Ever since Cardano deployed smart contract integration earlier this year, the network has been buzzing with on-boarded projects and development from the community. Its native token ADA has also grown significantly during this time owing to its increased uses cases amongst creators and developers building on the network.
One of the key areas Cardano has focused on, is the NFT market, with the craze for these non-fungible tokens showing no signs of easing. During a recent Cardano 360 session, the network’s commercial NFT business lead Josh Miller outlined the various strides this aspect of the ecosystem has made since the Alonzo era began.
The exec noted that Cardano’s NFT maker has already made over a hundred thousand NFTs, most of which are built on marketplaces native to Cardano. The biggest of them all is undoubtedly the CNFT marketplace, which the network has espoused as a serious rival to Ethereum.
Miller pointed out that CNFT recently celebrated a hundred thousand registrations in the Cardano community, along with the minting of 1.7 million NFTs and 1.5 million of ADA traded within this ecosystem, adding that these are “probably low numbers.” Overall, he said,
“We’re seeing a lot of tech come online… we’re seeing explosive growth in the CNFT community.”
One of the reasons behind the growth of Cardano’s NFT products is the diminishing of Ethereum’s role in the sector, owing to network congestion and unpredictably high fees. Cardano has even gone one step further in this rivalry by introducing interoperability on the network for those wanting to migrate from ETH without disposing off their previously minted NFTs.
However, there is another aspect that is triggering users to flee from the Ethereum network. That is the ESG concerns as “the energy requirements needed to generate NFTs have been a hot topic in the news.”
Robert Tran, COO of Bondly Finance, also highlighted how the entertainment companies they work with consider “mitigating the environmental impact of the blockchain” as their primary criteria while opting for a network. Bondly Finance, signed a partnership with Cardano last month to build a cross-chain bridge between the network and Ethereum. Tran added,
“One transaction on Ethereum literally uses as much power as the conventional hospital uses in a day and a half. It’s simply just not sustainable.”
He also pointed out how the Cardano cross-chain will help in easing these concerns, saying,
“The bridge has the potential to literally divert a significant portion of these transactions that are happening underneath onto the Cardano chain and that’s massive.”
There are other factors too that are enticing projects to build on top of the smart chain platform, according to Tran, who noted,
“Environmental concerns and the speed of transactions we feel will be key drivers in onboarding major consumer brands in the future. The other one is you know our view as a company but the future of blockchain is interoperability.”
He further added,
“Bondly has been built as an interoperable transparent portable swap protocol and we feel that this is the future of NFTs and Cardano is literally the most anticipated smart contract platform in the blockchain space.”
