How to Invest in Zora on Notum

NFT technology appeared more than seven years ago and became widespread in 2020-2021 when there was a new wave of interest in the crypto market. NFTs are a unique digital version of an art item, digital content, or media. It could be a painting, GIFs, photos, videos, etc, that were and still are quite popular among collectors, gamers, and crypto enthusiasts.

The greatest value of NFTs lies in their uniqueness, which means these tokens cannot be copied or substituted. As interest in NFTs has grown, more and more platforms with extensive functionality have emerged to allow users to create, buy, and sell these tokens. It’s a totally new niche for creators all over the world allowing them to monetize their bursts of inspiration.

This time Notum tells you about Zora, a decentralized protocol for creators where users can seamlessly interact with NFTs and receive a share of the resale value of their works. We will take a closer look at Zora Protocol’s operating principles, the pros and cons of using the platform, as well as the minting process on Zora.

Zora Protocol: Essentials

Zora is a decentralized protocol that targets creators, allowing them and other users to seamlessly create, buy, and sell NFTs. Thus, Zora is also an NFT and media marketplace.

Interesting fact! One of Zora's main focuses is maintaining payments for creators even though other popular platforms like Blur get rid of collecting resale commissions.

The global goal of the protocol is not only to change the idea of income for creators but also to provide the opportunity to receive a share of the resale value of their works when reselling NFTs through commissions. Zora's mission is to make art free and valuable on the Internet and to help create products that empower people to better support and value their creativity.

Source: Zora

The main components of the ecosystem are the Zora Marketplace and the Zora Network.

The Zora Network

The Zora Network is a scalable, fast enough, and cost-efficient Layer 2, which was created to bring media on-chain. The uniqueness of the Zora Network is that, unlike other Layer 2 solutions focused on DeFi, it is a platform that primarily prioritizes NFTs.

This EVM-compatible L2 blockchain was created with the goal of supporting tokenized media and offering users benefits such as confirming transactions in a matter of seconds, providing new on-chain features, and cheap minting for less than $0.50.

Important! In 2023, Zora deployed Zora Network software. However, the Zora Network works as a decentralized blockchain and is not operated by Zora.

The Zora NFT Marketplace

As an NFT marketplace, Zora was made for a variety of creators in 2020 and launched on Ethereum in early 2021. This marketplace has a completely unique concept as, unlike other platforms where the visibility and evaluation of content is controlled by algorithms, Zora allows the community to decide the value of digital art.

The Zora marketplace allows buyers and creators to set and negotiate the value of NFTs, which is achieved through the "Auction House". This admin-free tool allows any user to manage their own auction houses for any NFTs, approve auctions before they start, and change a curator fee.

Important! The Zora community is also involved in this process as it controls the value and sale of digital assets between the creator and bidders.

This community-driven approach supports direct interaction between creators and collectors, while at the same time allowing the community to determine the value of digital art. Thus, the value of digital assets becomes more fair and transparent.

«The marketplace also functions as a place to register media provenance, which would help artists collect royalties hassle-free» - Coingecko.

Zora is pushing forward AI artists to create and earn by adapting the latest trends and state-of-the-art technologies. You can learn about that a bit more by listening to TechCrunch’s podcast’s episode here.

How Does Zora Work?

Zora NFT protocol operates on a decentralized model, specifically tailored for NFT transactions and creators. The main parts that make Zora's operation possible are the following:

• Smart contracts. For Zora, smart contracts are a core component of the ecosystem, including the creation, ownership, and trading of NFTs. Zora produces NFTs, thereby allowing creators to tokenize their digital art pieces. Smart contracts are required for both the production and management of these tokenized assets, allowing to maintain transparency.
• Marketplace. An important component of Zora is the decentralized marketplace, which allows creators to list their NFTs for sale. The platform eliminates the need for users to turn to intermediaries due to facilitated p2p.
• Zora rewards. Zora pays developers who improve the protocol for working on NFT drops and also rewards users for creating and maintaining decentralized applications on the platform. The creators keep all the income from paid mints and in addition to this receive 42.9% of the mint fees from free ones.
• API. Zora’s API is an important part of the ecosystem, as it allows to retrieve of NFT metadata and market data on Zora NFTs, monitors on-chain events, receives information about sales from all markets, etc.
• Fees. Zora has a «collect fee» for making NFT's secondary purchase. This fee is 0.000777 ETH + 2.5% of the listed purchase price. The platform also has a «minting fee» - a fixed fee for collectors who want to mint NFTs. This fee is also 0.000777 ETH per NFT minted.
• Governance. Zora is managed by its own community’s Zora DAO, which has the rights to deploy new versions of the protocol, as well as set and receive commissions.

