Overview of Binance Smart Chain NFT Ecosystem: Which Projects Are Worth Experiencing?

This article was published in Planet Daily Odaily, authored by Huang Xuejiao.

From a pair of socks sold for $160,000 on Uniswap, to Twitter founder's five words auctioned for $2.5 million, to crypto artist Beeple's NFT work selling for nearly $70 million, now even Musk has started "selling" NFTs.

For months, NFTs have been breaking boundaries, becoming one of the most talked-about topics.

Perhaps flying too fast, many people can't help but ask themselves, is it the real value supporting this or is it already a bubble?

Currently, NFTs have become a gameplay that many projects are eager to introduce after liquidity mining. More and more conventional DeFi projects are enhancing their playability through NFTization. Compared to liquidity mining, it may not be as essential, but it is indeed approaching the point where "everyone has an NFT," reflecting the high acceptance of this gameplay in the entire market. Even so, more users do not directly hold NFTs, which indirectly indicates that the market has not yet reached a boiling point.

Next, we still look at the fundamentals. The on-chain integration of many unique off-chain assets and the combination of well-known IPs with NFTs is a natural progression. Whether it's Twitter NFTs or music NFTs, they have attracted attention as the first cases, but true scaling and popularization still have a long way to go.

Therefore, the tokenization and financialization of NFTs is just getting started, and the corresponding construction and new gameplay will continue to emerge. This industry is far from a fully prosperous era.

In the face of the trend, perhaps trying it out is the best choice. So what should we do? There are already many methods and tutorials available. Today, we focus on opportunities in new fields.

NFTs originated on Ethereum, and during the first major explosion, they brought unprecedented pressure testing to the entire network. Due to the limitations of the underlying chain's performance, including poor experiences from the early batch of chain games, this also provided opportunities for later entrants.

In 2018, old star public chains like EOS were once known for developing "spinach," but in the wave of DeFi, they were gradually washed away and faded out.

Where are the new opportunities in 2021?

We see at least two: one is the NFT and chain game exclusive public chain Flow, which will bring us a fully customized underlying and interaction, but it is currently still in the early stage of ecological development, and the infrastructure still needs to be improved, so we will keep an eye on it; the other is the new generation of public chains represented by Binance Smart Chain, which has recently become popular among developers due to its good compatibility, efficiency, and low cost, along with support from top-tier players like Binance. Many well-known game studios and digital entertainment IPs have announced their entry into Binance Smart Chain, such as the development team behind the recently popular My Neighbor Alice, Animoca Brands and Chiliz, which hold the issuance rights of world-famous athletes and clubs, as well as the trendy brand Realy, which collaborates with IPs like Star Wars, Adidas, and Nike.

This article organizes the most comprehensive NFT ecological map on Binance Smart Chain, covering 37 projects from entry to creation, auction, trading platforms, chain games, music, trendy goods, and collectibles. After sorting, it is found that NFTs on Binance Smart Chain are not simply copied from Ethereum but are systematic, relatively complete, and have emerged a series of highly competitive NFT products; moreover, compared to other ecosystems, the threshold for ordinary users and artists to participate is lower.

Next, we will conduct an in-depth introduction to 11 representative projects in five major areas: trading markets, games, collectibles, music, and cross-chain.

Trading Market: Bounce, Bakery, Dego

Bounce

Bounce (BOT) is a multi-chain decentralized auction platform that has currently launched on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Its main functions include token initial issuance, NFT trading, and OTC trading. Well-known decentralized asset bridge BoringDAO (BOR), computing power coin BTCST, and NFT game My Neighbor Alice have all been auctioned on it. As of now, the transaction amount for bids made with ETH has reached 259 ETH (currently valued at $466,000), while the transaction amount for bids made with BNB has not been recorded by the website.

In addition to being adopted by some projects, Bounce.finance also has support from some well-known crypto practitioners, such as its governance participants (also holders) list, which includes Compound Chief Strategy Officer Calvin Liu, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, and 1inch's Nikita Ovchinnik.

According to Bounce's official blog, the platform supports artists and investors to auction/bid on NFTs here, allowing artists to create personalized stores and receive user customizations. The platform charges a 1.5% transaction fee on all trading activities and promises to use this portion of revenue for repurchasing and burning Bounce's BOT.

