‘Almost Feeless’ IOTA NFT Marketplace Goes For Public Testing

The IOTA (MIOTA) non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace has launched on the IOTA 2.0 DevNet in test mode – it’s “almost feeless” and set to be fully decentralized.

The IOTA NFT marketplace allows the general public to use the decentralized IOTA 2.0 DevNet for the first time in a broader use case, the IOTA Foundation said. It enables users to test the platform in the current test version, in which the wallet is managed directly on the marketplace website, similar to the custody of wallets on major exchanges like Binance, they added.

Users can create a free account, claim IOTA 2.0 DevNet tokens via the integrated faucet, and start minting NFTs. MIOTA 1 is granted after sign-up for bidding and creating NFTs, added the nftiota.org.

Per the marketplace website, the goal was to create a very first workable version of an IOTA-based NFT Platform, adding that since many core features like smart contracts, identity, or a browser wallet are still work in progress, “we decided to compromise all these features with a central server to get started as soon as we can and decentralize features incrementally.”

The marketplace is expected to change the brand name, as well as corporate design and identity. Central authentication will be replaced by a browser wallet, and central bidding will be replaced by smart contracts.

“With the addition of a browser wallet and upcoming smart contracts, the IOTA NFT marketplace will become completely decentralized,” said the announcement.

While NFTs come with numerous benefits, current NFT solutions also face major drawbacks – and one of these is certainly fees, with the process of getting the NFT to a buyer being “extraordinarily expensive,” according to IOTA. Usually, there is a minting fee, a fee for listing the NFT on a platform, and a commission on sales taken by the platforms, followed by transaction fees.

The new marketplace’s solution to this is to eliminate the transaction fees, as there are none on the IOTA blockchain. However, the process is “almost feeless,” said the announcement (emphasis added) – meaning not completely without fess, but “significantly cheaper.”

There are minting fees that are “negligible” due to the IOTA Digital Assets framework, it said, while it claims that the commission of the IOTA NFT marketplace is the only one that remains, because “the infrastructure has to be powered in some way.”

The IOTA 2.0 DevNet (Nectar), the fully decentralized IOTA network that doesn’t need a Coordinator (a node run by the IOTA Foundation for network protection and transaction confirmation), was launched in June, together with the new Digital Assets framework.

As reported, in June 2020, the Foundation announced the release of Pollen, the first phase towards its decentralized network IOTA 2.0 and the so-called ‘Coordicide‘ – the death (the removal) of the Coordinator.

At 10:15 UTC, MIOTA, ranked 49 by market capitalization, trades at USD 0.79 and is down by almost 3% in a day and 4% in a week. The price is also down by 22% in a month, trimming its gains over the past 12 months to less than 215%.
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Learn more:
– IOTA’s African Pilot Moves From Flowers to Tea, Fish, and Textile
– NFT Market Becomes More Active, But Prices Drop