Announcing the Calypso NFT Hub

SKALE V2 marked a significant moment in the evolution of SKALE from islands of siloed L2 chains to a high-performance modular L1/L2 hybrid network of scalable interconnected blockchains.

This upgrade puts SKALE technically ahead of L1 and L2 competitors in the race to provide scalability without sacrificing security or user experience. In order to optimize the user experience, a critical component to bringing blockchain and crypto to billions of people, SKALE has implemented a number of features and coordination mechanisms. One such coordination mechanism is the introduction of chain taxonomies to help define the role various chains play in the network. Chains will be classified as either hubs, dapp chains, or community chains (where multiple dapps are sharing a single chain).

Hubs are a critical component to the creation of a larger strategy to ensure that the universe of SKALE chains can work with each other in as efficient a manner as is possible from launch (see Modular SKALE Chains and the new Hub architecture). Hubs are fully run and operated by different organizations in the community and not the core team. The core team works to support their efforts, but does not lead or govern their projects or timelines.

The Europa liquidity hub was the first hub announced last week (read more here) and will be run by several community members in an open source initiative spearheaded by Ruby.exchange. Europa is designed to create a Liquidity and ETH Mainnet Bridge aggregation hub for consumers and other dapps being built on SKALE. It was the first hub to be announced and its launch is coming in the very near future.

Without any further ado, we’d like to announce the Calypso NFT Hub. Like Europa, Calypso is meant to be a community run hub, however this one is meant to pool initial NFT liquidity into one chain, which will make integrations easier for NFT Marketplaces. It also allows creators and consumers to mint, buy and sell NFTs quickly, easily and without any gas fees, all linked to the Europa hub. Additionally, NFTs from Dapp chains across the SKALEVERSE will be able to move seamlessly to the NFT Hub and connect their users to the marketplaces.

Why name it Calypso? As SKALIENS we can’t get enough of outer space and Calypso, much like its cousin Europa, hails from space. Calypso is a moon orbiting Saturn. Europa is a moon orbiting Jupiter that has a constantly liquid pool of water under a shelf of ice (liquidity pool).

So who's driving this initiative? The genesis members participating in the Calypso NFT Hub include Afen, Curate, MyLilius and NFTrade. They are all incredibly excited to create a rich ecosystem of NFT marketplaces that connect to dApp chains, community chains, and the Europa hub. The Calypso community members will soon be releasing details regarding these proposals, so stay tuned. The proposal will include specifics on how the hubs will be structured, operated and governed.

In summary, SKALE Hubs help the Network grow in a coordinated and optimized fashion without sacrificing decentralization. The core team loves seeing the growth of decentralized community-run initiatives and is looking forward to more initiatives. Community use of DAOs and other unique strategies for structuring new SKALE Hubs are critical to organic growth of SKALE.