NFTs are hot, with investors dumping truly ungodly amounts of cash into some interesting places.
While Ethereum dominates the international NFT market, other blockchain networks are making moves in the space, too. Including ICON.
The Iconist’s favorite blockchain project has a thriving NFT community that includes investors, technologists and, of course, artists.
“It’s been super exciting to see creative talent flourish on the ICON network via Craft,” the ICON Foundation told The Iconist. “We’re seeing that creativity doesn’t end with simply the artistic rendition of a metaverse avatar but extends to tokenomics design, which make owning these NFTs a truly engaging experience.”
Let’s take a quick look at ICON’s NFT ecosystem, focusing on marketplaces and projects.
Craft Network: ICON’s NFT Gateway Drug
If you’re looking to get into ICON’s NFT space, start at an NFT marketplace.
ICON’s dominant NFT marketplace is the community-owned Craft Network, where you’ll find work by many of ICON’s top artists and projects.
The Craft Network caters to both artists and investors.
Artists can create collectibles to sell in the marketplace and continue to earn royalties from each secondary sale. Artists can manually adjust the royalty fee when they mint works. Collectibles created through Craft are permanently recorded on the ICON blockchain.
Investors, meanwhile, can purchase collectables and show off their collections. Buyers should pay a flat service fee of 2.5% on each purchase.
All you need to do to take part is login using the ICONex wallet for Chrome.
Buyers and sellers earn through their activity $CFT, the Craft Network’s native governance token. You can supply your $CFT to Balanced to earn CFT/sICX LP tokens to take stake on Craft.
Cool Projects
The ICON network has more than its fair share of talented artists who are leveraging NFT technology.
Here are just a handful of NFT projects on ICON. You know, just to get you started.
- PinkPunks: The ICON Network’s “OG ICON Punks” have sold 103 out of 111 collectables. Sure, the project might seem to some inspired by LarvaLabs’ CryptoPunks project. But let us ask: Does CryptoPunks have an NFT of the ICON Foundation’s Min Kim? No, we didn’t think so.
- GangstaBet: Inspired by classic gangster movies from the 90s, GangstaBet has been setting ICON’s NFT scene on fire, taking just six days for the project to sell all 5,555 of its characters. GangstaBet distributes GangstaBetToken ($GBET) to its holders on a daily basis — the token can be used to change the name and skills of the GangstaBets. The project is also working with the bounty program HX57, launching a series of GangstaBet prompts for “GangstaBet X HX57 Palooza.” Those prompts are due in six days.
- Project Nebula: Players of the ICON-powered science fiction strategy game Project Nebula can also collect NFTs in-game by colonizing new worlds — which can be acquired using ICX, in-game resources, or sometimes nothing at all — or by purchasing them from other players. The game has its own NFT marketplace, though you can find plenty of spaceships for sale at the Craft Network.
- Winible: Levering the power of NFTs, Winible makes investing in wine a more trustworthy and transparent experience and opens up the sector to more potential investors. Winible assigns a token to each bottle, which can be traded on the Craft Network. Users can use the web platform to verify information about the bottles, visualize their NFTs and redeem their tokens. Or they can burn their token and get the bottle delivered to their home to drink.
- SuperNode Racing: SuperNode Racing is an NFT car racing game built on the ICE Network. According to the CPS proposal, users will be able to build and own their own racing cars styled around blockchain tokens like ICX. Owners can race their cars for prizes. The artwork for the cars look awesome, but we’ll need to wait a bit for the game to launch.
Fandiem: The ICON Foundation announced last month a partnership with the non-profit fundraising platform Fandiem aimed at expanding ICON’s NFT ecosystem. Fandiem is a contest fundraising platform that “harnesses the power of the fan community to do good in the world.” With their donation to a selected nonprofit, fans are entered to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences with their favorite artists, festivals, athletes, and creators. The partnership is still a work in progress, however.
