The Far Side of Leda – Exploring Jupiter’s NFT Marketplace. ($JUP)

As I’ve mentioned recently on a few different occasions, a lot of artists have begun to gravitate away from Ethereum-based NFT platforms due to the high minting costs and flea market “ebayfication” of these sites (specifically the gargantuan ones like OpenSea). In a previous article, I noted how impressed I was with Ardor’s NFT marketplace, NFTMagic. However, today I’d like to talk about another up and coming NFT emporium, LEDA, which is runs on Jupiter’s blockchain.

In addition to being an affordable option (owing to Jupiter’s minimal transaction fees) for artists to mint NFTs, I’ve discovered it’s also something of a collector’s paradise. For being a relatively new site, there is already quite a large selection of pieces. One collection which intrigued me was the mid-century modern inspired, “Visionary Series,” which describes itself as “a series of 500 thought provoking unique art NFTS. The careful combination of colors and shapes inspires rich and creative thinking.”

Visionary 55/500 created by Block_Artsy

Perhaps the most notable recent addition to the marketplaces is the “Odd Potatoes” series, which is an exclusive NFT series made specifically for LEDA. The creators kicked things off with a free NFT giveaway of these preciously distinctive “Mr. Potato Head”-style characters. I was fortunate enough to receive one before the giveaway ended. Out of curiosity, I listed it on LEDA, and—to my pleasant amazement—it sold within less than 24 hours. I kind of regretted selling it though, as I think these Odd Potatoes might become kind of iconic, sort of Jupiter’s version of Crypto Punks or Pudgy Penguins. So I went ahead and bought up 3 of these bad boys at the first opportunity. I actually considered buying up all of them, since many had been listed for quite reasonable prices, but I thought it would be better to leave some for others to get some good trading action going.

an Odd Potato

As far as the site itself, it runs well and seems virtually free of bugs. The only area I see where there could be improvement is in the navigation. There really isn’t any easy means of navigating the site. Unless you know specifically what you are looking for and search for it directly using a word in the title, you basically have to continuously scroll down through all the NFTs listed on the site. This could be improved by adding categories, different pages, allowing different search options (most recent, oldest, most viewed, least viewed, etc) and reducing thumbnail image size to make things load more quickly. There is a lot of top notch art tucked away on LEDA, so it’s worth it to navigate even as is. If you enjoy hunting for buried treasure, you’ll definitely find it here. I must also mention that LEDA has the most useful and comprehensive FAQ I’ve seen on an NFT marketplace so far. It really does explain everything clearly and in detail. It’s rare in crypto to be able to refer tech-challenged normie users to an FAQ and have it actually answer their questions, but Jupiter’s LEDA has come through with flying colors on that front. I plan on snagging up more NFTs on LEDA and perhaps also minting some of my own in the near future.

Jupiter has established a reputation for consistently meeting deadlines on their roadmap. This has instilled a lot of confidence in the project among those who’ve been paying attention over the last couple of years. With developments like LEDA Marketplace, Metis Messenger (which I will discuss in a future article), Jupiter is slowly amassing a robust, mini-empire of practical and useful applications. Despite being named after a “gas giant,” Jupiter’s action-oriented, no-nonsense approach has been refreshing to observe in a crypto space that’s often bursting with vacuous, unfulfilled promises.
Go check out LEDA now.

For more info:

https://leda.jup.io/
http://www.jup.io
https://twitter.com/JUP_Project

If you enjoyed this article, feel free to donate some $JUP

Mainnet: JUP-3WYR-S6FR-52BE-HKHVB
BEP20 0x2b73aBdb4BbfD21180b46EcD1225987e71Ff4ac4