What is Efinity, the New NFT Blockchain from the team behind Enjin Coin?

Enjin, the team behind the multi-billion dollar Enjin Coin, has recently released their new project, Efinity. Built with Polkadot technology, it aims to be a next-generation blockchain for NFTs and offer fast finality, low fees, and incentives for ENJ holders. 

The biggest problem stopping NFTs from reaching mainstream adoption is the high fees and slow transaction times associated with Etheruem. Buying an NFT can cost upwards of $100 in fees, and also requires that a user hold ETH and be tech-savvy enough to set up a MetaMask wallet funded in Ethereum. All of these barriers to entry prevent the average person from buying and interacting with NFTs.

Enjin, a software company that initially focused on the video game Minecraft, created Enjin Coin in 2017 as a way to back NFTs by a tangible asset, thus giving them a value floor. They also created the ERC-1155 token standard, which allows for the creation of both fungible and non-fungible tokens in the same contract, saving on gas fees and offering more developer flexibility. 

However, none of this was enough to combat the inherent problems of the Ethereum blockchain. Additionally, there was the problem of incompatibility between NFT ecosystems, meaning that marketplaces were segmented and incapable of interacting with one another. 

Efinity was created to be a cross-chain NFT blockchain, which will allow interoperability between ecosystems, rewards for those who interact with NFTs, and a seamless user experience. 

The Efinity blockchain will run as a parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem. This means that Efinity will be one of one hundred blockchains that are able to interact with one another through Polkadot’s interoperability technology, which will allow developers of other parachains to integrate Efinity NFTs into their ecosystem and know that they will also work in other blockchains. Furthermore, Enjin is creating the paratoken, which will be similar to the ERC-1155 tokens that they created for Ethereum. In fact, EFI will be the first paratoken. The Efinity blockchain will be able to handle around 700 transactions per second with a confirmation time of six seconds. 

Efinity will also have a native marketplace, where users can mint, buy, and sell NFTs. 

Even though this new coin may seem like a slight to ENJ holders, it actually increases the value proposition of Enjin’s original coin. ENJ can now be staked in order to receive EFI, and any ENJ that is inside NFTs will also automatically be staked and earn rewards. This will allow ENJ holders to reap the benefits of this new blockchain without ever directly buying EFI. 

The Efinity token was initially made available in a CoinList sale, where it was sold for 20 cents. Now, the coin is hovering around $1, and seems to have stabilized at this price point. It has a current circulating supply of 54 million, and a total supply of 2 billion. This gives the EFI token a current market capitalization of $43 million, or $1.5 billion of the total supply is counted. EFI will be used to pay fees on the network, and all fees for buying and selling NFTs will be redistributed to EFI holders. It will also be used for decentralized governance of the blockchain.

A unique feature of the Efinity ecosystem is that it rewards all actors in the network, not just validators. For example, users will be able to earn EFI by bidding on NFTs, regardless of whether or not they win the auction.

Enjin is also creating JumpNet, an Ethereum scaling solution that allows for free NFT and ENJ transactions. They plan to create a bridge between Ethereum, JumpNet, and Efinity to facilitate interoperable NFTs. There is a limit to the number of transactions a user can make, and holding EFI increases these limits, bringing more use to the token.

The Efinity project has lofty goals, and could help bring NFTs to millions of users who currently cannot access the technology due to high barriers to entry. The Efinity project is still not ready for a full release, as they still have to develop the technology and connect to Polkadot. At the moment, the EFI token lives on the Ethereum blockchain, but will eventually be ported to its own blockchain once the Efinity mainnet goes live. 

Though the technology may not be ready for a while, the fact that Enjin has a good record of delivering on their promises has the blockchain community excited about the potential for Efinity and its next-generation technology.

By Lincoln Murr

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