The Humswap founders want to give NFTs utility and purpose on their forthcoming DeFi platform built on the Neo N3 blockchain. Humswap is one of the Neo Frontier Launchpad Excellence award winners, and was developed by Mario Lopez and Jason Tezanos. In episode 59 of the Neo News Today podcast, Lopez and Tezanos discuss their vision for the platform.

Humswap will offer liquidity pools for various tokens, a marketplace for NFTs, and token swapping. It will also provide an opportunity for users to play games and win prizes.

Two blockchain-based use cases inspired the Humswap project. First was CryptoPunks, the randomly generated collectable art NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Second was trading on decentralized exchanges like Binance’s Pancakeswap and Ethereum’s Uniswap. The intersection of NFTs and DEXs led the pair to design Humswap. Tezanos says:

We had an idea about NFT integrations. What happens if we give NFTs a purpose, besides being an NFT? What happens if they can have a use in a DeFi product?

Beyond its DeFi use cases, the Humswap founders seek to make the platform fun for its users to visit and participate. The platform’s first game, “Pita Toss,” allows users to spend a small amount of GAS to randomly generate a pita NFT (99% chance) or a hummus NFT (1% chance). A rare NFT, such as hummus, could offer the owner bonuses or unlock other features on Humswap.

Lopez and Tezanos, engineers at PayPal, wanted to include carnival-like games in their application to make it more engaging for users. But instead of throwing darts at balloons to try to win a giant stuffed teddy bear, users are rewarded with NFTs. Tezanos says:

That’s the idea. You can win some more common NFT, or maybe you hit it big, you hit it out of the ballpark, and you get some really awesome, rare NFT.

The founders plan to integrate unique uses for rare NFTs, such as incentivizing liquidity providers with NFTs that multiply LP rewards or offering bonus Pita Toss chances. Ultimately, the duo seeks to integrate new utility into NFTs that will encourage more users to engage with the Humswap platform.

Humswap’s NFTs were built following the NEP-17 standard, giving them more flexibility than the NEP-11 NFT standard. The founders said, “This was a conscious decision given our NFTs will have a purpose in our DeFi products, in addition to being art.” However, they haven’t ruled out the possibility of supporting both standards for Humswap NFTs.

Looking forward, Lopez and Tezanos will focus their efforts on designing the NFTs, along with their auction and marketplace functionality. Afterward, steps will include more DeFi-related uses, such as developing the capability for swapping and liquidity pool staking.

The full podcast episode can be found at the link below: