What Is Enjin?

Enjin is a blockchain project based on the Ethereum network. It started in 2017 as a platform to bridge the gap between games and blockchain technology, such as NFTs. It allowed game developers to create virtual assets or Non Fungible Tokens in their games. These assets or NFTs would be functional game parts like inventory, weapons, costumes, etc. 

However, since its launch, Enjin has become more than just a gaming-centric platform. Besides gaming, Enjin has use cases for NFTs in art, sports, virtual experiences, collectibles, and even for tokenizing real-world items. 

Enjin has launched two projects that are now integral parts of the ecosystem. 

The first is Efinity, a Polkadot parachain launched on Mar 12, 2022. According to Witek Radomski, Co-Founder and CTO of Enjin, this serves as a "cross-chain NFT highway." Using Efinity, you could use digital assets across multiple chains now integrated with the Polkadot ecosystem. 

The second is JumpNet. It is an Ethereum side chain meant to solve the infamous gas fee issues Ethereum has been facing for the past couple of years. 

What Is Enjin: Key Points

• Enjin is a platform that allows people to create, own, distribute and trade NFTs.
• It allows game developers to integrate NFTs into their games. It gives these virtual assets value and offers users more ownership.
• Over 1.2 billion digital assets have been created on the Enjin platform.
• Over 12.4 million ENJ coins are currently locked into digital assets.
• JumpNet is an Ethereum scalability solution for functionality issues the main Ethereum-based Enjin network had been facing.
• Companies like Microsoft, BMW, and Samsung have used Enjin for their own NFT projects or featured Enjin products in their offerings.

You must have a basic understanding of what Enjin is by now, let’s quickly understand how Enjin works. 

How Does Enjin Work?

Enjin is not a layer one blockchain. It does not have its own consensus mechanism. Therefore, there are no dedicated nodes for the Enjin blockchain. Since it runs on Ethereum, you have to pay your gas fees in ETH. 

Since Ethereum has a lot of scalability issues because of the Proof of Work consensus mechanism and network congestion, Enjin has been using Ethereum's Raiden network. It allows Enjin to give users a good experience despite Ethereum's scalability issues. 

Although Enjin currently has more use cases than just gaming, we should look into how the Enjin gaming ecosystem works since integrating NFTs into games is Enjin's core offering. This process also applies to creating NFTs for other use cases like art and sports.

How Enjin NFTs Work

Enjin puts this process forth in five steps. 

Acquisition 

The first step is for the developers to acquire a certain number of ENJ tokens. It is necessary for minting Enjin NFTs.

Designing Digital Assets

The acquirer can then use the free-to-use Enjin platform to create a 'custom coin' or a type of NFT. Developers do not require prior coding or blockchain knowledge to be able to design these assets on the Enjin platform.

The details of the number and types of digital assets depend on the developer. Each asset can have a specific number of ENJ tokens backing it up. Usually, the rarer an item is supposed to be, the more ENJ tokens back it up.

Minting Digital Assets

The developers mint these assets once they are ready to go. They do this by creating a smart contract on the Enjin blockchain. This smart contract stores a specified number of ENJ coins and tokenizes the digital assets in return. It means ENJ now backs these assets.

Trading 

Once these assets are tokenized, users can earn them in games or buy them on online marketplaces. They can also trade them with other users or gamers.

Melting

This step is an optional part of the process. It is more of a feature of Enjin. 

Once tokens are minted and players can use them, they have a specific perceived value in the market. This value can rise and fall depending on what users think of the digital asset. 

Let's say that this perceived value plummets and the digital asset is not worth the value of the ENJ token backing it up. The user can then 'melt' this asset, erasing the presence of the asset on the blockchain and getting back the ENJ tokens that were backing this asset up.

What Is ENJ Used?

Creating Digital Assets

Since Enjin works on top of the Ethereum Blockchain, the ENJ token does not serve the governance function that some native tokens do. 

Instead, the main utility of the ENJ token is the creation of digital assets. As mentioned above, digital assets on the Enjin platform are backed up by ENJ. Enjin coin is not necessary to pay transaction fees on Enjin. It is because it lies on top of the Ethereum system. Therefore, all transactions require ETH. 

