Original | Odaily
Author | Qin Xiaofeng
When a new NFT project starts to gain popularity in the community, how do you seize the trading opportunities?
A deep understanding of the project's fundamentals is key, such as the number of holders, distribution of holdings, percentage of blue-chip holders, daily trading volume, changes in floor price, and so on. Especially for projects that do not support Opensea (such as Ordinals Inscriptions), it is necessary to find the right trading platform. There are many factors to consider.
This is where NFTScan comes in. NFTScan's multi-chain NFT browser products primarily provide efficient and concise NFT asset search and query services for Web3 users, supporting various methods of querying such as addresses, project names, and smart contracts. Currently, it has expanded to 17 blockchain networks.
In order to expand business revenue, in addition to providing free query services to C-end users, NFTScan has also launched the OpenAPI developer platform, mainly providing professional NFT API data services for Web3 developers and next-generation fintech companies, providing NFT data support. Currently, there are over 4600 registered developer users, and cooperation cases include well-known projects and developer teams such as Binance NFT marketplace, Coinmarketcap, imToken, Bybit, Kucoin, and Mask.
In the course of business development, the large storage capacity and computational requests also posed a great challenge to the traditional MySQL database initially adopted by NFTScan, causing business growth to stagnate at one point. In the end, NFTScan chose the distributed HTAP database TiDB as the core data architecture to replace the original database system, effectively meeting the high concurrency, low latency, and other requirements in various NFT scenarios, and also adding growth gears for NFTScan's new businesses.
Today, NFTScan has grown into the world's largest NFT data infrastructure provider. The experience of NFTScan can also serve as a reference for players in other Web3 fields.
1. The Road to Advanced Multi-chain NFT Browsers
On September 4th, many cryptocurrency players think of the famous "94th Anniversary". But for Shier, the co-founder of NFTScan, this day also holds a special meaning - on September 4, 2021, the official version of NFTScan browser was released. Two years have passed in the blink of an eye, and NFTs have experienced bull and bear markets along with the overall market, with the prices of various blue-chip projects constantly falling, which is lamentable.
2021 was the golden age of NFTs. According to a report by market consulting firm L'Atelier, NFT sales reached $17.6 billion that year, a 21000% increase compared to the previous year. The rise of Opensea also prompted many entrepreneurial teams to flood into the NFT trading market.
However, Shier and ZK, another co-founder of NFTScan, have a different idea. After conducting comprehensive research on NFTs, they found that many entrepreneurial teams found it difficult to directly access full-chain NFT data and face high development barriers and poor user experience. "The most deadly thing was that there was no third-party blockchain infrastructure to support NFT data services at that time, even if you had money, you couldn't buy NFT data services." Shier said. Eventually, they came up with the idea of building NFT infrastructure and bought the domain name nftscan.com to officially enter the NFT field.
Before co-founding NFTScan, Shier worked in the DeFi oracle field for three years, and ZK worked in the encrypted wallet field for four years. Both with a technical background, they have a clear and sensitive understanding of the underlying operation logic, which laid the technical foundation for NFTScan and made product iteration and development faster and more timely, effectively occupying the market.
In April of that year, the NFTScan project was officially established, and the team began preparations and successfully obtained a seed round financing of $550,000, starting the early development of NFTScan. Three months later, the first beta version of the NFTScan browser was launched; on September 4th of the same year, the official version of NFTScan was officially released to the public; in December, NFTScan completed an angel round financing of $1.5 million, led by Mask.
In 2022, the NFT market has entered a new chapter, with new public chain ecosystems such as Solana and BSC starting to expand rapidly. NFTScan has also implemented a multi-chain strategy, continuously expanding to more blockchain networks, from BSC, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Solana, and Aptos, to this year's hot trend Bitcoin, zkSyn.
(NFTScan Browser)
On the data side, NFTScan has currently parsed and included 2.82 million NFT Collections, 1.14 billion NFT assets, 1.69 billion on-chain records, 130 million NFT wallet addresses, 160+ NFT Marketplaces, and data related to 10+ NFTfi. And this data scale is still growing, with an average of 6,000 new NFT projects and 2 million NFT assets added daily. It should be noted that such a large amount of data also poses challenges to the platform's data architecture. For this reason, NFTScan has also upgraded and ultimately chose TiDB as the core data structure (detailed introduction will be provided later in the article).
What can NFTScan, supported by this huge amount of data, be used for? Its core functions include NFT asset information search and query, NFT transaction record query, real-time display of NFT asset minting and transfer records, as well as wallet address NFT asset holdings data and minting records, transaction records, etc. Simply put, as long as you enter the NFT project you want to query, you can find all the on-chain transaction information related to it on NFTScan, and organize it according to different dimensions to help users make investment judgments. For example, NFTScan's Minting leaderboard will display the latest hot project minting situation in real-time, allowing users to quickly follow up and seize opportunities.
