NFT Marketplace Development Guide

The non-fungible token industry has great prospects, so NFT marketplace development is a good idea. This market is expected to increase at a 35% annual rate over the forecast period from 2021 to 2026, reaching $147 billion.

NFT has already become a mainstream phenomenon. This tendency can be explained by the growing number of influencers involved, the emergence of new gaming communities, and the increasing demand for digital art.

There already are a lot of NFT marketplaces, so this niche can be quite challenging. But if you are wondering how to develop your own NFT marketplace, just know that with an experienced team on your side it’s possible to build a unique cost-effective platform to attract new users.

But how to create an NFT marketplace? In this article, Softermii will provide an overview of this topic – the NFT marketplace creation, its features, and the technologies involved, as well as the cost to develop the NFT marketplace. We have experience in creating blockchain apps like Extobit and competence in FinTech. Custom NFT marketplace platform development is a part of our expertise. Read on!

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Key Benefits of NFT Marketplace

NFTs use blockchain technology, much like cryptocurrencies. It is also true for non-fungible token marketplaces. As a result, all the blockchain’s advantages apply to your digital platform for NFT sales. Let’s take a look at the main benefits of NFT marketplaces.

Complete Transparency

Blockchain technology implies that all NFT transactions are visible in a distributed database. You can think of it as a book of all transactions, which displays all the actions on your marketplace in real-time.

Decentralization

Developing an NFT marketplace means building a decentralized platform where users can trade assets freely and not depend on traditional financial institutions, regulators, etc. This decentralization is possible through the use of blockchain technology.

NFT’s Indivisible Nature

Each NFT has its unique digital ID and special features. Users can access exclusive assets instantly available via your marketplace. The uniqueness makes indivisible tokens so desirable.

Liquidity

The demand for cryptocurrencies and NFTs is constantly growing. People appreciate decentralization and the absence of standardized regulation, so they actively invest in digital assets. As a result, many users see increased liquidity in the NFT sector.

Authenticity and Unique Ownership

Another benefit of building an NFT marketplace is the chance to earn your users’ loyalty and trust. A non-fungible token is a publicly accessible record of ownership that may be checked if necessary. As a result, an NFT is impossible to forge.

High Level of Security

Blockchain technologies allow NFT marketplaces to experience all the benefits of first-class security features. Such features include cryptography and consensus algorithms.

What Types of NFTs Can List on Your Marketplace?

Think of NFTs as digital products and your marketplace as an online store. Just like eCommerce platforms trade clothing or, for example, home decor items, NFT marketplaces can target different niches.

Here you have two main options: create a universal marketplace or a niche one. The first will list different types of NFTs, while the second will include only a certain sort of non-fungible tokens.

So before you initiate your NFT marketplace development process, learn about the available types of non-fungible tokens.

The NFT market is expected to increase at a 35% annual rate over the forecast period from 2021 to 2026, reaching $147 billion.

Art

These are NFTs created by digital artists who seek to sell their works at auctions while retaining the copyright to their art.

Gaming

NFT in the gaming industry enables users to purchase or obtain in-game assets. After that, these assets can either be used in the game or sold.

Media

NFT in the media greatly facilitates combating fraud and copyright theft. For example, public figures can tokenize their content, thus authenticating it and claiming their copyright.

Music

NFTs in the music industry help authors fight piracy and receive income from their compositions.

Real Estate

It is another type of NFT that involves the tokenization of virtual lands and real estate. It provides an opportunity to avoid conflicts over land or real estate ownership.

NFT Marketplace Features to Consider

NFT marketplace project development involves defining the functionality of your platform. Here you have to think of both digital asset sellers and buyers. We’ve selected the main features of the NFT marketplace you should consider.

Storefront

When developing NFT marketplace platform, you need to take care of the storefront. It is the most significant element of your marketplace. Here you will gather all the necessary information, including offers, a detailed description of each NFT, its owners, rates, and price history.

Advanced Token Search

Required feature that is needed for the development of NFT marketplace app development. This feature will come in handy when your users need to find the token quickly. Here you should divide NFTs into categories such as music, images, videos, etc.

Filters

Filters have a function similar to the advanced token search, but they encompass more categories. This tool will assist your users in identifying NFTs based on more than just their type. There will also be such categories as price, creators, asset popularity, new offers, etc.

Creating Listings

Allow users of your marketplace to create listings. These can be general lists or, for example, wish lists. It’s good if listings show information about NFTs, such as the asset’s title, tags, price, or detailed description.

Listing Status

This feature is vital for the NFT creators. Thanks to it, they can keep other users up to date with the current status of their digital works.