Users can use the Ethereum-JumpNet bridge to bring their assets over to Ethereum. They can transfer or mint their digital assets for free or at a nominal transaction fee.

About ENJ Staking 

Although Enjin does not support a central staking system at the time of writing, users can provide their ENJ to specific platforms or exchanges like Aave and Bancor in return for rewards. You also earn passive income with OKX earn on your ENJ holdings. 

However, staking is on the horizon, according to an update in March 2022 by Witek Radomski, CTO and Co-founder. Enjin is in the process of launching decentralized collater nodes that would allow users to stake their ENJ directly into the Enjin ecosystem. Once that happens, users could earn EFI in return for staking their ENJ on Efinity.

About Enjin Founders / History

As we mentioned above, Enjin did not start as a blockchain project. It is unlike most of the biggest names in the crypto industry. Enjin started as a host of gaming communities in 2009, with Maxim Blogov and Witek Radomski as its founders.

Maxim, the current CEO, is a creative director and an expert in content and strategy development for large interactive applications specializing in video games and blockchain. 

Witek has been overseeing the technical development of Enjin since its conception. He is also the author of two novel standards in the NFT and blockchain space for Enjin.

The first one is the ERC-1155 standard, designed to bypass the inefficiencies of the old ERC-20 token standard for NFTs in 2017. He also recently worked on the first paratoken concept for Efinity.

Both of the co-founders have been with Enjin for about 13 years now.

Enjin grew its gaming community to about 18 million users in nearly a decade. Then came the 2017 Initial Coin Offering for ENJ, which raised almost $19 million for the project. 

Since then, Enjin has grown from a niche platform just for gamers to a platform for making NFTs available to individuals and businesses, although gaming is still at its core. 

In April 2021, Enjin launched JumpNet, an Ethereum sister chain with fast and free transactions.

It also launched the Efinity platform on March 12, 2022. As mentioned above, this is a Polkadot parachain and an extension of the Enjin ecosystem. 

About ENJ Tokenomics 

Enjin has a maximum supply of 1 billion ENJ coins, with almost 90% of this in circulation at the time of writing. 

From its ICO in 2017, Enjin managed to distribute 500 million tokens in around the first two weeks of September. Among these, 400 million were purchased, while the remaining 100 million were bonuses for individual contributors who spent anywhere between the following amounts.

• $1k-$15k USD – 5% bonus
• $15k-$50k USD – 15% bonus
• $50k-$100k USD – 25% bonus
• $100k-$1,000k USD – 35% bonus
• $1,000k-$2,000k USD – 40% bonus
• Over $2,000k USD – 50% bonus

Enjin raised $12m from over 4000 individual contributors during the presale. 

Then came the public crowd sale, which started on Oct 3 and ended on Nov 1 of the same year. Enjin sold a further 300 million coins in the crowd sale with over 18,000 contributions. 

Half of the remaining 200 million coins were reserved for the Enjin team and advisors. The other half, worth 100 million ENJ coins, was reserved by Enjin for the project's future development.

Over 12 million ENJ coins are currently locked into virtual assets, taking them out of circulation. 

How Is ENJ Created/Mined?

ENJ is an ERC-20 token, and it was minted up to the maximum capacity in 2017. Since it's based on Ethereum, it does not have its own staking ecosystem. 

However, the developing Efinity platform will offer ENJ staking rewards for users of the Enjin ecosystem. In the last update from the time of writing, Enjin said that the team was still working on rolling out the Efinity collater nodes necessary for the staking process.

Once the nodes are up and running, users could stake their coins with a node. It would allow the node to compete in the selection process. Once the node is selected, it processes transactions on Efinity. In return, it would get EFI as a reward. The node would distribute this EFI among users who staked their ENJ. 

Enjin vs. Other Competitors

Enjin is focusing on more than just games. As mentioned above, they have also developed use cases for NFTs. However, we must recognize that Enjin started as a gaming platform and still has most of its momentum and reputation based on that front. 

In the NFT gaming market, one major competitor they may face is Immutable X. Like Enjin, Immutable X is also based on Ethereum. Like Enjin's JumpNet, Immutable also solved the scalability problems on the Ethereum network by allowing users access to minting free NFTs.

