Recently, there's been an influx of criticism towards OpenSea's NFT marketplace—Scandals, no responses from support tickets, glitches and bugs... you name it. OpenSea hasn't treated the NFT community with the respect it deserves.

Ethereum is on the same boat, though there's hope for the network as it is currently going through an overhaul. With the Beacon Chain running parallel to Ethereum's Mainnet for the past couple of months; I, along with the other active users, hope to see long-awaited improvements to the network's capabilities.

More specifically, we hope to see a reduction in gas fees and transaction times on the network. The NFT community has grown substantially during the holiday season, and network fees have been at an all-time high.

I've already discussed what other solutions are being presented to counter Ethereum's systemic issue. For example, Solana is a great choice for minting NFTs, and some artists are opting to release their collections on platforms like Solanart to avoid paying for the ludicrous ETH gas fees.

What about Bitcoin Cash though? Are developers creating projects in the NFT world through SmartBCH?

OASIS

Enter Oasis, a fully decentralized NFT Marketplace run on Bitcoin Cash's promising sidechain: SmartBCH.

You could think of Oasis as a DApp on the SmartBCH blockchain. The DApp is connected directly to a decentralized exchange (called the OasisDEX) smart contract where all transactions occur.

The OasisDEX protocol allows users to buy and sell NFTs from other users on-chain. How neat!

OASIS comes with three functions: A marketplace, wallet, and explorer.

Marketplace

The marketplace is just like OpenSea. Users can sell their NFTs via three types of auctions: Dutch auction, English auction and a fixed price.

The Dutch auction has a higher start price and lower end price. As time goes by, the price decreases linearly according to the difference between the start and end price.

The English auction is well known in North America, as it has been used in countless other platforms like eBay. It contains a start price, and potential buyers can place staggering bids to purchase the NFT. The highest bidder wins.

Fixed price is pretty self-explanatory. Set a price, and if someone buys it before the auction expires, you will sell it at the enlisted price.

Auction time is based on block numbers. The platform will guesstimate the time and date the block number is met in the future.

Explorer

OASIS is compatible with a range of tokens like ERC-721. You can take a look at the explorer here. Currently, there's only a couple of NFT collections listed, but I bet as time goes on, OASIS will be able to find its niche in the NFT world.

Wallet

OASIS carries its own built-in wallet, unlike MetaMask's integration with OpenSea's platform. As a result, users can pretty much do anything with the wallet, from verifying collections to listing NFTs on the marketplace.

Although OASIS is still in its early stages, I see potential in the project. Once they begin to promote the platform on popular NFT communities like Twitter and Discord, and in Bitcoin Cash communities like read.cash and noise.cash, we could experience tremendous growth in the platform.

Why SmartBCH?

SmartBCH is a Bitcoin Cash sidechain enabling compatibility with EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and Web3. In summary, it's creating a bridge between Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum. 

When initially developing the blockchain, the founders believed that SmartBCH shouldn't try to rebuild an entire decentralized ecosystem to achieve its goal.

Instead, by building the SmartBCH blockchain using Ethereum's coding language, Solidity, developers can take advantage of Ethereum's vast network effect. 

Therefore, SmartBCH's developers believe in the compatibility between their beloved sidechain and Ethereum. Ethereum developers will have the capacity to quickly transfer files onto the SmartBCH network without needing to recode everything due to a lapse in coding languages. 

The founders also believe that SmartBCH will

provide the same benefits of ETH2.0 in... much shorter time.

Unlike Ethereum's expensive network, BCH already has low fees and near-instantaneous transaction speeds thanks to the network's shorter block intervals.

Furthermore, at the end of SmartBCH epochs' (a method to prove ownership and vote for the validators of 2,016 blocks), which typically take two weeks, 50% of gas fees will be rewarded to validators while the other 50% will be burned.

In essence, BCH will become even more of a deflationary currency. Power to BCH holders!

As SmartBCH tests the foundation of its current libraries, the network's developers continue to enrich the sidechain's capabilities. For example, they plan to introduce a multi-shard chain in the future. This means we could see layer 2 solutions built upon SmartBCH's network ontop of Defi, Dapps, and NFTs.

My thoughts

I can't wait for 2022. Both OASIS and SmartBCH took baby steps to ensure they succeed in a crowded market. However, OASIS has to further promote its platform, as it only has a mere 500 followers on Twitter.

In contrast, supporters of the SmartBCH sidechain must show the crypto world how developers could benefit from moving onto the SmartBCH network.

To my readers, please continue to promote Bitcoin Cash. We need all the eyes we can get on our dearest network.

I hope everyone has a happy New Year!

Sources:

https://leofinance.io/@pantera1/smartbch-what-is-this-about-and-why-we-should-care

https://assets.smartbch.org/whitepaper/SmartBCH_Whitepaper-en.pdf

https://read.cash/@OASIS/introducing-oasis-a-fully-decentralized-nft-exchange-on-smartbch-b9513c71

https://read.cash/@BCHouseVE/smartbch-english-aa578ba4

https://smartbch.org/

I am not a financial advisor. Please do your own due diligence before making a decision based on my article, as I am not responsible or liable for your investment decisions.