In addition, NFTScan Browser has collaborated with the Etherscan team to add Blockscan Chat functionality to NFT asset detail pages and user profile pages, allowing users on the NFTScan platform to communicate directly with any NFT holder. Furthermore, NFTScan Portfolio supports users to connect their own wallet addresses, enabling them to view and manage their NFT asset data on the EVM blockchain network in a one-stop manner, similar to Debank's data panel.
(Portfolio Function)
According to official data, the monthly active users of NFTScan browser are currently around 100,000. "The positioning of NFTScan multi-chain browser is a bit like Etherscan. Because it is a free browser tool, we haven't put too much effort into promoting the product. Basically, it relies on organic traffic and sticky users," explained Shi Er.
2. Launching NFT API service to generate business revenue
In the second half of 2021, the crypto market entered a bear market, and for crypto companies, the most important thing is to "survive." Expanding new revenue channels and increasing income has also become a core topic for NFTScan. It is difficult to generate revenue from C-end user free browser tools, so NFTScan has set its sights on B-end crypto companies, mainly in two categories:
The first category is NFTScan as a Service, which is a SaaS service launched for blockchain development teams (public chains/Layer 2, etc.). With the development of the NFT field, the NFT ecosystem has become an indispensable sector of blockchain networks. In order to support more blockchain networks, NFTScan has launched this service, which provides paid development work for new public chains, including C-end NFTScan browser products and B-end NFT API data services. For example, if an NFT on a new public chain wants to expand its ecosystem visibility, it can choose the above-mentioned service and integrate with the NFTScan platform to let more users understand more trends and drive traffic to the ecosystem.
According to official introductions, the early costs of the NFTScan as a Service vary from tens of thousands to several tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the scale of the blockchain ecosystem development team. It has received funding support from six foundations: Polygon, Optimism, Aptos, PlatON, Cronos, and Moonbeam.
The first is the NFTScan scanner platform, which provides comprehensive NFT tracking and analysis services. It offers real-time monitoring of NFT activities, supports cross-chain tracking, and provides valuable insights for NFT investors and collectors. With its advanced technology and user-friendly interface, NFTScan has become a popular choice among NFT enthusiasts and professionals. By leveraging the powerful features of NFTScan, users can easily track, analyze, and manage their NFT assets, ensuring a seamless and efficient NFT experience.
The second is the OpenAPI developer platform, which primarily offers professional multi-chain NFT API data services for blockchain projects. It provides access to NFT data sources, which is the core mission of NFTScan. Using the NFTScan API, developers can aggregate data from different chains, achieving unified access to cross-chain data and simplifying development complexity. Additionally, the rich data provided by the NFTScan API supports developers in building more feature-rich applications. Compared to manually fetching on-chain data, directly using the NFTScan API is more stable and reliable, providing important support for NFT application development. Developers can focus on product innovation without having to deal with repetitive underlying data retrieval issues. By leveraging the NFTScan NFT API effectively, NFT technology can be further applied in various vertical domains.
In terms of pricing, NFTScan uses "Compute Units" (CUs) to describe the cost of each API in a more fair manner compared to pricing based on the number of requests. Currently, NFTScan provides over 60 NFT API interfaces, which can meet the majority of developers' business scenarios. Each API has its own CU pricing based on the different resources consumed. Some customized services, due to the need for independent environments and targeted analysis, consume more resources and have higher charges. However, Shier also mentioned that as customized services become common APIs and achieve economies of scale, the costs will decrease.
Currently, the price of CUs on the NFTScan developer platform is: 1 USD can purchase 1 million CUs. If we take the typical usage scenario of obtaining NFT basic data, an average single API request from the NFTScan NFT API consumes 500 CUs. This means that with 1 million CUs, you can make 2000 requests, or in other words, 1 USD can be used for 2000 requests. Once purchased, CUs will be stored permanently in the account until they are used up.
According to official data, the API developer platform currently has over 4600 registered developers and has responded to more than 5.5 billion NFT API requests. It has served hundreds of high-quality Web3 projects and infrastructures, including Binance NFT Marketplace, Coinmarketcap, imToken, Bybit, Kucoin, Mask, OneKey, Coin 98, HashKey Group, SlowMist Technology, and other well-known projects and developer teams.
Related collaboration platforms have also given high praise to the data quality and services of NFTScan. "Through this collaboration, NFTScan will work closely with Binance NFT to promote transparency, security, and innovation in the NFT field. By providing comprehensive data insights and offering NFTScan's API services to developers, NFTScan will bring more development momentum to the NFT industry."
