A More Robust NFT standard

[IMPACT]

The Cardano NFT ecosystem is growing rapidly, but to date it does not have a dominant standard for NFT tokens. The closest thing there is at this time is the Cardano Improvement Proposal 25 (https://cips.cardano.org/cips/cip25/). Yet, CIP-25 only relates to the metadata associated with the token itself, and doesn’t go in greater detail to the larger design of the NFT itself.

Even where CIP-25 touches on the metadata and tries to standardize how to attach it in the transaction, many more functionalities are left out of the design. There is a strong need for a more robust metadata standard that is able to accommodate more complex use cases, such as:

Certification of authenticity

Public keys of creator & owner

Legal admissibility (describe context of creation & use, incl. business classification taxonomies)

Copyright information (e.g. Creative Commons license)

Transferability restrictions of the token

Possible ties with identity systems

Just to name a few more properties that should be incorporated. Second, CIP-27 (https://cips.cardano.org/cips/cip27/) deals with the distribution of royalties on-chain when an NFT represents ownership of content. Again, this proposal requires much more work to become a workable standard that can be applied across NFT projects on cardano, and even cross-chain.

In order to foster dApp interoperability these questions of NFT standards have to be addressed. By their very nature they must be open source, and help NFT projects on Cardano have a basic design that allows them to interoperate.

The publication of such standards will not only contribute to established projects, but help guide new ones. As a well crafted NFT standard becomes a template easy to reuse that takes a lot of the initial work from the individual developers of newer projects.

1. The creation of a more complete NFT standard which would be open to the entire ecosystem to adopt, comment, and improve.
2. A complete NFT standard is crucial to allow interoperability between NFT projects.
3. An NFT standard is a prerequisite to allow for cross-chain migration of assets.
4. It is the basis to expand the ecosystem.
5. It would be an open-source standard for the entire network.

The design of a valid standard is an abstract process. It must be broad enough to account for the myriad of use cases NFT can have, yet still be specific enough to be usable. This delicate balance is very difficult to achieve.

The Cardano NFT alliance is a collection of NFT projects across the entire ecosystem. We are bringing together the expertise from a whole host of projects that all are looking to use NFTs in a particualr way.

[FEASIBILITY]

There are already discussions regarding a unified standard for NFTs on Cardano. Improvement Proposal 25 and 27, bit none have been adopted by the larger NFT ecosystem and are not receiving much traction from reviewers. Yet, a great deal of the foundation is set by those proposals, we just need to take them farther.

The need for a NFT standard at this junction is critical. The ecosystem is growing, but each project is doing it their own way. If a unified standard is no set now, the differences between projects will only grown until they become incompatible.

Phase 1 - Research all the metadata standards and models from projects on Cardano./ 2000

Phase 2 - Create a draft CIP (Cardano Improvement Proposal) document for review by larger community./ 5000

(Join and participate in consortiums and working group in industry and with IOG engineering)

Phase 3 - Formalize the results the submission of a new CIP that captures the current CIP-25 and CIP-27. Both have to do on how NFT are structured on Cardano./ 7000

(Test it in the real world with actual projects and publish the final work)

Phase 4 - Finalize the Documentation into a simple user interface wireframe./ 10000

(We will create the wireframes, the UI development will need to be done in Fund 5)

Phase 5 - Create a series of remote workshops that show the features and design of the NFT standard./ 4600

Total: $28,600

The Cardano NFT Alliance is a group dedicated to expand the NFT ecosystem of Cardano. It's comprised from many projects across the network. Anyone interested in joining please use our link:

https://t.me/+FdJID6vfhU5mOGIx

[AUDITABILITY]

The firs document for auditability would be the draft of the new CIP. There it would detail the scope and core principles of the standard.

Then the wireframe and template code for the standard itself in the form of a GitHub repository.

Finally, we're planning four different workshops that explain the NFT standard, the way to use it in particular use cases, and what are the main properties.

The publication of a more complete NFT standard that's able to account for all the missing pieces that we have now on Cardano. The document would be presented to the community for discussion, iteration, and improvement. It's just the first step on a longer path to general adoption.

It's a new proposal.