Standard for verification of NFTs

[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 standardised 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 for this project is to have an open community discussion to define solutions to the problems above and work together in defining and establishing standards in the NFT space. 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 achieve safety and verification in the NFT space.

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

Our work will be focused around merging the different unofficial ways of working currently in the NFT space to push these forward to be established and adopted standards used by all tools and marketplaces. This will be achieved by bringing the suppliers together in mutual discussions to receive mutual benefits from collaborating on common ways of working.

For standards to become established they need to be adopted by tool builders and marketplaces. To achieve this we will work with the tool builders and marketplaces to get successful adoption of the standards. The NFT Guild is planning to create an open source tool to marketplaces so they can get free verification of new projects / artists without any manual verification process. The tool will also provide functionality for verifying the individual NFT tokens automatically. The tool is a separate proposal which you can see at https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398378 and it will be maintained by the NFT Guild to be an implementation of the agreed standards at any given time.

[FEASIBILITY]

Month: 0 - 2: Information gathering phase

Month: 3: Specification phase

During the Information gathering phase (months 0-2), we will bring new guild members into the NFT Guild communication platforms, create and send surveys to NFT Marketplaces, NFT Minting tools, Wallets and NFT creators. The surveys will be 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

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 standards and possible solutions. First version of the design will be published in public github site and reviewed by the NFT 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

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.

Marketing campaign, surveys & outreach - 4000 USD

Workshops to develop standards - 15000 USD

Project Management, Coordination, and Public Road Map Development - 4000 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

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

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

NFT Verification Tool (F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem)

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398378

Cardano NFT Reports (F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem)

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

[AUDITABILITY]

A public Github site will always show the latest standards we develop and will display the project state at present time. 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

A well established NFT Guild with and active community server (https://discord.gg/ffbyt6eWWB) with discussions and events to establish standards. A Github site with standards, specifications and best practices freely available to Cardano NFT space

This proposal is a tandem proposal to "NFT Verification Tool" - https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398378.

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