The Avalanche network (Avalanche, or, AVAX) is a decentralized and open-source blockchain with the fastest smart contract capability in the industry (as measured by time to finality). It also claims to be the proof-of-stake platform with the most individual validators securing its activity. Having celebrated its initial release in September 2020, Avalanche has been growing its ecosystem and adoption since, having recently breached the top 10 in market capitalization among all cryptocurrency projects.

But what makes AVAX so special?

In layman’s terms - compared to other blockchain platforms (like Ethereum) - Avalanche transactions can be conducted extremely quickly, securely, and with much much lower fees, which combined with its true decentralized nature, primes the way for practical utility to be delivered through AVAX dapp (decentralized applications).

Part of that utility (and plain fun) will come through Avalanche NFTs. Of course, to best appreciate Avalanche NFTs, it could help to ensure a clear understanding of everything that NFTs entertain. 

As you likely know, NFTs stands for Non-Fungible Tokens. As Wikipedia defines it, these non-fungible tokens are completely unique bits of data that are “not interchangeable” with other assets. A blockchain holds this data (1).

Again in layman’s terms, an NFT is basically any digital asset or piece of content that is linked to a blockchain (2) Most commonly right now, NFTs are thought of in more mainstream digital mediums - like audio, photos, art, social profile pictures, and other digital collectibles. The future possibilities for the nature of NFTs are boundless, though. With the maturation and mainstream adoption of blockchain technology, some experts would go so far as to say that we will know a future in which everything digital will be an NFT.

Hyperbole or not, the real-world application of NFTs is just getting started.

Given the speed, security, very low transaction fees, and massively growing community and market adoption of Avalanche, it makes sense that the upcoming NFT on the network are starting to catch the eye of “seasoned” collectors and newbies to the space alike.

Whether you want to acquire new NFTs without massive gas fees or you’re hunting for AVAX NFT rarity signals among different collectibles, you may not want to overlook the Avalanche network (3).

Avalanche NFT Market

Ethereum is still one of the undisputed kings of blockchain, and understandably so, with its first-mover advantage and vast network effects. As such, the Ethereum NFT market is relatively mature with lots of activity on platforms like Opensea (which was just valued at over $13 billion US fiat dollars).

So, of course you may be wondering: what does the Avalanche NFT market look like and what can you expect from this market?

Compared to Ethereum, the AVAX NFT marketplace options are certainly in their infancy (at the time of writing this post, at least). The recent Avalanche Rush program has helped and will continue to help that area develop, with nearly $200mm in US fiat dollars invested to grow the Avalanche network, including NFT projects, in late 2021.

Several parts of the Avalanche NFT marketplace that are starting to pick up tracking include NFTrade, Kalao, Yeti Swap, NFT Key, and Snowflake. There are certainly more projects in the works, and with the aforementioned strengths of the Avalanche platform, it is likely that more established players like Opensea (and upcoming Coinbase and Kraken NFT marketplaces) could at some point service the Avax NFT ecosystem.

While the market is not as mature yet as it is for Ethereum, it is worth noting that the advantages of AVAX as a technology affords a lot of AVAX NFT project developers to create their own Avalanche NFTs marketplace.

With the (near) fee-lessness, speed, decentralization, and security, open-source development of a market that allow NFT holders to trade amongst each other on a projects own hosted site or experience is achievable and, in many instances, may actually provide the holder of an AVAX NFT a better experience, as it can unlock unique and more scalable trading experiences.

AVAX Ecosystem

The broader AVAX ecosystem, beyond just Avalanche NFT projects, is also maturing very rapidly and will likely continue to evolve. With an incredible 80% safety threshold, insanely low transaction finality, and astoundingly high transactional throughput, there are an incredible amount of applications for Avalanche in dApps, including decentralized finance, (DeFi) central banking for governments, and—of course—NFTs. 

With such robust security features, and impressive scalability Avalanche will likely prove highly useful in financial applications in particular and may prove more resilient than predecessors like Ethereum—though the latest version of Ethereum may successfully address some of these concerns (4). 

Since Solidity works with Avalanche, without any modification, dApps designed for Ethereum are already compatible with Avalanche. For developers of Ethereum dApps, this creates a simple onboarding framework through Avalanche’s contract (C) chain. 

