Building an NFT platform with Solana
In the previous article on cryptos, I touched upon how NFTs can extend to EdTech space. This article will cover how I built a simple NFT Marketplace on Solana Blockchain using MongoDB Realm for deployment.
What is Solana?
Solana is a blockchain network based on Proof-of-Stake. Solana offers lower gas fees and faster transactions as compared to the Ethereum blockchain.
What is Proof-of-Stake?
All the consensus algorithms are designed to minimise the possibility of Sybil attacks(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack). So, that the power is distributed evenly across the stakeholders.
Proof-of-Stake(PoS) is an upgrade on Proof-of-Work (PoW). PoS removes the advantages of computational power and shifts to validators in the network. It reduces the risk of centralisation in the PoW because your computational power doesn’t give you the benefit of solving the puzzle. PoS removes miners of PoW but introduces the validators who are randomly selected based on their stake in the Network.
What is Metaplex?
The Metaplex is a set of tools for deploying NFT contracts on the chain. It comprises abstractions on 4 main contracts in Solana blockchain. In order to create generative art, we used Hashlips art engine. https://github.com/HashLips/hashlips_art_engine
What is Generative NFT?
In a few words, generative NFTs are collaborations between artists and AI. The AI adds a unique touch to the art, which adds a value proposition in the market to fetch more dollars.
What is Candy Machine?
Once the Generative Art is ready with the assets and metadata, and our wallet(Phantom) has sufficient funds we can start minting the token with below instructions.
Building a storefront ?
Metaplex now provides a simple UI for building an individual storefront for listing the NFTs. You can either use it or create your own storefront with any of the UI frameworks. We used ReactJS to develop our own storefront for listing the NFTs.
MongoDB Atlas and Realm
MongoDB provides managed DB services along with a PaaS platform called Realm which provides simplified CD using Github hooks to seamlessly deploy the application. In order to do the analytics on the NFT data, Atlas provides multiple capabilities from Lucene-based search to the charts which can provide additional capabilities to the platform.
So, the final NFT platform on Solana is deployed using MongoDB Realm. You can connect your wallet to log in and start minting the NFTs. Have FUN !!
