How CNFT.io achieves decentralization without smart contract?

Hi fellows,

I am very new to Cardano and also a fan of NFTs. Today, I went over the most recommended NFT website (cnft.io), created an account and did some test on the platform. But what concerns me is the decentralization level of the approach. As I understand, to buy an NFT token, there are basically 3 steps.

  1. When I hit the Buy button, there displays an address (I named it “designated address”) and asks me to send ADA to this address. So in this step, the Buyer sends some ADA to the “designated address”
  2. The Seller sends the NFT to the “designated address”.
  3. Finally, the NFT is send to the Buyer, and the ADA is sent to the Seller from the “designated address”.

So my question is, who has control over the designated address, or specifically, who owns the designated address?

Hello @namlleh

CNFT.IO is not a Dapp. It is a non-custodial centralized exchange. This is a business entity registered in Seychelles. So, any platform assets like website, code, escrow wallets are fully owned and controlled by CNFT.IO developers.

Hope this answers your question :smiley:

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Thank you for the response. Btw, is there any decentralized marketplace for NFTs?

I’m just asking with very little knowledge about the platform. Just don’t know where to ask. I saw people talking about cNFT.io everywhere, and thought this was the right place.

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I am not aware of any decentralized projects for CNFTs. However, I did use CNFT.IO to buy and sell CNFTs and they are the best option available so far.

This is still early days for development, so there is probably more projects on the way.

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Check out https://tokhun.io :wink:

I did check it out multiple times. So far I had only negative experiences with them. Had to contact support for every listing and sale I attempted. to make. You have to use their wallets which gives them custody of your CNFTs, not sure how I feel about that. Also, selection of CNFTs to purchase is very limited. As of today they have less then 5k NFTs for sale, compared to over 300k on CNFT.IO.

However, I know it is a startup. They have some very skilled devs on their team and they have some great ideas, so I’ll give them a try again in a while after they work out a few of those bugs.

They released their smart contract marketplace less than a week ago and traffic has increased a lot since, not sure if they already integrated Nami wallet but that should do the trick for you :wink: