In the ever-evolving world of NFTs, innovation is the cornerstone of progress. Enter Shipyard, a groundbreaking initiative that’s poised to redefine the way NFT creators and developers operate. In this blog post, we delve into the intricacies of Shipyard, an open-source collection of Solidity contracts that promises to revolutionize the NFT landscape.

Our hope is that Shipyard can serve as a hub for NFT-related development — making it easier for technical creators to start building their own NFTs, and to present a set of shared standards and best practices so more people can learn.

Background: Smart contract development within the blockchain ecosystem heavily relies on tried-and-true templates and libraries. Prominent names like OpenZeppelin and Solmate have long been the go-to resources for developers seeking to craft secure and efficient code. However, there’s always room for improvement and innovation.

Shipyard: A New Horizon for NFT Developers Shipyard emerges as a breath of fresh air, designed to harmonize and enhance the existing tools tailored for NFT creators and developers. Its mission? To provide a comprehensive resource that caters specifically to the needs of NFT projects.

Key Features:

• Unifying NFT Libraries: Shipyard brings together a multitude of top-tier NFT libraries and implementations under one roof. This consolidation creates a powerful repository, ripe for developer contributions.
• Dynamic On-Chain Metadata: The platform equips developers with tools for implementing dynamic on-chain metadata. This feature adds a layer of versatility to NFTs, allowing for more interactive and engaging experiences.
• Seamless NFT Transfers: Shipyard doesn’t stop there; it also streamlines NFT transfers, making them more seamless. This improvement in user experience is set to benefit both creators and collectors.
• SIP Integration: Shipyard goes a step further by providing encoders and decoders for Seaport Improvement Proposals (SIPs). This integration simplifies the process of building on Seaport, contributing to a more interconnected NFT ecosystem.

The Vision: The driving force behind Shipyard is to become a central hub for NFT-related development. By doing so, it aims to lower the barrier to entry for technical creators, making it easier than ever to embark on NFT projects. Additionally, Shipyard aspires to establish a set of shared standards and best practices that can guide NFT enthusiasts of all levels.

Join the Journey: Shipyard’s journey is just beginning, and it invites NFT developers from all corners of the blockchain universe to become contributors. By joining hands with this innovative project, you can play a pivotal role in shaping the future of NFTs.

Introducing Shipyard, an open-source collection of Solidity contracts for NFT creators. pic.twitter.com/AoPcT1qNjO

— OpenSea (@opensea) October 24, 2023

TL;DR: Shipyard is an open-source collection of Solidity contracts designed for NFT creators and developers. It unifies NFT libraries, offers dynamic on-chain metadata, streamlines NFT transfers, and supports Seaport Improvement Proposals (SIPs). The goal is to simplify NFT development and establish shared standards. Join Shipyard’s mission to revolutionize the NFT landscape!

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In an era where digital art is blooming and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are altering the way we perceive ownership and value, Transient Labs comes forth with a groundbreaking innovation – the Shatter Contract. A unique smart contract that paves the way for novel interactions between artists and collectors, Shatter Contract is a game-changer in the NFT space.

With Shatter, artists can mint their digital creations as a unique 1/1 and define if they’d want it to be Shattered into editions or unique 1/1s. Then, set the edition cap. Later, the collector can ‘shatter’ the piece into the pre-defined number of editions or unique 1/1s.

At its core, Shatter Contract is designed to revolutionize NFT collectibility. It empowers artists with the ability to mint their digital creations as one-of-a-kind (1/1) tokens and stipulate if they desire them to be shattered into editions or remain as unique 1/1 pieces. Post-minting, the reins are handed over to the collector, who can choose to ‘shatter’ the piece into a predefined number of editions or unique 1/1s.

One of the most enthralling aspects of this smart contract is what happens post-shattering. Once shattered, the new editions are seamlessly airdropped into the collector’s wallet, with the original 1/1 piece being burned. But the innovation doesn’t halt here. Should a collector own all the editions or 1/1s, they have the option to ‘fuse’ them back into their original 1/1 form. This level of flexibility allows collectors to either keep the NFT as a single piece or diversify it into multiple editions or unique 1/1s, each with its own value and demand in the marketplace.

For collectors, this not only introduces a level of liquidity, as they have the option to sell parts or the whole, but also a deep level of engagement with the art piece. They can interact intricately with the art, choosing to keep it shattered or fuse it back to its original form, each action narrating a different story of interaction and value perception.

Artists aren’t left behind in this innovative journey. The Shatter Contract offers them an avenue to unlock liquidity mechanisms by offering editions for collectors. It extends the artistic canvas by allowing the upload of variations of the piece as distinct 1/1s or even shattering an animation into a collection of unique 1/1s, which are the still frames, enriching the narrative and the value of the artwork.

Transient Labs has meticulously optimized the Shatter Contract, reducing gas costs by approximately 50%, ensuring more art transactions with less gas spent. In addition, they have developed the ShatterRegistry to bolster authenticity, security, and adaptability for future functionalities.

The first exhibition of the Shatter technology was displayed in the “Traffic Jams” collection by artists Bryan Brinkman and Cafromthesky. Collector Murat Pak bought the 1/1 piece and then shattered it into 16 unique 1/1s. Following suit, several artists have explored the Shatter Contract to present their creations in a new light, paving the way for collectors to interact with digital art in unprecedented ways.

8/ The first use of our Shatter tech is in @bryanbrinkman & @cafromthesky "Traffic Jams" collection.

Collector @muratpak bought the 1/1 and then shattered the piece into 16 unique 1/1s.

Take a look here: https://t.co/I268d5396N pic.twitter.com/NOJ3lHRuZu

— Transient Labs (@TransientLabs) October 16, 2023

With the Shatter Contract, Transient Labs is not merely introducing a new smart contract but is crafting unique experiences, forging a path of novel engagement between creators and collectors. It’s an invitation to think of innovative ways to engage with the audience and craft unique narratives in the digital art domain.