Bounce NFT Point-2-Point section

Compared to ordinary NFT trading platforms, Bounce's functionality is very powerful, supporting not only simple transactions but also auctions, P2P customized markets, and creatively supporting audio and video NFTs to meet users' diverse needs.

Users who want to participate in NFT auctions need to pay attention to updates from Bounce's official Twitter and find the entry in the Bounce Auction House.

Bakery

Bakery (BAKE) is one of the first projects launched on Binance Smart Chain and has received the first phase of the "100 Million Dollar Binance Smart Chain Ecosystem Acceleration Fund" and "Binance 10 Million Dollar Liquidity Support."

Bakery's two main businesses are Swap and NFT Supermarket, and it also supports many gameplay options combining NFT and DeFi, such as staking NFTs to mine tokens and staking tokens to mine NFTs.

The NFT Supermarket has currently been upgraded to V2, supporting more features, such as voting for your favorite NFTs.

Currently, the platform mainly has three categories of a total of 9 series of NFTs in PNG/JPG/GIF formats:

1. Digital artworks: including the Binance Smart Chain artist series (allowing users to mint their own NFTs), Seascape (to be introduced below), Binance NFT (Binance-themed NFTs), and BTC-themed NFTs.

2. Meme contests co-branded with other projects: 1inch & BAKE, BAKE & Banana, and a pair of divine CP------Musk & Doge memes.

Feel the magic of divine CP

3. NFTs from other games: including Bakery's recently launched Bakery Combos (which allows users to stake BAKE to generate, functioning similarly to adding a bonus to staking rewards, now you can sell this "function package" to others), Battle Pets (cat hatching, nurturing, and economic NFT chain games), Weapons, and Pet Eggs.

As mentioned above, the Binance Smart Chain artist series allows users to mint their own NFTs. Therefore, if you are an artist, you can mint your original images/animations into NFTs and sell them.

The specific steps are as follows:

1. Fill in the work description, including the work name, artist name, personal social homepage, and work introduction.

2. Upload the work. Supported formats are PNG/JPG/GIF, with a recommended ratio of 3:4 and a size of less than 10MB.

3. Check the declaration, indicating that the uploaded work is original; otherwise, it can be deleted at any time upon discovery.

Finally, connect to a wallet and pay 0.03 BNB (about $7.5) to declare the production complete. The platform also warns against uploading sensitive/illegal content.

The Bakery NFT supermarket has currently minted 40,663 NFT artworks, with approximately 140,000 transactions and a trading volume of $27 million. It is reported that BakerySwap will soon launch a music NFT section, inviting music creators to mint and auction music and videos.

Dego

Dego (DEGO) is an NFT+DeFi platform launched simultaneously with Rarible, the latter completed its cold start through liquidity mining, while Dego's gameplay is more "social," incorporating community fission and airdrop blind box modes to gain significant attention.

As it has developed, Dego has begun to transition from an application product to an application platform.

As mentioned in its official blog, the platform has two main functions: one is that creators/users can obtain a full set of services for NFTs here, including NFT issuance, auction, and trading. The second function is that Dego Finance is building a universal NFT protocol and cross-chain as a second-layer infrastructure to serve developers/creators and users across multiple blockchains, including Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, and Polkadot.

First, let's talk about its gameplay. Unlike many NFT platforms that mine visually appealing NFTs (like the cats in CryptoKitties), the representations on Dego are different levels of mining hammers, which look almost identical and are not for viewing but to enhance mining efficiency, making it a "cool financial game."

80% of the platform's tokens are used for mining rewards. During the pool opening period, users can deposit tokens accepted by the platform into the mining pool to earn rewards. Different levels of GEGO can enhance mining efficiency.

The following image shows the prices of different levels of GEGO.

In addition to buying directly from the market, users can also stake DEGO to mint GEGO. Besides its own DeFi gameplay, Dego also has functionalities of other NFT platforms, such as NFT trading, auctions, and viewing the ranking of NFT transactions launched on the platform.

Currently, DEGO has launched tokens from 12 other NFT platforms, including PancakeSwap, Seascape, etc.

The platform also has a System Tax dividend system setup, providing continuous incentives for token holders, which is quite special.

