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Reading ICP from zero to one - NFTs

This article is a platform-by-platform look at the IC ecosystem's only value asset, NFTs, from a sense of experience and on-chain data.

Author: kk 德米安

Published by: demianDAO

Typeset by: kkdemian

Contents​

  1. About demianDAO

  2. What is NFT

    1.1 The protocol standard of NFT

  3. Application scenarios for NFT on ICs

  4. How to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of an NFT

  5. The NFT platform

  6. Inventory of NFT projects

  7. The future of NFT

About demianDAO​

kkdemian launched the DAO, a community model DAO focused on learning, awareness and technology improvement, which includes the development of IC, Commos and other public chains, and will also introduce some of the current ecological protocols of ETH, such as RSS3, BANKless, if you are interested in joining this DAO, welcome to learn and share technology together.

Note: This document is completely open source, please feel free to consume it, no need to note the source of copying! The English version has been translated by Deepl PRO and is available to the global community. Any projects, Tokens, NFTs mentioned in this document are not investment advice and should be done at your own risk.

1. What is NFT​

The full name of NFT is Non-Fungible Tokens, which is often translated as "non-homogenizable tokens/non-substitutable tokens" in Chinese.

In fact, the difference between NFT and token is whether NFT has complete three attributes: indivisible, irreplaceable and unique, which can be simply understood as a collection that can not be modified and has uniqueness after it is released on a chain.

NFT was first proposed on the ETH chain, so most of the first NFT contracts implemented were hosted on EVM, but as NFT has evolved more standards and forms have been created.

The common ones are currently ERC-721 and ERC-1155:

What is ERC-721?

ERC-721 is the first standard protocol for non-homogeneous tokens in Ether, and is used in more diverse applications than ERC-20, including games, intellectual property, physical assets, proof of identity, financial instruments, ticketing, etc. ERC-721 was developed by the CTO of CryptoKitties, a crypto-cat game. ERC-721 was created by Dieter Shirley, CTO of CryptoKitties, and is currently used in projects such as CryptoKitties and Decentraland.

The tokens issued through ERC-721 are the non-homogeneous tokens, and it is ERC-721 that gives the non-homogeneous token NFT its uniqueness. All digital assets: paintings, bonds, houses or cars, are guaranteed security of ownership, ease of transfer of ownership, immutability and transparency of ownership history under the ERC-721 protocol.

In addition to ERC-721 and ERC-20, the future of blockchain is not far from another growing protocol, ERC-1155.

What is ERC-1155?

Currently both homogeneous token protocols (ERC-20) and non-homogeneous token protocols (ERC-721) require separate smart contracts when creating a token. For example, game developers may need to create thousands of token types, and using the old separate token protocols would not only limit interactions between tokens, but would also take up a lot of resources on Ether.

With ERC-1155, smart contracts can transfer multiple token types at once. In addition to saving on transfer fees (Gas Fee), multiple types of tokens can be traded directly based on this protocol, without the need for individual tokens to approve separate contracts before they can be traded, allowing for direct interaction between homogenised and non-homogenised tokens.

NFT is encroaching on the traditional internet in more ways than one, and it is also allowing cryptocurrencies to have more applications, for example in specific areas such as artwork, game props, e-deposit, authentication, virtual reputation, based on NFT's unique properties. Of course in the future it may be possible to form a unique on-chain reputation system based on NFT, and to use Token and NFT to form a real metaverse or virtual world.

1.1 Protocol standards for NFT​

DIP is a protocol model basically similar to ERC, but moved from the ETH chain to the ICP chain, and since there is no Token standard on IC, a unified standard for NFT is still under discussion. The other EXT implements the basic transaction functions, while the other attributes are implemented separately in the NFT.

Since there is no standard in the ICP chain, it is difficult to standardise the interaction between different protocols, or to allow NFTs to exist in different wallets unless they can support your protocol standard, which has both advantages and disadvantages. The IC still faces a lot of problems with standards, logging, and otherwise not being able to get more people to trust a Canister.

For different chains of NFT distribution now, the threshold of IC is higher, there is still no more open source code or examples, of course, the main problem here is the IC's own Canister storage limits, one may be careless NFT directly to zero!

