2021 was the year of NFT. In 2020, the total trade volume of NFT was roughly $94.9 million, which surged to $25 billion in one year (about 260 times). The number of blockchain wallets used to trade NFTs also surged from 545,000 in 2020 to 28.6 million in 2021 (more than 50 times). Various industries such as art, sports, and gaming, are implementing NFT, as it is a new keyword to lead the next generation along with Metaverse. Now, it is almost impossible to find a field without a connection to NFT.
What makes NFT so special? NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. On the blockchain, where it is impossible to counterfeit or falsify, NFT is a unique token with an inherent ID and data. The remarkable $69 million worth digital art auction at Christie Auction started an NFT boom in virtually all industries.
Examples of NFT Marketplaces
NBA TOPSHOT
National Basketball Association (NBA) sold digital cards of its players and the best scenes as NFTs. An NFT of LeBron James was sold for $23,000, and NBA TOPSHOT recorded $164 trade volume and 5.3 million trades only a month after its launch.
Decentraland
Virtual world platform based on Ethereum, Decentraland, plays a significant role in the world of NFT. In Decentraland, users use a digital currency named MANA to transact virtual land and item.
<Source : Decentraland>
Decentraland gained explosive popularity and profited more than 4000% in 2021 alone. Virtual estate of Decentraland was sold for over $910,000, and a shopping center of Decentraland was sold for $2.4 million dollars in November 2021.
Upbit NFT
South Korea was not an exception from the NFT boom, and the biggest digital currency exchange in South Korea, Upbit, launched an NFT marketplace. Upbit created NFT content with Brave Girls and the South Korean Olympic athletes and is collaborating with diverse artists. One example is ‘mirage cat 3,’ an illustration of a famous artist Jang Koal, which was auctioned off for 250 million won (approximately $20.5k).
<Source : Upbit NFT>
Obviously, Upbit NFT is rising as the representative NFT marketplace of South Korea, and Luniverse is the blockchain on which Upbit NFT is built. Why did Upbit NFT choose Luniverse?
Why Luniverse?
Most Advanced Blockchain Technology in South Korea
With the advent of smart contracts, Ethereum has become a standard for almost all DApps. The ecology drew a myriad of users to Ethereum, but the excessive number of users yielded problems, such as lower TPS and high gas fees. Different solutions have been proposed in the field of blockchain, and the most popular one as of now is layer 2: a side chain to proceed with transactions quickly to confirm the details and record only the result on the Mainnet.
With state-of-art blockchain technology, Lambda256 has built a blockchain Mainnet which is more than 100 times faster than Ethereum – over 2000 TPS. Thus, companies from various fields are implementing business using Luniverse blockchain. Moveover, Lambda256 provides tokens called LUK for a stable Mainnet environment. LUK is used as a gas fee in the network, and every LUK only costs $0.01. Therefore, a dramatic increase in transactions in the network does not lead to an unaffordable gas fee like that of Ethereum. Furthermore, sidechain users do not pay gas fees. Users can easily issue tokens on a web page, which is a GUI environment and create transactions using Ethereum standard functions.
If someone is to mint an NFT on OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace in the world, he/she needs Ethereum worth more than $100 for a gas fee. However, if he/she mints an NFT through Luniverse Sidechain, no additional cost except for purchasing a Sidechain is needed. Luniverse has also announced that it plans to support a bridge for NFTs, meaning that users can move NFTs which are minted in the Luniverse chain to Ethereum Mainnet to trade in Ethereum-based NFT marketplaces.
Eco-Friendly Blockchain
One of the reasons for blockchain skeptics is excessive energy consumption. Both blockchains with the most active trades, Bitcoin and Ethereum, implement Proof of Work (PoW) to verify and create a block. PoW is a consensus algorithm that rewards miners who first verify and create a block. therefore, miners use numerous GPUs for the calculation and operate circulators to cool GPUs off. The process consumes an enormous amount of energy.
According to Digiconomist, Bitcoin has emitted 97.14Mt CO2 last year, which is comparable to the carbon emission of Kuwait. The electricity consumption of Bitcoin last year was 204.50TWh, which is comparable to that of Thailand.
Ethereum has consumed 107.58TWh of electricity last year, comparable to the annual electricity consumption of the Netherlands, and has emitted 51.1 Mt CO2 in the same period, comparable to the annual carbon emission of Sweden. The energy consumption of Bitcoin and Ethereum together surpasses that of Italy.
Therefore, Upbit has chosen the Luniverse blockchain for an eco-friendly blockchain environment. Luniverse implements a Proof of Authority consensus algorithm, in which blocks are verified and created by credible institutions. 24 cooperative companies, including Lambda256, participate as validators of Luniverse. Luniverse also consumes 1/10,000,000 of energy compared to Ethereum. The difference here is as big as the Mountain Everest to a leaf. Thanks to the eco-friendly system of Luniverse, Upbit was selected as one of the only two officially licensed Olympic NFT pins, eventually minting Olympic heritage digital pin NFTs.
Luniverse NFT
Luniverse NFT
Luniverse leads to scale ecosystem and to popularize blockchain through a one-stop NFT service platform so that everyone can proceed with an NFT project. Are you curious about Luniverse NFT? Contact us at support@lambda256.io for a meeting.
Check out and communicate about the latest news of NFT and Luniverse on Luniverse Discord!