As we anticipate more innovations from Transient Labs, it’s clear that the Shatter Contract is a giant leap towards a more interactive and engaging NFT space, making every digital art piece not just a visual spectacle but an interactive journey.

TL;DR: Transient Labs introduces the Shatter Contract, a unique smart contract allowing artists to mint digital creations as unique 1/1 pieces that can be shattered into editions or unique 1/1s by collectors. This innovation facilitates deeper interaction with digital art, opening up new liquidity avenues and engagement levels for both artists and collectors.

The post Shattering Norms: How Transient Labs is Redefining NFT Collectibility with the Shatter Contract appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

In the cutting-edge domain of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), the MEMES team, spearheaded by Punk6529, has unfurled a groundbreaking tool – EMMA. Conceived with the objective of streamlining the allowlist process within the NFT ecosystem, EMMA epitomizes a significant leap towards reducing manual drudgery and rendering the allowlisting process more seamless and efficient.

The Genesis

The underpinnings of EMMA can be traced back to the MEMES team’s extensive journey across 150 allowlisted mints. Each mint, entailing three meticulous phases and multiple snapshots, laid bare the intricacies and challenges embedded in the allowlist management arena. This in-depth encounter with the process intricacies propelled the MEMES team to envision a solution, thus giving birth to Janus, a domain-specific language crafted exclusively for allowlists. EMMA, embodying the inaugural reference implementation of Janus, emerges as the quintessential tool aimed at automating and simplifying the allowlist procedure.

The Mechanism

The essence of EMMA lies in its ability to alleviate the manual workload traditionally associated with allowlist management. By instilling an automated workflow, EMMA not only streamlines the process but also significantly trims down the time and resources expended in managing allowlists manually. This is a monumental stride towards enabling artists and galleries to focus more on the creative spectrum rather than being entangled in the administrative hassles.

1/ Introducing EMMA – the Editor for Managing MultiPhase Allowlists

As you know, we love allowlists at The Memes and we believe someday you will too.

I know that, in the bear market, limiting access to mints is the opposite of everyone's problem, but I assure you… pic.twitter.com/B6usodJIEo

— 6529 (@punk6529) October 11, 2023

The Open-Source Ethos

In alignment with the overarching vision of propelling 100 million individuals into the open NFT-based metaverse, the MEMES team has showcased a profound commitment towards community-centric development by rendering EMMA an open-source asset. This move is a testament to the democratization ethos, paving the way for the entire NFT community to leverage, contribute to, and enhance EMMA, thereby collectively elevating the allowlist management paradigm.

The Horizon

With a treasure trove of innovative ideas in their arsenal, Punk6529 and the MEMES team are on a relentless pursuit towards not only refining EMMA but also unfolding more tools and technologies in the near and distant future. The invitation is open for enthusiasts, developers, and the broader community to join forces, contribute, and be an integral part of this exhilarating journey towards redefining the NFT landscape.

The narrative surrounding EMMA isn’t merely about a technological breakthrough; it encapsulates a vision, a community-driven ethos, and a steadfast resolve to continually drive innovation in the NFT realm.

TLDR: EMMA, introduced by Punk6529 and the MEMES team, is a pioneering tool designed to automate and streamline the allowlist management process in NFTs. Stemming from extensive experience in allowlisted mints, EMMA, an open-source initiative, aims to democratize allowlist management for the NFT community, marking a significant milestone towards achieving a more accessible and efficient NFT ecosystem.

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OpenSea, a leading player in the NFT ecosystem, has recently announced significant changes to its creator fee strategy. While these changes embrace certain DeFi principles, they have also raised concerns within the NFT community, challenging the notions of digital ownership and the role of royalties in supporting artists. This critical analysis dives into the implications of OpenSea’s decision, its departure from traditional practices, and the commentary from notable figures like Mark Cuban.

We launched our Operator Filter so creators could restrict secondary sales to web3 marketplaces that enforce creator fees.

But we relied on opt-in by the entire ecosystem, which didn't happen. So we’re making a few changes to our approach to creator fees.

— OpenSea (@opensea) August 17, 2023

Unpacking OpenSea’s Strategy

OpenSea’s original vision, embodied in the Operator Filter, aimed to enforce creator fees on secondary sales across web3 platforms. However, the reliance on ecosystem-wide opt-in hindered its success, prompting OpenSea to pivot its approach to creator fees. Starting from August 31, new collections will have optional creator fees on secondary sales. This move, while aligned with some DeFi principles, contradicts the traditional concept of royalties and digital ownership.

Impact on Digital Ownership and Royalties

One of the driving forces behind the NFT revolution has been the potential for artists to earn royalties on secondary sales of their work. This concept aligns with the idea of digital ownership, where creators continue to benefit from the appreciation of their art. OpenSea’s shift to optional creator fees dilutes this principle, potentially weakening the bond between artists and collectors and raising questions about the long-term sustainability of artists within the NFT ecosystem.

Mark Cuban’s Concerns

Mark Cuban, a notable investor and figure in the tech industry, expressed his criticism of OpenSea’s move, particularly its decision to forego collecting and paying royalties. Cuban sees this as a significant misstep that undermines trust in the platform and has the potential to harm the industry as a whole. His comments highlight the tensions between the new-age DeFi approach and the more established art world practices that have fueled interest in the NFT space.

Not collecting and paying royalties on NFT sales is a HUGE mistake by @opensea. It diminished trust in the platform and hurts the industry. And I say this as an @opensea investor @DevinFinzer

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) August 18, 2023

Navigating the Future

OpenSea’s acknowledgment of the importance of choice in creator fees is not without merit. The web3 landscape offers various revenue streams beyond royalties, and flexibility is crucial for both creators and collectors. However, striking a balance between these emerging DeFi ideals and the traditional mechanisms that have driven the NFT movement’s appeal remains a challenge.

