The survey is now closed.

Blockparty will be analyzing responses throughout the week.

If you provided your ETH address you may find something from Blockparty in your wallet at the end of the week.

🙏

NFT Protocol v3

The flagship feature in the v3 contract is undoubtedly the non-custodial swap architecture.

Additional features included in the v3 contract update include:

• Swap expiration

• Adjustable ETH/MATIC values

• Advanced accounting

Custodial vs. Non-Custodial Swaps

With both custodial and non-custodial swaps, swap makers must sign all necessary token approval transactions required to give NFT Protocol permission to transfer assets on their behalf.

From that point a custodial swap differs in that it requires that the swap maker’s assets be transferred to NFT Protocol to be held in decentralized escrow. Once in the protocol's contract, assets can only leave the contract if:

1. The swap is canceled by the address which created it. In this case the assets are returned to the address which created the swap.

2. The conditions for swap execution are met by a counterparty. In this case the assets are transferred to the counterparty and the specified assets from the counterparty are transferred to the swap creator.

Non-custodial swaps on the other hand allow swap makers to retain custody of their assets when creating a swap. The assets involved in creating the swap can only be transferred to a swap taker who's met the specified conditions for taking the swap using the token approvals the swap maker granted NFT Protocol when creating the swap.

Native currencies (ETH and MATIC) involved in a swap cannot utilize token approvals and are thus ALWAYS required to be transferred to NFT Protocol to be held in custody when creating a swap. If users wish to retain custody of native currencies when creating non-custodial swaps they must use the wrapped ERC-20 versions.

Swaps created on the NFT.org DEX are now non-custodial by default. Users may elect to create a custodial swap via the ADVANCED drop down menu on the NEW SWAP page.

PROs and CONs

While both custodial and non-custodial swaps on NFT Protocol are stored on-chain and thus benefit from the same safety and security standards, there are additional considerations to be made when choosing between custodial and non-custodial swaps.

Non-custodial swaps require approximately 15-30% less gas to create than custodial swaps, depending on the specific type and quantity of assets involved in the swap. Retaining custody of assets also allows users to list them simultaneously on other non-custodial marketplaces and protocols and to continue to garner any holders benefits that may be associated with holding the assets.

The downside to non-custodial swaps is perhaps the largest advantage to custodial swaps and that is swap integrity. Because a non-custodial swap allows users to retain custody of their assets, users can continue to transfer the assets involved in a non-custodial swap to other wallets or sell them on other marketplaces.

The NFT.org DEX is built to identify when the assets involved in a non-custodial swap are no longer in the swap maker’s wallet, but it is still possible that a swap taker will see a non-custodial swap on NFT.org and only find out that the maker address no longer owns the assets involved in the swap upon trying to take the swap. Such scenarios can be disappointing for buyers. Because custodial swaps require that NFT Protocol holds the assets involved in decentralized escrow, buyers can be confident that if they are seeing a custodial swap on NFT.org that the assets are present and that the swap can be taken.

Swap Expiration

When creating either type of swap on v3 users can now specify a date at which they'd like the swap to expire. Once a swap expires it can no longer be taken by any user.

Swap expiration dates are approximate because NFT Protocol is only able to allow swaps to expire at a specified block height. The application estimates what the block height is likely to be at the chosen expiration date and programs the swap accordingly. Because block times vary it is not possible to program a swap to expire at a specific point in time.

Adjustable ETH/MATIC Values

Swap makers may now adjust the ETH or MATIC value on the TAKE side of swaps with a single transaction, whereas in v2 a swap maker would have needed to cancel and then recreate a swap in order to adjust the ETH or MATIC value.

Swap makers can adjust these values via the SWAP DETAILS page.

Advanced Accounting

Because native currencies (ETH and MATIC) don't have token approval and transfer functions NFT Protocol can use to automatically transfer them when swaps are executed, ETH and MATIC received in swaps and placed into a swap that’s been cancelled remain in the protocol’s smart contract and are reflected as a user balance on the PROFILE page under ‘ETH (MATIC) Balance on DEX’.

These balances in v2 would have needed to first be withdrawn to the connected wallet before being eligible for reuse on the DEX.

The advanced accounting feature in v3 allows for user balances to be used for making or taking new swaps on the DEX without first having to withdraw. This accounting is done automatically such that DEX balances are prioritized and users are only prompted to transfer additional funds if necessary when making or taking a swap.

The NFT.org DEX v3 Features

The applications team has done a wonderful job integrating the v3 features into the UI at NFT.org.

Existing v2 swaps can still be viewed, taken and cancelled. User balances on the v2 contract can be viewed and withdrawn via the PROFILE page.

Swap type (custodial vs. non-custodial) and expiration selections can be found in the ADVANCED drop down menu on the NEW SWAP page.

Swap makers can adjust the ETH or MATIC values on the TAKE side of their swaps via the SWAP DETAILS page.

External data from OpenSea is now displayed for every NFT on the NFT DETAILS page.

