NFT (non-fungible token) is one of the excellent use cases of crypto that has gained a lot of momentum this year. Many artists, art lovers, celebrities, sports personalities are onboarding the NFT train launching and creating NFTs for fans. NFT drew major attention when an Indian-born blockchain entrepreneur, programmer, and crypto enthusiast Vignesh Sundaresan (Metakovan), who is based out of Singapore bought a digital art created by artist Beeple named “Everyday: The First 5000 Days” in a whopping $69.3 million bid.
One of the largest crypto exchanges in India WazirX has launched the first-ever NFT marketplace for Indian artists and crypto lovers. Soon the marketplace will also be available for other South Asian nations. WazirX, the company founded by Nischal Shetty, announced the development of the NFT marketplace on 30th March 2021. The team has now built and successfully launched it yesterday.
The marketplace currently has 15 approved creators with over 15000 applications from creators and collectors already in the pipeline. The WazirX NFT platform is running on Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain platform created by Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. Binance also acquired WazirX in 2019.
The marketplace will initially host works from visual artist Vimal Chandran, anonymous street artist Tyler, Montreal-based mixed media artist Ishita Banerjee, wall mural artist Sneha Chakraborty, and automotive photographer Arjun Menon amongst others. It has whitelisted over 300 creators from 15000 applications who will be releasing their works on the marketplace soon.
The marketplace is open for everyone who wants to buy NFTs and the trade will only happen via WazirX’s own native token WRX for now. Also, there is no bidding system as of now so it means all the NFTs will be of fixed prices only. WazirX will add the “auction” model in the near future as it plans to onboard big names from the music and creator space.
WazirX has also given artists the ability to add a royalty fee of up to 15% on the resale of their work and decide on the terms and conditions of the sale. The ability to earn through single artwork in perpetuity has piqued interest among artists to create NFTs in India and globally.
Secondary sales are a game-changer. Artists can end up making 10 times the amount than the initial sale price
Amrit Pal Sigh, an avid collector and creator of the NFT art form
The marketplace has two sections - ‘Spotlight’ and ‘Discover’. The spotlight section will contain a curated section for artists and the Discover section will have 50 new artists every day selected from the list of 15000 applications.
Our list of curated collectors and the 5 Million strong WazirX Crypto Community shall give us the impetus needed to grow the NFT community within the region
Vishakha Singh, Advisor, NFT Marketplace at WazirX
