Compare Zora and Mint Blockchains

This week's local narrative was the launch of the Apechain network. Launched by the founders of the Bred Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, it's perceived by many as a network for NFT or gaming. Clearly, any blockchain can have fungible or non-fungible tokens. But that does not make a general purpose blockchain specialized. A specialized blockchain must have special technological or financial features that enhance the creation, distribution, and interaction with NFTs.

We recently wrote in digests about blockchains specialized on NFTs, such as Story Protocol and Galachain. In addition, projects Phantasma and Unique Network that expand the view of the NFT ecosystem have already been listed to the aggregator.

Today, let's try to compare the Zora and Mint blockchains.

Note. These factors need to be kept in mind and one cannot compare absolute numbers, one will try to evaluate the dynamics and speed of development. 

1. Zora's blockchain was launched almost a year earlier, yet it is now more than twice as old.
2. Different market phases can favor or hinder successful launches and attracting users and projects.

Trends

Blockchains Compare

Zora's first block was validated on June 14, 2023.
Mint's first block was validated on May 13, 2024.

Both networks are built on Ethereum and protected by the Optimism technology stack. Therefore, their technical parameters such as block time or number of transactions per block are similar.

Number of transactions yesterday for Zora and Mint/The charts displays daily transactions for the past 30 days:

Cumulative account growth over time. In the same amount of time after the network launched, Zora had almost twice as many accounts.

All time active accounts number. Account growth on Zora appears to be more organic, but stagnant for the last year.

Number of new contracts.

Ecosystems

In addition to the Zora Network, the Zora ecosystem consists of:

1. The Zora web and native mobile apps
2. The Zora Protocol powering minting and protocol rewards
3. Developer tools and SDKs for creating, collecting, secondary markets, reward claiming, and metadata.

Data on the size of ecosystems varies greatly from source to source, so I'll just try to highlight what I've found. 

The least amount of information on Mint and Zora is presented on Coingecko.

We can see 65 dApps for Zora and 16 dApps for Mint on thedapplist. The portal superchain.eco argues that the Mint ecosystem has many more projects. However, there are only 84 projects listed on the Mint website.

At the same time, in the block explorer we see supported applications among which are industry giants like Uniswap and LayerZero and the total number of dApps is more than 50.

Zora ecosystem includes other major onchain media platforms. 

• Mirror.xyz — a Web3 publishing platform with collectible articles 
• Paragraph.xyz — a Web3 newsletter and blogging platform where posts can be collected 
• Sound.xyz — onchain music platform with music NFTs 

Through all these apps, you can create and collect onchain media, which is the main focus of Zora Network. 

Zora Key Features

Zora Network is unique in that it was built by a team with deep NFT experience. The platform is designed to empower Ethereum by emphasizing communities and digital brands on the blockchain, and offering toolkits for creating onchain art with a focus on gas efficiency and scalability.

Zora Chain aims to become the destination for onchain media.

Zora is geared towards creators and collectors, not traders. This is reflected in its content: most NFTs are digital art or media, not another PFP collection like on most other platforms. 

Most tokens are also not limited in quantity, but are only open for a limited time (30 days).

Zora NFT also supports a wide range of media. Besides JPEGs, NFTs can be video, PDF, HTML onchain, etc.

Creators can sign up and create on Zora without a wallet and without crypto. 

Artists can create and customize NFT drops on contracts they control on any of the supported chains, currently Ethereum, OP Mainnet, Base, Arbitrum, Blast, and Zora Network. Splits let groups of creators automatically distribute earnings from mints among themselves.

Zora Protocol Rewards lets artists earn from Zora’s 0.000777 ETH protocol fee every time someone collects from their “free mints,” i.e. drops with no list price. 

Secondary Rewards—they are onchain, built into each Uniswap market, and cannot be taken away. Every time a collector buys and sells on Uniswap, the creator earns a percentage of that transaction. This means that if a creator's mint goes viral and the market changes over time, creators have the opportunity to keep earning. The nature of Uniswap means that the relative percentage may change over time, but it will always be non-zero.

The onchain secondary market model is further supercharged by the recently added support of Zora Network on DEX Screener, one of the top DEX analytics platforms. 

Instead of creators earning just during the mint, they can now earn for the entire lifetime of the market—which can theoretically be forever.

Collectors can also earn rewards in two ways:

• Be the first to mint an NFT and get 0.000111 ETH from each subsequent mint
• Share an NFT and get 0.000111 ETH from each mint via your link (your referral is added when you share from Zora while your wallet is connected)

Zora Network unveiled a slew of new features like paying via credit card, support for HTML drops, ERC-20 minting, and support for AI layers in Canvas, a media remixer tool for putting anything onchain. 

Alchemy  brought Account Abstraction support to Zora Network, and Conduit rolled out the ability to deploy L3s over Zora Network. On the app side of things, platforms like Warpcast, Interface, and Surreal are becoming new gateways for collecting and commenting on Zora mints, especially with the rise of scenecoins.

Fans can collect any NFTs minting on Zora with ETH from any chain Zora supports without waiting for bridging. You can mint NFTs on it without having ETH for gas. Instead, you can pay for gas from another network. Connect on the chain where you have ETH, mint the NFT, and it will be sent to you on the Zora Chain. 

Read the details about Zora Ecosystem.

Mint Key Features

Mint blockchain offers a combination of unique features that cater to the growing NFT ecosystem, including:

• Abundant NFT standards: This versatility allows developers to create and deploy NFTs with varying functionalities and properties, catering to a wider range of use cases.
• The focus on creators and collectors offers an intuitive interface and user-friendly development tools.
• Mint’s secure and transparent nature can be used to track the provenance of physical goods, ensuring authenticity and building trust among consumers.

Coming Soon:

• NIPs Platform, providing developers with professional tools for NFT development and deployment.
• Strategic incentive programs that foster deeper developer and user engagement.

Mint Super App with Native Account Abstraction will bridge Web2 and Web3 seamlessly, lower barriers to entry, and drive the mass adoption of Mint

NIPs (NFT Improvement Proposal) 

Platform is designed to drive innovation and progress in the NFT space. It offers the most comprehensive collection of NFT-related Ethereum Improvement Proposals, along with the simplest one-click deployment tools for NFTs:

• Generally accepted NFT standards - ЕRС-721, ЕRС-1155
• ERC-404 is an experimental token standard that combines the elements of the ERC-20 and ERC-721 token standards to generate a token with the properties of both fungible and non-fungible tokens. 
• ERC-2981. A standardized way to retrieve royalty payment information for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to enable universal support for royalty payments across all NFT marketplaces and ecosystem participants.
• ERC-4907. Rental NFT, an Extension of ERC-721. Add a time-limited role with restricted permissions to EIP-721 tokens.
• ERC-5007. Time NFT, ERC-721 Time Extension. Add start time and end time to ERC-721 tokens.
• ERC-7765. Privileged Non-Fungible Tokens Tied To RWA. It defines an interface to carry a real world asset with some privileges that can be exercised by the holder of the corresponding NFT. 

With NIP tools you can easily create NFT avatar, meme, inscription or NFT tweet; use the RWA NFT launch and trading platform.

Conclusion

While both blockchains specialize in NFT, their approach to audience, liquidity solutions, and revenue sharing for authors is different. Zora is ahead in many metrics due to its earlier launch, but Mint highlights a more structured approach to development and implementation. I look forward to seeing both projects develop and grow along with the entire NFT industry.