The infrastructure for browser push notifications is built into the app and will be activated once one final bug has been fixed.

Documentation

Complete documentation on NFT Protocol v3 can be found in our user guide at https://docs.nft.org.

Peckshield’s latest audit report for the v3 contract can be found at https://doc.nftnode.org/audit.html.

What’s Next?

Our primary focus as we wrap up Q3 and move into Q4 2022 will be on implementing royalties and a programmable fee structure into NFT Protocol.

A programmable and more dynamic fee structure will position NFT Protocol to be able to generate more substantial revenue and bring more utility to our $NFT governance token.

Royalties are essential for our ongoing vertical integration with the Blockparty platform.

Auction functionality and collection offers will also be on our agenda for the remainder of the year for the back end. For the front end we’ll be focusing on implementing a communication tool and building out a SDK so that external developers may more easily begin building on NFT Protocol.

Marketing and Consulting

With the release of v3 we feel that we are now positioned well to begin deploying a more substantial marketing campaign.

We are working with an industry consultant who is helping us improve our understanding of the market and technology within this industry so that we may optimally formulate our marketing campaign which will be executed in conjunction with a marketing agency familiar with the industry.

$NFT Token Beta Launch Programs

Because we consider NFT Protocol to still be in a beta phase until we complete the remainder of our 2022 roadmap, both the Liquidity Mining and Protocol Fee Rewards programs outlined in the beta launch announcement are ongoing.

We do, however, want to distribute the rewards yielded through these programs thus far. The deadline for this rewards disbursement will be the moment at which this newsletter was published. We plan to execute this disbursement in September 2022 and more information on when and how this will happen will be announced in September.

Conclusion

With the v3 release NFT Protocol is now more clearly the leader in decentralized NFT trading infrastructure and providing what is undoubtedly the safest and most secure means of trading NFTs available.

There is no place more safe and secure to store NFT orders than on-chain and the NFT.org DEX is the only platform that allows this to be done in a non-custodial fashion.

We hope you enjoy the NFT.org DEX powered by v3 of NFT Protocol and we look forward to continuing to improve upon the best decentralized NFT trading tool on the planet throughout the remainder of this year!

Development has progressed swiftly in the last month since that update and we are excited to share that progress with you.

NFT Protocol Development

Development of v3 of NFT Protocol was completed last week and the contract has been deployed to Ropsten testnet where it is now being tested.

The features we were able to incorporate into v3 include:

• Non-Custodial Swaps

  • These swaps do not require the assets involved to be transferred to the protocol to be held in escrow as is currently the case with v2 of NFT Protocol. Creating a non-custodial swap will require paying gas for one or more token approval transactions and for submitting a makeSwap call to the protocol (the gas fee for making this call will be notably less than would be required for transferring the assets to the protocol as in v2).

• Adjustable ETH/MATIC Price

  • Swap makers will be able to adjust the ETH/MATIC price on the TAKE side of the swap via a single transaction rather than via two transactions for cancelling and recreating the swap as in v2.

• Swap Expiration

  • Users will be able to specify a block height at which their swap will expire. This is the safest and most reliable way to implement swap expiration in a decentralized system and the applications team will implement a tool for converting a given date and time to an estimated block height.

Because our single contract is now at its size capacity, adding further features would require layering in an additional contract which is something we plan to tackle in Q4 this year. Ropsten testnet testing of the v3 contract is going well so far and we are looking to schedule an audit for the v3 contract in early August and meet our Q3 release target for v3.

NFT.org DEX Development

With v3 of NFT Protocol now live on Ropsten testnet, the applications team is beginning to focus on making the adjustments and additions to the UI/UX required to accommodate the new features in v3.

Prior to v3’s completion, however, the applications team continued its work on the following features:

• Social Media Bot

  • The bot has been live on Twitter, Telegram and Discord for almost two months now. It’s mostly been operating wonderfully, though it has had a small bit of unexpected downtime which has required some additional analysis, review and debugging.

• Push Notifications

  • We have built a system which uses browser notifications for notifying users of NFT.org events pertaining to their address(es). Users can opt-in to this system when first connecting their wallets to the DEX. Notifications for events that took place while the browser was closed are delivered next time the browser is opened. The system is working well on most devices and in most browsers, though we are still working on debugging a small number of what appear to be edge cases.

• External Data

  • An OpenSea API key has been obtained and we are using it to draw data from OpenSea to be displayed on the NFT DETAILS page and on the forthcoming COLLECTION page. The NFT DETAILS page will display a graph and list detailing the NFT’s price history on OpenSea. The COLLECTION page will display data from OpenSea such as floor price, holder count, average price, etc. As we accrue similar data on NFT.org over time, the data displayed will grow to be aggregated data. Testing shows that drawing too much of this data can slow page load times considerably, so we are going to adjust the parameters such that the page draws only the last week’s or month’s worth of data by default.