2. NFT on the IC application scenario​

At present, NFT in the blockchain is more used in PFPs, and for more use scenarios are still being explored, such as NFT can be used as a pass, tickets, community honor, game props, achievement system, etc. I believe that the NFT on IC will also be the earliest through PFPs, and spread the NFT brand culture while expanding more influence, and then let NFT have more additional The NFT will then have more additional attributes, such as game tickets, passes, etc., or even be used as props in the game community to achieve an achievement system, and through the NFT empowerment scene, the IC will have upgradable attributes that make the NFT more playable.

3. How to evaluate the merits of an NFT​

For evaluating the merits of an NFT, perhaps we can rate it based on some of the models used to evaluate Tokens, such as the simplest team, community culture, number of holders, NFT distribution, development roadmap, liquidity, etc.

For an NFT project, the most important thing is still the team and the liquidity of the NFT, for the team I believe that in the post-blockchain era, more and more traditional companies will join the industry, but also in the era of growing the whole development progress, iteration speed, to seize the market, as in 2014-2016, the rise of Internet companies such as OFO, DDT, Meituan, is to play A kind of rapid iteration, user service, platform capabilities of the competition, and in the blockchain industry, not to learn or be eliminated, the future of the competitive pressure will be greater, but also to allow some thinking, early layout of the team can get dividends.

For the circulation, currently may be the most serious problem of the entire NFT ecology, because it is not like Token can be divided, circulation, trading, etc., we can look at the value of the market for the public chain can be seen, a public chain moat is: DeFi, stable coins, lending, and for NFT seems to apply to this scenario, if NFT want to go a long way, it is bound to be more than A single picture, like APE is rapidly expanding and cannibalizing quality blue chip NFT projects and cutting through an ultimate culture of boredom to get the whole NFT market hotter than ever, maybe it's also a consensus of, well, boredom 😂 , like Li Xiaolai said: "A consensus of stupidity is also a consensus", you never know You never know when the market is going to ebb, and you're the one who knows.

NFT is moving towards a new trendy culture and is replacing the traditional IP model. If in the future each NFT has its own brand culture and IP licensing capabilities, it will not be a single image, but a copyright, a sustainable income bond. If the NFT has this culture in the future, it is an unpredictable market.

4. The NFT platform​

NFT platforms are slowly becoming a kind of flood, the ETH ecosystem currently has hundreds of NFT platforms, just like the earliest exchanges with unlimited releases, so the whole NFT market bubble is really big.

Each public chain's NFT platform carries different user groups, but of course there are some big projects that issue their own marketplaces, such as ape and gmt, which are doing built-in NFT transactions, because this can save a lot of fees and royalties, which is also a part of a project's revenue.

There are currently 9 NFT platforms in the IC ecosystem: entrepot, yumi, icmarket, CCC, jelly, Cetoswap, Icpswap, crowdfundnft, gigaversemarket!

entrepot​

Entrepot, developed by Toniqlabs, is the first NFT marketplace on the Internet computer blockchain. Its name is by no means a coincidence. An entrepot is a port, city or trading post where goods can be imported, stored or traded. In the era of wind shipping, these centres played a key role in trade.

Entrepot offers a similar role in the digital world: a trading post where users can store and trade digital assets in a decentralised, non-custodial manner.

To buy or sell NFTs available on Entrepot, you must connect your Stoic/plug wallet or log in using torus. In the meantime, don't worry. This wallet has such an attractive, practical and user-friendly design that you will use it often. In addition, Stoic Wallet supports more NFTs than those listed on Entrepot, such as ICPunks.

Yumi​

Yumi has launched a new NFT marketplace based on the Internet Computer (IC), offering users a range of new opportunities in the field of digital ownership and meta-border. In this emerging digital world, users will be able to cast, trade, auction, share and interact with their NFTs through Yumi. yumi will enable users to purchase digital art and collectibles as well as 3D objects that will gain additional utility when deployed in meta-sections. yumi offers a one-stop NFT experience for NFT enthusiasts worldwide: it will quickly become the intuitive portal to the IC meta world.

