Palm Blockchain Protocol Grows, DC Comics to Launch NFTs on Platform

Many comic books are collectibles, especially ones that were created decades ago. Along with movies and television shows, Marvel and DC Comics have some of the most valuable comic books in the world. DC Comics announced on Sept. 29 that it has partnered with Palm NFT Studio to drop its own series of NFTs.

The series of DC NFTs will drop on Oct. 5, and Palm will host the release. The comic book company chose Palm because of its low fees and reduction of energy usage compared to PoW (Proof-of-Work) systems. But what exactly is the Palm platform?

The Palm ecosystem is an Ethereum sidechain that's designed to be a network for creatives and artists. The sidechain has its own PoA (Proof-of-Authority) system, rather than being a Layer 2 protocol and integrating within Ethereum’s PoW.

A PoA network is similar to PoS (Proof-of-Stake), but instead of taking tokens, network users stake their identity and reputation. The users that confirm the transactions are known as validators. Palm says that it plans to transition to an Ethereum Layer 2 protocol in the future, with no specific date in mind. However, that date could be when Ethereum upgrades to Ethereum 2 and switches to a PoS system.

Operating on the Palm protocol, the Palm NFT Studio allows artists and other creatives to release NFTs on the platform. Because the protocol uses a PoA network, the company says that the Palm ecosystem is cheaper in gas costs, provides faster transactions, and is at least 99.9 percent more efficient than PoW systems. The protocol and NFT platform were a joint venture with Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, film producer David Heyman, and HENI Group art house founder Joe Hage.

The joint venture is backed by Lubin’s company ConsensSys, Heyman’s HeyDay Films, and Hage’s HENI group. ConsenSys is a blockchain software company that will serve various roles for the Palm protocol, including being node operators. Along with books, prints, news, and artwork, HENI has an NFT marketplace with various digital art pieces to choose from.

Damien Hirst, a world-renowned artist, was the first person to release an NFT series on the Palm NFT Studio. The series called The Currency Project, was a series of 10,000 oil paintings that correspond to 10,000 unique art pieces of Hirst, stored away in a UK vault.

In July, those series were available for people to apply to purchase them and they were priced at $2,000 each. ConsensSys said that 9,000 of those 10,000 NFTs were distributed, and the rest were kept by Hirst. Recently, Hirst designed the cover art for Drake’s latest album, Certified Lover Boy.

In June, the MLB partnered with Candy Digital, a sports NFT platform that’s powered by Palm’s protocol. Candy Digital is the official digital collectibles partner of the MLB, and is currently releasing a series of NFTs called the MLB Stadium Series. The company is founded by figures including Gary Vaynerchuk, and Michael Rubin, the executive chairman of the sports merchandise company Fanatics.

Palm NFT studio would partner with Nifty, an NFT marketplace, to help release a series of NFTs for Warner Bros. The NFT series was in celebration of the release of the movie Space Jam 2: A New Legacy. The Space Jam NFTS were created by Palm NFT Studio, and were released on Nifty’s platform in July.