OpenSea’s shift in creator fees marks a notable departure from the established norms of digital ownership and royalties that have been pivotal to the NFT ecosystem’s growth. While the move aligns with some DeFi principles, it also raises questions about the future dynamics between artists, collectors, and platforms. As the NFT landscape continues to evolve, striking a balance between innovation and the preservation of core values will be essential to ensuring the continued success and trustworthiness of the ecosystem.

What Comes Next?

New Approach: Starting from August 31, OpenSea will be embracing a new approach to creator fees, focusing on flexibility and choice. Here’s what you can expect:

1. Sunset of Operator Filter: The Operator Filter, which aimed to restrict secondary sales to platforms enforcing creator fees, will be discontinued.
2. Optional Creator Fees: For new collections, creators will have the option to apply fees on secondary sales. This approach empowers creators to decide whether to implement creator fees based on their preferences.
3. Enhanced Visibility: OpenSea is dedicated to enhancing the visibility of creator fee settings and listings for both buyers and sellers. This ensures transparency and informed decision-making within the ecosystem.

Impact on Existing Collections: For existing collections, OpenSea’s new approach will be applied as follows:

• Collections Using Operator Filter: Preferred creator fees will be enforced on OpenSea until February 29, 2024, after which they become optional.
• Collections Not Using Operator Filter: There will be no change in the fee structure for collections that haven’t utilized the Operator Filter.

Product Enhancements: To provide a seamless experience for users, OpenSea is introducing several product updates:

• Collection Page Filter: A filter will be integrated on the collection page, allowing buyers to easily identify listings with preferred creator fees.
• Item Page Highlight: Listings with creator fees will be highlighted on the item page, offering better visibility to potential buyers.
• Seller Experience: Sellers will have an enhanced interface to either select the creator’s preferred fee or customize the creator fee, offering more control and personalization.

Learnings and Implications: OpenSea’s journey has revealed important insights:

• Opt-In Challenge: The Operator Filter’s reliance on ecosystem-wide opt-in highlighted the complexities of implementing uniform fee structures.
• Importance of Choice: Acknowledging that creator fees are significant for both collectors and creators, OpenSea’s new approach empowers individual preferences.
• Diverse Revenue Streams: OpenSea recognizes that creator fees are just one facet of the many revenue opportunities available to creators within the web3 landscape.

TL;DR: OpenSea’s transition to optional creator fees on secondary sales, departing from traditional royalty practices, raises concerns about the impact on digital ownership and artists’ sustainability. The move, influenced by DeFi ideals, is criticized by figures like Mark Cuban, who believe it could undermine trust in the platform and the NFT industry as a whole. Balancing innovation with the core values of the NFT movement remains a challenge as the ecosystem evolves.

The post OpenSea’s Shift in Creator Fees: Balancing Innovation and Traditional Values in the NFT Ecosystem appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

Sutu is an XR Artist/Storyteller who is the creator of the 10k Tezos collection Neonz, co-founder of Eye Jack App, TED Speaker and soon to be releasing his latest incarnation of his project – Circuit Breaker. 

The Sutuverse is a Web3 playground exploring the possibilities of NFT powered interactive experiences including AR, webGL and later in the year some VR.  On July 6, Sutu premiered to the world his new Neonz game ‘Circuit Breaker’ at the Proof of People exhibition at Fabric in London. The team had a computer terminal set up at the exhibition where visitors were able to play the game as a number of Neonz avatars and battled their way through a neon maze of obstacles to get the fastest time.  Additionally, at the exhibition Sutu showcased  ‘Neonz Facez’ – an interactive AR installation where visitors stand before a large 75 inch screen that is mounted with an iPhone. They were able to activate any one of his 10000 Neonz cyberpunk AR face filters. 

As the next evolution of The Sutuverse – Circuit Breaker is a browser-based speed run game. Sutu is aiming to launch the game publicly in the next few weeks. Launch date TBA, keep an eye on Sutuverse.com for updates. This is a Tezos based project, so users will be able to sync their Tezos wallets and then purchase a Neonz coin to play the game. For folks who own a Neonz already your Neonz will materialize as a full body 3d avatar. In game, they will have the option to customize and pimp out their Neonz with a bunch of new accessories. If you don’t own a Neonz, you can play as a nude base model, but will miss out on a few perks.  

This is a huge achievement technologically Sutu is proud of because in his words not only is this first release finished but “we figured out how to get all 10000 Neonz avatars loading in the game and also on peoples faces using AR – still can’t believe how smoothly that works.” In the long term this is a world building project, and since Sutu comes from a story-telling background, he is excited to further release his long wishlist of new features and lore as the Sutuverse evolves and grows. 

Links to explore more of The Sutuverse

Sutuverse Website – https://www.sutuverse.com/

Sutu Eats Flies Artist Website – https://www.sutueatsflies.com/

Neonz Website – https://www.neonz.xyz/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/sutu_eats_flies

The author of this article is a collector of Neonz at the time of publication.

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NOOBPUNKS is a newly released pfp-style project, consisting of 10,000 generated punks, in the style of the NOOBS project. NFT Culture Labs was enlisted to help build the art generator for the project, as well as provide a smart contract implementation using the latest state of the art in gas optimizations. Gas savings was a priority for the project, as the punks are being offered at a relatively inexpensive price, comparable to other punk-derivative projects.

The general approach to develop NOOBPUNKS was the following: stick to well adopted practices, minimize or eliminate access to storage variables where possible, prioritize common cases over uncommon cases, carefully consider what features to include in the contract versus what to do off-chain.

