While DeFi has been taking the spotlight, digital collectibles, or non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have been been quietly gaining traction in the background.

Well-known platforms such as Ethereum, EOS, and WAX already utilize this revolutionary new technology to mint unique digital items, but there are also smaller projects that are working hard to carve out a niche in the industry.

Phantasma Chain is one of these relatively low market cap projects that's been focused on bringing NFTs to the gaming sector. Currently ranked #436 on CoinGecko, they have been hard at work innovating, and have the potential to reach a much broader gaming market.

Phantasma Chain's Tech

In 2018 Phantasma Chain raised funds through an Initial Coin Offering on the NEO blockchain and launched their mainnet in October of last year. The block producers who validate transactions on the network were initially appointed by the team, however there was a plan to decentralize in the future. As per their January update:

How will future BPs be selected? We are planning to utilize our Onchain Governance System for the future BP selection process. SOUL Masters can submit a pitch nominating themselves as candidates, while the community can vote for their preferred candidates based on their pitch as well as their (potential) contributions to the Phantasma ecosystem.

A "SOUL Master" is anyone who has staked more than 50,000 $SOUL (worth about $2500 USD). SOUL Masters collect rewards from a pool of 125,000 $SOUL tokens on a monthly basis over a total of four years, in proportion to their staked amount.

Similar to NEO and VeChain, Phantasma Chain has implemented a two token model: the $SOUL token is used to govern the blockchain and the $KCAL token is used to pay for transaction fees (energy). Distinct from other platforms though, simply holding $SOUL in your wallet will not produce energy. Users must stake $SOUL in order to earn generate $KCAL.

In cooperation with other highly valued projects such as Matic, Algorand, and WAX, Phantasma Chain announced in June that they would join the Blockchain Game Alliance, an organization committed to promoting blockchain within the game industry.

Wallet software

Perhaps the most remarkable wallet available for Phantasma Chain is Pavillion, a game distribution platform with a built-in NFT minting tool and NFT marketplace.

Similar to WAX's user-friendly Cloud Wallet solution, users can create a blockchain account using their email address. This should alleviate their fear of losing valuable digital assets should they happen to misplace their private keys.

Using familiar account recovery procedures, it is possible for a user to regain access to their private keys. While this does put the site in ultimate control of the player's assets, it could help to bring less blockchain-aware users to the platform.

Gamers who simply want to store and track their digital assets can install the lite wallet, Poltergeist, which is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. There is also a Chrome extension wallet available for download called Ecto.

NFT Tech

Of particular note is how the developers of have been working on a cross-chain NFT marketplace called GhostMarket. It is currently possible to swap NFTs between the Phantasma Chain and NEO blockchains, and swapping to Ethereum is currently in development.

Users are able to create NFTs for free on Pavillion, and they can be bought and sold in bulk. In fact, up to 100 NFTs can be bundled into a single transaction. NFTs can be purchased on Pavillion's marketplace using either of the project's currencies, $SOUL or $KCAL.

Among other exchanges, Plasmachain's $SOUL token can be purchased on Kucoin or Switcheo.

Conclusion

The idea of a cross-chain NFT marketplace is quite intriguing. If the community could convince some popular games on Ethereum to transfer their assets to a feeless alternative like Plasmachain, that would certainly be good news for the platform.

Considering how young the market for NFTs is, any project that works hard should be able to carve out a niche in the industry.

If you're interested in the project, be sure to follow Phantasma Chain on Twitter for their latest updates, and read their Medium blog to get more details.