Hiring

We hired a new backend engineer who we began onboarding to the project on July 18. This engineer is tasked with working specifically on NFTnode which will allow Tilo to focus more of his time and energy on developing the protocol and its coming vertical integration with the Blockparty platform.

Marketing

We’ve been speaking with a global marketing firm with extensive experience marketing crypto and NFT projects to develop a strategy and establish a budget for their assistance in marketing NFT Protocol and the NFT.org DEX.

Although we hope to have them begin implementing the strategy we settle upon as soon as possible, the development of this relationship is also well-timed to coincide with the launch of v3 at the end of Q3.

Something this firm may be able to help us with in addition to their marketing services is with further developing our $NFT tokenomics and with showcasing some rather unique and novel swaps on the NFT.org DEX.

We are also seeking third-party consultation for a “competitive landscape” analysis. What we want is an objective analysis from a third-party on the safety, security and features of NFT Protocol relative to comparable protocols in the NFT space. This analysis will be allow us to demonstrate effectively what advantages NFT Protocol has relative to other protocols in the space and become an essential component of our marketing strategy moving forward.

Conclusion

The latter half of 2022 is looking to be quite exciting here at NFT Protocol. The v3 update to the protocol will bring a number of new features that will expand the appeal and utility of the protocol and the NFT.org DEX. We’ve expanded our team such that we’ll be able to move through our product roadmap more quickly and effectively. We are working with a global marketing firm and other third-party consultants to assemble a strategy for building a user base and value proposition as we move out of beta and towards the v3 release at the end of Q3.

Thank you for your ongoing support and we are looking forward to sharing our next development update with you in August!

• 11 completed swaps

• 27 NFTs traded

• 15.98 ETH traded

• 9 completed swaps were 1 or more NFTs sold for ETH

• 1 completed swap was 1 NFT traded for 6 NFTs

• 6 completed swaps were NFT bundles (1 or more NFTs on at least one side of the swap)

• 3 completed swaps involved Art Blocks

• 4 completed swaps involved Parallel Alpha cards

• Most valuable completed swap was 1 DRIVE by Dave Krugman sold for 15 ETH (edited) 

• 44 swaps created since beta launch

• 9 of 44 swaps created were canceled

We’ve taken note of this data as well as the feedback we’ve received from users and used it to assemble our roadmap for the remainder of this year.

v3 Roadmap

The current v2 version of NFT Protocol currently powering the NFT.org DEX functions as a decentralized escrow by actually taking possession of the assets involved in a swap order and executing the swap when the specified conditions for swap execution have been met by a counterparty. Our decentralized escrow minimizes attack vectors for the protocol and its users and is an important feature that will become increasingly appealing and useful to certain entities as the NFT space continues to grow and mature.

Paying gas to transfer assets to the protocol in order to create swap orders, however, can be an obstacle for many users for various reasons.

Our primary focus for the forthcoming v3 update to NFT Protocol is thus a new swap architecture that will allow users to create on-chain swap orders that will not require users to send their assets to the protocol. These swap orders will be the default swap order on the NFT.org DEX and users will have the option to choose to use the decentralized escrow when creating a swap.

More information on this new swap architecture will be announced in future development updates as development on this feature progresses.

NFT Protocol Roadmap

In addition to the new swap architecture, NFT Protocol will also be gaining the following features by the end of the year:

• Advanced accounting - NFT Protocol ETH/MATIC balances will be spendable on the protocol without first having to withdraw (this feature is currently in Q&A).

• Programmable royalties - creators and NFT project founders will be able to customize the royalties extracted from qualifying swaps on NFT Protocol and how they are distributed.

• Programmable fees - protocol fees will be dynamic (flat or value-based) and adjustable.

• Adjustable swaps - swap creators will be able to make certain adjustments to the TAKE side of their swap.

• Swap expiration - swap creators will be able to specify an expiration date and time for their swaps.

• Auctions - auction functionality will be built into the decentralized escrow swap architecture such that assets up for auction will be guaranteed to sell so long as any specified reserve price has been met.

• Collection offers - make an offer for any NFT from a given collection.

NFT.org Roadmap

The NFT.org DEX applications team will be building UI/UX elements to accommodate all of the new features coming to NFT Protocol over the course of the year.

The frontend team will also be building the following features for the NFT.org DEX this year:

• Social media bot - a bot that relays activity on NFT Protocol to Twitter, Discord, and Telegram (the bot is already live in a Q&A stage on all three platforms).

• External data - bring price history and data into the application from external sources such as OpenSea (this feature is also already in Q&A).

• Notifications - a means of users opting in to being notified of events pertaining to their address(es) that happen on the NFT.org DEX (this feature is also already in Q&A).

• Chat - a means of communicating with others via the NFT.org DEX interface.

• SDK - we are building a SDK that will make it easy for developers to build a custom frontend powered by NFT Protocol.

Release Schedule

We are aiming to release two updates to NFT Protocol this year.

We would like to push a v3 update to the protocol as soon as the new swap architecture has been built, tested and audited which will also include the advanced accounting functionality. We think we can get this update released as early as the end of Q3 2022.