At the time of writing, ENJ has a market cap twice that of Immutable X's. However, Immutable has some powerful partnerships and popular games going for it. Their most recent partnerships or projects include ones with Marvel and Disney. 

They also have games like their flagship Gods Unchained NFT card game, for which they originally developed their Immutable X Ethereum scaling solution. Other big games on their platform include the following.

• Illuvium 
• Guild of Guardians 
• Ember Sword

Enjin has partnerships at least on par, if not more powerful, than Immutable X's. But Enjin may not have as many games as popular as Immutable's. Enjin's most popular games include the following.

• Lost Relics 
• Kingdom Karnage
• Age of Rust 
• 9Lives Arena 

That said, Enjin is still better positioned to take the premier position in the industry regarding making NFTs accessible. While Immutable X is an excellent platform with scalability and accessibility solutions in place, it does not currently seem to have as many use cases or as broad a vision as Enjin.

Enjin Partnerships & Investors

Enjin became one of the top 10 coins bought by large investors around the start of June 2022. 

Besides that recent development, Enjin has partnerships with quite a few big names.

In the gaming industry, Enji has partnered with Ubisoft and Unity. Ubisoft is one of the biggest names in the video gaming industry, with titles like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed. Unity is also a big name in the industry. It is a game engine developer and has one of the most popular game engines in the world. The Unity Software Development Kit is available for developers looking to build games on Enjin.

But perhaps the most significant partnerships Enjin has are Samsung and Microsoft. Samsung partnered with Enjin in 2019, featuring the ENJ coin in the Galaxy S10. Microsoft built Azure Heroes in collaboration with Enjin to incentivize its Azure developer community.

Enjin also has partnerships with major names in the crypto industry, like Binance. US, Blockchain.com, and Coin Gecko.

Enjin Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

Strengths 

At the time of writing, Enjin's biggest strengths lie in its developing ecosystem and its momentum as a forerunner in the NFT space. 

Its JumpNet platform gives users free and fast transactions for minting and distributing NFTs instead of struggling on the congested Ethereum Blockchain. 

And the recent launch of the Efinity chain on Polkadot gives Enjin a basis to expand across different networks on the emerging Polkadot parachain network.

Weakness

Despite its ambitions and user-first functionalities across the ecosystem, Enjin does not seem to have the most popular NFT games. 

If you look up the best NFT games or play any popular ones, you may notice that none of them are built on Enjin. One possible exception may be Lost Relics which may be a little outdated at the time of writing.

On the other hand, platforms like Gala Games and Immutable have a few of the current most popular NFT games.

Opportunities

Enjin only recently launched the Polkadot Efinity project. It represents two things. The first is Enjin's step into the Polkadot ecosystem, which some might call a contender for dethroning Ethereum, a.k.a. an Ethereum killer. As mentioned above, Enjin is built on Ethereum, the default platform for NFTs. 

Enjin can develop its paratoken concept with EFI and allow users to create NFTs that can function on multiple chains simultaneously. If Enjin utilizes this opportunity, Efinity could become a prominent platform in the NFT space. It would strengthen Enjin even further as it would impact users on dozen of blockchains rather than just the ones in Enjin's ecosystem.

Threats 

Even though Enjin has a strong foothold in the NFT space, it has some significant threats in the NFT gaming space. It is worth reiterating that NFT games are where it all started for Enjin. 

If competitor platforms continue to develop games that dominate Enjin's NFT games in terms of popularity, Enjin could get overshadowed in the NFT gaming space.

Enjin Roadmap

Enjin releases regular updates on its upcoming activities and developments on its website and YouTube channel.

In the latest update on July 2022, Witek, the Co-founder and CTO talked about three things. 

1. In July, Enjin should release the back-end API for Efinity to some early adopters. It is part of letting developers shift the Enjin-hosted Efinity services to their own servers.
2. Fuel tanks or reservoirs of EFI tokens would allow game developers to give users access to free transactions.
3. Ongoing work on Enjin's online NFT marketplace, NFT.io, including the use of fuel tanks for the same purposes mentioned above.