Avalanche supports the creation of new subnets, using its platform (P) chain (5). By allowing the creation of subnets, developers can use Avalanche to meet their own highly specific needs depending on what the intended application is. Subnets using Avalanche’s platform (P) chain are able to enact strict and modifiable compliance guidelines to ensure that validators meet specifiable guidelines in private and public custom blockchains. Depending on the application of the subnet, this might be something like validators’ locations, hardware, or other specific criteria that are application specific. 

Developers also won’t need to worry as much about blockchains becoming inundated as may be the case in other networks. Avalanche’s framework supports “separation of concerns” (SoC) so that validators can focus on chains that they actually want to validate. As more and more users are active in blockchain networks, this has become increasingly important, not only for validators but for blockchain networks as a whole. 

AVAX Projects

It’s not surprising so many projects continue to proliferate using the AVAX ecosystem. At the time of writing this, there are 160 active AVAX projects listed on Avax.network, and with such a  versatile, efficient, newcomer friendly, developer friendly, and secure, multi-pronged system, it’s quite likely we’ll continue to see many more into 2022. 

Since the first NFT on AVAX, there’s been an enormous amount of interest in Avalanche ecosystem projects since developers can use Solidity to develop new dApps and use existing and already developed dApps in the avalanche ecosystem. 

We’ll also likely see an increase in the amount of assets launched in the AVAX ecosystem with such low costs and such high efficiency in the process. There are already several AVAX NFT projects that have gained significant traction and interest, including Avalanche Punks, those of Topps NFTs, Husky AVAX, those of Curate, and Avaxtars. As more users become active on Avalanche and NFTs as a general concept continue to grow in popularity, we can expect to see interest compound as the desirability of AVAX NFTs is solidified well into 2022. 

Avalanche Punks

With many upcoming AVAX NFTs, many of which are very highly anticipated, we might see changes in top $AVAX NFTS. That said, as of now, Avalanche Punks are some of the most popular Avalanche NFTs available, (and as of writing this, they are still available: https://avaxpunks.com) and they launched in August of 2021. The price of one ranges from the single to triple digits in $AVAX, so depending on what users are willing to spend, there are a lot of options for ownership. As of October 2021, they were the most popular Avalanche NFTs available on $AVAX. It’s not terribly surprising.

As their name implies, they’re very punk-looking NFTs of images that feature varying eyes, hairs, hats, glasses, earring, and accessories. They also come available as aliens, apes, zombies, skeletons, and orcs, and with different shades of skin—including dark, light and albino and pink. At launch, there were 10,000 unique Avalanche Punks NFTs made on Avalanche’s C Chain (6), and they’ve been quite popular on $AVAX since then. While they’re still available, that may change in 2022 as the Avalanche ecosystem becomes more popular, which it almost undoubtedly will. 

Avalanche Mint NFT

There are a lot of highly popular NFT projects already on Avalanche, including some relatively high profile projects like Topps Avalanche NFTs, (whether you collect baseball cards, music memorabilia, pro-wrestling memorabilia, or any of the many commemorative projects Topps has played a role in, you’re likely to recognize the name and logo). That said, it’s also fairly easy to create new assets using Avalanche. Since it is also relatively inexpensive to create new assets using Avalanche, you can also expect to continue seeing more and more upcoming Avalanche NFT drops. 

Not to mention, there is no exception when it comes to Avalanche mint NFT. The minting process is well-documented, and Avalanche has low minting costs and an intuitive minting process. In fact, instructions can be found on the Avax website. Through 2022 we can expect to see many more Avalanche NFT drops as Avalanche continues to gain popularity. Which drops will be the most popular is yet to be seen, but it’s a safe bet that Topps Avalanche NFT and any other well-established brand projects will at least be strong contenders. 

Resources

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token 
(2) https://www.investopedia.com/non-fungible-tokens-nft-5115211
(3) https://welcome.avax.network/?gclid=Cj0KCQiApL2QBhC8ARIsAGMm-KEApx9H5PiZVK3e8KaYEgfdHSgpCiW9f2xbkekEY4mBIcNVkVNfC_QaAj_yEALw_wcB
(4) https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/01/26/goodbye-ethereum-20-we-hardly-knew-ye/
(5) https://docs.avax.network/learn/platform-overview/#:~:text=The%20P%2DChain%20is%20the,to%20subnets%2C%20and%20create%20blockchains.
(6) https://medium.com/@avalanchepunks