NFTs Beyond Ethereum - 3 Blockchains That Provide Affordable Access to NFTs

With Ethereum gas fees creating a barrier to entry for NFT creators and collectors, three other chains emerge as viable alternatives.

NFTs are gaining momentum daily with a market value increase of over $2.5 billion just in the first quarter. Digital content creators are at the top of the value chain as they are receiving the financial rewards most traditional content platforms are depriving them of.

Most of the NFT market operates on the Ethereum network, which has been struggling with high transaction costs, pushing out creators and collectors alike. Fortunately, there are other blockchain networks establishing themselves as alternatives to Ethereum for the booming NFT market.

Read on to learn about three chains where new NFT markets are emerging.

Ethereum: The Home of NFTs

The Ethereum blockchain — often referred to as a decentralized world computer — allows individuals not just to perform peer-to-peer transactions but also to build decentralized applications. This enabled developers to build different kinds of innovative services on Ethereum. One of the most exciting of these services being NFTs.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) started gaining popularity when blockchain collectibles games were launched on Ethereum. One of the first games, CryptoKitties, launched in 2017 to allow players to breed and trade virtual cats. The project raised a $12.5 million investment with virtual kittens selling for thousands of dollars shortly after launch.

Since then, different games and NFT projects have been launched on the Ethereum blockchain, with Decentraland and Axie Infinity being among the most popular ones.

This year, an NFT frenzy was sparked when Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple, sold his art ‘Everyday — The 5000 days” for $69 million via the Ethereum blockchain.

The NFT market saw a huge increase, with over $2 billion worth of NFTs sold via the Ethereum blockchain in just the first quarter.

The Ethereum network is home to most NFTs considering it’s the first blockchain that launched a full-fledged NFT project and has the most active community members.

However, **until Ethereum developers manage to successfully reduce the chain’s gas fees with new network upgrades, many creators and collectors will not be able to afford to take part in the NFT market on Ethereum. **As a result, many NFT creators and buyers are looking for other chains to take part in this exciting new sub-sector of the crypto markets.

Beyond Ethereum — NFTs on 3 Other Chains

Several issues still plague the functionality of the Ethereum blockchain; gas fees are very high, the network is becoming slow, and it uses a consensus mechanism that is not environment friendly. This has led to people seeking other blockchains where they can mint and trade their NFTs.

By providing solutions to some of these issues, newer blockchains like Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Tron are diving in on the NFT frenzy.

Let’s analyze these blockchains to see what they hold for NFTs.

Binance Smart Chain

Binance Smart Chain, one of the fastest-growing blockchains, currently has a range of projects that give a broader perspective to the world of NFTs.

Through its high performance and low fees, Binance Smart Chain attracts NFT creators and collectors to its network. The fee for minting or trading NFTs on Binance Smart Chain go as low as $10, and the network speed outruns that of Ethereum.

DApps on Binance Smart Chain like Bakery Swap, Battle Pets and Pancakeswap allows users to go beyond owning an NFT. Through these DApps, Binance Smart Chain users can stake their NFTs and earn the platform’s token as a reward.

Also, Binance Smart Chain compatibility with Ethereum virtual machine enables developers to easily move from the Ethereum blockchain to Binance Smart Chain.

Polygon

Polygon, a layer two network to Ethereum blockchain, allows for increased efficiency and extremely low transaction fees.

Polygon recently launched a unit, Polygon Studios, which focuses on blockchain gaming and NFT projects. The unit received funding of $100 million to support NFT gaming projects. This caused a surge in the NFT activity of Polygon, with over 300 NFT projects and games functioning on its network. Some of them include Open Sea (largest NFT marketplace), Decentraland, Beeple’s NFT marketplace, Sandbox, and Rarible.

Building Polygon as a layer two on Ethereum has helped most NFT projects already running on the Ethereum blockchain to leverage a new solution with low gas fees, speedy transactions and a scalable network.

Polygon is also environment friendly as it uses a Proof-of-Stake (POS) consensus mechanism, which reduces the energy needed to mint and trade NFTs by 99%.

Tron

Tron announced in December last year it’ll be launching its NFT standard. And a technical paper was released earlier this year, analyzing how its NFT standard will provide better services by reducing transaction fees and accelerating network speed. Hence, making NFTs accessible to everyone.

For months, no practical result was seen, until recently, when the founder of Tron, Justin Sun, launched a Tpunks series on his blockchain. He also purchased one of them for $10.5 million.

The Tpunk series has skyrocketed in value just a week after its launch and currently sits at fourth position in the row of DApps, according to DappRadar.

Too much can’t be said about Tron’s dive into NFTs yet because it houses only one major NFT project currently. But the low transaction fees of the Tron blockchain are poised to attract more users to its platform as its new NFT standard gains more popularity.

The solutions developed by Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Tron address the challenges of the Ethereum network, making NFTs easily affordable for anyone to create and collect.

Access the World of NFTs with Trust Wallet

Considering how fast the NFT market is growing, no one wants to be left behind, and Trust Wallet gives everyone the opportunity to access this brave new world of unique digital assets.

Using Trust Wallet’s in-built DApp Browser (for Android) or the WalletConnect function (for iOS), you can use Trust Wallet to connect to DApps and NFT marketplaces to mint, buy, sell, collect, and subsequently store NFTs in your Trust Wallet.

If you want to take part in the NFT market on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain directly from the palm of your hand, download Trust Wallet today.