ICMarket​

ICMARKET offers SubDAO to join and create public collections and collaborations for NFT.

PFPs, other NFT lists, multiple Token purchase of NFTs, blind box auctions, NFT self-creation and uploads, etc. will be introduced in the ICMarket plan and roadmap.

The ICMarket roadmap has 4 release phases.

! nfts

From the roadmap we can see that icmarket is building a diverse marketplace and increasing its playability, much like jelly, while adding the possibility of DAO and perhaps a new breakthrough.

CCC​

CCC stands for Crowd Created Collectables, the first fully decentralised collaboration platform with the unique goal of connecting and allowing 50 million creators to participate in the Web3 world.

The CCC experience is pretty good, and without top-up transactions it might be a way to get things done. It's also relatively full-featured at the moment, offering a launchpad and individual creations.

jelly​

Jelly may look like an NFT marketplace dApp, but it is primarily an NFT marketplace infrastructure protocol that allows creators, curators or collectors to create their own curated marketplaces, all connected to the same de-trusted canister with interoperable data (same offer database, same collections, etc.) represented through the web side. Whoever powers the sale asks for a fee.

The Jelly roadmap has five release phases.

Phase 1 - Crowns Marketplace: Initially, the Jelly marketplace will be in single collection mode, supporting only Crowns collections. We will also audit the back end (BE) and front end (FE) of the protocol.

Phase 2 - Aggregator Backend: We switch the BE of the protocol to Jelly's Aggregator Protocol and continue to test the user experience with a single collection.

Phase 3 - Jelly Protocol Goes Ham: We switched on multi-collection mode for the Jelly Protocol and the marketplace. Any developer can create their own marketplace using the Jelly Protocol. We haven't forgotten the ICNS names, they can be traded in Jelly!

Phase 4 - Creator Tools and Governance: Once the Protocol is fully released, we will work with the community to integrate creator tools and establish governance for Jelly to decentralise its development and handover control.

Phase 5 - Multi-chain support: With the help of Terabethia, Jelly will begin to support collections from other chains.

With integration to Terabethia's upcoming ERC721 magic bridge and threshold signatures, Jelly can open the door to support bridging assets and interacting locally with NFTs on other chains.

Well positioned, big picture, and backed by Psychedelic, it may indeed kill the switch and become the NFT base protocol for the entire IC.

Cetoswap​

A marketplace under swap, unclear positioning, feels like a cottage version of the trading market, but has sent a few projects, driving the earning effect, but the experience is slightly troublesome!

Icpswap​

icpswap is a DeFi, but it offers a variety of tools, NFT trading, casting is one of the functional parts, I do not know what they are positioned to do in the end? Maybe they want to be a DeFi version of the marketplace.

The NFT that has been released so far is still mainly the first few projects to be tested, the protocol is dip712, now also supports plug login.

Crowdfundnft​

Building a safer and cheaper global crowdfunding service using smart contract technology - using the new NFT model.

crowdfundnft can be thought of as a crowdfunding NFT platform, but it doesn't look like a DAO model, it's just a way to play money and buy an NFT, which is essentially the same as a launchpad or blind box.

gigaversemarket​

incubated by gigaverselabs, which has released two NFTs, frog and punk, and is said to be driving the next generation of gas-free decentralized NFT market through DAO. We represent the open source cross-chain standard and an amazing collection of NFTs.

The whole marketplace looks like nothing more than a platform to submit and showcase.

! nfts

Above I have listed the current mainstream NFT platforms and added a few NFT platforms from the IC ecosystem to the list, they will be on my ongoing watch list, I don't know who will be the emerging leader of IC in the future.

From the perspective of the entire IC eco platform layout, it can be said that there is no comparable market with other chains at present, whether from the experience, trading, play on not much innovation, or even a better sense of experience and perception.

In fact, since the inception of psychedelic, I have found that their structure and control of the entire team of products has crushed other products in the IC ecosystem, such as swap, cap, dab, plug and other infrastructure. And then with the recent release of jelly, both from the UI design, roadmap and their own positioning have a very clear line, perhaps this is the biggest reason for the success of a good product, rather than making a patchwork of things out directly on line, circle a wave and run away, more and more looking forward to the price of the crown can not be a flight to the sky, and even drive the whole IC NFT real rise! The rise of!

