The first NFT marketplace approved on App Store now provides a gasless minting feature

Earlier this year, Elon Musk raised concerns about the potential damage the crypto mining industry is doing to the environment. This discussion drew a lot of attention and started a wide conversation on how the industry can decrease its environmental footprint. 

Michael Saylor, founder of MicroStrategy, famously quipped that Bitcoin (BTC) miners are energy arbitrageurs in their search for cheap or wasted energy. He argues that the bad name earned by crypto is unjustified when comparing the energy consumed by the regular banking ecosystem.

There is one project that is not only concerned with energy consumption but also possesses a strong corporate social responsibility ethos and has donated $10,000 to sufferers of COVID-19 in India.

Curate, the first NFT marketplace approved on the App Store, was one of the first signatories to the Carbon Crypto Accord, where crypto businesses pledge to become carbon neutral by 2030, highlighting the world’s concern with climate change. Sometimes tarred with a bad carbon outlook, the crypto industry is fighting back, pledging support to reduce carbon footprints and increasingly focusing on renewable energy. 

The nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace is designed to deliver an all-in-one experience for buying and selling NFTs. As well as supporting a stablecoin USDC, credit and debit cards via Circle, purchases can also be made using Ethereum (ETH) and Curate tokens (XCUR). It is targeting marketplaces like Opensea, Rarible and physical goods/P2P marketplaces like eBay and Facebook marketplace but with a 4% fee, which is significantly lower than customary charges.

The carbon neutral NFT marketplace uses blockchain agnostic technology and offers gasless transactions. Its P2P marketplace focuses on fashion, gaming and electronics.

“Curate aims to bring crazy simplicity to NFTs and create a harmonious ecosystem consisting of all major blockchain features without complexities and gas fees,” says Mohammed Carrim Ganey, CFO of the platform.

The marketplace has already recorded more than $7 million in trading volume since its launch in the first quarter earlier this year and amassed a large following with more than 100,000 followers on social media. Moreover, over 20,00  NFTs have been minted and sold on the platform. These NFTs are aggregated cross-platform and cross-chain by embedding key search functions and properties into the metadata of the NFTs, by default creating hard-coded NFTs.

The app, which is available on iOS and Android, comes with its own wallet. There are fiat on-and-off ramps provided by its partner Circle directly within the app, so the user does not get distracted. This ensures they spend more time engaging with the app and potentially spending more money as a result within the ecosystem.

Curate has already formed partnerships with other giants in this space, including Travala, Shopping.io, Elrond Gold, Algorand, Chainlink, Avalanche, Moonbeam and Matic.

Travala.com, a crypto industry leader in travel bookings backed by Binance, has added the Curate token, XCUR, to pay for travel or accommodation on its platform. The blockchain-based traveling platform supports hotel and accommodation booking and covers more than 2 million properties around the world. 

In its blockchain agnostic progression, the all-in-one marketplace is also integrating with Polygon to enable MATIC as a payment option, as well as to mint on the popular Layer-two solution.

While the Curate.style marketplace is currently digital, there are plans to introduce a physical goods marketplace, and merchants are being lined up to engage on the platform.

Ultimately, Curate has as its overriding ambition to provide a simple blockchain interoperable NFT marketplace with direct fiat on-and-off ramps and to operate in a gasless ecosystem. So far, it has hit all its milestones and is one to watch – and to download onto your mobile.

“The mission statement has always been about keeping crypto simple by providing a gasless multichain marketplace for both NFTs and general goods,” says James Hakim, founder and CEO of Curate.