An additional v3.1 update including the remainder of the aforementioned features will then be released towards the end of Q4 2022.

Updates to the NFT.org DEX UI/UX will be released as they are finished throughout the year with the goal to adhere to the quarterly release schedule outlined in the roadmap above.

This roadmap has been published in our documentation here where it will be updated regularly to reflect our development progress.

Other Roadmap Considerations

The remainder of this year will be about improving our Ethereum and Polygon deployments and working to solidify a place for them within the NFT ecosystem.

When we near the end of the work outlined in this year’s Q3/Q4 roadmap we will begin to set our sights on expanding to other blockchains such as Flow or perhaps additional EVM-compatible L1 or L2 networks.

Blockparty & Other Partnerships

Our development partners at Blockparty have recently begun to move into providing their clientele with Blockparty-powered storefronts such as this one that powered a recent NFT drop for NYC-based tattoo artist Trudy Lines.

As Blockparty moves deeper into this business model they’ll begin to integrate NFT Protocol as a means of facilitating on-chain secondary market NFT trading directly from their clients’ storefronts.

We’ve also been fielding interest from a number of entities interested in integrating NFT Protocol into their projects in some capacity. Some will be waiting until we release v3, some will be waiting until our SDK is ready, but at least one DeFi project we’ll name when their integration is complete and live has already begun integrating with v2 of NFT Protocol.

Governance

Our beloved community member Anderl has been working with governance to formulate a membership-based model to bring additional value and utility to our $NFT token. The proposal passed its temperature and consensus check rounds.

We will be discussing internally and with Blockparty over the course of the rest of Q3 2022 to iterate upon what a membership program could look like for both Blockparty and NFT Protocol and then working with Anderl to move his proposal into the final governance proposal stage of our governance process.

Generally speaking we do believe that a membership program could bring a lot of value and utility to the $NFT token and to NFT Protocol and Blockparty and are looking forward to presenting a plan for such a program to governance later this quarter.

Hiring

We are actively hiring for a new backend engineer proficient in Golang who will take full ownership over NFTNode - our chain parser/indexer that delivers the media and data to the NFT.org DEX.

We believe that NFTNode is capable of becoming a sort of standard within the NFT space and are looking for the right engineer to help realize its potential and allow Tilo the capacity to focus exclusively on the protocol itself.

We have received a lot of interest in the position and are actively interviewing and considering the most promising candidates.

Conclusion

These are tumultuous times not only within the crypto and NFT spaces but within the world at large. We believe that decentralized trading protocols like NFT Protocol are going to be essential components to the stage of evolution of the NFT space within the global economy. We are here to stay and building this protocol and this project with longevity in mind.

Thank you for your ongoing support and please visit us on Discord or Telegram with any comments or feedback.

The NFT.org DEX is now live and accessible for public use at https://app.nft.org/!

The DEX user guide can be found at https://docs.nft.org/ and Peckshield’s audit report can be found at https://doc.nftnode.org/audit.html.

Please find us on Discord, Telegram or Twitter and let us know what you think!

Happy trading!

The NFT.org NFT DEX - v2

The NFT Protocol project was conceived by Blockparty in August 2020. NFT Protocol was to be a decentralized NFT trading protocol that would first power the NFT.org DEX and then be vertically integrated with the Blockparty platform.

The first version of the NFT.org DEX was released as an alpha stage product in May 2021. As development on v2 of the NFT Protocol smart contract quickly progressed, however, it became prudent at that time to redirect all of our frontend development efforts towards building around the v2 smart contract which now powers v2 of the NFT.org DEX.

With v2 of the NFT.org DEX we set out to build a product for the NFT space that we believe to be the future of NFT trading:

• 100% decentralized and on-chain

• Multi-asset trading

• Multi-chain support

• Community-driven by design

The Status Quo: Why It Needs To Change

The hybrid on/off-chain NFT marketplace architecture that’s become prominent in the NFT space has its benefits and drawbacks. This architecture is complex and most often consists of several smart contracts that interact with each other and with off-chain components.

Generally speaking, these marketplaces require you, the user, to give them a signature by signing a message with your wallet and the signature is stored off-chain on centralized servers and used to authorize on-chain asset transfers on your behalf when a buyer buys your asset or when a seller accepts your offer for an asset.

This minimizes the number of transactions that require users to pay gas by allowing listings and offers to be made by simply signing a message with the connected wallet, but as we’ve witnessed time and time again this complex architecture is plagued by attack vectors and prone to regular downtime.

100% Decentralized & On-Chain

NFT Protocol is an improvement to this model in terms of safety, security and availability because it allows offers, listings and trades to be submitted and executed 100% on-chain - i.e., without relying on user signatures stored off-chain or any other off-chain components - and collects zero user information.

NFT Protocol requires that users sign on-chain transactions which transfer the assets to the protocol in order to create listings or offers. Once in the protocol's contract, assets can only leave the contract if:

1. The swap is canceled by the address which created it. In this case the assets are returned to the address which created the swap.

