NFT Collection Experiment

-------------------------------------------  COMPLETED ------------------------------------------

We completed this experiment on 4/1/2023.  If you are interested in learning more send me a note r.pedersen@richcanvas3.com.

NFT architecture is evolving.  NFT metadata principles are simple and lack many of the information architecture concepts that are required for it to go mainstream for eCommerce Use Cases.

NFT metadata management is one area that is especially weak.  The metadata concepts have evolved and been greatly impacted by the underlying Ethereum technology and performance constraints (on-chain vs. off-chain).  The only data integrity found is maintained either within the various contracts , third parties like OpenSea or loosely by schema initiatives like hip412.

As NFT's start to find there way into mainstream eCommerce solutions the industry will have to introduce mechanism to enforce metadata validation, integrity and discoverability/introspection.

This experiment is directed at understanding current NFT platform capabilities and make initial recommendations on standards to follow.

Hypothesis (a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth)

• NFT and NFT Collection principles and technology are foundational to future Web 3.0  "Non-Fungible Asset" eCommerce solutions.

• NFT and NFT Collection marketplace platforms are still in their infancy.

• NFT Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has very limited support.

• NFT Metadata best practices/standards are in their early stage

• NFT ERC standards are starting to come out with interesting metadata. 
  ERC-6059 Nested Hierarchy NFT, ERC-6785 Utility NFT,    

Goals (an aim or desired result)

• Understand the complexity of building NFT Collections, NFT's and associated Traits.

• Understand what off the shelf tools are available to build out collections

• Understand which smart contracts are best to use

• Understand which blockchain technologies are best to use (ex. Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin) 

• Understand NFT SEO.  How do customers find NFT's.

• Understand NFT Metadata standards

• Identify vertical industry experts 

• Perform the experience in 3 weeks with 1 resource

Outcomes

• Built "muses-of-an-architect" NFT Collection. coinbase  opensea

• Built ERC-721 contract solution with metadata extensions

• Built ERC-6785 Utility NFT with asset metadata

• Built NFT EVM scraping engine to extract NFT Collections, NFT's and NFT Metadata

• Built ERC-6059 Implementation

Architecture

Technical Architecture

NFT Platforms (build and maintain NFT Collections)

• Built initial NFT Collection using Coinbase NFT (nft.coinbase). 

• Coinbase builds out ERC-721 contracts for their NFT's.  Muses-of-an-architect is a single ERC-721 contract that contains 10 NFT's.

• Built subsequent muses-of-an-architect NFT's using ERC-1155 Contract on opensea.  OpenSea generates their NFT's within a parent ERC-1155 contract to minimize cost.  We imported our initial Coinbase NFT collection into opensea and then attached additional NFT's to the original NFT Collection.

• Built a second NFT collection using niftykit (niftykit.com).  Wanted to understand how other platforms create ERC-721 contracts. 

NFT Marketplaces

• Search and browse techniques in opensea.  Opensea dominates NFT marketplace and can build their own proprietary layered metadata to drive search.

• Search and browse techniques in non-opensea general search marketplaces.   Can they find our new muses-of-an-architect collection?  Nifty.com

• Search investor marketplaces.  Hold top NFT collections that investors would be interested in. SuperRare, Binance NFT,  

• Vertical Industry NFT marketplaces like NBA Top Shot

Information Architecture (meta-data)

NFT ERC Metadata standards

• ERC-721 (NFT), ERC-1155 Properties (name, description, image

• IERC721Metadata, ERC1155Metadata_URI

• ERC-1046

• ERC-6785 Extension Utility NFT
  April 1, 2023 called out in https://weekinethereumnews.com
  https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-6785-erc-721-utilities-extension/13568

• ERC-2477 Token Metadata Integrity
  https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2477
  https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/2483
  https://github.com/0xcert/framework (implementation of standard)
  https://github.com/json-schema-org/json-schema-spec/issues/647#issuecomment-417362877 

• ERC-4907 Rentable Smart Contract (NFT Rental Services).  https://www.renft.io/ 
  https://blog.devgenius.io/erc-4907-the-nft-rental-standard-edb60fe6527b

• ERC-5006 Rental NFT, NFT User Extension (Sitting  on top of ERC-1155)
  https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5006

• ERC-5625 Metadata JSON Schema dStorage

Metadata Schema Standards

• Token Metadata Schema v2
  https://hedera.com/blog/hedera-nft-metadata-hip412
  https://github.com/hashgraph/hedera-improvement-proposal/blob/main/HIP/hip-412.md#default-schema-collectibe-hedera-nfts-format-hip412100

• Mandates use of IFPS like solution
  CID = "ipfs://QmTzWcVfk88JRqjTpVwHzBeULRTNzHY7mnBSG42CpwHmPa"

deFacto Industry Metadata Standards

• OpenSea metadata – NFT metadata external reference (tokenURI)
  https://github.com/ProjectOpenSea/opensea-creatures/blob/master/metadata-api/app.py demo of working with IFPS metadata

