With the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) market boom recently and mainstream media attention thanks to celebrity adoption, many are wondering how mere pixels on a screen can be worth so much.
RMRK (pronounced Remark), is looking to bridge this gap by developing new standards for NFTs that can grant them long-lasting utility.
The project was Founded by Bruno Skvorc (also known as SWADER), a blockchain developer and technical educator at the Web3 Foundation.
Built on the existing Kusama network, RMRK launched a successful funding round via their “Initial Collectible Offering”, raising $2million from limited edition NFTs and a further $4 Million directly from investors.
What is RMRK
RMRK introduces innovative protocols to NFTs, incorporating five primitives together like “legos” to create flexible NFTs of arbitrary complexity.
These NFTs can then be incorporated into future, unplanned projects and be seamlessly connected to any parachain within the Polkadot chain. Additionally, RMRK is pursuing scalability by connecting metaverses cross-chain.
These innovations include:
- Nested NFTs which can equip other NFTs i.e. an NFT character equipping an NFT weapon
- On-chain emotes that can be sent to NFTs, allowing social mechanics and price discovery
- Conditional rendering enabled by On-Chain emotes which can allow NFTs to “evolve”
- Multi-resource NFTs which can be displayed differently such as a thumbnail on the marketplace but an item in-game
- NFTs as DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) so that multiple parties can work together on a music NFT or in-game NFT and royalties can be split proportionately
This paradigm shift in NFT technology means that new use cases can be brought forth into the space apart from simply being digital forms of artwork, which can be bridged into real world solutions eventually to disrupt existing networks.
RMRK’s remarkable progress
Earlier this year, the RMRK team announced the launch of Singular, Kusama’s first native NFT platform, boasting transaction and minting fees of just a few cents.
The marketplace’s accessible interface includes verified collections vetted by the RMRK team that work is original to prevent copyright infringement.
Furthermore, an audio player was also recently integrated to listen to audio based NFTs.
Early investors in the Initial Collectible Offering have also been handsomely rewarded not only through airdrops, but also insane price appreciation on their NFTs.
Recently, a sale of one such NFT went for 1250 $KSM, or $408,000 at the time on the Singular marketplace.
Image Courtesy: RMRK
RMRK is also partnering with Moonriver, a canary network for Moonbeam, to assist in deploying their NFTs cross-chain. This means that the NFTs such as in game items or characters can now be deployed across multiple chains and games, connecting their respective metaverse.
$RMRK token
The $RMRK token has appreciated substantially, doing a 4x in November alone thanks to the launch of the Singular marketplace. Furthermore, RMRK’s approach to token distribution has been met with great reception and 89% of the 10 million tokens distributed to those who participated in their Initial Collectibles Offering fair launch.
The token is also designed to be deflationary, with no validator rewards and no future public or private sales planned with only 5% locked for the team at a vesting period of two years.
Use cases of $RMRK includes minting fees for NFTs, a currency in the upcoming Kanaria Metaverse, governance, collateral for DeFi and Liquidity Provision and for moving NFTs across chains.
$RMRK can also be staked, but rewards are not paid out in the native currency. Instead, staking will be used to craft and mine materials, in-game and liquidity provider boosts and various other means such as collateral on the NFT marketplace to verify one’s collection.
The project also recently launched a hackathon for up to $50,000 in prizes, in collaboration with multiple agencies. This hackathon has multiple categories which leverages the RMRK community to progress, and includes everything from developing reputation systems for the technically inclined to creating comic books for the more artistic members of the community.
Successful projects will receive either a cash prize, an NFT bird or both, depending on the category.
The team also has a list of upcoming features constantly updated on their site, and founder Bruno Skvorc often posts updates on the roadmap on subsocial, a decentralized social network community built on Polkadot.
Probably the most exciting project currently on the roadmap is their upcoming Metaverse, which will centre around these Kanaria birds.
Kanaria are collectible NFT birds that hatched from limited edition NFT eggs, influenced by on-chain emoticons sent to them.
The birds have hatched and are trading in volumes of ~5m per month, with the most expensive one having been sold for 1250 KSM (400,000 USD at the time).
While RMRK has been helping other protocols bridge NFTs cross-chain, being able to actually interact with these birds could bring millions of new users who will need to buy, burn and stake $RMRK.
Featured Image Credit: RMRK
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