2. The conditions for swap execution are met by a counterparty. In this case the assets are transferred to the counterparty and the specified assets from the counterparty are transferred to the swap creator.

NFT Protocol's smart contract has been audited by Peckshield. The contract's code and Peckshield’s audit report will be published for public inspection on April 21st, 2022.

Whereas the hybrid NFT marketplace architecture oftentimes leads to user behaviors that render them vulnerable to phishing and malware attacks, NFT Protocol and the NFT.org DEX bring users into a direct relationship with open-source, audited code. This eliminates all third-party risk and places the security of the system entirely into the hands of the user and the user's own private key security practices.

Furthermore, because NFT Protocol is 100% on-chain it is not subject to the sorts of censorship, user obstruction and downtime some hybrid marketplaces in the NFT space oftentimes demonstrate. If it’s on-chain it can be traded via NFT Protocol 100% of the time. The blockchain doesn’t discriminate nor does it sleep.

Multi-Asset Trading

One of the major issues facing the NFT space is the relative lack of liquidity available for NFTs. The multi-asset trading facilitated by NFT Protocol and the NFT.org DEX can improve the liquidity available for NFTs by allowing NFTs to be paired with more liquid NFTs and/or fungible asset types.

NFT Protocol and the NFT.org DEX allow complex and dynamic offers and listings to be made using any combination and quantity of supported asset types.

Supported Asset Types

• ETH/MATIC

• ERC-20

• ERC-721

• ERC-1155

Multi-Chain Support

As the NFT space continues to grow and expand there will be a growing number of blockchains hosting NFT activity and catering to different niches within the NFT space.

We will launch v2 of the NFT.org DEX on April 21st, 2022 on both Ethereum and Polygon mainnets.

NFT Protocol is designed for easy deployment to any EVM-compatible blockchain.

An additional tool we’ve built which we call NFTnode is our chain indexer/parser and database architecture that is constantly scanning our supported blockchains for relevant data contained in each new block and for changes in the metadata referenced by each token on our supported blockchains and building and maintaining a database that the frontend of the NFT.org DEX can reference.

At this stage NFTnode is very resource-intensive, but also designed to extract and store data from any EVM-compatible chain.

In this way we are prepared to expand the NFT.org DEX to any EVM-compatible chain on which we see sufficient NFT activity. Part of our longer-term vision as outlined in the section below is also to expand to non-EVM blockchains.

Community-Driven

We believe that a decentralized NFT trading platform such as NFT Protocol should not only be driven and influenced by its user base but it should also give back and reward them as well.

The $NFT Governance Token

The $NFT token represents rights to participate in the NFT Protocol governance model at gov.nft.org & https://snapshot.org/#/nft/all. The governance model is a mechanism by which the $NFT token holder community can affect project and product evolution, approve expenditures from the governance pool of $NFT tokens and manage the NFT Protocol Treasury (fees collected by the protocol).

The $NFT token is also used to determine the protocol fee charged to swap takers on the NFT.org DEX. More information on the $NFT token and protocol fees can be found here.

Phase 1

The goal during Phase 1 of our plans for the $NFT token this year is to incentivize early adoption and liquidity provision, increase $NFT token distribution, build a foundation for long term viability of the protocol and reward existing $NFT token holders.

Liquidity Mining

NFT Protocol governance has approved funds from the governance pool to be allocated towards a liquidity mining program which will run the duration of the beta phase of the NFT.org DEX. During this period Ethereum addresses which create a swap containing 1 or more NFTs (on either side of the swap) that is taken on the NFT.org DEX will be eligible to claim $NFT tokens when the program claim window opens upon culmination of the beta phase. $NFT tokens from the program will be allocated on a “per swap taken” basis - i.e., the token pool for the program will be divided by the total number of qualified swaps taken during this three month period and each address will be eligible to claim a number of tokens according to how many qualified taken swaps were created by each address.

NFT Protocol governance has approved up to 1.5 million $NFT tokens to be allocated towards this program, but the size of the token pool for this program will ultimately be determined by the NFT Protocol core team. If upon analyzing DEX usage data after culmination of the beta phase the core team feels more than 1.5 million $NFT tokens are required to serve Phase 1’s goals the amount exceeding 1.5 million $NFT will need to be approved by governance.

More details on this program can be found on the NFT Protocol governance forum here.

Protocol Fee Rewards

Any $NFT token holder who holds tokens throughout the beta phase AND participates in at least one governance action during the beta phase will be eligible to claim a portion of the protocol fees gathered throughout the beta phase.

The lowest quantity of $NFT held by a given address throughout the beta phase will be used as the basis for this calculation.

For example - token holder A holds 30,000 $NFT when the beta phase begins but sells 10,000 $NFT during the beta phase and finishes the beta phase holding 20,000 $NFT. Token holder A would thus be considered to own 20,000 $NFT in the total pool of eligible $NFT tokens. If the total pool of eligible $NFT tokens is determined to be 1,000,000 $NFT tokens, token holder A will be eligible to claim 2% (20,000 / 1,000,000 = .02) of the protocol fees gathered throughout the beta phase.

