It’s no secret that 2021 was a huge year for NFTs. We saw Beeple break records with his $69 million sale, Bored Ape Yacht Club take over the Twitter profile pictures of dozens of celebrities, and total sales explode from a few million in January to a combined $7.4 billion as of December 2021.
Even though NFT adoption is growing at an unprecedented rate, the space remains littered with issues that are hampering widespread adoption. Among the biggest issues are the barrier to entry for anybody to enter the NFT space remains unnecessarily high, pump-and-dump schemes degrade the public’s trust in NFT creators, and a lack of portability between platforms, media storage, and blockchains make it difficult to evaluate the quality and longevity of an NFT.
Driven by our mission to democratize high-quality NFT creation for content creators of all kinds, we are excited to announce our platform.
Welcome Enshrine: the world’s most creator-centric NFT platform. Enshrine integrates with existing social media platforms for one-click NFT creation, lowers the barrier to entry for NFT collectors with hosted wallets and fiat payment options, and produces high-quality NFTs with guaranteed IPFS media hosting, robust contracts that support creator royalties, and carbon-neutral minting on Polygon.
While neither of these problems are unique to NFTs and have been around as long as Bitcoin, the hype surrounding NFTs has led to an influx of opportunists turning out thousands of no-utility projects and pump-and-dump schemes that take advantage of new adopters and crypto veterans alike.
We’re not saying that every NFT created needs to have some real-world utility like Axie Infinity. However, we do think that all NFTs should have some sort of value beyond pure speculation, whether it be value in real-world utility or sentimental value.
Our goal at Enshrine is to bridge the gap that currently exists between content creators and their fans by opening a marketplace for creators to sell their most iconic online moments and allow fans to own a piece of their favorite creator’s legacy.
Because of the nature of the crypto market, it’s unlikely that we’d be able to eliminate pump-and-dump schemes entirely. Speculation is and will continue to be a significant part of the NFT space until the market reaches equilibrium after widespread adoption. However, we believe that encouraging fans to invest in their favorite content creator’s NFTs will introduce the sentimental value that is missing from most NFT transactions today.
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you have had to explain the concept for NFTs to at least one family member or friend over the last year. If this is the case, it’s also likely this family member or friend had some difficulty understanding the concept. We think that this trend speaks to unnecessarily-complex nature of crypto in general and NFTs specifically.
If merely explaining the concept of NFTs is difficult, then getting that family member or friend set up to actually purchase an NFT is even more difficult.
We at Enshrine believe that someone should not have to go through the process of creating a wallet, figuring out how to fund a wallet, waiting for funds to settle, and potentially converting currencies just to buy an NFT. Our platform leverages hosted wallets and fiat payments that allows users to easily purchase NFTs from their favorite content creators using a credit or debit card.
Sites like NBA Top Shot that create a siloed experience fly in the face of the decentralized tenant of blockchain technology. Ironically, NBA Top Shot and projects like it are entirely centralized — completely relying on a single entity to host NFTs and facilitate transactions. The NFTs purchased on these platforms are meaningless outside the platforms, meaning the NFT is only valuable if the platform continues to exist.
Even on marketplaces that allow users to bring their own wallets and allow for portability between platforms, inconsistent NFT standards that can greatly impact the longevity and value of the asset remains an issue.
Most NFTs do not store the media on the blockchain. The blockchain component of an NFT contains metadata about the NFT (title, description, etc) and a pointer to the location of the media. The media might live on an AWS server or some random computer. So if someone forgets to pay their AWS bill or simply deletes the file, the NFT will point to something that no longer exists. If it’s easier, think about it like a broken link on a webpage that routes to a 404 page.
Every NFT created on the platform will adhere standards put forth by authority figures in the crypto space. To start, NFTs will use the Polygon blockchain, will meet the ERC-721 token standard, and will reference media that is permanently pinned to IPFS. From the outset, Enshrine is committed to providing the highest quality NFTs that are portable to other platforms, not just our platform.
We’re hard at work on the Enshrine platform and are planning for our beta launch later this year.
We have plenty of features on the backlog, but here is what you can expect from our beta release:
Interested in creating or buying on our platform? Check us out at enshrine.io or contact us directly!
