What is the Curate Marketplace?

The Curate platform is an NFT and physical goods marketpla1ce that allows users to mint, buy, or sell assets without incurring gas fees. The platform also doubles as a multichain bridge between blockchains, having collaborated with significant blockchains. This is made possible due to the platform’s proprietary private architecture.

The Curate platform is also the first gasless NFT marketplace to launch on Android and IOS stores, emphasizing carbon neutrality and community rewards. It allows users to conduct traditional transactions on physical goods with conventional payment methods while conducting NFT transactions with cryptocurrencies like USDC and XCUR.

The Curate ecosystem goes beyond NFT transactions to provide a marketplace that allows zero-fee transactions and creates infrastructures to earn staking rewards. Users can own specific NFTs in the Curate ecosystem that gives stake-boosting utilities. This enables users to unlock an APY rate of up to 60% when they stake XCUR tokens.

Curate has a marketplace built on X-chain, Curate’s blockchain, designed explicitly for gasless transactions within the ecosystem. The protocol uses technologies like blockchain agnostics, InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and others.

History of the Curate Marketplace

The Curate platform was founded in 2019 following the development of the NFT marketplace. In 2021, the project launched its X-chain blockchain and its NFT marketplace. By 2022, it launched the desktop version of its NFT marketplace and enabled decentralized deposits directly from MetaMask.

Subsequently, Curate partnered with Reef, PolarsyDAC, Zelaa NFT, Moon Nation, Shopping.io, ENS, Gangsters Paradise NFT Metaverse, and Travala. The partnership enabled users to spend XCUR tokens on these platforms and sites integrated into their infrastructure.

The XCUR token was listed in India on CoinDCX. It was also listed on Coinbase, Trust Wallet, Ledger, and Trezor. With these integrations, users could mint ALGO NFTs, run Verasity PoV beta testing, and buy NFTS with the tokens of integrated projects.

By participating in the Curate project, users can enjoy the Divine Anarchy Spirit Animals NFT drop and the NFT to merch feature that allows users to convert their NFTs to physical merchandise.

Core Components

Blockchain Agnostic Technology

The Curate NFT platform utilizes blockchain-agnostic technology. Blockchain-agnostic technologies refer to software and hardware infrastructures not built or tied to any specific blockchain network. This means they can have multi-chain interoperability, allowing them to read and execute events on multiple blockchains using a single framework and interface.

Blockchain agnostic technology comprises meta transactions, gas abstraction, relayers, and gas sponsorship. These mechanisms help the Curate platform conduct gasless minting and transactions, which removes financial barriers such as gas fees and improves users’ experience.

Meta transactions allow the blockchain to separate the transaction sender from the gas payer so users can interact with the X-chain blockchain without holding tokens to pay transaction fees. The gas fees can then be moved to either the application using gas sponsorship features or another user in the event of purchasing the NFT.

This allows other users to pay gas fees using native XCUR or alternative tokens. It is all possible because of the gas abstraction feature, which, when combined with the other features, makes each transaction effectively gasless.

X-chain

Source: Curate’s Website

The X-chain is the main blockchain of the Curate NFT ecosystem, designed to provide gasless transactions and improved financial experiences for users.

The blockchain uses scripting languages like Solidity and Lua to offer developers flexibility and its own XC-20 standard to develop its native token, XCUR, to make transacting on the blockchain significantly cheaper.

However, the critical feature of X-Chain is its status as a private blockchain. While this feature deviates from the principles of decentralization, it gives Curate more control over the network’s functionalities while achieving near-instant transaction speeds.

The consensus mechanism of the X-chain blockchain is a hybrid combination of the Proof of Work (PoW) system with Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT). This combination aims to overcome the limitations of traditional PoW infrastructures to offer enhanced security while handling up to 20,000 transactions per second.

The X-chain also has cross-chain compatibility, meaning it can connect with other blockchains to expand its reach further. Curate’s X-Chain launched alongside their NFT marketplace app in June 2021 to allow users to buy, sell, and manage NFTs, all while minimizing the cost of transactions.

Features of the Curate ecosystem: NFT Marketplace, Launchpad and Staking

NFT Marketplace

Source: Curate’s Website

The Curate NFT marketplace allows users to mint, buy, and sell NFTs on X-chain and Ethereum (ERC-721). The platform supports gasless minting and 0% commission fees on transactions conducted by users holding a percentage of XCUR tokens in-app.

The platform aims to support other blockchain networks like Solana, ALGO, Binance Smart Chain, and Avalanche. The platform also focuses on catering to the growing mobile device user base. For this reason, the Curate NFT Marketplace is the first application to be approved for both the Android and IOS stores.

The user interface is also designed to ensure a smooth mobile navigation experience while efficiently managing the user’s NFTs. The platform comprises general NFT collections, featured collections, and weekly picks to organize displayed assets better.

Finally, the Curate platform has an in-built wallet, allowing users to utilize their funds and conduct cross-chain transactions efficiently.

