NFT Verification Tool (Open-Source)

A collaborative and aligned approach and process to explore and establish tools, standards and resources to generate value for Cardano NFTs

20 years developer experience, SPOs, on-chain data verification tool creator, NFT creators, and dedicated community members.

Background

We have all experienced the market problem existing today, NFTs are hard to verify as being authentic. Additionally, the process of having NFTs verified on different marketplaces is very manual and lacks any standardized approach. This is holding back the growth of the NFT segment on Cardano for end-users to easily trust that the NFTs they own and/or are buying are authentic. For NFT creators this tool will allow them to quickly and easily add NFTs to several marketplaces.

What is currently happening today is that marketplaces and NFT creators are all solving the same problem in a variety of ways, which lacks interoperability and inclusive participation to solve the same market problem - without common standards, criterias, mis-alignments, and misunderstandings in general.

Our goal with the Open-Source NFT Verification Tool is to have an open discussion to define solutions to the problems above through the implementation of the tool. We will invite all NFT marketplaces and other NFT projects to participate in the insights gathering to further define the problem, the solution, and the scope for what is needed to deliver the MVP of the NFT Verification Tool. We will also consider deployment partners from existing NFT marketplaces to use the tool once it is built.

Our second goal is to create a public roadmap for the NFT Verification Tool to determine additional features and applications which could be added in the future.

The NFT Guild as we call ourselves, is open for everyone to join. Up until now the guild consists of CENT (SPO and developer), Felix Weber (Cardano Ambassador), cinnamon_bun (Twitterspace host and influencer), Woodlords (NFT creator) and Jian_de (project developer of Punk Baby House Party). Diverse background, but common goal of achieving verifiable NFT space for Cardano.

Our discord server is https://discord.gg/ffbyt6eWWB. Join the guild discussion there!

General

This initiative is a common goal of Cardano Community members and is supported and assessed by the Ambassadors Guild to build bridges within the ecosystem.

Our proposal has three main phases; 1) Information gathering, 2) Specification and 3) Development.

The main priority is to establish an open-source community, designed as an industry association called the NFT Guild.

Our goal is to form a steering committee with active participants to discuss and agree to build tools and resources for the Cardano Ecosystem.

Currently there is a gap in communication, coordination, and collaboration for the NFT industry to clearly define challenges, opportunities, and additions to the Cardano Ecosystem. Our aim is to build solutions that extend the utility of NFTs, the NFT Community and its ecosystem on Cardano. The first project is to create a tool to verify/authenticate NFTs.

Phase 1

During the Information gathering phase (months 0-2), we will bring new guild members into our communication platforms, create and send surveys to NFT Marketplaces, NFT Minting tools, Wallets and NFT creators. The surveys are designed to gather information about the current state, what problems the respondents see. The information will be processed and we will conduct workshops with identified partners. We will also discuss different scenarios and issues the community sees today to start thinking about possible solutions. At the end of this phase we will have a solid information base for transferring into the Specification phase

Phase 2

During the Specification phase (month 3), we will use the gathered data from the surveys and communication platform discussions done during the Information gathering phase and draw up a design for the solution. First version of the design will be published in public github site and reviewed by the guild members and partners to ensure the requirements are captured in the design and scope of first delivered version of tool will meet the demand and be easy to integrate into partner tools

Phase 3

The Development phase (month 4 - 6), the tool will be developed according to the specification. Versions will iteratively be published to the project github site and enable partners to make use of the tool as usable alpha and beta versions are published. Tasks and issues will be fully transparent and viewable in the site and community members can comment, report issues and rate the importance of the different components. Documentation will also be developed and updated as part of the development cycles.

Impact

We currently see a NFT ecosystem struggling because of the lack of verification tools. We are targeting to work with the broad ecosystem to identify and agree a new standard for achieving verifiable NFTs and also provide the tools needed for these actors to integrate and make use of the tool. Our initiative will bring verification of NFTs to the ecosystem, to help counteract malicious copy artists from stealing NFT buyers' hard earned assets.

Usage: there are over 36,000 Policy IDs and NFT projects on Cardano which can easily benefit from a large number of open source resources to further add value to the Cardano ecosystem. Total impact can be measured by the total growth in NFTs created on Cardano and the number of wallets holding NFTs. Every NFT project has their own roadmap, but there is no open, community roadmap for the NFT industry. There are many benefits to determine commonalities and define specific projects which can become open-source.

This proposal fits into the dApps and Integrations Challenge by providing an effective solution to a crucial and common unsolved problem we are facing in the Cardano Ecosystem.

Feasibility

We have the tools and technology we require as this already exists. We have the diversity needed for attracting partners as project members have contacts with the tool owners or are themselves NFT creators. We have the technical development expertise required in the project as the main developer CENT has already created a tool for doing similar verification of blockchain data. Partnering up with marketplaces, minting tool creators and wallets will also help ensure the project deliverable to be used for and by the community

Auditability

The github site will always show the latest version and where the project is at at any time. Information about compensation will also be viewable on this site. The github is open to the public

Adjustability

The proposal is adjustable by nature as we are working with and are influenced by the Cardano community and many different partners will join or influence our project. While the ecosystem changes, the requirements and ratings of design and components will change as well. Development phase is also following an iterative process, which will tune the deliverable towards a usable version even when requirements change

Project Management & Treasury

All received Funds will be fed into a project's Treasury. From there the funds will be distributed to project contributors.

The NFT Guild will coordinate all project related activities and operations and will ensure a fair reward to participating contributors.

Roadmap:

Month: 0 - 2: Information gathering phase

Month: 3: Specification phase

Month: 4 - 6: Development phase

Details for each phase can be found in section General above

KPIs / OKRs:

Number of new voters/collaborators from the NFT industry into Catalyst

Number of NFT projects following the agreed standard

Number of NFT marketplaces using the new integrated verification tool

Number of NFT minting tools using the new integrated verification tool

Number of wallets using the new integrated verification tool

Number of NFT Guild Community Events and Initiatives

Achieving to onboard 500 Guild Members to Q2 2022

Budget breakdown

Setting up & Maintaining communication & community Hub ( Discord, Telegram, Twitter ) - 1000 USD

Marketing campaign & outreach - 2000 USD

Project Management, Coordination, and Public Road Map Development - 4500 USD

Tool Development - 25.000 USD

Incentivise Community members in feedback and ideation process - 2500 USD

total 35.000 USD

Links

The github repository of our project can be found at https://github.com/shelley-dev/cardano-nft-verification

Working example for similar verification functionality. This is for supply chain data, however it shows the principle that can be used when verifying hash, public keys and signatures of Cardano metadata. 

https://bi.stakepoolcentral.com/tx_metadata_details?tx_hash=f22405e92625c2f637c1123fed70d095134905977f262f94d5144303ca63f3ad&key=0