Visit https://www.noobsnft.com/punks/ to mint today!
Public Minting starts on Feb. 16th at 10am CST.
NOOBPUNKS – 10000 generated punks in the style of NOOBS
Click here to view the verified NOOBPUNKS contract

Prioritize the common cases

• Single mint vs. batch minting

The initial decision during the contract development process was whether to start with an ERC721A base contract or to use ERC721P or NFTCultureLab’s ERC721Public as the base contract. While we wanted to use the ERC721Public implementation, the decision ultimately came down to our prediction of the most common use case of the NOOBPUNKS contract: single mints vs. batch mints.

In a scenario where most or all minters are likely to mint single tokens, ERC721Public can shine, as it will match and potentially exceed the gas savings of ERC721A’s mint function. However, once even a handful of batch mints are expected, the savings from ERC721A’s batch minting process will quickly yield drastic savings vs. ERC721Public.

It’s important to take the likely scenarios into account when choosing the base contract that you wish to use. The primary shortcoming of ERC721A, which is it’s lack of burn functionality, has been addressed in a recent changeset, see PR#61. Be sure to check with the Chiru Labs github here and get the latest version of the contract before you use it. (As of the time of this writing, the latest version is 2.2)

• Separate allowlist minting from public minting

Another example of analyzing common scenarios carefully can be seen in the design of our mint functions. Often, contracts will attempt to contain all mint functionality within a single mint function. This is a huge problem, from a gas perspective, because functionality like allow list checks, presale checks, etc. will be executed on all mint calls, for all people, regardless of the phase or the eligibility of the end-user. To make matters worse, these checks will typically involve expensive storage lookups. This results in a double penalty to the most important portion of a project sale – the public minters.

An easy solution to the problem of wasteful allowlist checks, is to seperate them out into their own individual mint functions. A side affect of this decision, is that it makes it easier to unit test your functions, as you just write separate, targeted tests as well. This optimization can be seen in practice in the NoobPunksBase.sol contract file:

By targeting each phase seperately, end users in the phase only pay gas for operations that are entirely relevant to their scenario. This adds a little bit of overhead to the gas used by deploying the contract, but its a small drop in the bucket compared to how much gas is saved when minting.

Following well adopted practices

• Preserve the intentions of ERC721 as best as possible

When developing a contract, and especially when making modifications to a well known contract implementation such as Open Zeppelin’s ERC721 implementation, it is important to do your best to conform to not just the interfaces but also the intended meaning and outcomes of the functionality. Gas optimizations are great, but if totalSupply() is changed to mean totalNumberMinted() or burn() transfers a token to address(1) instead of address(0), people are likely to use the functions provided by your implementation improperly. Worse than that, you run the risk of incompatibilities with marketplaces if you deviate too far from what is commonly expected.

Minimize or eliminate access to storage

Learning the lesson of storage and its impact on gas is an important process for new solidity developers to go through. When gas is no object, the complexity and richness of features that you might want to implement are quite broad, but once you come to realize that the contract will be unaffordable to operate, you quickly will refocus on the objective of making things as streamlined as possible.

• Leverage base class functionality as much as possible

A great example of this optimization is leveraging the “numberMinted” property provided by ERC721A. The numberMinted field is great for keeping track of how many tokens someone has claimed against a claimlist or if you want to make sure each wallet can only mint a set amount during the public sale. You can save a pretty significant amount of gas by leveraging functionality provided by the base class instead of implementing functionality similar to how you might have done it in previous non-gas optimized project.

• Constants instead of storage variables. Have a strategy in your system that allows for unit testing 

Constants are an important type of variable to leverage in solidity. When your contract is compiled, the compiler will replace instances of a constant with its value, as if the constant didnt exist. So constants serve a role of looking like a variable, but playing like they are a hardcoded value. This is important, because a constant can allow you to leverage a single value across multiple locations in the code, similar to what you might do with a private variable, but without the corresponding impactful storage gas overhead. The big drawback with the constants approach, is that it makes unit testing more difficult. You either have to provide override functions that use member variables instead of the constants, or you need to replace your variables with constants right before you deploy the contract to mainnet. For NOOBPUNKS, we started by defining as many variables as possible as constants. Those that potentially could be converted to constants, we commented as such. We then created unit tests that tested both the values used during testing, as well as the actual mainnet/to be deployed values. Once we flipped the variables over to constant, we set the unit tests with test values to skip. As long as all the remaining tests are passing, then we were safe to deploy.

• Pack variables where it makes sense.

Because Solidity is built on top of 256bit values, Boolean and Integer variables can typically be packed together without any loss of data. Though this process can be tedious and error prone, it is typically valuable when working with multiple storage variables, as each reduction in a call to a storage variable can save as much as 20k in gas. To make the process easier, NFT Culture Labs has made BooleanPacking.sol available in the open source repository.

• Merkle trees for allowlists

Merkle trees offer an important degree of gas optimization for contracts. The information stored in contract is minimal, a single bytes32 variable is enough to validate thousands and tens of thousands of different wallet addresses. Additionally, the security offered is very high. Anyone attempting to tamper with a leaf or insert a wallet into the tree will be rejected. Additionally, validation of whether a wallet is in the tree, though not as efficient as checking a single signature (as happens with an ECDSA scheme), can be done in linear time, and the complexity of the check scales rather slowly. for instance the difference between an allowlist of 1000 wallets and an allowlist of 2000 wallets, is only one single additional pass through the proof checking loop.

In NOOBPUNKS, the mint functions relying on Merkle trees generally executed in around 100k gas on average. Some function calls dropped as low as 80k gas, and a few with larger batch sizes associated with the mints went as high as 130k. So, using Merkle trees does increase gas impact, but if an allowlist or presale is important to your project, don’t be discouraged to layer one in on top of the ERC721A minting functionality.

Additionally, to make minting with Merkle trees easier, NFT Culture Labs is prereleasing two important new solidity implemenations within the NOOBPUNKS Contract: MerkleClaimList.sol and MerkleLeaves.sol.

