Let’s Talk NFTs
NFT is an acronym on everyone’s lips these days, with celebrities, bands, tech giants, artists, and crypto-savvy techsters throwing their works into the NFT pile. And the buyers are out there in droves, proudly showing off their NFTs and spitting out NFT know-how as they admire the art or other media that’s available for all to see, but somehow uniquely theirs to own.
The FOX Token by Fox Finance is a deflationary reflection token on the Binance Smart Chain that joins investors, innovative decentralized products, and the wild world around us in a common mission. This article details the current state of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) along with some exciting Fox-specific news.
It’s an interesting time to be in crypto.
Back when I first got into the crypto game, it was all about Bitcoin and the fact that there’s people solving complex cryptographic algorithms to earn massive amounts of money. That was it. It made Bitcoin the fantastic (if not energy inefficient) store of wealth that it is today, but it really didn’t have much purpose beyond money movement, payments, wealth, and further growth of blockchain-based technology.
Then along came an Ethereum. Suddenly, the whole idea of blockchain became a whole lot smarter. And over time, it’s become even better, with the ability to mint fungible assets (ERC20 standard “tokens”) and non-fungible tokens (ERC721).
So… what is an NFT anyways? There’s plenty of information out there, but let’s give explaining it again a go:
- An ERC721 contract deployed to Ethereum allows for the minting of 1 or more tokens
- Unlike fungible ERC20 tokens (which can have any number of equal units), each ERC721 token (NFT) can be unique
- You can attach standardized metadata in the form of a URL to a minted NFT, guiding NFT-ready dApps and wallets to the content locked within.
Still confused? That’s fine, it’s an odd subject. Let’s try again in more concrete terms using an example with an NFT we minted for the CEEZEE $SAFU Rugged Charity Swap (RCS):
- I have an ERC721 contract called FOXNFT
- I mint myself the 2nd token from the FOXNFT contract
- When I mint myself that token, I provide a URL in it that points to a JSON file containing metadata. It might look something like this:
{
"name":"FOX Has Your Back",
"description":"We get it, crypto can be a scary place. FoxFinance.io knows how painful a rugpull can be, and we're here for you as part of the SAFU Rugged Charity Swap (RCS).",
"image":"https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNcui6kLJaFuQhm3ZHsK1W937LnxNZoJBGS5NKTMpbAHi"
}4. The “image” value points to the image I want to show.
In this example, the minted NFT contains a URL reference to that JSON example above. The JSON file contains values for name, description, and image (required by the EIP721 standard). Image points to yet another URL, this one the image that we want to show. And voila, you have an NFT, ready to be displayed in Trust Wallet or Metamask or anywhere else that particular NFT can be viewed. What’s it for? Owning, of course.
Sure, different NFTs have different purposes, but at the core an NFT is just another Token, not unlike our beloved FOX token, but uniquely minted to point to a specific thing and be granted to a specific wallet. And really, here’s what it comes down to:
Owning an NFT means that on the blockchain, there is a record stating that your public address is the owner of that NFT. Because your wallet is the private key to that corresponding public address, you get to call yourself its owner. And the blockchain would agree.
“But wait,” I can hear you say. “This makes no sense! I thought I just popped into OpenSea.io and pressed the mint button!”
This is where it gets a bit trickier.
NFT Caveats
There are two main areas of consideration, at least as far as FOX and our NFT platform is concerned:
- Having an NFT is only as good as the place where your JSON and image file gets stored
- The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) currently has no global infrastructure for NFT viewing, selling, or interaction
Both of these may sound small, but they’re monstrous problems.
For the first, there’s a great article on this from TheVerge. The problem in summary is that a lot of NFTs out there have their JSON and images stored on non-blockchain infrastructure… maybe Amazon Web Services S3, maybe a Wordpress blog, maybe a computer sitting in the basement. And if those files get deleted? Poof. Your NFT is gone. That’s it. Fin.
The current best solution to that issue is using the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). It’s a distributed, peer-to-peer filesystem that operates somewhat like the blockchain itself. By storing files in IPFS, it ensures that the JSON or image can never be overwritten (every file stored has a unique hash), never deleted, etc. And so the NFT can live on, instead of you getting a token (possibly at great cost), and then getting a 404 one day because your NFT’s metadata was stored on some old server that’s disconnected from the internet.
The second issue is key for anyone on the Binance Smart Chain (for example, the FOX token). And that issue is this:
All of the current NFT dApps and markets on Binance Smart Chain are proprietary. They’re made for viewing and interacting only with their NFTs. For example, on BakerySwap.org you can mint NFTs for 0.01BNB, sell them, whatever you like. But they’re on BakerySwap’s NFT contract, and their platform. And as you saw in the last point, that’s not something that should be taken lightly given the backend worries with NFTs.
Binance has announced their own NFT platform coming in June. But as of yet, there’s not a lot of detail around it. Will it be open? Will it show and allow interaction with NFTs from all contracts, or just from Binance and their chosen partners?
What About Fox NFTs?
And so we finally come to FOX, and the FOXNFT platform. We’ve decided that if we’re going to do NFTs, we’re going to do them right. That means:
- We wrote our NFT contract from the ground up using the latest version of Solidity and OpenZeppelin contract libraries.
- We’re using IPFS for all file storage to future-proof any NFTs minted by our contract
- We’re developing our own NFT platform to display, browse, buy, auction, and admire NFTs.
- We’ve got a whole lot of ideas for how these NFTs can be used in the future.
So yes, we’re working hard on an NFT platform. It’s absolutely vital if we want to own the contract, own the standards, and own the way our NFT platform works. But we’re not stopping with a Foxes-Only NFT platform. Obviously to start we’ll want to use this platform to showcase the over 100 NFTs we’ve minted thus far, and give NFT holders an opportunity to see their inventory and buy more NFTs. That said, that’s just the beginning.
Our goal is nothing less than an open NFT platform that can be used by NFT holders across the Binance Smart Chain, one that allows intuitive, customized minting capabilities, cross-contract browsing and interactions, and more.
We intend to bring something special to the Binance Smart Chain, and to make NFTs more accessible there than they’ve ever been on the BSC, courtesy of the power of FOX.
Our first public release (Alpha) is expected May 31st and we’re absolutely hyped about it. Over time we’ll be adding more and more of the features mentioned above like auctioning and more. The FOX NFT Marketplace will provide new opportunities for our investors to share in our love of the FOX Token and FOX Mission, for others on the BSC to become part of the FOX Family, and will present us with new and unique opportunities for charitable giving and more. We can’t wait to show you.
