A WAX NFT Beginner's Guide
It’s exciting times in the world of crypto at the moment. There is a lot going on both within and beyond the world of EOSIO. Of course the rise in prices across most of the board has captivated many would be users but, in addition, potential adaptations of the technology and a variety of projects within the space have been equally enticing. One such project that is continuously making new inroads towards mainstream adoption is WAX.io with their booming NFT marketplaces.
The Worldwide Asset Exchange, or WAX for short, “is the safest and most convenient way to create, buy, sell, and trade virtual items - to anyone, anywhere in the world. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe already trade digital and physical items. But the problems that plague the digital goods and trading community have stunted its growth far beneath its full potential. WAXP(WAX) has created a full suite of blockchain-based tools that allows anyone to trade digital or even physical items instantly and securely, to anyone, anywhere.” eosgo.io
Now if you’re not familiar with virtual goods To Be Fungible or Not might be a good place to refresh or begin. Essentially though, for the purposes of this article we are mostly interested in non fungible tokens on the blockchain, or NFT’s short. In this piece then we will look at NFT marketplaces on the WAX blockchain and how one might go about getting started in the ecosystem.
The first thing that is necessary if you are interested in the collection of NFT’s on WAX is a WAX account and digital WAX wallet - and with big name releases already in the market such as Garbage Pail Kids and William Shatner collectibles why would you not be, but let’s dive into that a little later.
Now for those that may not be completely aware, WAX is a blockchain built on top of EOSIO technology. This is an entirely different blockchain than those you may have heard of like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or EOS, and it avoids many of the disadvantages although being revolutionary in their own rights they possess such as high transfer fees and cost of resources.
The easiest and most efficient way to get a WAX account is via the WAX Cloud Wallet. These accounts are free and as mentioned in Exploring Strange New World’s in WAX.io, one of the easiest ways to get an account on almost any blockchain. Of course there are other ways to create a WAX account as well, but for the purposes of this article detailing an entry into the WAX NFT marketplace space, the WAX Cloud Wallet is by far the easiest and most useful.
The WAX Cloud Wallet has a vast array of choices when it comes to registering for and logging into your WAX account. These include familiar mainstream options such as email/password, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Discord, Github, and Line registration and login options.
Registering for a WAX Cloud Wallet account, users are given a free 2 WAX stake so it’s ready to use upon creation.
“It’s as simple a ‘plug and play’ as blockchain can get. In fact, the only real difference from creating a WAX Cloud Wallet account than any other mainstream non-blockchain based registration or application on the Internet is that you must be sure to save the details given like the password, recovery phrase, and 2FA (optional) as if you happen to lose it, WAX will not be able to help you reset it. In other words, make sure all information that is included in the registration is carefully copied down and/or stored off of your computer somewhere safe even if on a portable USB so you never lose access to your account.” (Exploring Strange New World’s in WAX.io)
Primary & Secondary Marketplaces for NFT’s and On-Chain Collectibles
Once you have created your WAX account via the Cloud Wallet you’ll now be ready to explore all of the primary and secondary marketplaces within the ecosystem. To define the difference, primary marketplaces are generally considered exclusive to a certain product or release as secondary are understood as offering a plethora of collectibles usually via peer to peer.
For those looking to get in on the ground floor to any new releases any given project may have, primary markets will allow users to purchase NFT’s or collectibles - usually beginning a certain time on a certain day while limited supplies last. Users would navigate to the site, login with their WAX Cloud Wallet, and purchase assets usually in the form of packs either with WAX tokens or fiat by way of credit card. Some examples of these are https://toppsgpk.io/ and https://shatnercards.io/ both of which are at present sold out and did so unbelievably and increasingly fast (1). The assets would then be transferred directly and reflected directly within your WAX account denoted by the Cloud Wallet address. From there users have control and the option to keep them within your stash, move or send them to another WAX account address, or list and sell them on secondary markets.
Secondary markets then are places where users can go to buy, sell, and trade their assets. Unlike primary markets where originals are released by projects or individuals, these markets act more like a traditional trade show for trading cards whereby there are a number of listings by a number of individuals and users can shop around for the best price. Unlike traditional trade shows however, WAX.io marketplaces are ‘all access’ whereby anyone can sign in with their WAX Cloud Wallet (or other supported wallet WAX account) and partake in such as listing assets for sale, put assets up for bidding, or even in some cases, trading one asset for another, placing an offer for an asset that is no longer listed, and placing bids on listed assets.
Logging into the sites will depend upon the wallet which is used, as all interfaces are a little different. Again though, in keeping with the basics the process for the WAX Cloud Wallet is as follows:
Depending upon the site or the browser you use, your account will be remembered and signed into automatically. Regardless, you will have to go through the process at least once of selecting the same login method as that which you created your WAX Cloud Wallet account with and inputting your 2FA verification code when prompted.
Popular Secondary Marketplaces
Collectibles.io: Fully on-chain NFT marketplace on the WAX blockchain to buy and sell non-fungible tokens and collectables.
Login Options: WAX Cloud Wallet
Myth Market: Myth Markets are convenient online marketplaces to buy & sell digital collectibles from Topps, Blockchain Heroes & William Shatner and more.
