User friendly NFT minting feature

[IMPACT]

Interests for NFTs in the population exploded last year and became a world that companies and people want to jump into. NFTs are a tool that brings security especially for art with integration of all information into a blockchain. The way Cardano works makes it attractive for NFTs, but it lacks a minting feature available in open access for people to easily use it for their project development. Moreover, minting NFTs is an interesting feature in the crypto world, but without a protocol to easily link to servers containing the original file and then send the minted NFT to a wallet, this feature becomes hard to use for non highly skilled developers.

We found a protocol on the developers.cardano.org website for minting NFTs (https://developers.cardano.org/docs/native-tokens/minting-nfts/) but it is not complete and need to be linked to a wallet at some point. We propose to do it and to make it available for everyone in the Cardano community.

Our web system will pre-define the asset controller, provide pre-configuration and GUI for the NFT minting (Token Issuer) and wallet (Token User). To make the different development steps clear, we made the figure attached. In brief, we will first Define the Monetary Policy Script. This step will be required for the token issuers to lock the original file into the contract, their name and the number of tokens they want to create. Then, once the payment of minting fees from the issuer is done, the protocol will allow to mint the specific amounts of NFTs indicated by the issuer, crafting them into the Cardano blockchain and burning the requested amount of tokens. Once the script has validated the number of burned tokens, the NFTs will be sent and stored into a wallet. The issuer will then be able to use his/her tokens or redeem them.

The second stage of our project will be to test our protocol before allowing everyone to use it.

Being part of the Cardano community, we will develop the minting feature as open source to help the development of other projects/platforms from this challenge. We are going to use a written script already available for the Cardano community, perfect it and make it available and easy to use for everyone without high coding skills.

We believe that developing this feature will significantly help other projects from the community and indirectly expand ADA’s use-case. We believe it will also attract people from outside the community, willing to mint NFT and push them to use the Cardano blockchain, and so, to use ADA for their transactions.

The most obvious risk regarding NFT minting features in general concerns unauthorized parties who would mint an NFT using a digital file (Picture, audio track, video…) they do not own copyrights. Our project here is just the development of the minting feature easy to link to a server and a wallet. We plan to develop smart contracts to minimize this risk in another proposal for the Fund#9.

Non-developers may still be lost to use our feature. We plan to write a protocol or to make a video explaining how to use it. It will be interesting to have feedback from the community on it.

[FEASIBILITY]

Phase 1: 1st week to 2nd – Set up the environment, investigate in cardano-CLI and cardano-wallet, UI design (1 web developer + 1 UI designer) - $5,600

Phase 2: 3rd week to 6th week – Web GUI for utilizing the middlewares, database (1 web developer) - $5,600

Phase 3: 7th week to 10th week – Core functions that allow multiple users to mint, trade, and manage their wallet (1 web developer + 1 QA) - $7,000

1 Web developer: $40/hour: $1,400/week x 10 weeks: $14,000

1 UI designer: $40/hour: $1,400/week x 2 weeks: $2,800

1 QA: $40/hour: $1,400/week x 1 week: $1,400

Total: $18,200

My name is Alan Hegron (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-hegron-09648154/) and I am the proposer. I received 2 PhDs from France and from Canada in research and then went to work at Columbia University in the US and now at New-York University. It has now been more than 7 years I am managing projects involving international collaborations and am consequently well trained in managing many projects at a time and to always find a solution to problems occurring.

Members of the developing team work for Shinetech which is a leading software development provider founded in 2001 in Beijing, China, with additional global locations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. Shinetech collaborated with more than 1500 clients including world known companies like Coca-Cola, BMW, Ralph Lauren or HP. For HP, Shinetech developed its website and is still managing it worldwide, proving the seriousness and efficiency of the company (https://www.shinetechsoftware.com/).

Here is the development team:

Project manager, senior full-stack developer: Jason Hao Li

• Over 4 years of experience in full-stack web development. Expert in back-end development frameworks, front-end development, system design, business analysis and senior project manager. (CV attached)

Expert PHP developer: Finley Fei Ma

• Over 9 years of experience in PHP, Node, Front-end and 4 years project manager. Expert in PHP MVC framework, web development and CI/CD. (CV attached)

User interface designer: Keyon Keyang Du

• Over 7 years of experience in graphic design. Expert in UI and UX design and mobile app design. 4 years as UI team manager. (CV attached)

Expert PHP developer: Ranger Guan

• Over 9 years of experience in software development. Expert in front-end and multiple languages (PHP, javascript, TypeScript, Python…). Expert in web applications including E-commerce, in app creation and in Agile development methodologies. (CV attached)

Consultants/Advisors

Albert Feghaly: Bioinformatic specialist with PhD-level. Python, Javascript, big data, ML with 6 years in academia. Albert is developing with his team the successfully funded ''osNFTs for science popularization'' project from Funds #6 and #7.

[AUDITABILITY]

At the end of every step detailed in the timeline, we will update the community on the progress of the development of the minting feature linked to the wallet through: 

Github: https://github.com/alanhegron/NFT-minting-linked-to-wallet.git

Telegram: @AlanHegron

If we share our successes, we will also share our struggles and we believe that being part of the Cardano community is a strength and we would be pleased to receive suggestions about the development of these features.

After the 10 weeks of development, we will publish our script. We believe that within 3 months after publication, 5 to 10 projects will be using it. Regarding the feedback or the community, we may submit another proposal in the Fund#9 to perform it again, the goal being to have a finished product within 6 months, helping around 30 projects within a year.

It is a new one.