MerkleClaimList.sol is a fully self contained library, which allows multiple Merkle trees to easily co-exist in one contract, with all the necessary functionality needed for a fully functioning Merkle tree contained within the library. The real beauty of this library, is it allows you to add support for a Merkle tree onto the contract simply by declaring a new member variable:

    // Two fully functioning and independent Merkle Trees residing in the same contract.

    MerkleClaimList.Root private _claimRoot;

    MerkleClaimList.Root private _presaleRoot;

Second, is MerkleLeaves.sol, which acts as a companion contract to the MerkleClaimList library. MerkleLeaves.sol provides two handy functions for generating the hashes for two common types of leaves used in a merkle tree: _generateLeaf and _generateIndexedLeaf. The former will generate a leaf for an address value, and the latter will generate a leaf for an address and an index. Two additional methods are provided to expose access to these functions to external callers. Because all 4 of the functions are pure, they can be used in conjunction with any combination of Merkle trees that exist in the primary contract. Both functions will be released in the coming weeks to the NFT Culture Labs open source repository, so be sure to watch and/or star it and check back soon.

Carefully consider Contract features

• Off-chain randomization
• No custom features

The final two points to consider when building your project are two aspects to the same consideration: try to reduce custom coding as much as possible. Whether it is a pseudo-randomly generated (and potentially gameable) aspect of your minting process, or it is a bespoke approach to discounting a purchase or trying to prevent people from claiming multiple pieces in a wallet, all of these features can lead to excess gas consumption at best, and a broken experience or financial liability at worst. So when working with your team to develop the project as a whole, be sure to steer the team towards well practiced solutions and away from any unnecessary custom development. Its best to keep the standard parts standard, that way if you do try to push the boundaries of what is possible, you can focus the bulk of your energy on that effort, and save time where you can re-use what others have already fine-tuned.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

This brings me to my final topic, which is that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Whether it is the ethereum development ecosystem’s incredible work on the platform, or Open Zeppelin’s reference implementation, or the ingenious enhancements to it created by Pagzi Tech and then Chiru Labs, we all benefit enormously from each other’s efforts. Do your best to instill this collaborative and open spirit amongst your project teams, and make it a point to try to contribute back to the ecosystem however you can. Whether it is providing some new implementation of a Merkle Tree or maybe it is just a simple bug fix to someone else’s open source repo, every bit of progress is valuable, and we wouldn’t be were we are with gas savings if those who came before us hadn’t done just that. Get out there and build something great! GM!

If you want to talk with devs or potentially find people looking to build projects, please join the NFT Culture discord and drop a line in the developers lounge channel.

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Gucci announced earlier this week that they have purchased land in the Sadnbox Metaverse.  

This is the second major announcement from the luxury brand this year. Last month, Gucci partnered with SUPERPLASTIC to create new NFTs for collectors.

From floral fantasies to trippy GG Supreme dreamscapes, the characters of SUPERPLASTIC enter new realms as the leading creator of animated celebrities, vinyl and digital collectibles teams up with Gucci to create the new SUPERGUCCI collaboration.

For the three-part series of NFTs each with their own handcrafted porcelain sculpture, SUPERPLASTIC’s synthetic artists Janky and Guggimon combine their digital style with the House’s historic codes. In the first release, the famous SuperJanky figure finds itself within ten different whimsical scenarios inspired by Gucci Aria.

This first collection of ten NFTs dropped on February 1st  on SUPERPLASTIC via Gucci Vault, the House’s platform for objects that defy the confines of time and space through the power of imagination.

Crafting the future, pixel by pixel. Vault is building its own virtual world on @TheSandboxGame. Discover more https://t.co/wEUMFPiNsg #GucciVault pic.twitter.com/GVW1mpyJQC

— gucci (@gucci) February 9, 2022

What is The Sandbox?

The Sandbox is a decentralised, community-driven gaming ecosystem where creators can share and monetise voxel assets and gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain. Using The Sandbox’s free software, such as VoxEdit and the Game Maker, players, artists and game designers can create ASSETs and experiences, such as games, dioramas and art galleries, for themselves and to share with others. These can be monetised to earn the creator passive income.

What is Gucci? 

Gucci is a luxury Italian fashion and leather goods brand, founded by Guccio Gucci in Florence in 1921.

In the late 1800s, Guccio Gucci was a Florentine craftsman who worked as a leather tanner. He became an apprentice to a local shoemaker in his teens and later became a traveling salesman for the company that employed him. In 1920, he opened his own shoe store on Via de’ Tornabuoni.

Gucci’s first store was on Via de’ Tornabuoni in Florence, Italy.

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Ninjalerts

Ninjalerts is a great app that allows you to setup custom alerts for any contract or wallet. You can setup alerts for any of your favorite tokens or even just the ones that you’re holding. You can also setup push notifications for any of these alerts. This is a great way to stay on top of the latest news and rumors! What are you waiting for? The price of any NFT can change drastically in a matter of minutes. If you’ve set up an alert that you want to be notified about every time the price of a particular NFT changes.

Moby Insights

Moby Insights is a NFT tool that gives you live mint and sales feeds, access to historical mint data, and live graphs that update in real time. You can also receive alerts in Discord and by SMS. If you have a game that has been running on the Ethereum blockchain for at least a month, you can use Moby Insights to track real time sales and mints through its HTTP API v2. If you want a demo, contact support@mobu.io

wgmi.io

wgmi.io is a NFT portfolio tracker and account valuation tool created by BAYC member Aggregates all of your ERC-721 and ERC-1155 asset projects Customizable tables including trait floor calculation Easy overview of price growth per NFT and collection Holds all major ERC-721 tokens.

Icy Tools

Icy Tools is the ultimate app for tracking all your favorite NFTs, wallets, and more. With Icy Tools, you can track your favorite collections, get the history of any wallet in real time, and analyze any collection. You can also get breakdowns on projects and browse collections of your favorite artists, and more. Get all your favorite Crypto collectibles in one place. Features – Track all your favorite wallets, deposits, and withdrawals. – Track all your favorite Crypto collectibles and see their history in real time.