In addition to jelly, the other few can be said to have no special advantages or characteristics, to put it bluntly is not intentional.

At present, the entire IC nft platform is still the only one, but from the recent month of turnover, launch on the new can be seen, has been played badly, or has no earning effect, plus their experience is really getting worse and worse, the page stays long directly stuck...

5.NFT Project Inventory​

This chapter is the main event, I will pick a few NFTs from each platform to analyze and find clues through the data on the chain to find out who are the real blue chip NFTs on IC in the future, or maybe these are not 😂!

First up is entrepot, which is arguably the only NFT asset host for the entire IC ecosystem, from its earliest releases of viruses, starfish and magni to its later nft series of bitcoin flowers, punk, bots, motoko and more, which have made entrepots a fortune.

We use bitcoin flower and motoko (originally intended for cronics, but the data is not complete) and pod as examples to explain the NFT assets on entrepot.

Bitcoin flowers​

Bitcoin flower is the most promising NFT on entrepot at the moment, it is also being used as a base for more products, DAO and ethereum flower and pineapple head? It looks like they all want to go the way of ape, and will probably release tokens later, but there is no culture or users at this volume, and the current owner distribution of Bitcoin Flower is (source - nftgeek, raisinrank):

! nfts

Transaction data :

! nfts

Pending orders:

! nfts

Bitcoin Flower Data Overview:

! nfts

We use the above 4 data to analyze whether a particular NFT in the IC ecosystem continues to be held:

Ownership, this data is generally an indication of whether the current NFT is monopolised by a large investor, and is also an important indicator of whether an NFT has a community culture and a decentralised membership. The total number of bitcoin flowers issued in 2009, current owner: 769, and the percentage of large investors: 38.2%, so the bitcoin flowers are still scattered in the hands of large investors, or people who started early.

Transaction data: through transactions or mint, we can derive the number of times an nft has been traded in the market, or what can be called the traditional word painting change of hands, and finally certainly the premium rate, a version of the nft in the virtual world are through the pending orders, buying and selling to change hands, with the characteristics of the blockchain, each transaction is traceable, so we can analyze different nft through the transaction address and the correlation of wallet addresses to find out if they are held by a small number, or if they are controlled by the project itself.

The current trading volume of Bitcoin Flower since its launch is: 2021, rather than 664 single sellers, which means that we can probably project that the entire series of nft's have traded to around 700 addresses since launch, so maybe it's true that hodler just doesn't sell 😂

The price of bitcoin flowers from the launch of a few icp up to 1000icp, perhaps this is the early participation bonus, of course, in the ic this junk slow ecology, buy after the liquidity may be a very serious problem, there is no buy.

Listed: hanging single is also a reflection of the degree of activity of a nft, if in the case of owner enough, hanging single number can be seen in a nft collector's ability to change hands or earn money, but really do not hang single community culture is almost impossible, the essence is still trying to make money, can not earn money nft are rubbish, look at the earning effect of ape, now they even send a piece of shit are people crazy The fact that they are now sending out shit is a mad rush, and you can't underestimate those who are jerking off at home or overseas, they will have countless numbers, because it has formed an industry chain.

Finally, there is the community, which is very important!

The current community situation of Bitcoin Flower, they are the community of Ether Flower, FlowerPowerDAO, Bitcoin Flower together with the organization, currently Twitter (3930), medium (184), discord (1850) are not a lot of people, the site of the github is a private warehouse, but this big brother (FloorLamp) is very powerful, but I've been missing for a long time and have done a lot of ic projects like rocks, cube, drip, axon, maybe I've made enough money 😂

Then there is now ready to launch flowerpowerdao, github not much code may also be a private library, but open source code is not much content, community attention is not very high. But in the domestic community watch does have a bit of heat, said the pineapple head has hope to soar, or maybe it is self-righteous, ic this urine and slow development is really a hard to say!

Motoko​

Motoko was created on the Motoko programming language's 2nd birthday when the DFINITY Foundation distributed 10,000 Motoko ghosts designed by Jon Ball of Pokedstudios to the community.

