Please describe your proposed solution
We, at the NFT Guild, believe that NFTs are currently the best available technology for the representation of property. Regardless if the property represented by NFTs are artworks, collectibles or real world assets (RWAs), the fundamentals of the technology are the same, and the potential applications and use cases are almost limitless. When coupled with Cardano, their potential to revolutionise how property is recorded, in almost every aspect of society becomes clear. That’s what motivates us to continue building around the technology of NFTs, even though the hype cycle may have ended, and especially to try and create easy to use, but powerful solutions that are freely available to anyone in the community.
Our aim with this proposal is to start building a library of easy to use and deploy tools accessible to any potential Cardano NFT creator. Our library will contain first and foremost a series of open source smart contracts, implementable by any developer that is familiar with Cardano. But we don’t want to stop there, our aim is to deliver much more than this standard approach - we want to create an easy to use, user friendly platform that will allow for the quick customisation, configuration and deployment of the contracts even by non-technical Cardano community members. In the process we want to substantially expand the reach of the solutions we develop by making them accessible to a much wider range of creators and projects that could benefit from them.
The NFT Guild has already developed a very similar tool for the effortless deployment of a configurable smart contract as part of our Swap Pools Infrastructure project demo iteration. The Swap Pools admin panel enables even non-technical users to deploy smart contracts with custom settings and parameters - this allows for the needs of each project and the desire of each creator to be represented on-chain.
Please check it out: <https://nftswap.stakepoolcentral.com:11998/admin#>
We have identified multiple basic needs of the Cardano NFT community that are currently only met by centralised third-party entities or not at all. There are a few open source smart contracts for some tasks, like NFT fractionalisation, but these are inaccessible to non-technical creators.
We have identified four areas of interest that we want to focus on initially. We have split these over two F12 proposals.
So, in short, in addition to creating a well documented, open source smart contract library, we will develop a user-friendly UX & UI that will enable all creators to deploy personalised smart contracts for their collections for a variety of common needs.
The use cases that we want to focus for now are:
1. Conditional Unlocks and Airdrops for Token Holders
2. Customisable Escrow
3. Auto Royalty Splitting & Royalties Donation
4. Burning Smart Contract with Customisable Upgrade Mechanics.
Developing the last two use cases is the focus of this proposal.
Note: The first two are covered by a different proposal: <https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/127237>
Auto Royalty Splitting & Royalties Donation
We aim to create an easy to use web solution that deploys a completely configurable royalty fractionalisation smart contract on mainnet and outputs a single address for royalties that can then be used in the royalties token, according to CIP-27. The smart contract would receive the royalty payments from marketplaces, and, at set intervals, validate the payment of royalties to the addresses that hold the royalty token fractions.
This would essentially allow for the royalties to be “updatable” over time as the token fractions can be moved between wallets. Such an arrangement would make it extremely easy for a collection creator to pledge all or part of their royalties to a cause and have everything 100% verifiable on-chain.
Burning/Minting Smart Contract (w/ customisable upgrade mechanics)
A smart contract that irretrievably locks tokens (fungible or non-fungible), essentially burning them. Such a contract can be useful in a variety of situations, however one use case that stands out is the creation of an “NFT upgrade mechanic” where multiple tokens can be locked in the contract and new, upgraded ones, minted in their place, according to customisable logic. In addition, as part of the demo dApp we will create a way to visualise in real time the updated total supply of the collection, accounting for all the tokens locked in the burning contract(s). In the future we even envision the creation of a new standard that would allow wallets and chain explorers to also display the updated supply.
These use cases not only solve existing problems but also open up new possibilities for creative expression and commercial activity on Cardano.
Our solution is unique in its combination of open-source smart contracts and an intuitive user interface designed specifically for non-technical creators. This approach will significantly lower the barrier to entry for creators on Cardano, enabling a broader range of individuals to participate in the ecosystem by democratizing access to powerful tools.