Read on about the journey we are on
NFTs — the scams you have heard about — are actually a very serious matter 🙃
Arabs have a saying about everything coming and going but the pyramids being there forever, defying time. The blockchains are the pyramids of our time. The internet was built to survive nuclear war. Blockchain is a step further… an attempt by humanity to build something that can withstand things far worse than even nuclear war.
NFTs live on blockchains, they are graffiti on the pyramids, scratches and scars on something that was designed to live forever. Thus, NFTs have lives, and they live forever.
- They are property that cannot really wear down, break, or disappear. This amazing permanence means that an NFT collection can never die. Sure, it can disappear from the spotlight and be abandoned in more ways than one. But it can not be dead, only dormant.
- NFTs are keys that open up access. In the physical world to things and experiences and in the digital world to other NFTs. NFTs lead to other NFTs. That particular insight is what we intend to capitalize on with our first product.
- Data about relationships between NFTs, that is, metadata (data about data) is not stored in the NFTs themselves. There is currently no standard way to describe and store these relationships — a gap we aim to fill by first aggregating and curating the data, organizing it into a semantic layer, and then building apps on top of it.
Airdrop data is a subset of NFT semantic data and the subject of our first product, the NFT Airdrop Manager, which is now live. The application is purpose-built to uncover hidden relationships between NFTs, store them, understand them (truly understand them), and make them useful.
What have we solved? To illustrate the most simple use-case, pictured (below): there are two ways to get a MAYC (Mutant Ape Yacht Club) NFT. Either directly, from a BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club), or by combining a BAYC and a BACC (Bored Ape Chemistry Club). Currently there is no repository of this knowledge, and no tool to create a new relationship. That is, apart from our app 🙂
Or, consider you wish to track course attendance using NFTs and issue an NFT diploma to those who collected all prerequisites. Currently, you have to build a custom solution for it. Our app already has you covered, allowing you to set up a mint with prerequisites in minutes (pictured below).
How does the lifetime of a typical NFT look?
A failed project:
- Initial issuance -> hype -> large secondary market volume -> price moons -> price crash -> loss of interest -> oblivion. But not disappearance!
An abandoned project can be resurrected, revived, repurposed… by virtually anyone. It is the fact that anyone can give any meaning to any NFT that we are betting on.
Every NFT can be part of an infinite number of narratives!
A successful project:
- Initial issuance -> hype -> large secondary market volume -> price moons -> price crash -> an airdrop -> more hype -> price rises again -> price falls -> another airdrop … project lives on!
Just like with failed projects, infinite narratives can be invented around NFTs from successful projects too. The original issuer does not and can not control the Infinite Narratives. Once published, NFTs have a life of their own.
Why are NFTs being used as basis for other NFTs?
There are several reasons why NFTs are currently being, and are likely to continue to be, used as basis for other NFTs (i.e., targets for airdrops or claims):
- NFT collections are in many ways ongoing enterprises. There is a team and/or a community behind them, and they keep adding value, especially in the form of airdrops of new NFTs to holders of the original/genesis collection
- A new, unrelated NFT project might want to airdrop something to owners of some existing NFTs in order to attract their attention
- An organization might want to enable claims of a new NFT only to owners of specific NFTs (such as Proof Of Attendance Protocol (POAP) NFTs that prove that you have been somewhere and/or done something)
- A business might want to airdrop NFTs to customers as part of a loyalty program, or a promotional campaign
- A business might want to airdrop real-world merchandise to customers or community (apparel, etc)
Why is tooling needed and who is the target audience for the Airdrop Manager?
- For a busy person that owns as little as a dozen NFTs it is already too hard to keep track of airdrops / claim opportunities. This is a real problem because many bring monetary value or some other perk. Some have unlimited minting periods, but many are mintable only within a week, a month, etc. The NFT Airdrop Manager allows NFT owners to have a one-stop-shop where they can see all the airdrops they are currently eligible for. They can then act on that information.
- For an entity that creates an airdrop, there is no easy way to advertise it to NFT owners. There is no standardized vocabulary to describe airdrops and creating them is a hard, expensive, manual process. The NFT Airdrop Manager, by being a location where all drops can described in a standardized way and seen by eligible claimants, will help raise awareness for particular drops and turbocharge the mainstream adoption of the airdrop concept.
Thus, the target audiences for the tool are:
- NFT owners (finding claims they are eligible for)
- NFT issuers (creating Drops with Prerequisites)
- Wallets (using the API to show users which NFTs they are eligible for)
Roadmap for the Airdrop Manager
For Retail:
- V1: You come to the site, it loads your NFTs, you can see the drops you are eligible for, as well as how much you would profit if you claimed them. You are taken to external sites to claim. ✅ (Done)
- V2: There is a browser extension that notifies you of potential airdrops without you having to have an account anywhere. Also, you can enter an email to be informed that way when a new drop you are eligible for comes along. ✅ (Done)
- V3: We display a button you can click to go straight to the smart contract to mint.
For Issuers:
- V1: Forms that you can use to register an airdrop you already created elsewhere by yourself. ✅ (Done)
- V2: Fully functional backend for issuers (persons, entities, DAOs, corporations…) to create new drops and manage the campaigns. We also offer minting capability (on Polygon) using an API from a provider like Alchemy.
- V3: We provide functionality for building (and hosting) your claim site using our drag-and-drop and click-and-choose components.
For Wallets:
- An API permitting wallets to inform users about important (potentially lucrative) ongoing and upcoming airdrops ✅ (Done)
A unique feature – browser extension!
We have a fully operational browser extension (works in Chrome and Brave) that notifies users of airdrops! It also calculates their monetary value based on floor price (if they are trading). Check it out and let us know what you think!
What next?
Foundation: using AI to help curate information
Information is everywhere. There is no lack of it — there is too much. The secret sauce of our product is the curated database of NFT relationships that we have built, and the mechanisms we have built to populate it, review it, and keep it current. We are using AI and some crafty engineering to turn the flood of information into tentative data that matures and strengthens over time.
We call that… “data marination”. Data is not processed once… but is constantly reexamined and reprocessed, verified and enriched. Over and over and over, day in and day out. Those small steps accrue and over time add weight to initial estimates, or overrule them. What we end up with is a solid foundation — the solid foundation — on which a suite of reliable and useful NFT tools can be built.
Are being built. Stay tuned.