What is Paras? Learn about the top NFT Marketplace on NEAR Protocol

• overview
• History of the birth of Paras
• Bringing Paras to the NEAR Protocol ecosystem
• Paras and NFT . management
• Paras Comics
• PARAS token staking, game play and other new features
• NFT services will continue to grow on Paras
• Conclude

overview

Paras is an NFT Marketplace platform for digital art cards. It is one of the most active communities in the NEAR Protocol ecosystem . Paras started out as a decentralized social media platform and grew into a vibrant mecca for the arts in the cryptocurrency market. Everything from artwork to themed series can be found on Paras.

Late last year, the Jakarta-based team released a new product called Paras Comic. As the first home for digital comics on NEAR, writers and illustrators can upload their digital comics to the platform as collectible NFTs. In the meantime, fans of crypto comics and art can interact, engage, and support creators by purchasing NFTs (Non- fungible Tokens ). 

The Paras team doesn't stop with NFT artwork and comics. Paras co-founder Riqi told the NEAR Foundation that they plan to release a few more features in the coming months. All are part of the plan to become a large cultural center for the NFT.

History of the birth of Paras

In 2017, Riqi is in her final year of university. Like many early crypto adopters, he was intrigued by trading. However, as a developer, Riqi is also beginning to familiarize himself with the more technical aspects of blockchain. He was interested in building decentralized applications, but didn't feel the time was right to build a Dapp.

By 2020, the crypto space has gone beyond transactions. New protocols are popping up and a bunch of developers are starting to build Dapps on top of them. So, after leaving her job and taking a two-month break, Riqi started developing Web 3.0 apps with her partner Afiq Shofy.

After successfully building several decentralized applications on Blockstacks, Riqi and Shofy launched Paras in March 2020. Initially, the two envisioned Paras as a "personal website builder" - where users could present their avatars, resumes, CVs, etc.

But then Riqi wanted to create a larger decentralized social media platform and that's why Paras was born.

Bringing Paras to the NEAR Protocol ecosystem

Around this time, Riqi and Shofy were looking for a more scalable blockchain. In the end, they chose to bring their platform to the NEAR Protocol.

This founder uses NEAR Protocol because it is better than all other blockchains. He rates NEAR Protocol as extensible, easy to use. Tools and everything else is great.

This social media iteration of Paras launched on NEAR Protocol's testnet in Q3 2020, but it flopped. There are not many users and those who have used Paras are digital artists who are new to the blockchain space .

For months, both founders considered turning Paras into a social media platform for digital artists. A platform like Deviant Art, but on blockchain. However, after researching NFT on Ethereum, Riqi quickly realized that NFT sales were stable from August to October 2020.

Riqi and Shofy quickly redesigned Paras into an NFT Marketplace. In December, both founders relaunched Paras as an NFT Marketplace on NEAR Protocol.

By early 2021, Paras has attracted more than 70 active artists and 80 collectors who are generating revenue by selling and trading digital art cards. The number of artists and collectors using Paras has grown exponentially over the past year, thanks to the cost of minting artwork on the NEAR Protocol. Paras currently boasts 90,000 registered users, 20,000 of which are regular users. Together with 12,000 artists and 50,000 collectors, they generated about $18 million in artwork sales.

This low barrier to entry has made Paras one of the most popular NFT Marketplaces and decentralized applications on the NEAR Protocol ecosystem.

Paras and NFT . management

Some NFT markets are impacted both visually and physically, due to their decentralized nature. The sheer amount and variety of NFT artwork, while inspiring, can quickly become confusing from a user experience perspective.

This is not true of the Paras platform. Riqi, Shofy and the rest of the project development team provided Paras with a simple UX design that made it easy for users to find what they were looking for.

On the Paras homepage, users can browse through featured collections, highlighting some of the platform's most notable NFT artwork. There are also categories for the top collection of the past seven days, as well as the pieces that generated the most sales. 

Publishing allows creators to enhance their images through a storytelling format. In the publishing vertical, Paras empowers the curated community through storytelling, but also offers a weekly editorial through which the team profile the latest NFT art and creators.

These efforts also extend to social media. In particular, the Paras Twitter account showcases the artworks that appear on their ecosystem.

Paras Comics

In December 2021 – a year after its debut on NEAR, the Paras team released its most recent feature, Paras Comic. This is a standalone app, Paras Comic is a place for creators, readers and collectors to interact with comics without any centralized intermediary.

On this new comic publishing platform, users can support creators by collecting NFT comics. On Paras Comic, there are many types of stories, such as ATMA fantasy comics and Bob Boom fantasy comics. If collectors like the works, they can tip the artists.

Gary Edmund, a cartoonist who has worked with independent publishers and Marvel, said publishing Bob Boom on Paras was a great adventure. According to him, Paras and the cartoonists are doing something that has never been done before.

Edmund says Bob Boom's plot is a scam, even though it's packaged as a "bounty hunter" comic. One might expect a star wars-style story, but Edmund promises something different on Paras. 

PARAS token staking, game play and other new features

Earlier this year, Paras launched NFT Staking for the PARAS token. Created as a utility token in September 2021, the use cases of the PARAS token include exclusive tickets for future transactions and events, as well as voting in DAO governance. Staking the PARAS token will also be the foundation of governance, which is expected to launch in the next few weeks.

There will be other ways to make money on the Paras platform. With ExVerse, Paras is starting to explore gaming for money (P2E). A free-to-play P2E MMO Battle Royale game, ExVerse is bridging the gap between the mainstream gaming industry and Web 3.0. According to the ExVerse development team, it's called the "first battle metaverse".

NFT services will continue to grow on Paras

Riqi believes that the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency started with Paras Comic. Using it as a gateway, Paras plans to leverage comic culture and Fandom to reach more and more users, paving the way for future NFT services.

Paras will develop these projects themselves, or support entrepreneurial teams with the financial resources and technical expertise of the development team. Riqi said the team is currently looking at bringing digital and fashion books to NFT services in the near future on Paras.

Conclude

In fact, NFT is widely applied in the fields of games, sports, real estate and finance. Besides, NFT is also useful in many other fields such as academia, fashion and music industry. To better understand the applications of NFT, readers can refer to the article " Applications of NFT in practical fields ".

Although, NFT also gradually cooled down during the gloomy period of the market, but it is still sought by many people, as well as choosing it for speculation and hoarding. Paras is one of the NFT Marketplaces with a variety of NFT genres from pictures, videos, to comics, so you can find potential NFTs and stock them.