Motoko itself is still very important in the IC ecosystem as a development language, but of course it still has some scaling issues for people familiar with Rust or projects with more complex business needs, but in the NFT space, Motoko is one of the assets officially dropped into the community, and expectations are high - after all, it's official!

We are still using 4 pieces of data to analyse Motoko in the IC ecosystem,

Firstly, the owner data: 6599

! nfts

Transactions:6987

! nfts

Listed:1039

! nfts

Overview image:

! nfts

Motoko is one of the most active NFTs in terms of trading volume, and is also the head of the NFT ecosystem in IC in terms of holders and total trading volume, but there is a problem here, as Motoko is still controlled by a few giant whales in terms of single purchase and sale data, with the sole purchaser 1685, while motoko adheres to the original NFT distribution model, 10,000 in total, at this point the ratio of mega whales:16.85, which is already very low compared to bitcoin flowers, or maybe because motoko is all airdropped, while the market makers are slowly accumulating NFT.

! github

In the long run, motoko is officially backed by dfinity and is also an emerging language, so if IC makes a big splash in the future across the Web3, we can't rule out Motoko becoming one of the blue chips in the IC ecosystem NFT. Figurine, but of course there could be more ways to play with motoko, such as launching a developer community where you have to have motoko to get a pass, which would give motoko more attributes!

Community data: basically it follows the official development, because everyone who wants to do something on it or develop an application needs to learn motoko, so this could be the possibility that it will have a culture, or the power of the community. Every new language needs to be built up over the years, for example Rust, Go, React, etc. all need to be built up over time to have more of a community culture and community, so motoko is just getting started!

POD​

POD is an NFT distributed by distrikt for the community, the initial share is only 2102, it says it was given to users with badges early on in the community, but I don't have one 😂 , although I have a badge, I've not logged in much lately, so I'm probably judged as an inactive user!

The distrikt POD collection consists of 10,000 ships that will traverse the IC ecosystem. They are linked to a single-minded goal: to protect the key to an enhanced experience for true distributors. Your POD contains numerous and sanctuaries of unlimited potential. When you hold a regional POD, you hold the key to unlocking multiple dimensions of experience that can only be used by the initiated.

The PODs are still analysed here using 4 pieces of data,

The first is the owner data:

! nfts

transactions:659

! nfts

Listed: 447

! nfts

The community: behind the pod is distrikt, as we mentioned in the icp series, distrikt has received official and third-party capital funding, is also ambitious to do decentralized social, of course, from the progress of the whole project, there are still a lot of achievements, and as the only NFT of the ecology, we can also see in the official give some scattered instructions We can see that pods will have a lot of scenarios and rights in the future, of course, we don't rule out the distribution of tokens to those who eat pods, just like the current ape of the ethereum ecosystem, which gives various benefits to early contributors and hodlers.

Through the examples and data of some projects, we can see that the biggest role of NFT is still for images or applications in PFPs, DSCVR is debugging NFT and adding it to avatar settings.

Based on the current data, we have come to a small conclusion that the NFTs that are currently on the rise in the IC ecosystem are the first ones that are backed by official or officially initiated NFTs, such as bitcoin flower, punk, motoko, while for some unofficially developed NFTs most of them have weak turnover and community power, which is of course the weak point of the entire IC ecosystem!

6. The Future of NFT​

NFT is bringing a new wave of players into the blockchain and crypto space. New entrants are excitedly looking for the "next" boring ape project and dreaming of the riches that only a space like crypto can bring. But for all the interest in NFT, it is likely that many participants still lack a true understanding of the underlying technology of NFT and what they are buying when they exchange their money for digital assets. ICP, as one of the infrastructures of web3, also needs more application scenarios and infrastructure to be perfected before it will follow the general trend to capture the market and emerge as a blue chip like ape and moonbirds, which, for now, is not possible!

There are many reasons why this is not possible: few users, few projects, more quality projects, or not even a marketplace that can play!

NFT will eventually form a creator economy, user ownership will slowly spread from bitcoin and ethereum to more blockchain projects, eventually creators will own their own value or community value, you have 10,000 Followers, not as much as you have 10 Collectors!