Login Options: WAX Cloud Wallet
AtomicHub: A user friendly interface for the AtomicAssets NFT standard. Its features include an Explorer, a Marketplace, a Trading interface and an NFT Creator.
Login Options: WAX Cloud Wallet, Scatter Desktop, Anchor
Waxstash: Quickly buy and sell digital Topps Garbage Pail Kids, Blockchain Heroes, Fine Art and many more professional artist creations with the fastest growing marketplace.
Login Options: WAX Cloud Wallet
WAX Inventory: Buy, sell, and trade virtual crypto assets through WAX inventory - WAX Marketplace. Powered by Worldwide Asset eXchange smart contract.
Login Options: WAX Cloud Wallet, Scatter Desktop, SimplEOS
*For an up to date list of dApp offerings on WAX.io both including and beyond the NFT Collectibles space, please redirect to any of the following locations: Dapp.com, Dapp Radar, Dapp Review, WAX.GG
How to Fund Your WAX Account?
Only WAX or WAXP tokens on the WAX Blockchain will work with WAX accounts. Please beware of any WAX tokens trading on decentralized Ethereum exchanges, as WAX ported over to and operates on EOSIO technology some time ago. Unfortunately there are still ‘old’ Ethereum based WAX tokens in circulation on these exchanges because you know - nothing really ever completely dies in crypto. Do not be fooled into buying these tokens and try to transfer these tokens over to any of your WAX accounts as they will not be accepted. As confusing as this all may sound, well known Waxpert Kaefer was kind enough to clarify all this a little further just to tie up any loose ends that may still be lingering...
“At this point there are only 3 decentralized exchanges that still trade the ETH token simply because they can't be shut down. All other exchanges trade the new protocol token.But there are some exchanges that swapped late and did not change the ticker to WAXP. The WAXP ticker was chosen to distinguish the old ERC20 from the new protocol token. The internal system contract calls the token WAX, this is why it is called WAX on Newdex and in some other places.
The only place where people are in danger of accidentally purchasing the old ERC20 is from inside some wallet with Bancor integration. Bancor stopped trading WAX on their site, but unfortunately the relay in the background is still live.
The WAX protocol token can, among others, be bought on:
Newdex, Alcor, Bittrex, Huobi, Upbit, Bithumb, Bitfinex, KuCoin, ChangeNow, and Changelly.
For people coming from fiat without access to crypto the best option is Cryptolocally. There is a moonpay integration also but I would not recommend it because of very high fees for small and medium sized orders as well as bad rates for bigger ones.”
For those with an EOS account, by far the easiest way to get WAX into your wallet is via Newdex.io. All that is necessary is to log into Newdex with your EOS account, go to WAX/EOS Markets page and place an order while adding your WAX Cloud Wallet account into the designated field.
Conversely, wax can also be sold for EOS or any of the other tokens with WAX pairings on Newdex (PGL, KARMA, BET). Just sign in to Newdex via the tab on the top left, change the blockchain account field to WAX, and follow the usual steps for your associated WAX Cloud Wallet option on the left hand of the pop up.
Should you have any difficulty in any of this, you can contact Newdex support via their telegram channel at https://t.me/NewdexChat.
For those that may not already have an EOS account, you could also go through the process of registering for one via Wombat or Dapp Account which we outlined in our previous post EOS Onboarding: Free Accounts Avenues Beyond the Hassle of Multiple Sites and Resource Management Issues (Link). If the main purpose for doing so is integrating with a WAX Cloud Wallet the Wombat option is recommended as logging into Newdex via the Wombat interface is already available. (2)
For those that would like to dive into the WAX.io ecosystem without the hassle of creating an EOS account to fund the WAX Cloud Wallet with some tokens, the centralized exchanges noted above can also at the time of writing be utilized. Unlike Newdex and Alcor however, these are not decentralized so users will have to go through the process of depositing another currency, placing an order on the platform, and manually withdrawing the tokens back from the exchange back into their WAX accounts.
Closing Remarks
Although this represents only a brief introduction to the WAX.io ecosystem in the form of NFT and collectibles, it is hopeful that you now have all you need to begin getting in and playing around with this very exciting new space if that is something of interest. Of course WAX.io offers much more than NFT’s and collectible marketplaces for users to engage in such as games (Prospectors.io,EarnBet) and social apps (Karmaapp.io), but with all the hype coming into the entire space right now in regards to collectibles, we here at EOS Go felt a beginner guide for those of you that are new would be rather timely. Regardless, even if the above was something that you mostly already knew, we hope that you did gain at least a little insight into something that may be new or of use further down the road. Thank you for joining us, and do feel free to share this post around to any and all audiences you feel may find such topics of interest or useful.
Footnotes:
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Sold Out: Garbage Pail Kids on WAX Sold Out in Just 24 Hours, Sold Out: “GPK Goes Exotic Card Packs” on WAX Sold Out in 1 Hour!, “William Shatner NFT Mega Packs SOLD OUT in 3 minutes, Standard Packs SOLD OUT in 9 minutes!” (https://wax.io/blog/william-shatner-is-now-live-on-wax update)
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For more on purchasing EOS accounts via various 3rd party applications beyond the above mentioned, the following guides may be of assistance: How To Get an EOS Account with Wombat, TokenPocket, or Meet.Oneand Scatter Starter Guide.