Every time a user trades DEGO, the platform charges a 2% fee, of which 1% will be directly burned, and the remaining 1% will be transferred to the dividend pool (80% allocated to users; 20% allocated to the team).

Additionally, when users bid on DEGO, the platform will earn 10% of the price difference, of which 80% will be used as auction system revenue, and 95% of the total revenue of the auction system will be injected into the dividend pool.

If previously, DEGO was a product adept at manipulating token economics, by the first quarter of this year, it has begun its journey to become a foundational platform.

According to the roadmap, by Q2 2021, DEGO is expected to achieve important milestones such as NFT loans, launch the DEGOCHAIN testnet, conduct cross-chain development, and test the Dwitch (swap) function.

Games: Animoca, Seascape, Cocos, Alice

In addition to the Dapper Labs team that developed CryptoKitties, NBA TOP Shot, and the Flow public chain, Animoca Brands may be the second hidden giant in the chain game circle.

Let's first look at its achievements. Its products include The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, Crazy Defense Heroes, F1 Delta Time, and MotoGP, with two tokens issued, SAND and REVV. A token called LMT is also set to be issued in cooperation with Binance Smart Chain.

According to the announcement, on March 11, Animoca Brands' subsidiary Lympo, which holds the intellectual property rights of world-renowned athletes and clubs, announced that it will launch the token LMT and related NFTs on Binance Smart Chain.

LYM was released on Ethereum in 2018, and this migration to Binance Smart Chain is due to the platform's good trading experience and relatively complete ecological system.

It is understood that the Lympo NFT ecosystem will be carried out in two phases.

First, the digital collectibles phase, where the platform will issue various NFTs around world-famous athletes, clubs, influencers, and enthusiasts, ranging from common cards to ultra-rare cards.

Next is content development, at which point the platform will launch LMT as the main functional token and game currency to achieve "play-to-earn." Players will be able to use their collectible cards to create and upgrade their sports hero characters, then form teams to compete against other players and win rewards of real value.

According to the official announcement, the new LMT token will start issuing on March 19, and the only way to obtain LMT tokens is to exchange existing LYM tokens, with the specific exchange rate to be announced soon. At that time, holders will have the opportunity to obtain NFTs from various rights pools. More detailed information about the ecosystem and LMT token will be provided in the upcoming white paper.

Seascape

Seascape (CWS) team has been deeply involved in the blockchain gaming track for many years, with core members coming from top traditional game development companies both domestically and internationally.

In 2019, the team launched the large-scale war strategy chain game "BLOCKLORDS" version 1.0. In February of this year, Seascape simultaneously launched its first game "Profit Circus" on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. Within less than a month, the number of players exceeded 10,000, the number of transactions exceeded 50,000, and the total locked value (TVL) in the game exceeded $10 million, with over 15,000 NFTs minted.

Seascape is committed to combining NFTs with DeFi gameplay, continuously bringing exquisite products to players while also serving game developers by providing SDK support to assist in development and subsequent game release and marketing. Currently, the team has independently developed multiple games and has launched the platform's universal token CWS.

According to Seascape COO Nicky Li, the team will also release multiple DeFi games in the short term, including yield farming mini-games, NFT lotteries, mining, and nurturing games, etc., helping users easily and enjoyably "earn while playing" on Seascape. In the future, the platform will launch products at a pace of one new game per month. Some are developed by Seascape studio itself, such as BLOCKLORDS 3D, while more are co-developed and released with traditional game developers, including VR, open-world action, and simulation management games.

NFTs from old games can also be "reused" in new games. CWS, as the only universal token on the platform, will thus form a stronger economic cycle.

The official listed investors include eight industry institutions, including Binance.

Cocos-BCX

Cocos-BCX (COCOS) is a veteran in the chain game industry that has experienced a round of bull and bear markets. Although it has previously sparked controversy due to token crashes and inflation, this does not hinder its resurgence in this era of NFTs and chain games being highly sought after, thanks to its industry accumulation.

Recently, insiders indicated that Cocos-BCX may launch NFT concept games on Layer 2 and Binance Smart Chain.

