CoinMarketCap takes a deep dive into another NFT marketplace.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have often been hailed as the next big thing in crypto. With 2021 bringing with it more than a few record-breaking NFT sales and exploding adoption among both creators and consumers, it appears there may be some truth to the assertion.
Here, we take a look at a platform that looks to usher in the next stage of NFT growth by tackling some of the major challenges the industry faces today.
What Is Refinable (FINE)?
Refinable wants to become the "definitive NFT hub" on Binance Smart Chain, by giving creators an outlet they can use to create their own NFTs and get them into the hands of users. It seeks to provide a solution to the four main NFT verticals, namely: creation, distribution, discovery and utility.
Through Refinable, creators will be able to easily tokenize their content and distribute them to end-users through a variety of mechanisms, such as auctions, gifts and royalties. Users, on the other hand, will be able to find and invest in NFTs from a range of sources, and then further leverage their NFT portfolio to extract additional value from it through the broader DeFi landscape.
By addressing some of the major friction points for NFT creators and users, such as high fees, poor discoverability and low flexibility, Refinable looks to leverage the untapped potential of NFTs and bring them to an even larger audience.
Like most blockchain-powered platforms, Refinable features a native utility token — in this case, known as $FINE. The token is woven into the core of the Refinable ecosystem and provides holders with a variety of benefits, including increased distribution and royalty limits, access to exclusive sales and listing upgrades. It can be used to settle fees on the Refinable marketplace and for governance purposes.
The platform conducted its final raise in April 2021 via a Polkastarter IDO and launched shortly after on PancakeSwap.
How Does Refinable Work?
Refinable makes it easy for NFT creators and users to easily interact through an intuitive decentralized platform where users can browse a diverse range of NFTs from their favorite artists, brands, and entertainers.
The platform is designed to allow creators to launch their own NFT line without any coding experience while also keeping fees and commissions to a bare minimum — helping to maximize uptake by both individual creators and larger industry partners.
Right now, Refinable is part-way through its development roadmap. The team behind the project plan to launch Refinable's NFT creation and trading features in Q2 2021, and expects to roll out social features, community drops and governance features in the next quarter.
It will eventually bake in more advanced functionality, such as IP protection, commercial and non-commercial rights and customizable royalties — which may make NFTs more attractive to institutional users and brands.
What Makes Refinable Unique?
Bringing NFTs to the masses is no simple task. Still, Refinable includes a number of unique features that give it every chance of success. These include:
Easy Discovery
Refinable helps to tackle one of the biggest obstacles to NFT adoption — discoverability. It achieves this through a marketplace where users can easily find assets that suit their individual tastes using tags, collections, social channels and more to navigate the NFT market.
For creators, Refinable will offer a variety of features that help minimize the headache of going from NFT minting to eventual sale — such as automated royalties, flexible sale terms and multiple settlement currencies.
Content Agnostic
Through Refinable, creators can tokenize, sell and distribute practically any type of content — including static and animated images, domains, music albums. Users will be able to buy and trade these items trustlessly through Refinable’s smart contract-powered marketplace.
Moreover, through its partnerships with LABs and Ethernity, users may eventually be able to buy/sell real estate-backed NFTs and limited edition tokens endorsed by their favorite celebrities.
Supports Both ERC721 and ERC1155
Refinable is one of the few NFT platforms to support both of the main Ethereum non-fungible token standards, allowing creators to leverage their unique capabilities to produce ever-more functional and desirable NFTs — while reducing costs and improving DeFi composability.
Built on Binance Smart Chain
Unlike the vast majority of NFT product suites which run on Ethereum, Refinable is built on Binance Smart Chain — a platform secured by a novel consensus mechanism known as proof-of-staked-authority (PoSA).
This makes it just as easy to interact with as Ethereum-based platforms while benefiting from drastically improved transaction fees and transaction confirmation times.
What Is Binance Smart Chain?
As we previously touched on, Refinable is built on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) — a blockchain that is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to Ethereum, largely due to its low fees and rapidly growing DeFi ecosystem.
Launched in September 2020, Binance Smart Chain is secured by a variant of proof-of-stake(PoS) known as Proof-of-Staked-Authority (PoSA) — which requires that users stake their reputation/identity to participate in the transaction validation process.
Binance Smart Chain benefits from a three second block time and transaction fees that are measured in cents. As a modified fork of Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain is immediately accessible to developers and is compatible with most of the same web3 wallets. This provides a consistent experience to users who are familiar with using Ethereum dApps.
Refinable is the first major NFT hub built on BSC and aims to leverage its unique properties to help grow the NFT industry from the grassroots.
How Does Refinable Compare With OpenSea?
Refinable shares similarities with a number of NFT hubs, but OpenSea is arguably its most direct competitor.
Both Refinable and OpenSea feature support for practically any type of non-fungible token thanks to ERC721 and ERC1155 compatibility and allow users to quickly get to grips with NFTs. However, they’re built on different underlying platforms — Ethereum (OpenSea) and Binance Smart Chain (Refinable).
The two are similar in that they both allow users to easily create their NFTs and list them for sale on an intuitive marketplace, but they differ in the functionality they offer on top of this. Refinable is built to support both consumer and enterprise NFT use cases, whereas OpenSea is largely designed for collectors and NFT enthusiasts.
Moreover, Refinable is centered around the $FINE utility token, which allows the community to govern the growth and development of the platform, and share in its success. OpenSea currently lacks a utility token.
All in all, Refinable is essentially an early-stage version of OpenSea, but built on Binance Smart Chain with several major enhancements woven in.
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