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PROBLEM STATEMENT
Current NFT implementations in Cardano are not truly decentralized if they depend on third-party services to manage the storage and access of the asset. There is no guarantee that these services will be around for years to come and therefore assets can be lost.
IPFS/Filecoin or Arweave are these kinds of technologies that allow storing any kind of information and accessing it through its unique identifier, known as hash. Taking advantage of Cardano's metadata capabilities, we can take that hash that represents a unique digital asset and attach it into a transaction, establishing a light asset register on-chain, while getting the asset source must require a query to an external storage service.
There are use cases that require these third party services to achieve optimal performance. For example, game assets or collectibles campaigns. But there are other use cases where it is necessary to ensure the existence and accessibility of the asset in the long term, some, even for a lifetime. For example, when we want to save our will or memories.
In addition, there are currently very few user-friendly interfaces for minting NFTs on Cardano, and to our knowledge, none of these ensure full ownership of the resulting asset by the original creators—as the actual minting occurs in a third-party service and the policy resides there.
That means that the majority of artwork minted as NFT don't provide signatures from creators that can be used to easily check the authenticity of the pieces.
DESCRIBE YOUR SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM:
Development of a light wallet that provides sovereignty to mint and sign non-fungible tokens (NFTs) 100% on-chain from digital assets .
The idea is to provide a tool developed within the framework of the C64 project so that any artist or user can upload assets to Cardano blockchain in form of metadata attached to native assets. In addition, data will be stamped with identity so it can be easily authenticated from artists' websites or business cards.
When the asset exceeds the maximum size per transaction, it will be splitted as many transactions as necessary to complete the asset size. We are aware that storing all the information in multiple transactions makes the creation of NFTs more expensive and may load the blockchain with too much non-essential information. That is why only specific use cases are best suited to this solution.
As a light wallet, it will rely on third party servers to interact with the blockchain, in the same way as Yoroi, that's why we'll be adding an option during the minting process so GUI will be able to choose the blockchain endpoints, either Gimbalabs (Dandelion) or any other trusted source.
BRIEF PROPOSED SOLUTION
Tools and specifications for minting assets coupled with fully on-chain metadata as well as with the owners' signatures, allowing creators and artists to distribute authenticated and verifiable content, while at the same time ensuring long-term availability.
DETAILED PROPOSED SOLUTION
Overview
- Adopt cardano-meta-handler for embedding any content-type file. Using the http response standard makes the implementation easier and more familiar to developers, as well as facilitating the processing of the asset thanks to the declaration of its type.
- Create a multi-platform light wallet for desktop to mint NFTs. By using these cross-platform technologies and open source frameworks we guarantee the best practices and community adoption.
- Adopt Yoroi's cardano serialization library to build and serialize metadata transactions 100% on-chain, making the application backend free, and consequently making the wallet lighter.
- Capability to choose trusted blockchain endpoints. When we use a light wallet we need a third party service to interact with the blockchain, in the same way that Yoroi uses Emurgo's servers. We believe that being able to choose your own endpoints adds a new degree of freedom while promoting decentralization of these services.
- Assets gallery inside the wallet. In the same way that the wallet allows you to create new NFTs and add them to the blockchain, the wallet includes a gallery that query any NFT stored in the blockchain.
BLOCKING PROBLEM AND EVIDENCES
As no smart contract is required, there is no technological limitation to the scope of this proposal.
FUTURE PLANS
In the future and not included as a goal in this proposal, a donations/treasury system will be implemented that enables a sustainable development model for the tool and the operators providing the gateway services to Cardano.
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE:
Caso as Project Lead. Full-Stack Developer. Learner at Emurgo Academy. Cardano Ambassador. Stake Pool Operator. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaime-caso/
Rcmorano as Advisor and Collaborator. ex-Emurgo DevOps lead. Gimbalabs co-founder. Dandelion operator/lead. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rcmorano/
Vicente as Advisor. Yoroi-mobile, R&D Engineer, Emurgo. https://www.linkedin.com/in/vicente-almonacid/
DESIRED OUTCOME
1 Project Lead position 2000$/mo x3 months, as part-time work.
500$ incentivized program to pioneer artists minting NFTs 100% on-chain.
TIMELINE
3 month development since the time funds are received.
INTELECTUAL PROPERTY
Apache 2 license.
REFERENCES
- Cardano-serialization- lib: https://github.com/Emurgo/cardano-serialization-lib
- Cardano-meta-handler: https://github.com/repsistance/cardano-meta-handler
- Decentralized endpoints proposal: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Dandelion-Cardano-APIs-market/352562-48088
- Lift-wallet: https://github.com/CodingOnChain/lift-wallet