GhostMarket has integrated NFT minting onto Neo N3 TestNet and updated its blockchain explorer to include NFT tracking on N3. GhostMarket recently added support for Neo’s NEP-11 NFT standard with partial functionality, allowing developers to mint, burn, and transfer NFTs.

GhostMarket is a cross-chain NFT marketplace and explorer supporting Neo and Phantasma, with plans to integrate other blockchains. The platform launched in July 2020, and at the time of press has more than 1,270 users and houses approximately 297,290 NFTs.

Under N3’s current fee system, each NFT on the N3 TestNet costs approximately 0.3 to 0.5 GAS to deploy. GhostMarket founder, Vincent Geneste, noted the NEP-11 standard enforces some data to be stored on-chain, increasing today’s costs. Current TestNet fees were established when GAS was priced lower in USD, therefore NFT costs may decrease in the future with updated fee structures. Noting the NEP-11 onchain storage requirement, Geneste said:

The NEP-11 standard expects at least some of the NFTs’ metadata to be stored onchain, which is great in terms of decentralization. As opposed to Ethereum, where everything is stored offchain; NFTs can get removed or tweaked, and you wouldn’t even know. NEP-11 expects at least a name to be onchain. This is mandatory if you want to be NEP-11 compliant.

Users can participate in marketplace activities by connecting to GhostMarket with Neo wallets compliant with Neo’s dAPI (NEP-12) standard. However, at the time of press NeoLine and O3 Wallet are still integrating N3 support into their web wallets. Therefore, average GhostMarket users can’t mint NFTs on the platform, but developers can still build a wallet from the source code and begin testing.

GhostMarket also functions as an NFT explorer, enabling browsing of NFT events such as minting, transfers, and burning activities. Geneste noted that most explorer capabilities will be live on Neo N3 TestNet, except for trade history and sale prices, which are tentatively expected to go live in July 2021.

While GhostMarket’s N3 smart contracts were written from scratch, the team was able to port about 75% of the explorer’s code from Neo Legacy to N3. Geneste used Python tooling to add Neo N3 to the explorer, a language he was unfamiliar with but adapted to quickly with COZ’s tooling. He said, “We used neo-boa, which works very well. I’m not a Python expert at all, like literally, I’m not. And still, it was quite simple to both play with it, deploy it, and test it. I think it was overall simple enough for newcomers.”

Looking forward, GhostMarket aims to integrate trading capabilities for NFTs on N3 TestNet in July 2021. GhostMarket also plans to include dynamic discovery and parsing of all NEP-11 compliant contracts. In the meantime, developers can reach out to the team to add their NFT contract. Lastly, the team intends to add support for classic, Dutch, and English auctions to Neo N3.

The GhostMarket NFT marketplace can be found at the link below:
https://ghostmarket.io/

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