18 highlights
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GARI is India’s first NFT marketplace that is driven by a social media platform. Based on the Solana blockchain and using its own cryptocurrency, also called GARI, it promises holders the chance to empower their favourite creators as well as access to govern the platform.
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Users with the Chingari app were handed out GARI tokens, a move known as airdropping in the crypto world, but anyone can buy GARI on Republic Crypto, with a minimum buy-in of $100.
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Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan also decided to participate in the rush for NFTs with the launch of his own collection on Beyond Life, an NFT marketplace
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Users can stake their tokens upon a creator, who in turn can take loans to, say, buy better camera equipment so they can produce more interesting content for their viewers. In exchange, those who have staked their token against a creator can reap a portion of about 6-7% of the income generated from the creator’s content.
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An NFT essentially records the ownership of a digital asset (basically, any kind of file) on a blockchain. The most popular use of NFTs today is to buy and sell digital art, from still images to music. They’ve been around for a while in the larger crypto world, but the market exploded this year after artist Beeple auctioned off a digital artwork for over $69 million, or over Rs 500 crore, in March.
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In India, there are currently two large types of projects emerging, as described by those in the industry—“hype” projects driven by stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan, and those that are built from the ground up with a strong community backing.
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Of course, while hype and excitement around a project is necessarily a good thing on this side of the internet, it doesn’t necessarily translate into sales.
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This only shows that projects like BollyCoin, GARI and Euphoria carry the might of the celebrity factor, and are successfully bringing people in through the door, but don’t leave investors with a whole lot of direction as to what to do after.
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Take NFTMalayali started by 38-year-old Melvin. His project has been actively trying to onboard artists and helping them understand how to monetize their art efficiently on marketplaces like WazirX
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Where there are two widely different approaches to building NFT projects, naturally, there are two separate types of people who are willing to shell out their cash for these projects.
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Indians also less frequently participate in Discord and Twitter launches, which are the primary way to understand a new project in the NFT world.
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Gas fees are transaction charges on blockchains like Ethereum, which is the most widely used one for NFTs today. There are other, cheaper chains that support NFTs, though, which have also been adopted by Indian NFT marketplaces. These include Solana (which GARI is using), Polygon (the Bachchan’s NFTs via Beyond Life are on this) and the Binance Smart Chain.
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Despite the rapid pace at which NFT projects and marketplaces are coming out of India, it still can still take an average period of three months to build such projects from the ground up, according to Adnan Khan, a developer working on building a marketplace for Cardano, another blockchain that supports NFTs.
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“There are a few important aspects to consider while building marketplaces. You should be prepared to handle the load since NFTs are all based on hype so you don’t want your marketplace to go offline on the day of sale. Another is making sure that smart contracts run smoothly (considering it is a smart-contract-based NFT marketplace) and they should be properly audited,” Khan says.
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Apart from this, regulation will be key to ensuring that people are getting steady returns.
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Big buyers or whales in crypto speak, who are willing to pay top dollar, will only be interested in investing if they know what they’re getting into.
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Cryptocurrency exchanges in India also suffer from regulatory ambiguity. Markets such as the US and Singapore have thriving exchanges where users can move their currency to cryptocurrency very easily, following which they can invest in NFTs.
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In India buying crypto usually requires approval from a bank, after which the money can get converted into a currency such as ethereum and then into a wallet.