a result of wrong or incorrect address is not a possibility as compared with previously existing protocol.

The adoption of the ERC-1155 is still very poor compared to the ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards, probably because it is new and most of the existing tokens were already running on previously existing standards. On prominent name in the ERC-1155 standard is the game producing company Enjin. This company plays a major role in the standard as the ERC-1155 protocol was developed by Witek Radomski, Andrew Cooke, Philippe Castonguay, James Therien, Eric Binet, Ronan Sandford, developers in Enjin.

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Question 3
Login to Etherscan. Please indicate the number of ERC-1155 tokens in existence at the time of writing your assignment. Indicate the first 5 tokens by volume of transactions in the last 24 hours. Indicate the Hash of the last transaction carried out and the identification of the token as well as its smart contract. Show Screenshots.

Etherscan (etherscan.io) like blockchair, ethplorer, etherchain among others is a block explorer and analytic platform to track cryptocurrency transactions within the Ethereum network.

Logging in to EtherScan

• Click on the Sign in button at the top-right corner of the webpage.
  



• In the new webpage, Input username and password. Fill the reCAPTCHA to proof you are not a robot then click on the Log in button.
  



• In the new webpage, the profile overview is opened which signifies a succesful log in. Also, the sign in button at the top-right corner of the webpage is replaced by the username.
  

Indicate the first 5 tokens by volume of transactions in the last 24 hours.

• Locate the Token drop-down menu, hover your mouse on it, as the drop-down menu list unveils, click on the ERC-1155 Top Tokens button.
  


• Information about the top ERC-1155 tokens are generated on the webpage.
  

As seen in the screenshot above, as at the time of creating this post, there are 17,996 ERC-1155 tokens and the top traded ERC-1155 tokens include:

S/N	Token	Trading Volume
1.	OpenSea Shared Storefront (OPENSTORE)	25,777
2.	0x715565baf69afcbbe88f56d46f1c9fe2df828705	4,178
3.	Woodies Mint Passport	3,852
4.	Rarible (RARI)	1,303
5.	0xd0ed73b33789111807bd64ae2a6e1e6f92f986f5	977

Indicate the Hash of the last transaction carried out and the identification of the token as well as its smart contract.

• Locate the Token drop-down menu, hover your mouse on it, as the drop-down menu list unveils, click on the ERC-1155 Transfer button.
  


• Information about the top ERC-1155 tokens transactions are generated on the webpage. Click on the transaction (txn) harsh of the last transaction. In this case, the last transaction harsh was 22 seconds old with a harsh of 0x5b74bb1a99333b606635c5bdb7e69d31850546d4725ec8e0d49b611dbf4fbeb9.
  


• Important information about the transaction is generated. in the interacted with (to) column, we can see the smart contract address.<br

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Question 4
Enter the Enjin wallet. Describe the functions that it presents in its user interface. Enter the Marketplace: indicate the number of items for sale, indicate the first 3 items on the list and their description. Show Screenshots.

Exploring Enjin wallet interface
For this tast, I will be exploring my already downloaded Enjin wallet android application, the first step is to locate the launch icon on my phone to open the application.

• Once the wallet application is launched, user can see three major rows. The first row is made up of four major functional buttons, the next row has the total value of assets displayed in USD and the last row has a list of few crypto assets and the quantity owned by user
  The first button at the top left corner is a side button that contain other important buttons such as Wallet, Assets, Scan Qr, Exchange, MarketPlace, DApp Browser, Linked Projects, Contact Support, and Setting buttons.



• The second button at the top (Main Wallet) is used to add more wallets to the app or choose from an array of logged-in wallets.



• The third button at the top with a contact symbol is used to save frequently used addresses. When you click on the button, a new interface opens where you can choose an address type, contact address and a desired label to identify the address owner.



• The third button at the top with a add symbol is used to add or remove displayed token and coins from the principal/ main view.



• The last button stores other vital buttons such as Backup Wallet, Rename Wallet, Edit Coin List, Auto add tokens, Manage Wallets and Rate Enjin Wallet.

Enter the Marketplace: indicate the number of items for sale, indicate the first 3 items on the list and their description.

Using the menu option in the mobile app, one can visit the Enjin marketplace. For this task, for ease of convenience I used the https://enjinx.io/eth/marketplace link on my Pc. Below is a screenshot of the marketplace interface / webpage.

The following information can be deduced from the screenshot:

• Total number of items up for sale as at the writing of this post is 17,494.
• Top (first) three items on the list include:
  1. Crystal Rosin, having 2 listings, biding from 415 ENJ
  2. Sirons's Thunder, having 2 listings, biding from 999 ENJ
  3. Zigzag Zeal, having 4 listings, biding from 290 ENJ

• Crystal Rosin
  
  
• Siron's Thunder
  
  
• Zigzag Zeal
  
  
  

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Question 5
In your personal opinion, what is the future of the NFT Markets? Give reasons for your answer.

It is widely believed among a number of people that non-fungible tokens are over-hyped and just a contraction waiting to cascade down. This was also originally said of bitcoin and the blockchain at its inception, but it still exist today and doing better. It is certain that it will continue to be especially judging by the innovations and contributions to the technology from reputable organizations and individuals of the world.

The reason why NFTs will continue to grow and become more part of the everyday life of a modern man is due to the role that they play, backed up by the robust and appreciable features of the blockchain technology. Artist of all calibre now have value for their work, especially with minimal to elimination of legal paper works in some cases. Everyday, celebrities and huge companies are embracing the technology.

The sport industry is is one of the many that have recently joined in adopting the blockchain technology, especially the non-fungible token technology as a Ronaldo NFT break a trading record of $289,920. This rare NFT was traded on Sorare, it can be used to compete in crypto tournament games. This we believe is a record that will definitely be broken in the future and more sport nfts will be minted. We can boldly say the NFT technology is competing and will disrupt the sport cards industry.

^{Image Source: Crypto Briefing}

The gaming industry reported a revenue of $155 billion in 2020. This number is estimated to increase in the years to come. Gamers all over the world invest tons of money in buying gaming weapons, skin among other game features which can not be transferred across different gaming platform. And worst of all, if the game is hacked, all investment is lost. With NFT moving to be the future of the gaming industry, weapons, avatars, skin among other collectibles can now be shared across different gaming platform. And with the decentralized nature of the blockchain providing security, there is minimal fear of losing investments. This is why industries like Big time studios, predicting the future are raising funds.

^{Image Source: Venture beats}

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CONCLUSION

Non-fungible tokens are becoming widely popular as more individual are acquiring it. It is however the first exposure to cryptocurrencies for many especially for art lovers and artists. Most industry employ the help of blockchain companies to help them mint nfts for sale, as seen in the case of celebrities like Eminem, Shawn Mendes, Ellen DeGeneres, Shanter William among others.
The future certainly is bright for the token and it is a good financial advice to get involved.

Thank You!