Crypto Slam

Cryptoslamio is a website that allows you to track rankings of NFTs by sales volume. You can get insights on the rankings for 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, all-time, and live. You can track and organize your NFTs with useful lists. You can easily see the stats on the “My NFTs” page. To the left of the “My NFTs” icon is the “Other NFTs” page. This page is extremely important as it lets you see the most valuable NFTs on market.

freshdrops.io

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the new website, freshdrops.io, but it’s the best way to snipe top rarities directly via browser extension. You can see the rarity rankings directly in OpenSea, trigger auto buys at defined price and gas levels, and can see all the ETH you’ll spend on the purchase. You should check it out, and it’s free The new website, freshdrops.io, is a great new tool for sniping.

NFT Trader

NFT Trader is a new service that provides a fast and easy way to trade your NFTs for other NFTs. The trades happen securely and privately, and there is no need to trust the other party. NFT Trader works as follows: wap your Assets in 1 step Choose your assets from your wallet.
Do the same with the counterparty wallet. Pay a small transaction to create the trading link. That’s all.

The post Trade Like A Pro: 7 NFT Tools You Need On Your Radar appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a form of digital collector item. They are designed to track ownership of a piece of digital content. Many collectors are scrambling for these digital collectibles, while others are wondering why anyone would pay for something that can be so easily copied.

To the layperson, NFTs exploded on the scene overnight. One minute nobody had heard of them, and the next people couldn’t get enough of them. And they are paying very large sums to show just how much they want these pieces of digital property. One NFT sold at Christie’s for the astonished sum of $69 million. That one was attached to a work by the artist known as Beeple. 

It isn’t just the art world raking in money from NFTs. The NBA is using them to bring trading cards into the digital world, and have made over $230 million since launching their platform, called NBA Top Shot. A single LeBron James highlight went for $200,000 on its own. Musician Grimes sold around $6 million worth of NFTs after merging artwork with original music.

Essentially anyone who created content that can be sold digitally is capable of earning extra money via NFTs. Sometimes a lot of extra money. But what exactly are NFTs, and how secure are they? Is it safe to spend the kind of sums we are seeing people spend on the technology? We asked people on Twitter and the responses showed a lot of skepticism around this new medium.  

In this article, we’ll break down what NFTs are, how they work, and ask experts from the art, music and sports worlds what they think about NFTs and their future fate. 

The state of the NFT market

So, there have been a few high dollar sales of NFTs, but what does the market as a whole look like? Much like recognition of the term, it’s expanding rapidly. The first quarter of this year saw sales climb to over $2 billion. The fourth quarter of last year saw sales of only $93 million, meaning an increase of 20 times the volume in just one quarter.  What’s more, the first-quarter figures do not include revenue from NBA’s Top Shots or the $69 million Beeple NFT. 

Joe Conyers, EVP, Global Head of NFTs for Crypto.com, believes the numbers may not even be really accurate. “There’s even more happening that is untracked,” says Conyers. “And there’s a lot of inaccurate reporting happening. I think you had a lot of excitement, a lot of big projects that finally came to fruition. Beyond just the people and the bigger names, there’s a lot of mid six figures projects that dropped in Q1 that drove that number alongside a lot of new platforms.”

Four of the top NFT marketplaces are presented below, in alphabetical order. 

• Nifty Gateway — This nifty (NFT) marketplace teams up with top artists and brands to create NFTs exclusive to their platform. The site allows you to transfer your NFT to and from external wallets.
• OpenSea — This is the first, and as result, largest, NFT market currently active. It allows sales of any type of NFT, so if you are interested in seeing what can be sold on the NFT market, this is a good place to go.
• Rarible — This site allows you to mint and sell NFTs, and of course to purchase them from other users. One interesting features is the ability to set a royalty rate for your minted NFTs. When you do this, you’ll receive a percentage of the sale for every transfer of ownership.
• SuperRare — Because of the nature of NFTs, you’ll find a lot of marketplaces with some version of the word rare in their name. This one focuses specifically on very rare art NFTs, which users can purchase via live auction.

Sandy Khaund, Founder of Macrodemic, Entrepreneur & Investor, agrees that buyers are finally taking NFTs seriously, which is part of what is fueling the massive growth in revenue attributed to them.  “I think it starts with [NBA] Top Shot and what Dapper Labs did at Top Shot,” Khaund adds. “The combination of the fact that they made it very accessible coupled with the fact that you have some of the most prominent athletes in the game, that started to create some momentum. And what that did was help other people who were afraid to jump in on anything like NFTs to be able to do it. I think with every successful deployment of NFT, you have more people excited to do it. And the more content that’s out there, the more people want to engage and are willing to overcome whatever obstacles it takes to be able to buy the NFT, which includes buying Ethereum to be able to actually transact in these scenarios.”

This year, there have been 73,000 buyers of NFT, but only 33,000 sellers. The disparity has created a seller’s market and allowed NFTs to become a boon to those who are creating them. Elena Zavelev, CEO and Founder of CADAF & Digital Art Month, explains this from the arts market perspective. “We have been working with NFTs even before they were even called NFTs – we used to just call them blockchain art – and this recent boom has been pretty fantastic for many artists. I think that last year, with the pandemic, everybody had to go online and so many new projects, so many new initiatives were happening that this really made a big impact on both the collector and the traditional art world.”

As the technology is very new, it’s unknown whether the power dynamic will remain the same. If it does, the NFT market might continue growing considerably for quite some time. 

How NFTs work

NFT tokens are cryptographic assets on blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other, so in order to understand how they work, one must understand blockchain. Blockchain as a technology here provides the possibility to store data in a secure and anonymous way. From a high-level technical perspective that is a database where for all data changes generates a unique transaction which in turn is organized as a chain. Using sophisticated cryptography and a decentralized network, the blockchain can ensure that it is safe from counterfeiting and that each coin belongs to the correct person.

