Hello, Unique Network

Last month we deployed the beta rollout of UniqueScan and UniqueMinter, a new blockchain explorer and NFT minting tool to experiment and test your NFTs on Opal (our testnet) before they go live on Quartz, Unique Network’s parachain on Kusama.

We’ve been thrilled to see the response to these new Unique technologies, with currently 1,790 collections created on Opal in the last month alone. Thanks to everyone from the community who has supported our Quartz mission and journey thus far.

Now, we are excited to share the latest and greatest on Quartz! See below for the latest updates.

Quartz Token Allocation

First off, some important updates about the Quartz ecosystem, following our latest product announcements and our Kusama crowdloan win back in November of 2021, which couldn’t have been possible without the support of our incredible community. To crowdloan participants: we had initially allocated up to 8% QTZ for the crowdloan; however, based on the community participation, only 3% were ultimately distributed.

In line with maintaining a long-term view on the strength and growth of the community, we have now locked the Quartz token balance at 5% into the treasury for seven years. This decision will help on two levels: the optimal number of tokens in circulation and the strength of the treasury, which will, in turn, fuel development and further community growth.

Unqnft.io Moves to Quartz

Your favorite marketplace unqnft.io will now be migrated to the mainnet - Quartz. This process will involve a few steps: To begin, we will shut down the current marketplace on 1st March at 12 pm UTC.

All NFTs will remain within your respective wallet addresses. The marketplace will be back live in a few days after that; you will be able to view your NFTs exactly like before. However, one change is that the NFTs listed for sale previously will be delisted. You will be able to list your NFTs for sale again as soon as the new marketplace on Quartz is live.

Please note that the marketplace rewards snapshot will occur directly after the current marketplace is shut down temporarily on 1st March. It is highly recommended that by 28th February, you have your Chelobricks and Substrapunks in the wallets you want them to remain in during the next distribution of marketplace rewards. Once the marketplace is live on Quartz, you will be able to resume trading

UniqueMinter and UniqueScan Updates

UniqueScan is now live on Quartz! You can hop over to UniqueScan and choose to view it on either Opal or Quartz chains. https://uniquescan.io/

The beta version of UniqueMinter is now live on Quartz, you can access it here: https://minter-quartz.unique.network/

Opal Testnet Updates

Opal, our testnet, has seen some downtime.

This happened because we ran a forkless upgrade to runtime version 0.9.16. As consensus mechanics in the upgrade had changed significantly and the computers executing the upgrade were not powerful enough, things broke. Here are some next steps from us:

  • Currently Opal network is live, but we have temporarily disabled wallet and minter UIs
  • New Opal network will launch soon!
  • All collections and NFTs minted on old Opal will be moved to the new soon after the new Opal network is live
  • We will re-point WSS endpoints to the new Opal and re-enable wallet and minter UI
To avoid a similar situation again during upgrades, we have identified a robust way to conduct forkless upgrades. We will run upgrade experiments on a privately setup copy of Kusama and Quartz so that Opal becomes increasingly stable. We have decided to create this test environment on AWS and leverage their stability as a cloud provider. This decision will help us seamlessly migrate a stable forkless upgrade process to Opal, followed by Quartz at a later date.

What is Quartz?

Quartz is our experimental parachain on Kusama Network and a new user-friendly platform for you to test extreme innovation in NFTs and build for the next generation. Built on Substrate, Quartz gives you the most versatile options for discovery and democratization of the NFT ecosystem and marketplaces (with very low barriers for entry). Whether you're a developer looking to build NFTs who's new to blockchain or a creator looking to mint your latest and greatest work, there's no need to stress when using Quartz. You don’t need complex knowledge of blockchain (or a big budget) to build on our parachain.

Benefits Of Quartz

  • Speed of Innovation and Easy Access
    • On Unique and Quartz, creating an NFT ecosystem isn’t only easy, it’s fast. We pride our product in that you can launch an NFT marketplace in under an hour—and we’re always here to help you get there.
  • Customization and Flexibility
    • Sponsorship of transactions fees: Sponsoring makes it easier to onboard users onto a marketplace and allows the users to avoid dealing with network fees.
    • We also can sponsor additional types of transactions:
    • Minting NFTs.
    • Subsidized gas fees.
    • NFT transfers.
    • Smart contract calls scheduled transactions for NFT collection and white-label marketplace experiences. From minting to galleries, you choose how your customers interact with your platform and NFTs.
  • Scalability
    • Projects from the Polkadot/Kusama ecosystem solve problems from other chains with high gas fees, low tps (transactions per second) and interoperability.
    • Quartz offers 300 tps now (6000 tps in the future).
    • Gas fees are currently 0.1 QTZ for minting NFT.
  • Sustainable Minting
    • Designed for scale and efficiency, Proof-of-stake Substrate network on Polkadot means a lower carbon footprint and low cost when compared to other networks.
  • EVM-Compatibility
    • Quartz makes it easy to onboard users from Ethereum, because we present the familiar infrastructure to the user and developers viaERC-721 functionality (carried out in an NFT pallet), EVM Smart-contracts, and the Quartz token’s ERC-20 functionality.

Behind Quartz!

Unique Network is a scalable blockchain for composable, next-generation NFTs with advanced economies — the Substrate-built parachain for Polkadot and Kusama. Our advanced features and tools include customized collection management, flexible economic tools, including freemium-based blockchain gaming models made possible by subsidized gas costs, and re-fungible and fungible modes for collections, allowing for dynamic NFT ownership models. We also offer solutions that enable non-blockchain developers to quickly deploy dApps to mass markets with scalability on par with non-blockchain solutions.

In November of 2021, Unique won the 14th auction for Quartz to become a parachain on the Kusama network. We are now a fully functional chain on Kusama and are heading into our next phase: a crowdloan to fully launch on Polkadot, a relay chain that makes parachain blockchain interoperability possible.