Recently, NFTs have become a way to earn money and save it at the same time. Everscale also has its own NFT standard, called TIP-4, which is a product of collaboration between all Everscale developers and teams. It’s already been implemented and is on the way to being integrated into all Everscale wallets and products. In this article, we’ll explain how it works by comparing TIP-4 with the Ethereum NFT standard, ERC-721.
Difference #1: one smart contract, many smart contracts
The difference in the development paradigm in Ethereum and Everscale is that Ethereum has one smart contract that stores information about all users and wallets, while Everscale is organized based on interaction between multiple smart contracts.
As regards NFTs, this means that on Ethereum, information about an NFT collection, each NFT in the collection, its owners, minting terms, and so on, is contained in a single large smart contract.
On Everscale, each NFT is a small smart contract with its owner, who is the NFT owner, and each NFT collection has one smart contract that stores all information about the collection. In addition, there are the smart contract indexes of each NFT, which allow fast on-chain searches.
This logic of smart contract design makes it possible to take advantage of Everscale’s asynchronous and multithreading.
Difference #2: the fee for storing smart contracts
The development logic of Ethereum smart contracts is based on the idea that all data storage on the blockchain is free. There is no concept of destroying unclaimed data on the Ethereum network. Therefore, you can be sure that all the information that got there at any point will be stored on Ethereum forever.
On the one hand, this is good, as it allows you to trace the history, but on the other, the Ethereum network is overflowing with old unclaimed data, and the growing volume of blockchain nodes has already become a problem.
On the Everscale blockchain, there is always a fee, albeit small, for storing any data. This is a very important difference in terms of the architecture of smart contract development. That’s why Ethereum’s smart contract architecture is not suitable for Everscale, because there is no correct answer to the question of who will have to pay for a large smart contract storing all the information about the owners.
In Everscale, the basic idea is that the smart contract owner has to pay for storing the smart contract.
That means that the NFT owner pays for the storage of the NFT smart contract, and the collection’s author pays for the storage of the NFT smart collection contract.
For the Everscale network, this idea makes a lot of sense, because wallets for TIP-3 tokens — the Ethereum equivalent of ERC-20 — are similarly organized. In Everscale, each wallet is a separate smart contract, while in Ethereum, the ERC-20 token contract stores all information about wallets and their balances.
At the same time, we should understand that the NFT collection works no matter what happens to the collection contract. Even if someone destroys the smart contract for the collection, or the owner doesn’t pay for it, nothing will happen to the NFTs as long as the development is right.
If the owner no longer needs the NFT, then the owner stops paying for storage, and the unclaimed NFT is destroyed.
For example, storage of the Punk #294 NFT cost its owner about 0.075 EVER per year.
Difference #3: mapping or indexes
The next difference is how the information search for NFTs takes place on Everscale and Ethereum.
In ERC-721, everything is constructed on mapping. Mapping is a dictionary of keys for corresponding values.
There are several such dictionaries determined in ERC-721, which are used to quickly find the NFT owner by the NFT address. You can use the address of the NFT owner to see how many tokens they have.
However, as mentioned above, this architecture for smart contract creation is not suitable for Everscale.
As well as being expensive, in Everscale, mapping does not fit in with the multithreaded architecture, as it would require a single smart contract for every call.
Everscale has a better search solution, though — separate smart contract indexes for each NFT.
Not only do indexes help you to search within a single collection, but the current index enables you to find how many NFTs a user has in total. Two indexes are issued: a wallet index and one using the slash of the collection.
The NFT owner also pays for the smart contract index. The principle is that when you buy an NFT, the storage fee for the smart contract index is withdrawn immediately.
Difference #4: the gas fee and transaction speed
The last difference is the respective speeds of Ethereum and Everscale.
Ethereum is a sequential blockchain with a large number of users and high competition between transactions for space on the block. Because of this, the gas fees in Ethereum are also very high.
Everscale, on the other hand, is a blockchain with infinite scalability, so there is no competition for space on the blockchain and the cost of gas is very low.
This is reflected in the transaction cost of an NFT for end-users. On Ethereum, minting an NFT from a popular collection during hype periods can reach several hundred dollars, and it increases the transaction cost for all network users.
On Everscale, it is impossible to have a situation where the exchange stops trading because a popular NFT collection is announced. However, a situation like this is quite possible on the Ethereum network, where validators choose the deals that are more profitable for them. That’s why some transactions are not completed for a very long time due to insufficient gas payment.
Ethereum has popularity and a huge audience behind it, while Everscale has technical perfection and speed on its side.