Shier revealed that the revenue brought by the API services can basically achieve a break-even point, and their next goal is to further expand more B-side enterprises. "Currently, the scale of the NFT data track is relatively small, mainly concentrated in NFT trading markets, crypto wallets, blockchain big data analysis, Socialfi, and other fields. Our estimation of the market is that there are about 1,500 related projects, which belong to large B-end data services. Currently, the scale and volume are not large. But with the development of the entire blockchain and Web3 field, we believe that this market will continue to expand."
III. Massive data impact on underlying technical architecture, NFTScan breaks through with TiDB
Over the past two years, NFTScan has built a leading global NFT data infrastructure from scratch, not only with a C-end NFT browser product, but also with the NFTScan developer platform that serves blockchain development teams, providing multi-chain NFT data services for Web3 developers worldwide.
Currently, the NFTScan database has recorded over 2.82 million NFT contract addresses, over 1 billion NFT asset data, and 1.7 billion multi-chain NFT on-chain interaction records, and this number is still increasing at a daily rate of 6,000 NFT contract addresses and 2 million NFT assets.
Large increments and high activity are the two main characteristics of NFTScan's business, which also determine its high requirements for database technology architecture, requiring comprehensive, real-time, efficient characteristics, and meeting the demands of
High concurrency, low latency, and other requirements. Choosing a suitable data storage system that can meet the business needs is crucial for NFTScan. Previously, NFTScan used MySQL and Elasticsearch on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its core database solution. After half a year of usage, this solution encountered many problems such as poor scalability, high storage and maintenance costs, decreased utilization, and recurring accuracy errors, making it unable to keep up with the rapid business growth. Eventually, NFTScan decided to adopt a solution called TiDB as the core data architecture, replacing the original database system. It took two months to migrate the underlying database system entirely to TiDB.
TiDB is an open-source distributed relational database independently designed and developed by PingCAP. It is a fusion-type distributed database product that supports both online transaction processing and online analytical processing. The advantages of this solution that attracted the NFTScan team in the comparison and selection process are as follows:
(1) TiDB is highly compatible with MySQL in terms of transmission protocol and SQL syntax. NFTScan can easily migrate data to TiDB, greatly reducing the learning cost, time, and effort for the development team to use a new database, and also accelerating the migration of the database architecture.
(2) TiDB adopts a distributed architecture that separates computation and storage, as well as a design mechanism for distributed storage at the underlying level. NFTScan can flexibly scale computing and storage resources based on real-time changes in read and write traffic, maximizing resource utilization and significantly reducing costs. Taking the API services on the business side as an example, the average query time has reduced from 10-100 milliseconds to 10 milliseconds or less; even with a processing capacity of 1,000 QPS, such query speed can still be maintained stable.
(3) TiDB's HTAP capability can handle transactional and analytical workloads simultaneously. With a single database, it can meet the requirements of both transactional and analytical databases, perfectly meeting the growing business needs of NFTScan and reducing overall operational costs.
(4) TiDB's data replication synchronization mechanism and built-in disaster recovery solution ensure the high availability of the overall database service.
From the final result, TiDB perfectly meets the core requirements of high throughput and low latency of NFTScan.
"Relying on the powerful distributed storage and computing capabilities of TiDB, NFTScan has built a data storage system that has high performance, elastic scalability, and supports high-speed computation of massive data. TiDB's excellent design of distributed storage mechanism and its flexible features for on-demand and elastic horizontal scalability allow NFTScan to handle various high-concurrency OLTP and OLAP scene. "Supplementary Twelve said.
As of November 2022, NFTScan's TiDB database stores approximately 6 TB of business data, with a QPS of 5000 and an average query duration of 40 ms. Various applications run stably on TiDB.
Conclusion
In fact, there are not only NFTScan but also other platforms that focus on data mining in the NFT market. However, they have not shown strong advantages and have even been gradually eliminated by the market. NFTScan is not without flaws either, such as Portfolio's inability to filter out junk NFTs and phishing projects, which seems complicated. Based on feedback from various market demands, NFTScan has also realized this problem and is developing relevant strategies to address and optimize it. However, the flaws do not cover the brilliance. In the end, NFTscan has become the largest NFT data provider based on its own strengths.
"Our advantage is that we focus and specialize in the NFT data layer," Twelve explained. There is a lot of on-chain data, but NFTScan only solves one problem, which is the data parsing and standardization of NFTs. "We have always focused on the development and construction around NFT data, maximizing the value of data and serving more people."
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