RareWeave - The New Arweave native NFT marketplace

The Arweave space is abuzz with the launch of RareWeave, a new NFT marketplace that has just entered its beta phase on the Arweave blockchain. The announcement of their beta launch, made through a tweet by the RareWeave team, marks the beginning of a new era in NFT ownership, promising a seamless and native Arweave experience.

Oh, and it was created by kids...

A group of 15-year-old high school kids just launched an NFT marketplace on Arweave #mindblown - Tate Berenbaum

RareWeave

At the core of RareWeave's functionality is its unique NFT-Smartweave-enabled protocol. This technology allows for the minting, trading, and exploration of the community's NFTs on Arweave. 

So, who is the team behind the creation? A few teenagers aged 14 to 17, including Nik Rykov, CTO and co-founder of RareWeave (aka mouse), SP (Sam Poirer), co-founder and CEO, and five more devs, designers, and advisors.

We found each other in the Arweave community, discussed interesting ways and use cases of smartweave contracts, brought some ideas from other chains, and came up with the idea of how to make smartweave NFTs that are tradeable against AR and any coin possible (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Solana, etc.) natively.

Reaching out to mouse for more info, I asked them what the team's inspiration was for creating the marketplace:

We were trying to prove that it's possible to build real apps with real use on Arweave, exploring new ways of communication between contracts and blockchains.

Offer Accepting Model: A Solution to the SmartWeave Contract Issue

RareWeave's Offer Accepting Model addresses the SmartWeave contract issue and allows users to conduct transactions using real AR instead of bAR or other tokens. This trading model provides a more efficient and user-friendly experience, enabling users to list NFTs for any possible tokens.

Permaweb adoption increases as tools like these are built 🛠️🐘 - ar.io

I asked the team if they faced any challenges in making the marketplace.

Yes, we faced a lot of challenges. First challenge that we solved was that smartweave contracts aren't actually able to hold custody of AR, so we weren't able to build tradeable NFT from the start. After I (with JF, creator of arweave.app) researched a lot of interoperability concepts, we developed concept specification of tradeable smartweave NFT, which later turned into tradeable NFT contract and then into RareWeave. Second challenge that we're facing now is slow speed of AR payments. In our scheme, buying NFT requires two transfers, 2nd after 1st is mined in block, and we ran into ~2 min block speed of Arweave. That can be solved by integrating payments using chains with quick inclusion in block (like Solana or Polygon), and we're actively working on it.

Expanding to Solana and Bitcoin

So the RareWeave team is not content to rest on their laurels. They've already announced plans to integrate with other blockchains, showcasing their commitment to expanding the platform's reach and providing users with even more options for trading NFTs. With these upcoming updates, RareWeave could be poised to make waves in the NFT space and attract a diverse range of new users and investors.

RareWeave is Open-Source, the team is already working with others from the Arweave ecosystem (and not only).

Did you work with any other Arweave teams to get to the beta phase?

Yes, our team is built from Arweave ecosystem enthusiasts, and we are actively participating in discussions of NFT specs. RareWeave is also fully open source and already has some outside contributors who are not in RareWeave team, which we highly appreciate.

There's now a native Arweave NFT marketplace. Meet RareWeave. RareWeave has their own NFT-Smartweave-enabled protocol to make this possible as a native #Arweave experience. It's got an underground vibe. Some wild stuff appearing already 👀. Always DYOR. - Only Arweave