Speaking about the Zora architecture, the protocol is an extension of the ERC-721 NFT standard, aimed at providing a single pool of liquidity with bids in the market for each NFT.

Source: GitHub

Why Use Zora Protocol?

Pros

Ethereum based

Zora is built on Ethereum, which offers the most trustless, secure, and scalable framework for extension.

User-oriented concept

Protocol was built as a platform for creators, not products, and is focused on unlocking ideas and potential rather than extracting value from them.

Minting

Zora believes that creativity should thrive in all kinds of systems and aims to bring this creativity online so that more creators can implement their ideas. Minting allows information to be accessible and free, while at the same time increasing the value of the creator.

Security

Zora considers security a priority and encourages any feedback to help resolve potential vulnerabilities. Despite the project's decent security, Zora also has a Bug Bounty Program that rewards up to $40,000 for finding errors or bugs.

Community Engagement

Zora promotes community participation and engagement by providing a decentralized environment where users can interact, trade, and discuss NFTs.

Zora: Minting Tokens

Minting an NFT on Zora has a small fee. However, it is important to note that еhere is no charge to the creator, and all the income received from the sale is sent to them directly. The platform has a convenient mintFee function that allows you to find out the mint fee for a specific contract. More details about this can be found here.

Important! The mint fee does not apply to admin minted NFTs.

To mint a token on Zora, the protocol uses the mint function which is called on the main 1155 contract. After this, the minter checks whether a particular user should be able to mint. After checking, the minter tells the main contract 1155 if it should be minted or not.

More detailed information about minting tokens, in particular Mint Function with rewards, Minter Strategy Contracts, and Admin Minting can be found in the official protocol documents.

Zora Bridging

At the moment, users have several options for bridging to Zora.

A native bridging from the Ethereum mainnet is happening through the official Zora Network Bridge. However, please note that this option may be expensive due to L1 gas fees. However, to bridge ERC-20 tokens, the protocol uses the Optimism Superbridge.app, which supports Zora.

“For instant bridging, multiple providers allow for instant bridging both from and to the ZORA network” - Zora Docs.

Regardless of the bridge chosen, the steps for bridging will be almost identical. For example, to bridge ETH to Zora, you need to connect your crypto wallet, select layer two network «to bridge from», then select Zora as “to bridge to” and wait some time, depending on the load on the L2 network and Ethereum.

Zora NFTs

Zora NFT platform has its own NFTs which are also quite popular in the crypto space. The most recognizable is Zorbs, released in January 2022. They were created as a commemorative NFT and Zora allowed users to mint them for free.

Source: Zora

Interesting fact! Now Zorbs are still popular and in demand, and there are even rumors about their potential airdrop, although there has been no confirming data from the project.

In addition to the original Zorbs, the platform also releases commemorative Zorbs with various Web 3 projects from time to time. A famous example of such cooperation is Zorbion.

Source: Zora

How to Mint an NFT on Zora

1. Tap the “+” button in the top right corner to start minting;
2. Upload any of your media file;
3. Choose "Zora Network" as your deploy network (minting is free only on Zora Network);
4. Add your token to a collection or create a new collection, providing title, description, and thumbnail;
5. Type your token name and set your mint price in ETH;
6. If you want, you can use "Advanced Options" for description, mint limit, sales configuration, and custom payout addresses;
7. Leave a checkbox unchecked for a cost-free collection creation;
8. Tap "Create" to finish, sign the signature request, and upon confirmation, your collection is ready to sell and illuminate the world.

Source: OpenSea

Notum’s Verdict

Now, Zora is already one of the leading and most popular NFT platforms. It is available on several networks and gives users unlimited creativity, as well as the ability to buy and sell various NFTs. Zora strives to expand creative freedom and empower creators, allowing digital art to gain new levels of recognition.

Now Zora is not only a protocol but also a large marketplace that has also deployed the NFT-specific Layer 2 Zora Network, which directly shapes the future of the NFT sector. With the proper level of security, user-oriented approach, and decent level of community engagement, Zora has every chance to become a leader in the NFT market by offering new and innovative solutions for creators.