Reliquary : NFT Marketplace Development
Summary
Reliquary Sports & Entertainment is a licensed memorabilia and collectibles retailer with official licensing agreements with professional sports leagues, individual athletes and entertainment properties throughout North America. The company had been built on physical collectibles signed items, limited edition prints and game-worn goods but saw growing collector interest in the digital collectibles market, with significant untapped potential across its existing licensing portfolio.
About Reliquary Sports & Entertainment
Reliquary Sports & Entertainment is a licensed memorabilia and collectibles retailer with official licensing agreements with professional sports leagues, individual athletes and entertainment properties throughout North America. The company had been built on physical collectibles signed items, limited edition prints and game-worn goods but saw growing collector interest in the digital collectibles market, with significant untapped potential across its existing licensing portfolio.
When Reliquary explored available NFT marketplace options, no existing platform offered sufficient control over rights management, brand presentation, secondary market terms, or the ability to provide verifiable authentication at the collection level.
Markeltree was engaged to build a custom NFT marketplace platform dedicated to officially licensed and authenticated sports and entertainment collectibles.
- NFT Marketplace Architecture Design
- Smart Contract Development and Royalty Enforcement Engineering
- On-Chain Provenance and Authentication Layer Development
- Release Management and Drop Mechanics Engineering
- Fan-Facing Frontend Design and Development
- Credit Card and Fiat On-Ramp Integration
The Challenges
Every project starts with real problems. Here are the core challenges we tackled for this engagement.
Artix Core was severely restricted by slow storefront load times and fragmented bidding mechanics found within mainstream public white-label platforms. Third-party templates failed to process dynamic royalty distribution splits accurately or handle sudden traffic concurrency spikes during premium collection drops, causing frequent transaction drops and high collector abandonment. Furthermore, a dependency on generic Web3 minting sites diluted their visual exclusivity and forced creators into complex wallet configurations, while secondary market purchasers lacked clear provenance tracking and long-term asset data persistence.
Core approach & deliverables
A breakdown of the core components built and delivered for this project.
Marketplace Smart Contract Architecture
For Reliquary's marketplace to protect licensing economics, smart contracts needed to enforce royalty splits, edition limits and licensing attribution at the protocol level not merely as platform policies that could be bypassed by trading on external venues. Markeltree developed a smart contract architecture where royalty distribution, edition caps and licensing attribution were embedded into each NFT's metadata at the point of minting. Royalties were enforced across all secondary transactions regardless of where they originated, protecting Reliquary's licensing economics throughout the full lifecycle of each collectible.
Provenance and Authentication Layer
The value of a licensed collectible depends entirely on verified authenticity. Markeltree built an on-chain provenance layer that cryptographically connected each NFT to Reliquary's verified issuer wallet and the specific licensing agreement under which it was minted. Collectors could independently confirm the authenticity and licensing status of any item in their collection by checking the blockchain record directly, without relying on Reliquary's assurance or a third-party authentication service.
Release and Edition Management
Reliquary's collectible releases required controlled edition sizes, release timing and tiered access for different collector tiers. Markeltree built a release management system enabling Reliquary to configure edition limits, whitelist existing collectors for early access, set public sale windows and implement Dutch auction mechanics for high-demand drops. Edition caps were enforced at the smart contract level, making it impossible to mint beyond the licensed quantity regardless of demand.
Fan-First Collector Experience
Reliquary was not building for cryptocurrency experts it was building for sports fans. Markeltree designed a collector experience that removed blockchain complexity entirely, presenting a familiar e-commerce interface with credit card purchasing, email-based account creation, and an optional wallet connection. The collector experience closely mirrored the presentation of physical collectible sales rather than the interface of a blockchain trading platform. Fans could participate in the collectibles market without any prior cryptocurrency experience while maintaining full on-chain ownership of their items.
Secondary Market and Portfolio Visibility
The secondary market needed to be visible and transparent for both collectors and Reliquary. Markeltree built an integrated secondary market into the platform that surfaced each item's full transaction history from the on-chain record, current listing prices, recent sale comparables and real-time portfolio valuations for collectors. For the first time, Reliquary gained visibility into secondary market activity across its entire catalogue, informing release strategy and pricing decisions going forward.
Key Outcomes & Impact
Proprietary NFT marketplace with smart contract-enforced royalty distribution, edition limits and licensing attribution on every token.
On-chain provenance and authentication layer cryptographically linking each collectible to Reliquary's verified issuer identity and licensing agreement.
Controlled release management system with whitelisting, Dutch auction mechanics, tiered access and contract-enforced edition caps.
Fan-first collector experience with credit card purchasing and email account creation requiring no prior crypto knowledge.
Integrated secondary market with on-chain transaction history, real-time listings and collector portfolio valuation.
Our digital collectibles needed the same authenticity standards as our physical ones documentation of what they are, where they came from, and protection of our licensing economics no matter where a collector chooses to sell them. Markeltree built a marketplace where the authenticity is in the blockchain, not a certificate in a plastic sleeve.
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