Launchpad

Source: Curate’s Website

The Curate launchpad allows users to mint and launch their NFTs with minimal fees. The launchpad provides benefits like Marketing, consultation, advising, and a large community.

The Launchpad is geared towards companies, creators, brands, and products that allow users to create and trade unique digital assets with other users in the ecosystem. Users can leverage the Curate project’s social presence on Twitter, Telegram, and other platforms to benefit from the launchpad’s marketing functions.

They also work with the NFT experts in the Curate team to properly develop the NFT collection, and the users would have access to Curate’s network of partnerships on different blockchains. The flexibility of Curate’s cross-chain infrastructure, the benefits of gasless transactions, and the size of the Curate community enable launchpad users to grow their base and develop their projects seamlessly.

Staking

Source: Curate’s Website

The staking feature on Curate’s platform allows users to lock up their XCUR assets for 30 days at a time with an APY rate of up to 15%. Users can also get a stake-boosting NFT that increases their APY rate by up to 60% of the staked amount.

Since users can only stake for 30 days, the project also has an auto-renew feature that automatically stakes both the principal and earned interest. This auto-renew feature allows users to enjoy a compounding effect on their assets.

This feature is not automatic, and users have to set the “auto-renew compound rewards” option on their staked assets if desired.

What is the XCUR Token?

Source: Curate’s Website

The XCUR token is the native token for the Curate NFT ecosystem, which allows users to conduct transactions and incur zero fees. Although the token is built with the XC-20 standard, which provides for gasless, zero-fee transactions, it is compatible with BEP-20 and ERC-20 contract standards.

The token has a total supply of 60 million tokens and a current supply of 50 million in circulation. The XCUR token allows users to utilize the ecosystem’s staking and governance features.

Here’s a breakdown of its tokenomics:

• Community and Governance: 16.7%
• Advisors: 17.5%
• Initial Circulating Supply: 14.2%
• Strategic Partnerships: 21%
• Community Rewards: 8.7%
• Team: 6.8%
• Group Vault: 6.9%
• Development and Marketing: 6.9%
• Migration Bonus: 1.4%

Risk Analysis

Advantages

The Curate project provides gasless minting and launching of NFTs with zero-fee transactions. Its mobile-first approach makes the platform accessible at all times, and its hybrid design gives a fast, seamless user experience.

Its focus on community development, rewards, and governance fosters user participation, leading to a vibrant marketplace for digital assets.

Disadvantages

Due to its curation process, the platform might offer a smaller set of collections for users to access, and its centralized design wouldn’t win favors among DeFi users.

The project also depends on its X-chain, which is not as popular or tested as other projects like Ethereum and Polygon, which are known for supporting NFT projects. This can make new users weary of the project as its hybrid consensus mechanism is not battle-tested, putting its stability and security into question.

Challenges

Balancing quality control with scalability would be challenging as a platform focuses on curating high-quality collections. It must also balance expert selection and community participation to ensure diversification in the displayed NFT collections.

The project will find it challenging to compete against popular blockchains like Ethereum and popular marketplaces like Opensea and Rarible. The NFT space is highly volatile, and regulatory uncertainty compounds this problem, making it difficult to onboard investors.

Competitive Analysis

The Curate marketplace and Mintable are NFT marketplaces that prioritize the gasless minting of NFTs. While similar, they prioritize different quality techniques, transaction fees, and blockchains.

The Curate platform charges a 4% transaction fee higher than Mintable’s 2.5% transaction fee. Yet, transactions on Ethereum, the blockchain Mintable is built on, are known to have transaction costs between $6 to $25 on average as opposed to X-chain, which boasts lower transaction cost averages.

Additionally, the Curate platform allows users to stake XCUR tokens to avoid paying transaction fees.

Another difference is the curation process. The Curate platform is built on a private proprietary blockchain to ensure security and quality. It also involves a selection process determining which collection gets approved on the platform and which gets rejected. Mintable has no rigorous selection process, and its blockchain isn’t designed to be private. This leads to a broader range of lower-quality projects being listed on the platform.

Is the XCUR Token a Good Investment?

The XCUR token is the native token of a growing ecosystem that has access to all the user bases of both Android and IOS devices. Its gasless, zero-fee features also save users money when conducting transactions.

The Curate project is well placed in the developing NFT space and is one of the first to implement gasless minting. This would make it an attractive platform for new users and artists who need more funds to onboard into the crypto space.

Finally, the governance feature attached to the XCUR token allows users to decide the future of the Curate project, letting them determine its long-term advancement for their benefit.

How Can You Own XCUR?

Users can follow a simple process to own XCUR tokens and become a part of the Curate ecosystem.

Setup a Wallet

One way to own XCUR tokens is to purchase them through an exchange. For this, the user must create a Gate.io account, complete the KYC process, and add funds to the account to buy the token.

Utilize the XCUR Tokens

Once users have acquired XCUR tokens, they can explore the Curate ecosystem by minting NFTs, gasless transactions, staking, launchpads, and governance to earn passive rewards.

Take Action on XCUR

Users can trade the XCUR token here.