Building an NFT Platform on Cardano — Part II
Cardano Smart Contract
In my last article “Building an NFT Platform on Cardano — Part I”, I described the NFT platform that our team is building. Without smart contract, we really can’t do much as actions are performed based on the trust between buyer and seller. (i.e. buyer pays the seller and he/she trusts the seller will send him/her the NFT in return. )
The situation will change with the introduction of Cardano smart contract. Actions are triggered by smart contracts (rather than traditional programs/scripts) deployed on the blockchain with logics verifiable by all parties. We can prove mathematically Cardano smart contract is more powerful than Ethereum’s, meaning that what can be done on Ethereum today can be done on Cardano but even more.
Cardano smart contract has entered critical phase as Charles Hoskinson mentioned. If everything goes as planned, it will be available on the Mainnet by August 2021. With the availability of Plutus playground now and the introduction of Alonso Testnet in the short run, many parties (including us) have already started trying out smart contract functionalities. In the following paragraphs, I am going to mention some of the features we are going to add on our NFT platform once smart contract becomes available.
Fixed Price Sale
Before smart contract is introduced, we only allow our administrators to upload NFTs for sale. But when smart contract is available, it can be done right after NFTs are minted. In fact, we allow users to import their NFTs minted elsewhere for sale as well.
Seller will send his/her NFT to smart contract and smart contract will send the NFT to the buyer as soon as enough Ada is received. The logic is on “first come, first serve” basis. At the same time, it will mark the NFT as “Sold” so that sale won’t happen twice.
Auction
Auction is a key feature for our NFT marketplace. Use of smart contract is a perfect way for us to implement the logics.
A simple implementation goes like this: Once the auction starts, seller sends his/her NFT to the smart contract. Bidders also sends his/her Ada to the smart contract. Upon the expiration of the auction, smart contract logics are triggered and will send the NFT to the winner (e.g. user who bid for the highest price) and refund Ada to the losers.
NFT as a Service
There are unlimited use cases for NFT. Besides user generated digital contents, the concept can be applied in different areas. 2 examples as:
Example 1: Certificates for Education
There are a lot of organizations offering online courses now (e.g. Udemy, Coursea, edX,…). After completion of courses, the organization will issue a certificate (either physical or digital) to the students. However, it’s hard to prove if the certificates are valid or not. It’s very easy for somebody to “produce” such a certificate claiming that he/she has finished certain courses.
Use of NFT can prevent this. The organization can mint an NFT with course information as metadata (e.g. student name, ID, course title, date+time, exam score, etc) and send to student’s wallet upon course completion. And when being challenged, student can show his NFT. As the issuing party and other information can be verified on the blockchain, it can genuinely prove that the candidate owns the certificate.
Example 2: Certificates for Luxury Goods
People who can afford to buy luxury goods wants to prove that his/her goods are not counterfeits. This can be made possible with the use of NFT.
A watch manufacturer, for example, can mint an NFT for its watch, using all the unique properties of the watch as metadata (e.g. exact weight, dimensions, shape, material, photos takes from different angles, etc). NFT can be sent to the customer’s wallet together with the physical good once it’s sold.
Customer can claim his ownership of this unique watch by showing his NFT that is sent from the manufacturer. And since all unique properties can be found from the NFT’s metadata, people can verify the physical good not a counterfeit.
Our Approach
Companies that are interested in NFT services may not have the expertize and don’t want to invest in developing blockchain applications themselves. These are the potential customers we target.
We will create a set of API’s for our customers to call so that smart contracts can be created easily. Also, we will develop customizable templates for our customers to embed on their websites. Once integration is done, our customers can mint NFTs on their own websites and then put them on sale (fixed price or auction) or send to their customers directly. We will only charge this white label service a small amount of setup fee as well as commission for each transaction occurs.
Conclusion
The Goguen release will be a big event for Cardano this year. The available of smart contract features will make Cardano a complete blockchain platform that allows applications to be developed on. We are super excited about this as we can finally build an NFT platform offering very affordable transaction fees. By that time, we expect to see mass adoption of NFT.