NFTs exist on blockchain networks such as Ethereum, and provide a certificate of authenticity as well as legal rights to the digital asset.

In general, that is a new generation of ICOs and cryptocurrency tokens which use standard ERC-20 and they are fungible.  Unlike them, NFT tokens have ERC-721 standards (developed by some of the same people responsible for the ERC-20 smart contract) and they cannot be traded or exchanged at equivalency, so they are non-fungible and immutable. Also, NFT could be based on ERC-1155 standard which allows to issue multiple tokens in one contract, tokens in one contract can be fungible and non-fungible at the same time.

From a non-technical perspective, NFTs extend the concept of a cryptocurrency by encoding information about a digital asset along with the other information. Now, rather than a bunch of otherwise identical coins, there are countless unique items on the blockchain that can be sold. Anyone who purchases an NFT will be the only one who can own that particular chunk of the blockchain. If it seems weird to purchase something digital that can be copied, think of NFTs as a digital certificate of authenticity. Other people may have copies, but only the purchaser has the original, insofar as digital content can be original. 

And there is additional value in the smart contract logic that powers the digital collectibles. “I remember there were studies a few years ago,” Maryna Rybakova, CEO at Artisfact Limited, points out, “on how resale royalty right in the US was a problem for living artists who could not receive royalties when their work went up on for auction or was resold on a secondary market. And while in Europe, there is the resale royalty right, in the US there isn’t one. And so NFTs or the blockchain smart contract logic that came about with crypto art was also aimed at solving that problem. So I think there are many possibilities that are created by the smart contract logic to improve the existing art market and the way businesses operate.”

Will NFTs repeat the fall of ICOs?

With the success of Bitcoin, many other developers wanted to get in on the action. This led to the rise of initial coin offerings, or ICOs. The first appeared around 2013, but ICOs hit their stride in 2018 and 2019. Dozens of new cryptocurrencies were popping up, asking for money from investors before the coin launched. The problem is, there were more people interested in creating their own coins than there were investors wanting to invest in yet another cryptocurrency. ICOs are still around, but the market is nowhere near what it was at the height of the phenomenon when investors were still willing to pay for the chance to get in on the next big thing.

Like NFTs, ICOs were built on the backs on blockchain platforms such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Although the concepts aren’t identical, they are similar enough that one must be cautious when investing in them.

Let’s take a deeper look at how similar NFTs are to ICOs. Will the parallels be enough to predict a crash of NFTs similar to what ICOs experienced? Litecoin creator Charlie Lee seems to think so. He draws a list of five similarities that NFTs have with ICOs and the altcoins that inspired the ICO craze in the first place.

• It’s easy to create new ones with no barriers.
• They’re simple to understand & explain.
• They bring tons of new people into crypto.
• High prices & pumps create hype/FOMO.
• A Few will hold & have value, but most won’t.

Lee’s strongest criticism comes from the first point. It costs almost nothing to create an NFT, and they are currently bringing in a lot of money. As more artists decide to cash in on this new craze, Lee argues, the supply will overtake the demand and the prices will crash. 

Defenders of NFT argue that they are no different than other digital purchase. Once a piece of software has been written, it’s only the cost of the bandwidth send it out to as many customers as are willing to pay for it. The two questions left to be answered are whether or not the market will suitably discourage artists from selling too many copies of the same artwork, and whether people will view having the ‘original’ piece of digital artwork the same way they view owning the original of a piece of physical art.

“I like to think that the NFTs will be more like the dot coms than they will be like ICOs,” Sandy Khaund reflects. “I think ultimately the ICOs that survived are the ones that truly had value. And I think the dot coms were like that too. There were a lot that went away, just like a lot of the NFTs will go away. But I think the big difference is that there’s also a fundamental change where the technology behind the NFTs has a lot of room to grow and evolve in interesting ways.” 

The legal concerns with NFT

While the theory of NFTs is that they function similar to a certificate of authenticity, the problem with that is that the ease of creating them from digital content doesn’t guarantee that an NFT was minted by the original creator. Digital artist Corbin Rainbolt found this out the hard way when art that he posted on his Twitter account got turned into an NFT without his consent. This means that when you purchase an NFT, it’s possible you are buying it from someone who doesn’t have the rights to sell it. 

While most of the major NFT markets have systems in place to report copyright infringing NFTs, it can be hard for an artist to prove that they are the original creator and the person who minted the NFT isn’t. Because NFTs are built on blockchain, and a big selling point of such technology is anonymity, it can also be hard to track down and hold accountable those who violate copyright law for a quick buck.

Andrea Steuer, CCO and Director of CADAF & Digital Art Month, shares some of the best practices in the market. “We need to be extremely careful,” says Steuer, “because we really want to put out the best content that we’ve vetted, that we really know who the artist is and we can prove who the artist is. So, at the CADAF side, how it works is that we have an application process where we look at each artist. We check the older material, we check their social media, we basically do a little background check on them, and then they sign an exhibitor agreement where they really tell us that this artwork was created by them, and that they can and they’re willing to stand behind that.”

Even beyond outright theft, there’s the question of who has the rights to sell NFTs. Game developer Jason Rohrer found himself in the middle of just such an argument. Rohrer commissioned artwork for his 2012 game The Castle Doctrine. When he put that artwork up for sale as a collection of NFTs, however, the original artists cried foul. They argued that they sold him the rights to use the art in a game, not to sell it as NFTs. 

Although largely unregulated, there are some ways that NFTs can run afoul of legal obligations. In 2018, the European Securities and Markets Authority created a report on crypto-assets. The report noted that if the seller of a particular NFT grants certain rights to the purchaser, such as a profit sharing arrangement, the NFT could be considered a security token. It then becomes liable under the regulations for financial markets in that jurisdiction. As the NFT market grows, other jurisdictions will likely come to the same conclusions, to avoid any loopholes in their financial regulations.

