Even though there is not yet a functional smart contract on layer one, Cardano's development team has put together a way to create non-fungible tokens. Their experimentation with hosting unique datasets on blockchain are similar to what the pre-ERC-721 setups were like for Ethereum. Analysts say that so far, these experiments have proven to be highly desirable with token drops selling out as fast as they arrive.

The ADA Technology Management group of Cardano revealed on April 2 that it has two non-fungible token images that it plans to put on its chain. The company added that it is going to offer non-fungible token minting to its pool of services. These non-fungible tokens have a few caveats. One is that Cardano's lack of smart contracts will make it hard to create a native token. Another is that the company will only make one of each, so it will be a challenge to put any kind of value on it.

Developers say that they can put meta data into it through a file system on InterPlanetary. In one of their examples, they showed how a transaction linked to an IPFS location that displayed the code. The result was a unique token that can be transferred on Cardano's platform. There are a lot of extra hoops for these non-fungible tokens, but they still seem to be popular. One firm sold 10,000 of them in three days at a price as high as $40,000 each.

Cardano has been working on non-fungible tokens for a while. Its marketing team sold one inspired by Satoshi's Kid for 32,000 ADA. It went live at the end of March. Cardano also has a few other other projects that are in a rudimentary stage of development, but they could be a more economical way for an interested party to invest in a native token. The project's developers are still working on smart contracts, which would make their plans a lot easier and simpler to implement. They look forward to the added functionality that smart contracts have to offer. Interested parties should keep a close eye on future developments.