Uses Cases and Partners

Artpool

Unique Network is a scalable blockchain for composable NFTs with advanced economies that offers innovative tools for startups that are building solutions for next-generation NFTs. From boosting the discovery of creators to giving developers the tools to customize their marketplaces, we constantly seek partnerships that will help promote our vision of empowering creators. Our latest partnership with Artpool, an NFT discovery and curation platform - and art discovery social network-, or Art Curator Grid, demonstrates the democratized and collaborative future we want to support across tech and art, facilitated by blockchain technology. Art Curator Grid is host to over 1000 selected curators, art professionals, venues and organizations from 76 countries, working with more than 6000 artists worldwide, engaging every day with its tools. On the other hand, Artpool is an NFT Platform created by Art Curator Grid where art enthusiasts and collectors discover quality artworks curated by leading professionals.

Through this partnership, Artpool will build their new NFT marketplace on Unique's infrastructure, utilizing many of our network's Advanced Tools & Features on Polkadot and Kusama. NFT Sales through Artpool will help finance specific fundraising projects, allowing art organizations to finance new physical projects and experiences such as exhibitions, residencies, publications, and performances through embedded, sustainable NFT sales powered by our technology. Artpool has hyper-curated the projects available for sale on its platform through their integration with Art Curator Grid, an established network of art venues and creative professionals.

Artpool is a great solution to the crying need for fundings of the art world as it makes the crypto world accessible to a wider pool of people and is totally unique for NFT enthusiasts as they have the chance to become an integral part of future art projects and finally buy NFTs created by artists, selected by experts from the art world.

Pauline Foessel, Founder and Director of Art Curator Grid and Art Pool

While it might seem curious to use digital art powered by NFTs to finance physical experiences, this kind of revolutionary thinking extends the reach of NFTs beyond the use case seen from digital collectibles like Cryptopunks. This is what we are focused on at Unique - creating the 3rd generation NFTs framework for the next stage of this sector, mass adoption. The accessibility of our developer tools make it easy for Artpool and Art Curator Grid to create a custom NFT marketplace that will attract a wider community of artists and collectors from non-NFT-specific communities to join us in the new digital era. This level of confluence will further establish NFTs as a technology with nearly limitless potential.

Artpool is a great representation of what Unique Network is designed for - empowering creators to do something that has never been done before. Artpool's value proposition is something that is very much needed in the current crypto art market - access to deep expertise in curation. Their platform not only brings immense value to the artist community but to the collectors community as well.

Alexander Mitrovich, CEO and Co-Founder, Unique Network

Unique Network is devoted to creating the best NFT infrastructure for digital natives, and helping bridge the industry gap that exists between artists and collectors from different communities (physical and digital). We firmly believe that if digital and physical artists can share their infrastructure in a mutually beneficial way, the new paradigm for art will be served, building a bright future for us all.

Chelobricks

In May of 2021, Unique Network released the first look into the power of our Marketplace, a white-label product that enables anyone to build an NFT—and do so in the best, most sustainable, and innovative way possible.

So if you're going to launch an NFT Marketplace, why not kick it off with a moment that truly flexes the platform's power and gives users a taste of what to expect from the future? Say hello to Chelobricks.

Chelobricks are a collection of 10,000 NFTs, built on Substrate, that currently live on our Marketplace today. Not only was this drop a significant milestone to showcase how our product allows creators to build on Polkadot, but it was an early look into our dedication to building a new kind of efficient community on the blockchain.

As excited as we were about the Chelobricks drop, it would appear the community was as well! The Substrate-based Chelobrick Collection saw most of the 10,000 unique, randomly generated, characters (Chelobricks = “Person” or “Man” in Russian) claimed in less than 20 hours. This sale welcomed a variety of new users to Polkadot and showed them NFTs on this platform can shake some of the constraints that many users face running on ETH (slow network speeds, limited feature set, lack of scalability).

So what's so special about Chelobricks anyways, and how these digital characters got claimed in less than a day? Some might say it's a bit of nostalgia, as Chelobricks run on Substrate. This is the same chain that birthed Unique's Substrapunk project, an ode to the iconic Cryptopunks, one of the first ever NFTs. Also released in a collection of 10,000 (four years prior in 2017), Cryptopunks helped set the scene for the immense energy of the burgeoning NFT community.

Future-Ready NFTs

Chelobricks helped showcase a new kind of future for NFTs on Polkadot, demonstrating the power and potential of composable, forever-liquid, multi-resource NFTs. These collectibles also offered an intuitive experience for the user/buyer, replicating some of the early excitement people felt when they first explored digital collectibles, where everything from Crypto Kitties to avatar-centric art disrupted what they knew about creating, gaming, and collecting. Chelobricks are a new chapter in this story and one that we know people will still be talking about years down the road.

At Unique Network, we’re truly just getting started with how we will nurture and facilitate the future of NFTs. In June of 2021, with RMRK, our partnership shared our plan to merge Substrate-based Chelobricks with the Kusama-based Kanaria NFT collection — the first cross-chain NFTs with composable functionality and evolving traits. This collaboration allowed holders of Chelobrick NFTs who buy a Kanaria egg NFT to have their pieces interact with each other, get new looks and applications via upgrades, and even be governed by decentralized autonomous organizations.

Our RMRK collaboration presents an exciting future for NFT-to-NFT interactivity, demonstrating an eclectic future for lucky Chelobricks holders. Through this partnership, we’re offering them the chance to gain some new buddies in the form of Kanaria eggs, furthermore displaying how we’re always looking towards the future of experimental, generative art.

