okay – this is a long overdue post. and holy fck I have come along way since the last time I posted… and yes I know that this website needs a major update. Something I will be doing is giving myself some much needed time… anyways I started this quest last summer –> which let do my discoveries about the Nifty Kit App. I still love this contract option as you can take them off admin control, and mint fully on Etherscan. I know they were doing a contract upgrade so that is on my to do list for an updated tutorial.
There are so many tools now.
I want to preface all of this with Decentralization is a spectrum, and when I started on my quest of wanting to be able to deploy my own smart contract on my own site, I did not understand how much work this is. I learned while creating a generative project – (which proved easier than minting and selling my own art)
Now my reasons for wanting to do this on my own is soly for anti-censorship reasons. SO in that case we are still missing some tools, and I am still missing some knowledge but we are getting closer. Ultimately the most important thing is knowing at which point you are reaching a centralized bottleneck (and in some cases, that is accessing the internet in general).
Additionally – I started a full time job in NFTS last October. The experience was amazing in so many ways, I truly got to build the most beautiful community ever. I also was working 18 hour days. I decided to leave last month, as I truly felt that I was getting behind in what I believe the best impact I could have on the space is. sorry on being slow with this …..
Helping to get rid of the barrier to entry to utilizing, understanding and accessing this technology
So know that this guide is a WIP, I also will briefly talk about some of my projects as, I have met alot of new people in the last 6 months, and have not given any art updates at all + the easiest way for me to share some of this stuff is through personal experience.
I def need to update my NFT for Dummys guide to include new platforms, but right now I will focus on those that allow you to create your own smart contracts and are accessible to most.
Part two will be explaining some of the functions on these smart contracts in greater detail
Also – plz correct me if anything I said feels wrong or you need clarification.
I do mention foundation, but I also have some invites so hop on down to hiscord and LMK what your mission is/ what kind of art you create :).
- You can deploy ERC 1155 or ERC 721 – they also have snapshot & airdrop potentials + merch integrations with shopify
- Secondary Sales registry + secondaries in contract – this is important bc most platforms pay out secondary sales on a platform level – (I believe known origin has been doing this for a while but once again I like to focus on platforms you do not need to apply to – that being said you still have to set your % on opensea! – they have a nice reminder + royalty tracking which will be key as this space grows)
- Extensions allow for some extra functionality within contract without advanced understanding of the technology
- That said, the sales orders are not in the contract. Via manifold studio, you do not set a price or set up an auction. To use these contracts, you still need a SO to sell your NFTS you are still reliant on a third party marketplaces
- That being said – they have a one page site for auctions…. and yungwknd so kindly helped me to mint this. I am not sure when it will be live for everyone but I know they are moving in that direction. This is similar to FDN where the sales contract is a custody contract. It is not public but its a very simple process – I didnt even check the price of gas when I minted bc I was on their time but it was $6.00 to approve the contract and $50.00 to mint)
- This in itself is such a need, and I am so grateful that the manifold team was able to help me out. I think relying on a marketplace is okay for now – I Just like to know that if the whole world crashes… I could still sell nfts 😉 I also recognize the privilege I have in manifold responding to me, but even months ago, when I was trying to figure out why a JSON was not attaching as metadata @richerd responded to my DMS.
My experience and process. I have been super excited about creater studio and even got accepted to the beta. This has been a priority for me and unfortunately did not have the bandwidth to check this out until this weekend. SO ofc I like to play around with things. I made a few testnet versions the other night, to play around before making a final version. Then I was ready to mint my piece.
I deleted the contracts I had made prior (Im not sure why I did this, I kind of just wanted to see what the delete function did. NOW deleting a contract from your dashboard does not delete it from the blockchain, just your personal dashboard)
simplified
This contract is still verified on RINKEBY
Technically I can mint more onto it on Rinkeby… but this will no longer show up on my MANIFOLD dashboard….
This wouldn’t normally be an issue (I am a testnet maxi and have minted more testnet tokens than I can count…) but I really wanted to mint a token the day I was ready.
However, the verification on Rinkeby step kept failing. I went into their discord and it seems this happens time to time-(rinkeby is buggy & alot slower).
at 4:12 PM they made an announcement about the issues with ARWEAVE & RINKEBY
5:10 PM: I was able to verify a contract on Rinkeby without using manifold –> I then tried to manually verify it but tbh theres an implementation part of this contract and this is where I got lost. Also not sure how to properly put into standard JSON format and im sure there are scripts but so much to do – decided that was not important
10:05 PM: Manifold announced that they removed the etherscan verification step so that people would be able to continue the mint process. This is huge for two reasons.
1) they recognized said bottleneck and provided a very quick solution
2) they still encouraged use of testnet. Since I had tested multiple times I felt okay and deployed to mainnet
another note – they make it super easy for you to view your nft on both rinkeny & mainnet on rarible, opensea, and metadata.
last night OS was undergoing maitence, and my token was not showing up on Rarible.
I believe Rarible still runs off of the opensea api – can def fact check me on this
The API was under maintenance and since I had tested this metadata I minted anyways. Today it views fine on Rarible 🙂
sidenote, I would love to help anyone to build these “areas of improvement”. I think these are needs for the space and in attempts to move to a place where we are not reliant on a platform, I would love to help make some of these things happen. I also have full faith that when it is sustainable these will be offferings. and something I love about manifold is they have truly been accessible and advocates for artist sovereignty and bettering the space!!!
AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT / THINGS I WISHED MANIFOLD HAD:
- Options on the website do not lineup 100% with what options are on chain (may be confusing for people – not really their fault as people probably like / need the option to delete hence why I mentioned it here as I think it could be confusing
- Deploy Scripts to be able to create without relying on Manifold Front end – option to move forward without verifying your contract on Rinkeby
- Metadata scripts compatible with specific contracts (also seeing ARWEAVE is down for manifold) I didn’t have any isssues – but could see this coming up – or wanting to host your metadata on your own node etc…
- Sales contract + landing page repo so that people could set their own auctions (I have tried to get this working with Zora’s auction house but have still been finding issues – did leave a comment on the repo – got something functioning but not in the way its supposed too … (I feel like this is on the way)
- Rinkeby– I am testnet whale but I have seen a few people who have been unable to claim from rinkeby. This is not a manifold issue at all but something that also could be a factor in wanting to mint immediatly – that being said if you need test eth feel free to ping me in hisscord
MY MANIFOLD GENESIS: https://auction.decentralizedick.art/ (VSFW)
** UPDATE** the site does not work on mobile – learning experience + more details on this twitter thread
** def another learning opp and another place where lack of having access atm is a bottle neck I may have actually figured out the fix but I will wait on the update!!!
twitter thread: https://twitter.com/adultarts/status/1501473901305827330?s=20&t=uNX2r_yCCjxK8_weFSPPvw
**sooo if you wanna bid do it from chrome/brave on desktop 🙂
- Tons of options for minting + includes code and no code examples – even via no code options you can look @ the code (I found this helpful for learning and understanding).
- Embed code to be able to sell via web3 wallets from your own website – Bulk uploads, metadata options, etc
- Sales mechanisms (set price) options available in the contract
- (there is a repo for auction buttons + contract but this will take me a few days to get through bc I do not know typescript at all)
- can do lazy minting on own contract –> metadata gets uploaded to IPFS – Asked where when I started writing this and it is currently hosted on Piñata.
- Honestly there are a ton of features that I need to play with & explore more they are also super responsive on discord and DMS – There are almost TOOO many features (in a good way) but I will have some tutorials this week. I would say this is a little less straight forward than manifold but they have a ton of marketplace SDKs in diff languages which feels like a plus
- I will be doing a tutorial for this tomorrow and probably have more notes as I went through sooo many demos – impressed though and love that they are responsive
- okay so back in the day this was my least fave platform. That being said the UI is 100000x better now
- You also can mint on your own contract for foundation.
- Its pretty reliable – before I had a chance to dig into everything manifold, I was able to do this
- Auction only + splits is a PLUS ** today they updated buy it now. I believe 1/1 only!!!)
- I totally forgot how much of a % they take – and adjusted my prices accordingly 🙂
- UPDATE AS OF TODAY THEY ANNOUNCED ONLY 5% + BUY IT NOW OFFERINGS!!!
- The added benefit of – your own contract + only taking 5% now makes FDN better IMO.
- You can mint a new token directly from Etherscan – but the sales function is the same issue as manifold. BC these auctions go to a custody marketplace contract – – this is def a huge need for the space (that being said FDN is a little older and I am not aware of any current downtime stuff — also THIS IS PART OF BEING EARLY ON EMERGING TECH — all platforms will lag at times
- FDN NO LONGER HAS ALL THE ENDING AUCTIONS ON THE FRONT PAGE- this kinda sucks. That was a really cool feature for discovery.
- MY LAST MINT from my genesis wallet on FDN: (semi NSFW depending where you work – gets past tumblrs content filters)
GRANTS WOOD AMERICAN GOTHDICK: https://foundation.app/@adultartsandcrafts/adultarts/2
- Runs off of the Zora auction house protocol
- Unfortunately I couldnt get this to work on testnet and rn don’t have a ton of extra eth / art to put on mainnet to test out
- That being said on mainnet it pulled everything in my wallet (which I could not get to work with the create auction house repo – this is basically a no-code marketplace
- You can set a curator % on secondary
- If you mint via artiva app they utilize the zora protocol. BC they have censored people in the past I have strayed away from minting on zora, but this was before they open-sourced everything
- you can also make your own contract on rarible (this has been around for a while)
- IMO Manifold provides more options + the secondary registry
- still an option out there + Rarible does also seem to market artists + you can sell directly on the site
THE TLDR…
There are sooo many more options now for us to have creative sovereignty over our work, all in different areas, so at the end of the day it is up to you where you are making tradeoffs
This is never going to be a complete list lol – was up very late adding to this and playing around.
I will post video tutorials over the next few days and will be posting office hours starting the 15th
I am always avail to answer questions in discord
I do not DM ppl I have never met – safety things so always tweet @ me or say hey in discord before we move it to DMS
IMMEDIATE NEED OF THE SPACE I WOULD LOVE TO HELP BUILD :
- marketplace contract for editions or sales for manifold contracts
- site landing page for said auctions with wallet connect (have a basis on how to do this but not sure re: the sales contracts)
- IF YOU ARE DOWN HMU !!!!!
- prob said more. I need a redbull and a nap.