What is Enjin (ENJ)?
- Real Vision
- April 28, 2022
- 4:17 PM
Enjin is a technology company based in Singapore. The company offers an all-in-one service for building gaming communities through the Enjin Network, a social-gaming platform, which allows users to create customized websites, forums, group chats, and digital-item stores specifically for their communities. Some of the popular gaming communities on Enjin are from games such as Minecraft, World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars, among others.
Further, Enjin has built software that gives blockchain-game developers the ability to create and manage in-game assets in the form of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. By utilizing blockchain technology, Enjin hopes to eliminate expensive fees and fraud associated with the transfer of in-game assets and collectibles. Enjin operates its own marketplace to facilitate the trading of NFT assets created through its platform.
The Origin of Enjin
The Enjin company was established by Maxim Blagov and Witek Radomski in 2009 as it launched the Enjin Network, a community-gaming platform. In 2017, the company pivoted into the blockchain-gaming industry. Enjin raised $18.9 million in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) by selling Enjin tokens (ENJ) to the public. ENJ is an ERC-20 token and is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain.
Watch the Interview: The Crypto Gaming Revolution, Featuring Witek Radomski
With the funds raised, Enjin built its own set of blockchain services and tools. In the beginning of 2018, the gaming company released its own wallet, the Enjin Wallet, for both Android and iOS. In mid-2018, Enjin went live and officially launched the Enjin platform on the Ethereum mainnet.
Later that year, Enjin proposed a new Ethereum token standard to the Ethereum community — ERC-1155 — which was approved in 2019 and is now widespread among NFT and game creators. Following the creation of the ERC-1155 standard, Enjin built its marketplace, Enjinx, to trade ERC-1155 tokens. Today, more than 1.16 billion assets have been created through the Enjin platform, and currently more than 12.4 million ENJ tokens are locked in these assets.
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How Does Enjin Work?
Enjin helps game developers integrate NFTs into their games. They have built tools allowing developers both to create in-game assets as NFTs on Ethereum and integrate them into games and apps. Enjin also built their own wallet, allowing gamers to store their personal in-game NFTs in a non-custodial way. Furthermore, the Enjinx marketplace lets gamers trade their NFTs outside a game’s ecosystem as long as the game is connected to the Enjin platform.
Creating any NFT on the Enjin platform requires the locking of Enjin Coin (ENJ). Game developers can determine the amount of ENJ tokens they want to ‘invest’ in the creation of each NFT. NFTs created on the Enjin platform can always be exchanged back by users and game developers into the same amount of ENJ they were initially created for. This guarantees a floor price for each individual NFT minted on the Enjin platform.
Each in-game item (NFT) is customizable at the time of minting to fit the needs of the respective game. The individual features are recorded in a ERC-1155 smart contract, which is then deployed on the Ethereum blockchain, giving the in-game item the general benefits of a crypto asset, namely security and speed.
Enjin, Efinity, and Polkadot
To further develop its offering, Enjin is currently developing its own blockchain, Efinity, after securing a slot as a Polkadot parachain. Efinity is designed to be a blockchain specifically for NFTs. The chain will allow for low fees and plans to compensate network participants not only for securing the Efinity blockchain but also for governing the network and for facilitating NFT price discovery. The chain will have its own native token, Efinity Token (EFI), but both Enjin Token and Efinity coin will have utility on the Efinity chain. ENJ is needed, among other use cases, to nominate the collators that secure the Efinity chain. EFI, on the other hand, will play a vital part in the governance of the Efinity chain.
ERC-721 vs. ERC-1155 Tokens
Enjin, or more precisely its co-founder Witek Radomski, is known within the Ethereum community for proposing the ERC-1155 token standard. Back in 2012, Witek Radomski had first introduced the Enjin company to Bitcoin and convinced the team to accept the cryptocurrency as a means of payment. Later, he learned about Ethereum and smart contracts and was eager to create blockchain-integrated software. Soon after, Enjin pivoted into the blockchain-gaming industry and Radomski proposed the new ERC-1155 token standard to further improve NFTs.
Up to this point, most NFTs have been created with the ERC-721 token standard. ERC-721 tokens are unique non-fungible tokens that are deployed on the Ethereum blockchain, each as a separate smart contract. This process is costly, riddles the Ethereum blockchain with redundant code and, by separating each contract into individual addresses, the ERC-721 standard is limited in its functionalities.
For NFTs and the wider token ecosystem to develop and expand, it was clear a new standard had to be created. Thus, Radomski proposed the ERC-1155 token standard, which allows for a single smart contract to include non-fungible, fungible, and semi-fungible tokens. This solution minimizes the volume of transactions, reduces the inefficiencies of smart contracts, and saves transaction costs.
Enjin Wallet
The Enjin wallet is the center application that links all the components of the Enjin ecosystem together. Each personal wallet is directly connected to the Enjin platform and stores all the NFTs from the games built on the Enjin platform that an individual owns. Because it directly links an Ethereum address to a user’s identity on the Enjin platform, the Enjin wallet must be used for participating in all games on the Enjin platform.
The Enjin Token (ENJ)
The ENJ token is an ERC-20 token running on Ethereum. It is the native token of the Enjin platform and is used to directly back the value of NFTs created within the Enjin ecosystem. Thus, the token is required for developers to get access to the Enjin platform and use its NFT minting functionality.
The ENJ token was minted with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. Of the total supply, 80% was sold to public and private investors during an ICO in 2017, while the remaining 20% was reserved for the founders and the project. The ENJ token has a hard cap, meaning there will never be more than the 1 billion ENJ tokens initially created. Currently, about 93% of the total supply is in circulation.
How to Buy Enjin Token (ENJ)
Enjin token has a market capitalization of over $1 billion. It, therefore, has large trading volumes and deep liquidity and is listed on most of the big crypto exchanges. To buy ENJ, investors have two options:
Option 1: Create an account on an exchange such as Binance, Coinbase, FTX, Huobi, or Bitfinex and buy ENJ through a centralized exchange (CEX).
Option 2: Swap ENJ on decentralized exchanges (DEX) supporting the Ethereum network such as Uniswap, SushiSwap, or 1inch against other cryptocurrencies.