We are targeting Q3 2022 for a v3 launch and beta phase culmination which will mark the end of the liquidity mining and protocol fee rewards programs.

Phase 2

The long term success and viability of NFT Protocol, the NFT.org DEX and the $NFT token depend largely upon adoption of the protocol and platform and their ability to generate revenue.

It is for this reason that v3 of the NFT.org DEX will include a programmable fee structure. A programmable fee structure will not only permit a more dynamic, value-based fee structure, but also allow the fee structure to be adjusted as needed to ensure the success and viability of the protocol and platform and support the value of the $NFT token.

In this way the launch of v3 of the NFT.org DEX will represent a shift away from the focus being on increasing $NFT token distribution and towards building revenue potential and thus new opportunities and mechanisms for $NFT token holders to participate in governance, approve expenditures from the governance pool and manage protocol fee distribution and allocation.

As indicated in the section below, v3 of the NFT.org DEX will mark the first phase of vertical integration with the Blockparty platform. Phase 2 of our plans for the $NFT token will thus include additional utilities and incentives for Blockparty creators using NFT Protocol.

Beyond Beta: The NFT.org DEX v3

While v2 of the NFT.org DEX is already a timely and revolutionary addition to the NFT space unto itself, there is no shortage of upgrades and improvements we can make in order to elevate the decentralized NFT trading experience.

The first set of backend upgrades we plan to make after the v2 launch will be intended to prepare NFT Protocol to power Blockparty’s secondary marketplace and lay the foundation for a thriving $NFT token economy:

• Programmable royalties

• Programmable fee structure

• Flow blockchain integration

• $NFT rewards claim contracts

While we work on these backend upgrades, the frontend team will be working on:

• Chat - a means of communicating with others to negotiate trades and sales

• Push Notifications - receive notifications when events pertaining to your address(es) occur on NFT Protocol

• $NFT rewards claim interface

• A SDK for developers who want to build a custom frontend around NFT Protocol

Additional backend features on our wish list for this year include:

• Collection offers - where a swap can be taken with any NFT from the specified collection

• Auctions

• Enabling ETH balances on the DEX to be used on the DEX

• Programmable swaps - where a user can edit certain types of swaps without having to cancel/recreate swaps

Conclusion

We couldn’t be more pleased to be delivering the NFT.org DEX to the NFT space and to $NFT token holders at a time when the perils of the hybrid NFT marketplace architecture have never been more apparent.

We hope you enjoy the NFT.org DEX as much as we enjoyed building it.

Please join us on Telegram or Discord where we’d be happy to receive your questions and feedback!

Thank you for the ongoing support throughout our development phase and we look forward to bringing the NFT.org NFT DEX to the world very soon. We’ll see you in the testing group!

~Jake Cox, NFT Protocol Community & Product Manager

Back End Development

As was reported in the August development update we are moving forward building the DEX using our proprietary decentralized data management system we’ve dubbed NFTProtocolNode. Throughout August and September we’ve continued to optimize the system to meet our needs in providing sufficient on-demand data for the UI/UX of the DEX - which is no easy task due to the sheer quantity of tokens on Ethereum and Polygon, corresponding metadata, and inconsistencies in token and metadata structure.

At the time this post was published the Ethereum chain sync was at 100% and the metadata sync was at 99% - meaning the system has compiled nearly all of the token data and corresponding metadata from Ethereum mainnet. After noticing the system seemed to struggle with certain types of metadata, we’ve since optimized the system to pass over any data it can’t digest promptly and then make subsequent passes to try again until all digestible data has been captured or identified for additional review.

With this system we believe we’ve built perhaps the most comprehensive decentralized database of Ethereum token data and corresponding metadata in existence and as such we are already fielding substantial demand for access to NFT ProtocolNode. There is already one application aside from the NFT.org NFT DEX being built with this system which you will hear more about when it is completed.

Front End Development

The frontend of the DEX is where we’ve been doing the bulk of our work over the past couple months. The frontend team took the design we created with our designer in July, built its components and then applied them to the frontend “scaffolding” to create a comprehensive frontend for the DEX akin to what we shared in the design mockups in the August development update.

We’ve been testing and evaluating a minimally viable alpha version of the DEX for about a month now and, as is to be expected when testing and evaluating an application for the first time, we have found numerous things we overlooked in the design process that have needed to be added or modified in certain ways. We’ve also identified key points in the user experience that we feel need to be improved in order to bring to market a product that we can be confident will make the impact we’ve all been looking to make.

We are also continuing to identify and address anomalies in how the frontend fetches data from NFTProtocolNode in order to ensure we are providing a satisfactory user experience for DEX users.

