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- This year’s Taobao Maker Festival, a yearly event showcasing Chinese art and business sponsored by Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform Taobao, will use non fungible tokens (NFTs) for the first time
- Heshan told Blockcast that he was surprised by how easy working with non fungible tokens was, adding, that he originally assumed the principles of blockchain and NFT would be pretty difficult
- When comparing the price of minting NFTs on Near to Ethereum, the self-described socialist cyberpunk stated that casting an NFT on Ethereum is hundreds or thousands of dollars too costly. NEAR is a small application that costs only a few pennies and is extremely useful
Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will be included for the first time at this year’s Taobao Maker Festival, an annual event promoting Chinese art and business sponsored by Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform Taobao. Near Protocol, a decentralized application platform will collaborate with Web3Games, a blockchain gaming company, and Chinese artist Huang Heshan to offer NFT-based real estate designed by Huang during this year’s event. During the event, Heshan’s virtual Bu Tu Garden will be offered for purchase, with over 1,000 virtual buildings including 10 luxury single-family homes, 300 high-end apartments, and 1,000 umbrella parasols. Bu Tu Garden is part of Heshan’s first NFT collection, Toorich City Series, which is centered on a fictional real-estate magnate named Mr. Toorich who is committed to creating up-market homes for the poor.
The Bu Tu Garden NFTs may be purchased on Taobao’s website using the Chinese renminbi. To claim the tokens, you’ll need a Near wallet. The Taobao Maker Festival was first conducted in 2016, and this year’s event will be hosted from July 17 to July 25 at Shanghai’s National Exhibition and Convention Center. Heshan told Blockcast that he was astonished by how simple it was to work with nonfungible tokens, saying that he originally believed the ideas of blockchain and NFT would be quite hard. The cost of casting an NFT on Ethereum is hundreds or thousands of dollars too expensive, the self-described socialist cyberpunk added, comparing the price of minting NFTs on Near to Ethereum. NEAR is a little program that costs only a few cents and is highly useful. According to NEAR, this year’s Taobao Maker Festival will be the first to incorporate NFTs. According to Huang, buyers would be able to place their orders on Taobao and pay in renminbi, the local Chinese currency.
While Heshan’s digital real estate NFTs are strictly creative works, crypto-powered virtual real estate has experienced considerable development in the previous year, with a digital land plot inside blockchain game Decentraland selling for over $900,000 only last month. Illuvium co-founder Kieran Warwick swapped a virtual land piece he bought last year in Axie Infinity for a profit of almost 9,000 percent.
This isn’t the first time an Alibaba-affiliated company has dabbled in NFTs. In May, Alipay, a subsidiary of Alibaba, released two digital art pieces based on NFT. Owners of the paintings will be able to view them on the payment screen of their Alipay app anytime they make a purchase. Within hours, 16,000 copies had been sold out. Alipay confirmed shortly after the sale that NFTs are not cryptocurrencies and hence cannot be exchanged at a significantly higher price.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.
