Basic Concept

NFT – Non-Fungible token. Unique token. A digital record in the blockchain that has information about the owner and the object of ownership

Using a cryptocurrency wallet with a unique account number, you can buy any token, including a unique NFT token, in a few clicks and have reliable proof of ownership and the purchased asset in your wallet. After the purchase, you can resell your asset, or use it as you wish, just like you would with any personally owned item

If you create an NFT token for a photo, it will record the creator's wallet number and information about the photo itself (file link, license, etc.) And that token can be bought by any other cryptocurrency wallet owner. The paid amount will instantly go to the author's wallet, and the buyer can use the photo according to the license

At Photocentra you can create an NFT token for your photo (Mint token) and put it up for sale (List for sale) in just a few clicks

What is all this for?

To sell digital art, you must somehow give money to the creator, and guarantee proof of purchase for the buyer, so he can prove the legality of the use of the image

Today, to make a deal in the real world, you need to sign a contract with the buyer and get payment from him in some way. If you're selling your masterpiece for a million dollars, you shouldn't have any trouble traveling anywhere in the world and having to suffer the inconvenience of signing a contract and transferring money. But what if you want to sell stock photos for $1.5?

There are many photostocks that make the selling and buying process as easy as possible. Many photographers use popular services to sell their photos. Why do we need another, new marketplace?

It's already outdated!

Now you have to make a contract with a photostock (on their terms, of course), and the buyer transfers money from the credit card not to you, but to the account of the photostock. The company holds your money until it reaches the payment threshold and then transfers it to your account. We get long chain of intermediaries, payment systems and photostock. Each of them takes their own commission and puts their own conditions

Let's look at the payout table of a popular photostock

The company provides a convenient service and takes care of the deal? But they take almost all of your profit. You get only 15% to 40% of the price of the image

THIS

IS

NOT

FAIR

With an average stock photo price of $3 you get 15% or only $0.45 per sale

The buyer is required to purchase a monthly subscription for a large volume of images he might not need. If you want to buy 1 photo without a subscription the price goes up a lot

Also, you fully depend on the company and they can block you or withhold payment to you for any reason

NFT tokens change EVERYTHING

When you create an NFT token and list it for sale, you get ALL THE PRICE. There is only a small commission of 4.9% which is paid by the buyer

Once again

When you sell your photo, you instantly get the full price right into your wallet without any intermediaries. And the buyer receives cryptographically secured proof of purchase and legal use of the images for his own purposes

But that's not all

NFT tokens are forever stored in the blockchain and do not depend on the platform where you created them. Once you create a token, you always own it, even if the platform disappears! That's how blockchain works

But we haven't said the most important thing yet!

You can sell your token on ANY NFT marketplace that supports the same protocol you created it on

Photocentra uses the Immutable X protocol, which such large platforms as Opensea (trading volume of more than $800 million per month) and Mintable plan to integrate. This means that tokens created on Photocentra will automatically be available to a huge audience of customers on those platforms, as well as any others who join Immutable in the future

Below are boring technical details

Photocentra marketplace is built on the Ethereum blockchain. However, as you know, all blockchain write operations require a gas fee. Minting NFT tokens requires a lot of gas, which is completely unacceptable for a stock photo priced at a few dollars. Therefore, a Layer 2 solution is needed

Immutable X is the world's first Layer 2 solution for NFT on Ethereum. Immutable allows you to mint NFT tokens on Layer 2 without using gas! Yes, this means that tokens are minted and traded on Layer 2, but you can always withdraw it to Layer 1, if you want, by paying for the gas needed for the minting

Immutable X is a Sidechain?

NO! It is a full Layer 2 solution with Ethereum security. They use transaction batches in which each transaction is a Merkle tree element that hashes each other, and then the finished batches are stored in Layer 1 Ethereum

Quote from their website

How does Immutable X work?

Immutable X uses a ZK Rollup: we take thousands of off-chain trades, generate a proof that these trades were all valid (i.e. the users who owned the assets signed the trades), and then publish that proof on chain, where it is verified by a smart contract.
During this process, the on-chain user assets are held in the smart contract, and can only be released after a valid proof including them has been published in a batch

Read more about ZK-Rollup technology and Ethereum scalability issues here https://docs.x.immutable.com/docs/the-trouble-with-scaling-ethereum

Post only questions related to the subject. Marketplace discussion here https://photocentra.com/blog/3825

Update June 19, 2022

Marketplace currency has been changed to USDC, now prices do not depend on Ethereum volatility. If you have works for sale, it is recommended to delist them and re-list in the new currency. If you had ETH funds in your account you can withdraw them using https://market.immutable.com/inventory