We are most definitely in the final stage of development in which we have identified and are addressing only the adjustments, refinements and fixes necessary to yield a production-ready product. We anticipate being able to identify and declare a launch date very soon.

Blockparty’s Secondary Market

In pursuit of building Blockparty’s secondary market infrastructure Tilo has been doing research on existing royalty standard proposals within the Ethereum developer community in order to ascertain if something already out there might suffice for our needs or if he’ll need to build something new. He has a fairly good grasp on where to start and will be constructing a prototype over the coming weeks. We will likely introduce our royalty standard first through Blockparty’s secondary market and then consider applying it to the NFT.org DEX in a future update once it’s been sufficiently refined.

Blockparty’s designer has been working on re-skinning the DEX design such that it will align with its branding.

Governance

The NFT Protocol governance forum had its first community member submit an idea regarding NFT staking for a temperature check in September. The idea passed its temperature check round and is now being refined in preparation for the consensus check round. Please keep an eye out for the coming consensus check on Telegram, Twitter or the governance forum and leverage your $NFT tokens to make your voice is heard on this idea.

Conclusion

Our focus this month will be on finishing the DEX such that we can identify and declare a launch date. The past couple of months have been full of a lot of hard work on behalf of our engineering and product team bringing the DEX to life and we are looking forward to releasing what we’ve created out into the wilderness that is the NFT space. Blockparty CEO Vlad Ginzburg and CTO Joseph Fiscella have been working on a go-to-market strategy for promoting the DEX launch, the $NFT token and announcing some significant partnerships. I have also been in contact with additional crypto-native entities who we are looking to involve in this strategy.

We truly believe the NFT.org NFT DEX is going to make an impact on the NFT space and we can’t wait to share it with all of you and with Blockparty and its whitelabel clientele via its secondary market - which will happen shortly after we launch the DEX.

Thank you all for supporting us through this development phase and if you haven’t yet please join us on Discord where we will be focusing more of our community engagement efforts when the DEX launches due to that being the apparent platform of choice for the NFT space.

~ Jake Cox - NFT Protocol Community & Product Manager

With the v2 smart contract finished and audited at the end of June, most of our back end work throughout July pertained to building out and testing our decentralized data management systems. In July’s development update we reported that we were working with The Graph Protocol and on our own proprietary system we’d tentatively dubbed nft-node for our decentralized data management needs.

Throughout the month of July we discovered that there were some limitations to The Graph Protocol at this time and so we began focusing more so on building out and testing what we’ve now tentatively dubbed NFTProtocolNode to fill in the gaps in our decentralized data management system.

NFT Protocol’s Blockchain Architect Tilo Ochotta had this to say about his work on NFTProtocolNode:

NFTProtocolNode is a versatile data accumulation service providing filtered on-chain information to be used by the DEX UI and future B2B customers.

Similar to The Graph, it accumulates each and every transaction from the blockchain and derives from it the required information to compile a comprehensive database with all contracts and tokens that reside on Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, and EVM chains we will support in the future.

This includes metadata information and token images.

We plan to open-source the project in the future so that the community can participate in its development.

At this juncture it appears as if we’ll rely primarily on NFTProtocolNode for our decentralized data management needs, though we of course still have our subgraph should we need it. We think there are some really great services that could be built on top of NFTProtocolNode and are looking forward to sharing it with the community someday. We truly think it’s going to be a great asset not only to NFT Protocol and its DEX, but to the NFT and crypto spaces at large.

Front End Development

UI/UX Design

August 3rd marked the end of our one month contract with our UI/UX & brand designer. He spent the month of July working with us to create designs for every screen and modal we’ll need to build in order to provide a top-notch UX for the NFT.org landing page and the DEX itself.

Please note there are placeholder images and texts in many of these screen designs.

These screens show the ‘create swap’ interface in its blank/default state and then in the midst of creating two different swaps. Users add assets to each side of the swap via the ‘+’ button which brings up the asset selection pop-up modal below. This modal allows users to view assets available in their connected wallet and also search for additional assets (necessary for adding assets to the ‘buying’ or ‘take’ side).

Users can hover over an asset prior to swap creation and a ‘-’ button will appear and allow the user to remove that asset from the swap. Users can also hover over a given NFT to reveal a menu with remove, modify quantity (if ERC-1155) and view details options (screen below).

On the ‘browse’ page users will be able to view all available swaps and filter through them by asset type, contract address, and tokenID. Users will also be able to view swaps associated with assets in their connected wallet.

Clicking on a swap will bring up a ‘swap details’ pop-up modal as seen below so that users can assess the contents of a given swap in more detail.

Users will also be able to generate and view a ‘profile’ containing a profile image and all of the assets contained in their connected wallet.

Although most of the design process catered to ‘dark mode’ we did have our designer put together a ‘light mode’ theme which will most certainly be included in the final frontend design.

The designer also put together a basic template for a NFT.org landing page that we really like and plan to implement to coincide with launch.

We’re really happy with how the design turned out and will be working hard over the coming weeks to build it out and bring the DEX to life!