• Binance metadata

• Zoro protocol
  https://github.com/ourzora/media-metadata-schemas

Metadata Integrity Issue

┌───────────────────────┐       ┌────────┐      ┌────────┐

│        TokenID        │──--------------------────▶│Metadata│─────▶│ Schema │

└───────────────────────┘       └────────┘      └────────┘

This provides no integrity

┌───────────────────────┐       ┌────────┐      ┌────────┐

│        TokenID        │────--------------------──▶│Metadata│═════▶│ Schema │

└───────────────────────┘       └────────┘      └────────┘

┌───────────────────────┐            ▲                                     ▲    

│   tokenURIIntegrity   │═══════════════╝                                     ║    

└───────────────────────┘                                                     ║    

┌───────────────────────┐                                                     ║    

│tokenURISchemaIntegrity│══════════════════════════╝    

└───────────────────────┘                                 

https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2477

People to watch

Kristijan Sedlak
xperermint
https://github.com/xpepermint
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksedlak/
Supporting ERC2477 (schema), ERC4709 (rentable)
0xcert  founder up until 2021
GenoBank.io

William Entriken
github.com@phor.net
https://twitter.com/fulldecent

 Witek Radomski
witek@enjin.io
https://twitter.com/witekradomski
Enjin Wallet

Digital Wallet has a key metadata component

• must have an on chain contract component (ERC4337)

• must support composability of accounts (householding)

• must support metadata

Specific Tasks

Get all the NFT's within EVM for a particular Owner
C:\ethereum\DemoProjects\web3-project2 implements example of finding ERC721's in EVM blocks

Decompose NFT Interfaces, Abstractions and Contracts and understand piece parts

https://etherscan.io/address/0xc84f803af78402ddd911d9ec4f697ee945052ec5#code

• @openzeppelin/contracts-upgradeable/token/ERC721/IERC721Upgradeable.sol

• token/ERC721/ERC721.sol

• token/ERC721/IERC721Receiver.sol

• ERC721TokenReceiver.sol

• token/ERC721/IERC721.sol

• token/ERC721/extensions/ERC721Enumerable.sol;  allows for all the NFT's to be discoverable in collection

• token/ERC721/extensions/IERC721Metadata.sol;   name, symbol, tokenUrl

• Interface => utils/introspection/IERC165.sol;  check if interface is implemented by contract

• Interface => IERC2981.sol - NFT Royalty Standard (10% goes to the original creator of NFT)

• abstract contact => DefaultOperatorFiltererUpgradeable.sol

• abstract contact => OperatorFilterToggle.sol 

• OperatorFiltererUpgradeable.sol 

• ERC1155 => multiple collections (multiple types) within single contract

• ERC721A => batch minting

• Interface => IERC20.sol  - fungible token,  for buying and selling tokens

Nested NFT Analysis

• ERC-6059 (nesting cross collection)

• ERC-6150 (nesting within a single collection)

Metadata Analysis

ERC-721 contract (Collection)

• Name,  Part of ERC721Metadata

• Symbol, Part of ERC721Metadata

Other metadata at Collection level

• Max number of NFT's to create

• Max number of NFT's per wallet

• Min NFT Sale Price

• Supports Interface (find out what interfaces Contract Supports)

ERC-721 token (NFT)

• Token URI,  Part of ERC721Metadata

  • Metadata URI conform to RFC 3986 and follow ERC721 Metadata JSON Schema

  • ifps://{CID}

ERC-5006 (extension of ERC1155)

• • Different roles between owner and user.  Owner can operate on NFT and user role can not

  • Introduces User Record (tokenId, ownerAddress, amount, userAddress, expiry)

Metadata relating to sale of NFT

JSON Schema Meta Data

good overview: https://anettrolikova.medium.com/deep-dive-into-nft-metadata-99fe36aeef24

ERC-2477 (not active)

Token Metadata Integrity

https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2477

Discussion thread: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/2483

OpenSea Rich Metadata standards

https://docs.opensea.io/docs/metadata-standards

good deep dive blog: https://opensea.io/blog/announcements/decentralizing-nft-metadata-on-opensea/

Alex Atallah co-founder of OpenSea, https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexatallah

api: https://github.com/ProjectOpenSea/metadata-api-nodejs

Discussion around metadata

https://hackmd.io/@Bnkhqf0tSbi1lX2Xc-WXYQ/ByxXJK-JK

json-schema.org managements the metadata for NFT JSON

Not really being used to manage real metadata

Token url:  ipfs://{{CID}}

Utility url:  ipfs://{{CID}}

• Interesting Use-Cases

  • https://www.thedigitalspeaker.com/nft-luxury-brands-blockchain/

  • ERC-1523 Standard for Insurance Policies as ERC-721 Non Fungible Tokens (DRAFT). ./eip-1523.md

  • Rent oriented use casest

Next Steps

• NFT721 needs extension to include schemaUrl as part of core contract.  This can be used to validate tokenUri and utilityUri type off chain meta data.  Maybe add tokenUriSchema and utilityUriSchema.

• Need to look at introducing schema definition and validation standards similar to 2477.

Example of NFT Marketplaces (NFT Storefront)

https://github.com/onflow/nft-storefront