The Revelar Gate is a DApp aiming at creating deeper utility around NFTs on Cardano with a clear use case for subscription-based models to explore choosing Cardano as a go-to blockchain for these business models. With the low-cost creation and management of these NFTs, a Gate can allow for logic layers to verify and distribute access to the media within the metadata.
Research and design a balanced system for gating content with private IPFS clusters and failover to project/creator-owned infrastructure.
This proposal covers building an MVP of the Revelar Gate which will cover:
- Using Revelar’s minting engine to create a “Private NFT”
- Create a custom IPFS storage cluster on Revelar as your own gateway.
- Assigning simple verification rules to validate access.
- Display the private NFT content.
- Research and document a balanced system (ease of use + redundant) for gating content with private IPFS clusters and failover to project/creator-owned infrastructure.
Before we get too far, please note we address centralization concerns below in Risks.
Gating content for creators allows for new and untapped models for general NFT projects but specifically within our focus, for NFT Game Developers. While the metadata is stored on-chain, Gates would allow for authentication steps like connecting a wallet to verify your ownership when trying to view the IPFS linked content.
Example:
Gates could use NFT (A) to validate access (viewing/consumption) to the media within NFT (A) or a completely different set of NFTs (B), (C), (D)…
As the Cardano NFT space matures, we have an opportunity to leverage some of the uniqueness of Cardano’s native asset interoperability and low cost to accelerate NFT Utility. This focuses on DApps that are building logic-driven NFT workflows, perhaps with validation steps, different royalty structures (other than CIP-027), and new unique ways to leverage gated content.
For the DApp Challenge, our focus is to create a relatively flexible design and service for other DApps to plug and play into their application, without having to manage custom IPFS deployments and infrastructure overhead. This allows us to empower new DApps to be created and built in the Cardano Ecosystem much faster, at a lower cost.
Success is defined in the # of “Revelar Gates” deployed in the first 12 mo, as well as discussing and finding the right balance of community-owned infrastructure long term. (Federated → Decentralized)
Our world today is full of risks, especially with the unknown nature of our global economy & workforce. These are the largest risks we are proactively accounting for in this proposal
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Centralization: In the spirit of transparency, we realize this covers specific use cases for NFTs and creates some centralization concerns with Revelar as a private service on top of Cardano. *We believe that there are ways to mitigate this long term with the same federated approach in building and proving the concept quickly, then distributing the Private IFPS deployments to community collaborators or project creators long term. Furthermore, we will investigate the best redundant path for self-hosted nodes to de-risk infrastructure reliance on Revelar.
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NFT Standard Changes: By gating specific content, we create an edge case for platforms that are using the CIP-025 standard in loading assets to be displayed in wallets, marketplaces, explorers, etc. *To account for this, we will continue to abide by the CIP-025 standard in metadata design and provide thumbnails as public assets, with the content being gated held separately. If we discover through deeper community collaboration that a new CIP needs to be drafted and proposed, we will work to create one.
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Software delays: Show me software shipped on time, I’ll show you software riddled with bugs. This is the largest risk with any DApp project due to the unknowns of this decentralized frontier and new technology that becomes available along the way. *Our approach is to keep it simple solving 80% of the problem early on with known systems and infrastructure approaches from our previous experience. This means limited complexity with smart contracts and a focus on scalable simple solutions with business processes (like 24/7 customer support, dedicated QA) that often save time by solving problems early and supporting customers when systems break.
We have also partnered with a contracted dev shop as needed for engineering overflow needs. It’s a known team for us and they work on enterprise FinTech software deployments around the globe. Reference available upon request. https://www.excellarate.com/
There are likely other risks, but we believe these three are the primary ones to take into account and mitigate along the way. Again keeping in line with the Challenge Brief, we want to deliver the highest value with the least amount of technical sophistication to grow the community.