This partnership comes at an important time for us Unique Network as we expand on the initial launch of our Marketplace, where our advanced features demonstrate how we’re building the most efficient and progressive runway for building and selling digital collectibles.

Our decentralization announcement will also ultimately help provide more support towards building new projects, as a remaining 50% of the Marketplace commission will be kept in the Treasury for the development of the Marketplace and future games with our collections. As far as more announcements and updates, there's plenty more on the way to look forward to. For now, we hope you enjoyed this reflection on Chelobricks and how their launch and community continue to show how we’re adding an excitingly unique spin to the world of NFTs and the technology from which they are built. Check out some Chelobricks out here. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Read the full article by Charu Sethi in our blog.

SubstraPunks

Pictures + NFT - Cryptopunks

This story begins back in 2017, with the birth of Cryptopunks, the first mainstream success of blockchain, through NFTs and the ERC-721 standard...

The Cryptopunks project was developed by Larva Labs in 2017, then a two-person team of Canadian software developers who took inspiration from the cyberpunk movement. Demonstrating a future of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum, Cryptopunks added a whole new perspective to the intersection of digital collectibles, cryptocurrency, and the entire concept of art and commerce online.

This project was also an inspiration for the ERC-721 standard which is mainly used now for minting NFTs, becoming a framework on the blockchain for the birth and continual growth of non-fungible tokens. Years later, as NFTs captured the attention of everyone from world-famous celebrities to the titans of the traditional art world. Cryptopunks led this mass global craze for NFTs. As of writing, the lowest price available to pick up a punk of your own is around 103.7 ETH ($362,390 USD), and rare punks are selling for upwards of $10,000,000.

Fast forward three years later to 2020. Inspired by the impact of Cryptopunks, Unique Network launched its first NFT collection, Substrapunks, to demonstrate the innovation and alternative ethos that drives Unique Network to develop NFTs that have more utility, interoperability, and are more sustainable than Ethereum-based NFTs.

Substrapunks were the first NFTs on Polkadot, with 10,000 Substrapunks being created. We chose Polkadot because of their infrastructure design, and its Substrate chain. The goal for this NFT drop was not only to pay homage to the visual essence of its predecessor, but to exhibit how NFTs on Polkadot can shed some of the limitations (high gas fees, more damage to the environment, lower flexibility) of Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens. The success behind Substrapunks helped give us the fuel and support we needed to design and soft launch our Marketplace in November of 2020.

Let’s talk stats. In the three months following their sale, SubstraPunks were traded repeatedly, with over 724 exchanged in the marketplace in September alone, with an average price of 1.5 KSM and a total turnover of 1069 KSM (almost 3x the turnover in July 2021).

So what’s next for Substrapunks and the Unique Network Marketplace? We look forward to ongoing trading and engagement across the Substrapunks community, where people enjoy this edgy, diverse collection of characters whose value continues to grow as a reflection of the success of Unique Network .

So just as Cryptopunks started the NFT revolution, we believe that Substrapunks will be the best case study for Polkadot NFT capabilities. Unique Network is proud of its Substrapunk roots, and we’re equally excited to deploy additional advanced features for NFTs. Stay tuned!

Read the full article by Alexander Mitrovich in our blog

SupraOracles

SupraOracles is an oracle platform that brings enterprise-standard oracles to the Web 3.0 ecosystem. SupraOracles empowers the developer community with a novel oracles toolset that efficiently creates, deploys, and manages data applications. Collaboration and working with SupraOracles will help further improve NFTs and the Metaverse.

Partnership with SupraOracles will combine Unique's white-label NFT technology with SupraOracle's novel oracle toolset to improve the composition of the dynamic NFTs. Together, both protocols are helping act as a bridge between contemporary networks and blockchain, so developers who are historically more familiar with Web2 can make an easier transition to Web3.

As Unique Network and the community continue building the future of the Metaverse, Unique Network utilizes SupraOracle's technology to locate and collect real-world data feeds so that the dynamic NFTs that people create with our technology will have the most optimized information possible.

United Nations and DigitalArt4Climate

The United Nations has confirmed the selection of Unique Network its NFT platform as a lead tech partner for the DigitalArt4Climate initiative to help spread the word and increase awareness among the population on world's climate change.

Unique Network has joined the DigitalArt4Climate Initiative to lead the technical implementation of the program, alongside partner organisations International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges (IAAI GLOCHA), UN-Habitat, Social Alpha Foundation, Exquisite Workers, and Pallette69. Social Alpha Foundation will provide educational and mentorships sessions for artists and will be sponsoring the winner awards as well. Exquisite Workers is the lead creative and content partner for the initiative while Pallette69 is leading UX/UI mentorship for Designathon.

The United Nations has recognised NFT technology as a unique new medium for creative expression that can help amplify messages about climate action.

DigitalArt4Climate aims to empower young artists, designers, and activists worldwide to create art that can inspire people to take action against the global climate crisis.

Unique Network will create and host DigitalArt4Climate’s NFT marketplace for these artists and web designers to showcase their artwork. The marketplace will be built on Unique Network’s ready-to-use suite of NFT solutions that uses blockchain technology that is optimised for energy efficiency and low carbon impact.

The advanced features of Unique Network will allow for building in flexible economic and revenue models for individual artists. The DigitalArt4Climate Initiative’s work program was structured to complement the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26), the annual global summit where nations meet to reach agreements on how to tackle climate change collectively.

Alexander Mitrovich, CEO of Unique Network, said in a statement that blockchain technologies and open data can be used as a change agent in identifying actions to protect the climate.