Enabling a Global NFT Creator Community on XRPL
Non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) and their creators are making waves across industries. From art and music, to real estate and gaming, there is not a market that will be untouched by NFTs as the underlying blockchain technology—and its myriad use cases—continue to gain momentum.
In an effort to provide continued enablement of NFT creation, we recently launched Ripple’s Creator Fund: a $250 million commitment to support NFT creators using the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to explore the bounds of NFT projects and use cases. By providing creators with the necessary tools, financial support and partnerships to kickstart their NFT projects on the XRPL, we’re bringing together a global community of creators and builders who are pioneering the space and finding new use cases for tokenized assets.
XRPL: Purpose-Built for NFT Creators and Developers
The XRP Ledger has ease of use and native token functionality built in by design. Released in January, NFT-Devnet—a beta environment built to enhance NFT support on the XRPL—lowers the technical barriers to entry for those looking to get started creating NFTs or who want to join the Web3 movement and experiment with tokenization use cases.
A couple of the key benefits to using the XRPL for NFT creation include:
- Speed: nearly 70 million closed ledgers since 2012 with each transaction taking no more than 3-5 seconds to complete.
- Low Cost: at fractions of a penny per transaction, costs are inexpensive enough to enable a wide variety of NFT use cases.
- Sustainable: the XRPL is the first major blockchain to be carbon-neutral—maintaining neutrality since 2020—and is more efficient than leading proof-of-work blockchains.
- Simplicity: NFT-Devnet pre-programs all activities that an NFT user may wish to complete, including minting, burning, trading, requiring royalties, pointing to metadata, and more.
- Public and Decentralized: the XRP Ledger is open-source, available to anyone to build on, and maintained by the community.
Whether or not you are new to the world of NFTs, to the XRPL community or both, NFT-Devnet makes it quick and easy to get started creating and testing your next NFT project regardless of experience level. It’s customizable and built to grow and scale along with any and all use cases—large or small.
Expanding NFT Partnerships
Since the Creator Fund launch, we have received nearly 4,000 applicants that submitted projects focused on NFT use cases across gaming/metaverses, music/entertainment, art/collectibles and beyond. Some of the Creator Fund recipients to date who are taking their NFTs to the next level include xPunks, Steven Sebring and Justin Bua—among others.
Not only have we seen some truly unique and inspiring NFT projects come to life on the XRPL, but we’ve also had the exciting opportunity to partner with some of the biggest names in the industry to help drive further expansion. By collaborating with infrastructure and marketplace partners, we’re able to ensure NFTs can be easily created, sold, traded and utilized within the XRPL community.
Partners include marketplaces such as Mintable, mintNFT, NFT PRO, Ethernal Labs and onXRP, and creative agencies like VSA who can help brands and businesses break into the NFT space, create meaningful brand experiences, and share their creations with the broader NFT community.
What’s Next for NFTs?
While early NFT use cases have primarily been centered around avatars, art and collectibles, more utility-based applications are beginning to emerge. As the technology and its use cases continue to mature, it’s these real-world applications that will continue to enrich NFT experiences and afford usefulness for the community. The core utility-based use cases we believe will have the most immediate impact include Media & Entertainment, Carbon Credits, and Real Estate, and we will take a deeper dive into each from both a technical and practical application perspective in future posts.
As projects continue to be developed, previewed and tested on NFT-Devnet, we will no doubt uncover additional tokenization capabilities on the XRPL. The RippleX team will propose its NFT standard be included in an upcoming software release with hopes that the new NFT capabilities will continue to inspire groundbreaking projects and yet-to-be thought of applications by the incredibly talented XRPL community.
Ready to bring your next NFT project to life on the XRPL? Check out the XRPL blog and NFT documentation to learn more, join the community and start creating today.
Attending SXSW? Join us at the Ripple House March 11-13 to discover NFT capabilities on the XRPL, learn more about Creator Fund, and connect with other creators building on the XRP Ledger.