From Mandlebrots to Multichain: The Story of TradePort
The community has always been at the heart of what we do. To those of you who have been with us since the early days, we thank you. And to those who are just now discovering TradePort, welcome. You're stepping into a story that’s been years in the making.
As we work together to usher in a new financial system, it’s important to pause and reflect. Today, we’re looking back on our beginnings and the ways our team and community have learned, grown, and experienced so much together. Let’s dive in.
Humble Beginnings
TradePort’s cofounders, Josh and Daniel, began their journey in crypto all the way back in 2012. Well, the truth is that Josh shared with Daniel the potential of Bitcoin, and Daniel ignored him. At this point, the space was still a fringe experiment driven by ideals, code, and community.
They kept following along as crypto developed, though. Periodically, Josh would call Daniel to tell him about a new chain popping up. In 2016, it was Ethereum; in 2017, it was Stacks.
By 2021, both Josh and Daniel had been personally diving into NFTs, and their shared curiosity and builder mindset led them to launch Mandlebrots, an on-chain Algorithmic Art Collection on the Stacks blockchain.
You can still see and trade the original Mandlebrot collection on TradePort today! https://www.tradeport.xyz/stacks/collection/mandelbrots?bottomTab=trades&tab=items
It was one of the earliest NFT drops on Stacks and gained early traction, but one problem became clear: there was no infrastructure to support secondary trading.
So they built it.
But Mandlebrots weren’t the only NFTs to need a launchpad and trading infrastructure. Artists, devs, and collectors across Stacks began reaching out, all looking for a place to mint, trade, and grow their communities. What began as a personal tool evolved into one of the first NFT platforms on Stacks.
The Rise of Move
As builders, Josh and Daniel have always been obsessed with one thing: better tech.
So when they came across the Move programming language, a smart contract language purpose-built for safety, speed, and composability, they saw the future. Unlike Solidity, Move offered structural advantages that made it ideal for the next generation of on-chain applications.
TradePort launched on Sui just after mainnet launch. Five other marketplaces were active in the ecosystem. While they had much more traction than TradePort at the time, the TradePort Team continually provided better tech by focusing on deeper analytics, clean UI, and stable data. This propelled TradePort to quickly become the leading marketplace on Sui.
For those of you who were on Sui in 2023, know it was marked by a long bear market. Activity across the board plummeted, and prices on Sui were as low as $.42. This season of hardship wiped out dozens of crypto companies due to squeezed markets, limited cash flow, and opportunities elsewhere.
Despite the hardships, TradePort continued to build and believe in Sui and Move-based tech. TradePort survived the bear market with a focus on diving deeper into the tech and into the community. While Sui NFT contracts have additional complexity and rules, the TradePort Team became experts in Sui contracts and has provided guidance to teams in the ecosystem.
The Multichain Era
Currently, TradePort not only supports Sui but has expanded its reach, adding support for Movement, Aptos, IOTA, and Supra. What started as a small project on Stacks has now become a multichain marketplace and developer platform, connecting creators and traders across six major blockchains.
The Evolving NFT Landscape
The crypto space looks very different in 2026 than it did just a few years ago.
The past year has been defined by institutional adoption, regulatory clarity in the U.S., and the rise of new NFT verticals. While traditional PFPs and generative art still hold strong, real-world assets (RWAs), on-chain games, and programmable utility NFTs are attracting increasing attention, capital, and developer mindshare.
The TradePort Team is optimistic about the future of blockchain tech, and we hope to not just support it but drive innovation alongside the community.
One way we’ve stepped forward in innovation is through the launch of Liquid NFTs. After recognizing key challenges faced by our community, including a lack of liquidity, limited holder rewards, and the underappreciation of rarity, we developed a custom, in-house primitive designed to address them head-on. You can read more about liquid NFTs here: https://www.tradeport.xyz/blog/introducing-liquid-nfts-unleashing-nft-liquidity-to-make-nfts-great-again.
Where we are headed
To everyone who has supported us, collaborated with us, or recently discovered TradePort: thank you. This platform exists because of you. The work we do is driven by the community, and together, we’ll shape the future of on-chain assets.
2026 marks the beginning of a new chapter for TradePort. After countless conversations with builders, partners, and community members, one message has been made clear: the space needs to grow.
That need, combined with the broader shifts happening in crypto, has driven us to bring new real-world assets on-chain, assets designed to spark activity, demand, and opportunity for all on Sui.
If we’ve seemed quiet lately, it’s because we’ve been heads-down, bringing this vision to life. And if you’ve been paying attention, the next chapter has already started to unfold... Check out a sneak peek here: https://x.com/RipStationxyz/status/2062196808583897129?s=20
