The Alpha Market
Disrupting the NFT Space
The Alpha Nodes team always strives to locate fundamental issues in existing protocols and see how we can develop solutions. The concept of an NFT Marketplace to achieve better utility for DeFi applications like NaaS protocols is a fantastic assumption, but the implementation has fallen short of the mark. Our Alpha leaders have been working diligently to create the solutions needed to enable the NFT Marketplace of our dreams, and we believe we’ve accomplished just that. First, let’s break down why other NFT Marketplaces are flawed.
Existing Marketplace Flaws
Currently there are only a handful of marketplaces across all chains, with just 1 or 2 that cater to a specific chain. Why is that? Imagine if you had a multi-chain OpenSea.
Most of the newer NFT Marketplaces being conceived in the DeFi space have a heavy focus on increased buy/sell/listing taxes for the NFTs in what seems to be a way to ensure immediate profitability. This just leads us to believe the team is relying on their fees rather than volume to drive success to their project. Not the best practice for holders or a long-term vision.
NFTs can only be purchased with the mother-chain currency, i.e. ETH, AVAX, FTM. etc. This is perfectly okay for traditional NFT collections focused around art, but when NFTs are focused on utility especially in the DeFi space, this poses an undercutting issue I mentioned in our previous Medium article. Unfortunately, this is a limit of the marketplaces themselves and has forced DeFi applications to cater their NFT tokenomics around this limitation. We will remove this, and unlock the full potential of natively purchased & sold NFTs.
In-House NFT Marketplaces are just copy & paste forks. There are a number of token projects out there with an NFT Marketplace built into their dApp, but the functionality is very simple: List, Bid, Sell or Purchase. That’s all. There is no extra utility to these marketplaces, and your NFTs will never move if they’re locked within a specific protocol.
Alpha Market’s Features
Alpha Market will solve all of the above issues.
Alpha Market will launch primarily on the Avalanche Network at the launch of our Phase 2 and NaaS protocol. We will be catering to our snowy chain first, but the functionality to be multi-chain is already being built in. Do you want an NFT marketplace with OpenSea functionality, but you can press a little button on the top right that says “Switch to Fantom”? We do too. So we’re making it happen. We want a marketplace that looks and feels the same no matter what chain you’re operating on.
At launch, the marketplace will be within the Alpha Nodes domain, however as we move forward with our bigger plans the Alpha Market will have it’s own custom standalone domain.
How can this get better? Well — We’re also working on ways to bridge your NFTs from one chain to another, something that hasn’t been done before on a large scale. This is a full multi-chain ecosystem future baby.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “With all of this crazy innovative tech, you’re probably going to charge an arm & a leg for trading on your multi-chain marketplace, right?”
NO.
We believe that what we are building is going to disrupt the entire NFT space on every. single. chain., and we’re playing the long game. We don’t need to boost our pockets with ridiculous trading fees, no, we’re going for that sweet volume. Our exact trading fees have yet to be set, but we can promise you they will be consistent with, or better than, the biggest player out there: OpenSea.
Now, here is where things get really juicy and exciting for you as an $ALPHA holder.
Alpha Marketplace will not use AVAX, ETH, FTM, etc. as it’s native token for trading NFTs. Since we will be a multi-chain platform, we need our own unique utility token to be used as the medium of exchange. That token will be your beloved $ALPHA token that’s already in the wallets of over 1,750 beautiful holders. $ALPHA will be used to buy and sell your NFTs and the fees will be collected in $ALPHA.
So wait — The NFT Marketplace generates fees in $ALPHA? I wonder where those fees go… Back to holders? Of course! All of our marketplace fees will be split up between Holders, LP, Treasury and Team. The largest portion of these fees will be returned to holders by being added to our Node Rewards Pool. As our Alpha Market volume grows, we will be able to substantially fill up our rewards pool with fees generated from marketplace action, rather than fees generated by node creation. Sustainability.
In essence, all of our holders are partial equity owners in this NFT Marketplace and get to share in the profits directly proportional to the amount of tokens held. This is where our long term utility really comes into play.
Our entire NFT Marketplace is custom built, from the ground up, by some of the best software engineers and developers in the space. Alpha Nodes has bootstrapped our liquidity to get to the point where we are now able to hire on Senior engineers to really take this to the next level. We have already begun, and have added now 2 full time engineers with additional part timers as well. These developers are personally known by our lead developer and co-founder BadShogun. We don’t talk to talk, we walk the walk.
We are currently working with the biggest names in the NFT space to make sure this marketplace is more than a success — it will be a game changer.
Here is a very early design prototype provided by one of our community members, and embodies a lot of the design philosophy we will be using for the marketplace.
Will Other Projects Be Listed On Alpha Market?
Yes, we are building the Marketplace of our dreams and we don’t want to hog it to ourselves. The functionality we are designing is meant to be utilized by other protocols so they can fully unlock the potential of their own NFTs. Our fees will be competitive, if not the best around, and the additional volume will reward $ALPHA holders significantly.
$ALPHA will still be used as the medium for fees generated on the platform, but we know many protocols would benefit from being able to list their NFTs for purchase/sale with their own native token. We are building out the marketplace to allow for this, enabling other projects to piggyback off of our technology and in exchange $ALPHA (and $ALPHA holders) will benefit from the trading & listing fees.
We are already in chats with multiple projects interested in our early design, and we will be opening up a section of our website to enable requests to be listed on Alpha Marketplace. All collections / projects will be vetted by the Alpha Team to ensure no bad-actors will list with us.
How Will The Purchase Process Work?
One big question I’m sure many of you have, is “Can I use my other currencies like AVAX, ETH, FTM, etc. that I have stored in my wallet to purchase NFTs?” The answer is yes. The marketplace will be run with $ALPHA, but that doesn’t mean we want to make you go to a DEX, swap for $ALPHA just to purchase an NFT on the marketplace. If you choose to purchase an NFT with another currency, your transaction will automatically exchange into $ALPHA and then purchase the NFT for you. No extra hassle on the user’s end. Any trading fees will be visually present to show your total purchase cost or sale amount prior to you executing the transaction.
What’s Next?
Our next Medium will be dropping in the next 48–72 hours, and will be all about our Multi-Chain plans and how we plan to achieve what we say we will achieve. Stay tuned, stay Alpha.
