Getting Ready for NFTs on Unichain

🦄 Uniswap just announced Unichain, a Layer 2 designed for DeFi—but how will its NFT scene shape up?

• Unichain is on the way. The new L2, a Superchain network slated to launch in November 2024, is being built to become a new major center for DeFi in the Ethereum ecosystem. 
• The plan is to optimize for performance and user experience. The network will offer near-instant transactions with one-second block times, with 250ms sub-blocks coming later. The L2 is also doubling down on interoperability to power easy cross-chain activities across Superchain networks like Base, Zora Network, etc.  

• Yet Unichain isn’t being designed as an appchain focused exclusively on the trading vertical, e.g. like dYdX. Instead, the new network will be a general-purpose rollup that—besides being a new central hub for the Uniswap ecosystem—will also be wide open for other apps to deploy on. 
• This openness, combined with Unichain’s equivalence with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), means it will be particularly easy to deploy new projects or repurpose existing ones on the L2. Here, cue in NFTs. 
• Indeed, with this ease, the conditions are ripe for a Unichain NFT scene to take shape. For example, you could take open-source L1 infra like Zora’s NFT minting protocol and readily redeploy it on Unichain. 
• Of course, the very first NFTs on the network will be the dynamic Uniswap V3 NFTs, which are fully onchain SVGs that represent liquidity provider (LP) positions. In fact, it’s already possible to interact with these NFTs on the Unichain Sepolia testnet. But what third-party projects will come next?

• That remains to be seen. But even though NFTs may not be their primary focus compared to DeFi, Uniswap will be ready if Unichain's NFT scene quickly gains momentum. With its 2022 acquisition of NFT marketplace aggregator Genie and the integration of NFTs into its new Uniswap Wallet, Uniswap is positioned to support non-fungible assets from Day 1 of Unichain's mainnet launch and beyond.

• All that said, we’ll see what happens. I’m sure in the immediate excitement around the mainnet launch, a bunch of commemorative collections will launch on Unichain. What takes hold after that is an open question, though. 
• Will +40% of Unichain’s all-time gas fees eventually come via NFTs, like on Zora Network now? No, surely not. That figure will probably settle in the 2-3% range like it currently has for DeFi-centric L2s like Arbitrum, Base, and ZKsync. Even still, that amount of traction would mark a significant amount of NFT activity considering how much transaction volume Unichain may come to facilitate. 

• For now, there isn’t much to do ahead of the November 2024 Unichain mainnet launch, but it is already possible to set up and fund a wallet on the Unichain testnet and start making some trial Uniswap trades. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if any NFT projects integrate with the testnet. I predict at least a couple will, so get ready!

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