Sandy Khaund argues, “Much like every new medium – and NFTs almost make a new medium in terms of the transmission of media, transmission of content – there’s going to be some level of legislation that needs to come into play, some level of regulation. But you also don’t want to stifle the creator community either. You want to make sure that there are no unintended consequences that prevent people who are trying to do the right thing from doing the right thing. And that’s why these laws are very difficult because if you make them too onerous, you may have unintended consequences. You may have negative effects because you’re actually stifling the creativity. Because one thing that can be said about these NFTs – good or bad – is that they brought out a lot of very interesting creativity.”

How secure are NFTs?

Imagine someone has purchased an NFT that later turns out to have been based on stolen artwork. The market that sold the NFT is going to have to take it down, as they don’t have the rights to host the art. This means that the person who purchased the artwork will no longer be able to see it. Granted, it’s digital, so the buyer could have just downloaded it after they purchased and be able to view it anytime they want from the comfort of their computer. But what if they then want to sell it? They are largely out of luck.

There are two ways the artwork could be stored on the blockchain. The art itself could be put in there, if it’s small enough in size. Alternatively, a link to the artwork could be put into the blockchain. If you’ve ever went to a website and encountered the 404 file not found error, you can probably immediately see the problem with the latter example. When you buy a collectible, the general idea is to sell it at some point down the road when its value has increased. Some people may be content just looking at their collectible. With physical collectibles, this is rather easy. You keep them in a secure location, and they’ll always be there. With NFT, you need to worry that one day the URL will simply stop working. This requires a significant amount of trust in the person you are purchasing from.

Thankfully, there are ways to protect your investment. The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) by Protocols Labs, allows users to ‘pin’ an NFT to their platform so it will be available even if the point of origin stops serving it. IPFS only stores the metadata though, so NFTs that point to a URL could still end up missing. Services like IPFS 2 Arweave will pin your NFT to the IPFS and go a step further, storing the data on the Arweave blockchain. Now one needn’t worry about the data going missing, as long as Arweave continues to operate. In that sense, it’s more of a contingency plan than a full solution.

And of course, keep a general checklist to protect yourself from attacks based on general cyber security threats:

• Choose a secure wallet
• Use a complex password
• Enable two-factor authentication
• Keep your recovery phrase in a secure place
• Back up your wallet regularly
• Update your software regularly
• Use a secure internet connection

“We’re very early in the technology, and there’re bound to be security issues if NFT platforms don’t maintain a basic level of security procedures,” Joe Conyers agrees. “There are higher-level security procedures you can implement. For example, you may allow a valid IP address after a seven-day holding period, and add 2FA, obviously. Or just really basic stuff that I think some platforms miss who are not there yet, like basic credentials and staffing validation. When we came to market, we knew these were going to be real issues. We took a lot of what we learned on Crypto.com, obviously heavily security focused to ensure the billions of dollars of values saved there.” 

Conclusion

While there are many who have concerns about NFTs, there are also people ready to spend millions of dollars on them. As more of our content becomes digital, it is inevitable that collectibles will become digital as well. Whether NFT becomes the permanent form of digital collectible depends on whether the industry can find ways to navigate the copyright and storage issues. However, all our experts agree that the technology behind the NFTs is definitely here to stay and we are yet to explore its full potential. 

By DataArt’s Andrea Steuer, Elena Zavelev, Joe Conyers III, Maryna Rybakova, and Sandy Khaund 

The post NFT Security Concerns – Will Non-Fungible Tokens Survive the Hype? appeared first on NFT CULTURE.

Leading NFT Display provider Blackdove has partnered with Spores Network to provide an amazing solution for collectors to display NFT Fine art on the Blackdove digital canvas, allowing high-end collectors a mechanism to finally display their NFTs in their home, galleries, and more. These digital canvases can be white-glove shipped and assembled to over 200 US cities and Asia-wide.

“Blackdove has been committed to putting digital art on par with traditional paintings by providing the absolute best in home or business display and management. We are very pleased to bring our market leading solution to Asia with Spores as our partner, ” Marc Billings asserts.

Spores Network founders believe that crypto will lead to decentralization of ownership and frictionless redistribution of capital. Their mission is to create an NFT ecosystem that is creator-centric, community-driven, frictionless, and borderless. To that end, Spores has built a cross-chain DeFi-powered NFT marketplace defining decentralized pop culture, sharing NFT content across gaming, esports, animation/anime, digital fine arts, music, and film/TV. Spores co-founders include Duc Luu (Nasdaq IPOed serial entrepreneur ), Eric Hung Nguyen (former senior investment analyst at a top-10-worldwide hedge fund), and a diverse team of advisors across blockchain and entertainment.

“We at Spores are committed to being Asia’s premier NFT marketplace at the cutting edge of art and pop culture. Our collaborations with the world’s greatest living artists will define digital art collecting for the next century. Now instead of owning that art only in the metaverse, you can share your collection in the comforts of your own home.” Duc Luu, Chairman of Spores Network

Blackdove delivers NFT based artwork in a physical form with its lineup of Digital Canvas displays, media players and smart television apps. Simply connect your wallet to Blackdove’s web platform, pair a display and enjoy your art instantly, anywhere in the world.

Pricing models for the Digital Canvas lineup include entry level solutions, through 98” single panel displays and custom installations of architectural significance. As art has shifted to a digital format Blackdove delivers a collector grade display experience.

For those with televisions, Blackdove is available as an app download on all major SmartTV platforms including Apple and Android TV platforms.

The company was founded with the mission to allow digital art to be sold and displayed on par with traditional paintings and sculptures. To achieve this goal, Blackdove partners with the finest NFT marketplaces, galleries, museums and artists to deliver a best in class solution for digital art installations.

For more information, please visit: https://www.blackdove.com/

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