NFT Standards explained
From a shorter span of time, NFT has gained immense traction and itself created a multi-billion dollar industry for digital collectibles. It created a substantial opportunity for creators and artists all over the globe. The market size has crossed 40B$ even in this inception phase. Cryptopunk a 24 x 24 pixel 8-bit avatar images trades for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Popular brands started acquiring and collaborating with NFT projects like Adidas collaborate with Bored ape yacht club and Nike acquired RTFKT (a company that makes virtual sneakers and NFT ). It’s challenging the way how people consider digital assets and pull up the gates for a decentralized virtual future.
What is a Non-Fungible Token(NFT)?
An NFT is a cryptographic token that represents ownership of a unique digital asset. The asset isn’t just restricted to images, It can be an event ticket, a game skin, a membership, or something you can imagine digital that matters ownership. As it’s unique, one NFT can’t be traded with another one. You can’t exchange a movie ticket for Spider-Man with Avengers, But, It’s possible to transfer ownership like your friend can watch the movie if you give the ticket to your friend. As all the events from minting to ownership transfer happen in a public blockchain, anyone can decipher the evolution of an NFT from inception to the current stage. People can trust the information because blockchain is an immutable database of records.
Most of the NFT projects mainly fall under Ethereum and Solano networks. Ethereum holds the major share but due to its high gas fees and transaction times creators now prefer Solano over Ethereum. This doesn’t mean these two networks only have the capabilities to issue NFT. There are other native blockchain projects such as Cardano, Kusama, avalanche, and so on.. supports minting NFT. Here in this post, I will cover NFT standards for Ethereum and Solano network
ERC-721
It’s introduced by Dapper Labs (Cryptokitties in 2017 as an EIP (Ethereum improvement proposal). It’s the first of its kind and a gold standard for NFT. If an NFT is minted based on the following protocol, it can only be represented as a single asset. It’s an appropriate standard for creating and tracking unique NFT. Popular NFT Cryptopunk, Bored Ape Yacht Club comes in the context of ERC 721.
ERC-1155
The ERC-115 token standard was introduced by Enjin Project, a blockchain-gaming company. As it shares traits from both ERC-20 and ERC-721, It’s called a semi-fungible token. permits the creation of both semi-fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens.
Benefits of ERC-1155
- ERC-1155 allows the transfer of multiple assets in a single smart contract, ERC-721 allows only one token transfer per contract. This leads to less network congestion and lower gas fees.
- As ERC-1155 supports both fungible and non-fungible tokens hence it can issue multiple quantities of the same NFT. While trading it exists as a fungible token and afterward, it can convert to NFT.
- Token transfers can be reverted in case of failed transactions with ERC-1155 — This works only when a receiver is a contract and it should follow certain conditions. Know more about safe transfer rules
- In ERC-1155, smart contracts are linked to multiple URIs and do not store additional metadata (such as file names). In comparison, ERC-721 only supports static metadata stored directly on the smart contract for each token ID, increasing deployment costs and limiting flexibility.
Creating an NFT in Solano
Alike Token standards in Ethereum, Solano doesn't have a protocol standard specification. An NFT in Solano is yet another token that token supply is restricted to one. It’s created in a similar way, how Fungible tokens are created.
NFT space is evolving at a rapid pace. It’s challenging multiple industries like Gaming, Fine arts, music, physical collectibles, memberships, and so on...
I am excited. Are you?