According to public information, some team members of Cocos-BCX come from Cocos Engine, one of the three major game engines globally, which is also the origin of its token name. It has previously received investments from institutions including 500 Startups, NGC, and Binance Labs.

Over the past two years, Cocos-BCX has initiated and maintained a non-fungible digital asset standard BCX-NHAS-1808 and a forge (supporting NFT minting, decomposition, etc.), and has issued over 1.2 million NFT tickets for events such as ChinaJoy Plus.

It is understood that Cocos-BCX, which is landing on Binance Smart Chain, will launch a new NFT+DeFi+chain game gameplay at the end of March, helping assets in multiple fields achieve liquidity and interoperability through blind boxes, mining, airdrops, and other forms.

My Neighbor Alice

Before "rising to fame" in the secondary market, My Neighbor Alice (ALICE) had already shown a very good fundamental outlook.

It has an excellent game studio background, based on the team's research in new technologies and experience in releasing multiple successful games, My Neighbor Alice has an experience that is highly anticipated, like many excellent games.

From the game's concept video, My Neighbor Alice is set in a place on the Lummelunda Islands where animals and humans coexist peacefully. After logging in, players can obtain a piece of land and become Alice's neighbor, then earn rewards by completing daily leisure activities (such as fishing, bug catching, and beekeeping), and freely design and decorate this land (decorative elements include vegetation, buildings, furniture, and livestock). Players can also communicate directly on the island and in the world chat room to make friends.

Players building fences

Overall, My Neighbor Alice can compete with Animal Crossing in terms of game setting, style, and sound effects.

On this basis, My Neighbor Alice incorporates asset tokenization gameplay, including issuing the platform's universal token ALICE, issuing limited edition item NFTs, and deriving DeFi locking, staking mining, and other gameplay.

Compared to ordinary games, it allows players to convert their creations into profits, "and your creations can live on forever under someone else's stewardship." I think this may be the most noble form of "humanitarianism" for many gamers.

My Neighbor Alice has launched a limited demo version on Steam (similar to the concept of a testnet in blockchain, where game data will be reset upon official launch) and is set to officially launch in mid-year, with the blockchain version also launching on Binance Smart Chain.

Currently, My Neighbor Alice has begun selling some NFTs, and its token ALICE has also been listed in the Binance trading area.

Collectibles: Realy

Realy

Realy is a platform focused on the consumer lifestyle sector, very close to us. Its slogan is "REALY Recognize Real," positioning itself as a global trend item authentication and trading platform.

The role of NFTs in this is to record historical information, achieve information synchronization from production to circulation on-chain, and enable more efficient transactions, just like buying cotton futures may only be for profit rather than actually wanting the physical product. The emergence of tokenization allows goods to remain in the platform's warehouse, but the product NFTs have changed hands multiple times.

In terms of specific operations, Realy has collaborated with brands such as the Star Wars SITH STORE capsule series, Adidas, Nike limited editions, CLOT, and Jordan from the start of product sales, generating specific NFC chips for each item in cooperation with the brand, which contains blockchain encrypted information. Once torn (used or replaced), it becomes invalid.

After purchasing a product, users can verify whether it is genuine in a specific way; if they do not want to use the product, they can transfer and sell the NFT on the REALY APP. If the buyer of the NFT does not want to redeem it, they can entrust it to REALY's custody warehouse.

Realy's product page for minting NFTs

Currently, the categories covered by Realy include sneakers, trendy brands, trendy toys, and artworks.

Music: Rocki

Rocki

From Dogecoin to Bitcoin to NFTs, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has experienced all the interesting things in the crypto circle.

However, the first NFT work that touched Musk was not the digital paintings or IP collectibles we often see, but an NFT of a song.

Indeed, music is a medium that everyone needs and can understand. If the NFT gameplay is suitable, it is entirely possible to replicate the success of NBA TOP Shot.

On Binance Smart Chain, there is such a music + NFT platform, Rocki (ROCKI). Let's take a look at how it works?

Rocki previously issued two types of NFTs based on Ethereum, and recently announced its migration to Binance Smart Chain. These two types of NFTs and their functions are:

ERC721 type NFT: Anchored to the music ownership and music royalty income of the issuer (artist), and can be traded. For artists, issuing this NFT can directly bring them some upfront income, while fans can become investors in the track, and as the song becomes widely known, the funds invested by investors will begin to yield returns.