Buying and Bidding

No eCommerce NFT platform development is complete without the function of buying and placing bids. Make sure you add this option to your marketplace so users can easily buy and bid on non-fungible tokens.

Wallet

One of the most essential features of the NFT marketplace. It would help if you also integrated a wallet into your marketplace. As a result, your users will be able to pay for and manage NFTs without leaving your platform.

Ratings

Implement a rating system to let the users of your marketplace know which tokens are the most relevant. This feature will be especially helpful for beginners in the crypto field.

Auction

The auction is a fascinating NFT marketplace feature even for those users who are not yet ready to trade on your marketplace. This function helps to generate traffic for your platform.

Key Steps of NFT Marketplace Development

You can build an NFT marketplace with the following steps:

1. Define Your Niche

The first thing you need to do is decide on your marketplace type: universal or niche. A better option is to list different types of NFTs, as it will attract a wider audience.

2. Choose Your Blockchain

Choose the blockchain on which you’ll build your marketplace. Some of the most popular ones are Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. You can also make your platform support multiple blockchains at once.

3. Determine Your Project’s UI/UX Design

After deciding on a blockchain and a niche, you can think about NFT marketplace design. Make sure your user interface is intuitive and user-friendly.

4. Implement Smart Contracts

The next step is to develop smart contracts for your marketplace. For this, you must hire experts who understand regulatory requirements.

5. Secure Storage

In this step, you should determine where the creators and buyers of NFT will keep their assets. In addition, you should ensure that records of all transactions are securely stored on your platform.

6. Integrate Third-party Services

To build a successful NFT marketplace, you will need to integrate payment gateways, crypto wallets, social media, and email services. These are the basic tools from third-party providers, but you may require even more. The number of integrations depends on your business needs.

7. Test Your Marketplace

Once you’ve developed a basic version of your NFT marketplace, test it. This way, you will correct all the shortcomings of your platform and bring your product to perfection.

8. Launch Your NFT Marketplace

It is the final stage that involves the launch of your marketplace and its ongoing support. You will have to constantly improve your platform and adapt it to the needs of your users.

NFT revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 18.55% resulting in a projected total amount of US$3,162m by 2027

NFT Marketplace Design Best Practices

A decent NFT web design suggests simplicity and intuitiveness. In NFT art marketplace development, you should also pay attention to the main design trends in the crypto industry. Here are some of them:

• Using dark backgrounds
• Using bright colors like purple, pink and yellow
• Using futuristic elements in design

However, first and foremost, your platform must meet the needs of all users, from beginners to NFT experts. To please everyone, you should use such design practices as:

• Thoughtful user experience
• Straightforward user interface
• Consistency throughout your platform: fonts, colors, buttons, the layout structure, etc.
• Responsive design

NFT Marketplace Architecture

To make NFT exchange development as smooth as possible for you, we listed the main components of such a platform. We divided them into two groups: architectural elements and third-party integrations.

The main architectural components include:

• Marketplace application. It can be a mobile or web application for selling and buying NFTs.
• Wallet. It is a service for storing, exchanging, and sending digital assets.
• NFT metadata. It includes the details of every non-fungible token on your platform.
• IPFS. An InterPlanetary File System is needed to store data from distributed networks.
• Smart contracts. These technologies provide a unique identifier for each non-fungible token.
• Blockchain. It is the foundation on which your marketplace will be built. It will store information about all transactions on your platform.

Third-party integrations may include:

• Infura.io. You can use this service to access the Ethereum blockchain.
• Ethereum. It is the most popular blockchain in the world of NFT marketplaces.
• CoinMarketCap. It is a service for tracking prices in the cryptocurrency market.

Take a look at the following NFT architecture diagram:

NFT Marketplace Tech Stack to Use

These are the technologies you can use for NFT marketplace solution development.

Frontend: JavaScript, js, Vue.js.

Backend: Python, Express.js, Node.js.

Mobile development: Swift, Kotlin, React Native.

Database: MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL.

Cloud storage: Amazon Web Services.

Smart contracts: Solidity, Drizzle, Ganache, Brownie.

How Much Does it Cost to Create an NFT Marketplace?

The cost of NFT marketplace website development depends on the number and complexity of features, selected technologies, and the cost of a particular NFT development company’s services.

To calculate an approximate NFT marketplace cost, we divided the process of creating an MVP for such a product into separate stages:

Stage 1. Discovery phase, Estimation & Research, UI/UX Design

This stage is conducted to make a thorough analysis of your business concept to understand the requirements that your NFT product would need. During this stage you should choose the team for NFT market development, define essential and optional features, convey market and customer research, and build a prototype. After completing this discovery phase, you will have a greater understanding of your core objectives, audience, scope, and challenges.

