NFT Verification Tool

[IMPACT]

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. 

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 an open source tool that can be used by all parties. 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 encourage and support deployment partners from existing NFT marketplaces to use the tool once it is built.

The tool itself will be free to build and run by anyone who wants to provide verification of NFTs on their site or app, most likely NFT marketplaces and wallets. The tool will be kept up to date with the standards developed by the NFT Guild and partnering tools. This will give the community a uniform verification workflow and reliable verification status for NFTs, while marketplaces and wallets can integrate the tool functionality for free and hence be able to remove their own need for manual labor in verification of artists and NFT projects.

The community will benefit from the tool by being able to post proof of authenticity to the Cardano blockchain or publicly available repositories and will therefore not experience any delay in getting their wanted “Verified Artist” or “Verified Project” checkmark.

The tool will be freely available for download and build from a designated NFT Guild Github repository. CENT will also always run the latest build of the tool on the infrastructure of the Cardano Blockchain Intelligence site (https://bi.stakepoolcentral.com) to support community tools unable to run their own service.

Marketplaces and wallets running their own instance of the tool, will be able to query verification status for any given NFT and in that way be able to display verification status that is uniform across different tools and platforms.

Toolmakers and platforms may resist acceptance and adoption of the tool

• We will overcome this risk by including toolmakers and platforms in design decisions so the tool is usable and provides effortless NFT verification for their tool
• The automatic verification will outperform platforms existing manual labor processes.
• We will actively invite and support tools when integrating the verification tool
• Verification tool will report consistent verification status for NFT projects while platforms not using the tool will display inconsistent status for the same projects / NFTs
• Updates to the standards will be freely available for integrated platforms

[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. The current tool is manual and made for general verification of hash and signatures. It is available in the “Supply Chain data” (https://bi.stakepoolcentral.com/supplychaindatalist) section of Cardano Blockchain Intelligence. Example at https://bi.stakepoolcentral.com/tx_metadata_details?tx_hash=f22405e92625c2f637c1123fed70d095134905977f262f94d5144303ca63f3ad&key=0

Unfortunately at the time of writing, the offchain “Public data” resource http://api.cardano.scantrust.io/publicdata/90c5132d.json (file to be verified) is offline, and therefore cannot be used for verification. This fact points out the importance of minimizing the number of offchain resources and markers and instead keeping these onchain to ensure successful verification. Cardano decentralized blockchain never goes offline!! This fact will be used when we develop the standards for the new automatic tool.

We have attached images of the verification reports from when offchain resources were available. 

Please also refer to our article on Medium, for an in-depth background and description of the verification functionality:

https://medium.com/p/e6de26a83538

The tool we will develop during this project will be specifically designed to verify in accordance with the NFT standards and therefore be automatic. Partnering up with marketplaces, minting tool creators and wallets will also help ensure the project deliverable to be used for and by the community

Phase 1 (Tandem with standards project)

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 (Tandem with the standards project)

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.

This project is an implementation (tool development) project based on the standards and specifications developed in the NFT Guild project “Standard for verification of NFTs” (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398372) .

The requested funds will be a treasury used by the NFT Guild to compensate for contributions that benefit and ensure delivery of the tool. The requested funds are based on the below list of activities. 

Project Management, Marketing campaign & outreach, Coordination, and Public Road Map Development - 4000 USD

Tool Development and Testing - 20.000 USD

Documentation and help resource development - 5000 USD

total 29.000 USD

CENT - Stake Pool operator of the pool CENT since December 2019. 20+ years of experience from software development. Creator of the community tool Cardano Blockchain Intelligence. Project Catalyst proposer since F6. Active member of the NFT Guild

Felix Weber - Bridge Builder & Networker, Funded Proposer, CA & Catalyst Circle v1. Founder at Catalyst Swarm, Bridge Builders & Ambassadors Guild

Peter Wolcott - Driving Catalyst, HeartBeat.Team, SWARM Veteran & CC Admin Secretary

Anamaria Kövesdi (NewMindflow) - Artist and entrepreneur, in the CNFT space since day 1, creator of the Trybbles & Icons Cardano NFT projects.

Project Catalyst participant since F3, proposer in F4, F5 & F7, CA in F5 & F7, VCA in F7. Member in various Catalyst projects, initiatives & communities over more than a year.

Rares Kövesdi (NewMindflow) - Artist and entrepreneur, in the CNFT space since day 1, creator of the Trybbles & Icons Cardano NFT projects.

Project Catalyst participant since F3, proposer in F4, F5 & F7, CA in F7. Member in various Catalyst projects, initiatives & communities over more than a year.

Jenny Lau (SushiBytes)

Creator of the SushiBytes NFT project and active participant in the CNFT community since April 2021. Certified public accountant with 13 years of experience in financial and tax reporting. Experience with managing non-profits.

Stephen Whitenstall 

( @swhitenstall ) has 30 years' experience in organising academic, community and business projects. He develops, maintains documentation and provides technical project management support for Catalyst Swarm.

In Fund 6 of Project Catalyst, Stephen's organisation QA-DAO https://quality-assurance-dao.github.io was funded on several significant projects, including Distributed Auditability https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Distributed-Auditability/366707-48088 and Oversight of Catalyst Circle https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Oversight-of-Catalyst-Circle/370088-48088, and Stephen was co-proposer on a number of other successful proposals around community engagement, auditability, and transparency.

In Catalyst Circle v2, Stephen was the representative for Catalyst Coordinator (Funded Proposers).

Other NFT Guild Proposals

NFT Community & Ecosystem (Fund9 Challenge Setting)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/402560

Standard for verification of NFTs (F8: Open Standards & Interoperability)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398372 

NFT Swap Infrastructure Templates 1 (F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397532

Cardano NFT Reports (F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/399099 

[AUDITABILITY]

A public Github site will always contain the latest code and documentation while it is developed. Information about NFT Guild compensation from the treasury will also be viewable on this site.

The NFT Guild hosts a weekly call where progress is shared and discussed in addition to the calls needed for collaboration on this particular project. We would be glad to have you join any of our calls to hear the progress or join our project. Join our Discord for more details: https://discord.com/invite/ffbyt6eWWB

The compensation of contributions from the project treasury will be fully transparent and a recurring part of our calls.

In addition to that, we plan to set up a first Website in Q1/Q2 2022

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

Fully functional and running tool implementing the standards and specifications of our “Standard for verification of NFTs” (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398372) that is adopted by marketplaces and wallets, providing the Cardano NFT community with uniform and consistent verification status of NFTs across tools

This proposal is a tandem proposal to "Standard for verification of NFTs" - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398372.

The NFT Guild works with establishing standards for verifiable NFTs. This project is an implementation of the agreed standards

The NFT Guild was established late 2021 and this project is a continuation of the project https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384031