Enjin Updates, News, and Highlights

In March 2022, Enjin launched the Efinity parachain on Polkadot. They built this project with the support of the Web 3 Foundation. New functionalities like the API for developers and fuel tanks are still being added to the parachain. 

Efinity is supposed to be a platform for providing fast, accessible scalable NFT solutions that can work across chains. 

In a video on Enjin's YouTube channel, Witek, the CTO, talked about why they chose Polkadot to build the Efijity platform. They decided on Polkadot because of the scalability challenges that Ethereum was facing.

The EFI coin for the project is built on the first paratoken standard. This coin is supposed to function in ecosystems across chains like the dozens of parachains on the Polkadot system. It would allow users to use their virtual assets across different ecosystems, like how Enjin allowed gamers to own virtual assets that they could use across other games.

Enjin is also working on its online NFT marketplace called NFT.io. After Efinity, this would be the latest addition to the Enjin ecosystem.

BeInCrypto Nominates Enjin’s Efinity as One of the Greenest Blockchains

On July 23, 2022, BeInCrypto tweeted about the most carbon-conscious blockchains it mentioned in its latest Ebook. Efinity, Enjin's Polkadot parachain, made it into the list. The ebook used a quote from Wikter Radomski, which brought the point home. 

"Polkadot is proving to be among the most viable and carbon-conscious options, using the equivalent of 6.6 US households worth of energy per year, which is why we’ve chosen it as the destination for our NFT parachain, Efinity. Parachains do not require additional energy resources to operate, so Polkadot's energy consumption will remain less than 0.001% of Bitcoin.”

Where To Buy ENJ?

You can buy ENJ at OKX, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges with millions of users across over 100 countries. On OKX, you can seamlessly buy ENJ with BTC or USDT. Head to the basic trading page and search for ENJ. This will bring up the ENJ trading pairs. Choose a trading pair and place the order to complete the purchase. 

How To Store ENJ?

You can store your ENJ on any wallet that supports ERC-1155 tokens. It includes popular wallets like MetaMask and MyEtherWallet. 

Not to mention, ENJ has its own wallet, Enjin wallet 2.0.

The Enjin wallet allows you to store both NFTs and cryptocurrency assets. This includes NFT assets that are not built on Enjin like popular NFT games such as Axie Infinity and Crypto Kitties. The wallet also allows you access to the popular cryptocurrencies and the Enjin marketplace.

How To Stake ENJ

Staking your ENJ directly on the Enjin platform is not possible at the time of writing. It is because it does not use a Proof of Stake consensus system or any of the derivatives of this system. 

However, as mentioned above, Efinity's collater node launch will allow users to stake their coins in return for EFI tokens.

You can also use your ENJ tokens to earn rewards by soft staking your coins on certain exchanges. For example, you can earn rewards using your ENJ coins on Decentralized Finance platforms like Aave and Bancor.

Soft staking is a term used for earning rewards just by holding a certain balance in your account on a platform. Unlike hard staking, you can use these coins after you have staked them. It gives you more liquidity if you want to use your ENJ coins elsewhere. 

FAQs About Enjin

Is Enjin an NFT?

Although the ENJ token is not an NFT, Enjin is highly invested in the concept of NFTs. As we discussed in the article, the novel ERC-1155 standard they came up with for the ENJ token aimed at solving issues like scalability and friction for NFTs based on the ERC-20 standard.

Which Games Use Enjin?

Some of the most popular games that use Enjin include the following.

• Lost Relics – An NFT loot game featuring a dungeon adventure theme.
• Age of Rust – A Sci-Fi based on a post-apocalyptic scenario.
• Kingdom Karnage – An NFT trading cards game.
• Forest Knight – A turn-based strategy game.
• My Meta Studio – A creator-led metaverse with a set of different games
• Azure Heroes – Microsoft's NFT game reward system, which incentivizes and rewards positive developer impact on the community.

Is Enjin Built on Ethereum?

Yes, Enjin is built on the Ethereum blockchain. The ENJ token is an ERC-1155 token. However, it's worth mentioning that Enjin has made significant steps toward reducing its dependency on Ethereum. They did this by launching JumpNet, a gas-free transaction platform with a bridge to Ethereum for transferring assets.