Estimated costs: $11 200

Stage 2. Development

NFT marketplace developers build architecture, link databases to data flow, and more. At the same time, UX/UI designers create the interface for your NFT platform. We also add synchronization with the cloud, making the overall user experience better. Next, we will consider the basic and additional features separately.

Estimated costs: $25 600

Step 3. Testing

When your MVP is ready, you need QA specialists to test it for bugs. As a result, all discovered issues must be corrected to ensure the high quality of your product.

Approximate cost: $9 600

Step 4. Launch and Technical Documentation

You now bring your MVP to market to see how the users react. If the marketplace app you created is successful, you may gradually expand its functionality and improve it in every possible way. This phase involves creating a document that contains all the necessary information about your application.

Approximate cost: $1 600

We’ve made a recap of an MVP of NFT marketplace costs in the table below:

#	Stages	Time	Cost
1	Discovery Phase	280 hours	$11 200
2	Development	640 hours	$25 600
3	Testing	240 hours	$9 600
4	Launch and Technical Documentation	40 hours	$1 600
	Total	1 200 hours (5 month)	$48 000

NFT Marketplace Development Challenges

The virtual NFT gallery development process may include some challenges. Learn more about them to anticipate the difficulties that may lie ahead.

Smart Contracts Integration

Smart contracts are the latest technology in the world of fintech. A good understanding of technical and regulatory requirements is required to implement it and ensure a flawless trading experience for users.

NFT revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 18.55% through the period of 2023 to 2027

Lack of Experienced Blockchain Technology Specialists

Blockchain technology has just started gathering steam. Due to this, there are still few experienced specialists who can build a platform based on blockchain.

User Onboarding

The problem with many NFT marketplaces is that their creators do not take into consideration novice users. As a result, new users often leave the platform because they do not understand how to use it.

Future Trends in NFT Marketplace Development

As the NFT landscape continues to evolve rapidly, several key trends are shaping the future trajectory of marketplace development. Stakeholders are increasingly adopting and integrating innovative techniques to cater to the diverse needs of artists, collectors, and enthusiasts. Here, we delve deeper into these transformative shifts:

Social and Gaming Features Integration

With social media and digital entertainment merging, NFT marketplaces are adding social and gaming features to their platforms. This integration creates an immersive experience for users, allowing them to interact, share, and showcase their NFTs within virtual realms. For instance, owning a rare NFT could grant access to exclusive chat rooms or even special abilities in a game. This convergence of gaming and NFTs ensures deeper engagement, loyalty, and a novel way of experiencing digital ownership.

Tokenization

Tokenization is not new to the blockchain realm, but its adoption within NFTs is a budding trend. Beyond the art and collectibles domain, assets like real estate, intellectual property, and even physical goods are getting tokenized as NFTs, making them more divisible, transferable, and liquid. This expansion can lead to decentralized finance (DeFi) integration, where fractionalized ownership of NFTs could be utilized as collateral for loans or traded in secondary markets.

Cooperation between Several Blockchain Networks

In the early days of NFTs, most of them operated on singular blockchains like Ethereum. However, as demand surged and scalability became a concern, a need for cross-chain compatibility emerged. Now, NFT marketplaces are leaning towards supporting multiple blockchains. It broadens the scope for creators and collectors, reduces fees, and facilitates smoother transactions. Cross-chain bridges and protocols are being developed, enabling NFTs to move seamlessly between blockchains.

NFT Curation and Discoverability

With the meteoric rise in NFT creations, the problem of plenty has emerged, making discoverability a significant challenge. Marketplaces now focus on curating NFT content, much like streaming platforms curate playlists. Expert curators, algorithm-driven recommendations, and user-generated curation lists enhance the browsing experience. It helps collectors discover hidden gems and ensures that quality content gets the spotlight it deserves.

Final Thoughts on NFT Marketplace Development

OpenSea-like app development can bring you significant benefits, given the rapid growth of the NFT market. Such marketplaces attract many users because of their decentralization, high level of security, and the ability to own unique digital assets.

However, developing an NFT marketplace can be a real challenge. You will have to implement smart contracts, use blockchain as the cornerstone of your project, and take care of secure storage for the personal information of your users and transaction data.

Hiring developers skilled in creating NFT marketplace can make your life a lot easier. Softermii has more than 120 talented employees, many with expertise in blockchain and FinTech. If you are interested in creating your own NFT marketplace, please contact our team.

There already are a lot of NFT marketplaces, so this niche can be quite challenging. But our experienced team will help you build a unique cost-effective platform to attract new users.