ERC1155 type NFT: This type of NFT can be understood as a batch trading version of ERC721. The NFTs on Rocki are anchored to exclusive or limited edition songs. For example, if a song issues 100 NFTs, then at most only 100 people can purchase and listen to it, just like a limited edition record. Of course, this NFT can also be traded.

In November last year, an artist from Malta, Guy J, released an exclusive track "COTTON EYES" on the ROCKI platform. This track signed an ERC721 contract, auctioning 50% of the future royalty rights on bounce.finance, which ultimately sold for 40 Ethereum.

jeren purchased the NFT of this song, enjoying 50% of the copyright income

Currently, the platform has issued the token ROCKI.

Cross-Chain: pNetwork, Arkane Network

pNetwork

pNetwork (PNT) is a cross-chain project. In January of this year, it announced a partnership with Binance Smart Chain and launched the BSC-Ethereum cross-chain bridge, supporting asset transfers between the two chains, including the transfer of NFT tokens.

As of March this year, pNetwork has released 28 bridges connecting 7 different blockchain protocols, including mainstream chains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, EOS, and Litecoin.

After the launch of the cross-chain solution for pTokens, the team plans to upgrade the network, introduce validation nodes to achieve complete decentralization, and establish a public pNetwork permissionless network. A pNetwork DAO and governance token PNT will also be launched.

Arkane Network

Arkane Network is positioned as a SaaS platform that supports game tokenization, multi-chain, NFT token creation, trading, and wallet building.

It has currently released the Beta version of the NFT market Arkane Market on the Ethereum Matic Layer 2 network and has supported 20 DApps, including chain games, prediction markets, and various products.

For example, in its collaboration with 0xGames, Arkane can provide the following services: allowing 0xGames players to start playing without downloading any additional software, such as wallets or DApps, supporting various terminals (PC, mobile, console) and using social logins like Google, Twitter, and Facebook, and supporting the exchange of fiat and cryptocurrencies.

For Binance Smart Chain, by investing in and integrating Arkane, it can conveniently call Arkane's SDK and Dev tools to improve its NFT market infrastructure.

Interestingly, to celebrate the cooperation between the two, Arkane specially released a Christmas food------gingerbread man's NFT, which received 3,800 minting applications within a week. It is said that the activity level on Binance Smart Chain surprised Arkane.

Conclusion

After looking at so many projects, we summarize the commonalities of these NFT projects: compared to the previous generation of Ethereum-style chain games, playability has greatly improved; the financial attributes are stronger after combining with DeFi gameplay; and as it generalizes to trendy goods, music, and other fields, along with the involvement of major IPs, it will bring greater leverage and exciting experiences.

As a cutting-edge NFT ecosystem, Binance Smart Chain has done some things worth emulating.

It is itself a high-performance platform compatible with Ethereum, similar to Ethereum's Layer 2. Compared to starting a completely new chain, Binance Smart Chain has a certain inherent advantage in positioning, and the platform has completed the construction of multiple cross-chain bridges and asset migrations in the shortest time, allowing Ethereum players to quickly migrate seamlessly, which is something an ambitious public chain can achieve through later efforts. Another very important aspect is Binance's support for projects in terms of users, funds, and ecology, which is enough to attract many new projects.

Seascape COO Nicky Li has recounted that for the same game, after landing on Binance Smart Chain, it took less than a week to exceed 6,000 players, with over 15,000 transactions and a total locked value (TVL) exceeding $3 million, with 6,000 NFTs minted. In contrast, the Ethereum version took about two weeks to reach the same locked scale, and the NFTs minted in the game did not exceed 500.

Binance Smart Chain has already formed a climate of an independent and powerful ecosystem, calling for more creative developers to continue filling in the puzzle of the empire.

This is also true for various types of artists in different fields. In the post-pandemic era, people's spiritual and real lives have become increasingly online. The virtual cloud world depicted in "Ready Player One" is no longer far away. The digitization of works, copyrights, and trading parties is still ongoing. We should, like the cool guy Musk, pay attention to NFTs, embrace change, and make some transformations in form to meet the new revolution of digital life and aesthetics in the post-pandemic era.