Other Front End Development

Near the end of July we hired by contract an experienced front end developer, Gustavo Gualbano, to build the React-based styled components library we need to bring the above design to fruition. He’s been working for us full-time for more than a week now and has created the theme, page templates, and some of the styled components themselves.

Gustavo’s work is lining up wonderfully with Remon’s work on the front end “scaffolding” such that Remon will be able to apply Gustavo’s themes, templates and components to his architecture as Gustavo completes them. Remon has also successfully signed some transactions on Ropsten testnet using his pre-styled front end architecture.

Partnerships

Blockparty

Our development partners at Blockparty need a secondary market and so do their growing whitelabel clientele. In July’s development update we announced that NFT Protocol will be looking to provide Blockparty with its secondary market infrastructure and generate fee revenue for the NFT Protocol Treasury (owned by $NFT stakers) by doing so.

Internal discussions among NFT Protocol and Blockparty team members pertaining to what this integration looks like and how we can make it happen were ongoing this month and we’ve laid forth an iterative roadmap working towards what will eventually be a seamless integration. The first iteration will likely look like Blockparty directing its customers who withdraw assets from its platform to the NFT.org DEX via its UI/UX and withdrawal flow. The ultimate goal of seamless integration looks more like Blockparty and its whitelabel clientele having secondary markets embedded with customized front ends into their websites that are powered by NFT Protocol on the backend. Such integration would require some infrastructure changes on behalf of Blockparty and research as to what those changes ought to be has already yielded some viable and appealing options as to what those changes might look like.

Blockparty and NFT Protocol remain committed to becoming increasingly vertically integrated over time as a mutual business model and more information on this process will be forthcoming.

Immutable X

Immutable X contacted us in July and provided us with access to their documentation and testing environment. Because Immutable X is itself a smart contract on Ethereum integrating NFT Protocol (which is also a smart contract on Ethereum) with Immutable X is a nuanced and complex endeavor - we need to create a mechanism for our smart contract to work effectively with theirs as opposed to simply making calls to their smart contract as would be the case for a platform like OpenSea.

We’ve begun to poke around their documentation and do a little brainstorming as to how we can make this integration happen. It’s possible that we may be limited in our ability to integrate with Immutable X by their development timeline (there are some features that they plan to provide on their end that aren’t quite ready yet). We also foresee a means by which NFTProtocolNode could help us integrate Immutable X.

We’ll continue to explore their documentation and brainstorm possibilities such that we can fit an Immutable X integration into our product roadmap when a means of integration becomes clear.

Others

Blockparty CTO and NFT Protocol lead developer Joseph Fiscella is always hard at work with business development related activity and he has some additional partnerships and integrations in process with which we hope to move forward once the DEX is live.

Governance

When we launched our governance forum at the end of May we chose to mimic Uniswap’s three-tiered governance model and quorum requirements.

In July the NFT Protocol community successfully took a governance proposal through all three tiers of governance, met quorum within each tier, and ratified its first major governance proposal - NFTP001 - DEX Launch Liquidity Mining.

The proposal requested that a swath of tokens be allocated from the governance pool towards a program wherein people who provide liquidity to the DEX when it launches will be eligible to claim a number of $NFT tokens.

You can read more about the proposal here:

https://gov.nft.org/t/governance-proposal-nftp001-dex-launch-liquidity-mining/50

Conclusion

Things didn’t align for us to get the DEX launched in July as we’d hoped, but we now have all of the pieces and personnel in place to move swiftly towards a completed product that we will be proud to launch - and we now have a more realistic goal of launching in August in sight.

Once the DEX is live we will focus our attention on bringing forth the new $NFT staking program as outlined in July’s development update. We’ll continue to work on establishing a plan for integrating with Blockparty and Immutable X, solidifying and planning additional partnerships and integrations, planning our next feature set, and monitoring NFT activity on other blockchains on which NFT Protocol may find a home some day.

We’re really excited about the new design and all of the thoughtfulness that went into crafting an incredible UX through the design process. We’re really excited about NFTProtocolNode - how it will allow us to provide the NFT space with a truly decentralized product from front to back and side to side and for the services we hope to build on top of it. Most of all we’re really excited for you all to see and use this product that we’ve worked so hard to build - for $NFT holders and the NFT space at large. You’ll have it in front of you on your screen before you know it!

~ Jake Cox - NFT Protocol Community & Product Manager

If you haven’t already joined us on Discord - please do! The NFT space seems to have chosen Discord as its platform of choice so it’s important that we continue to build up our presence and activity level on Discord as the DEX launch approaches.

Governance Forum Thread

Snapshot Proposal (VOTE HERE)

When we launched our governance forum in late May we chose Uniswap’s governance model as our governance model template. This is a three-tiered model involving a temperature check, consensus check, and governance proposal stage. The temperature check is intended to evaluate general sentiment towards a general idea. The consensus check is an opportunity to refine the idea and then check for consensus. The final governance proposal stage is a culmination of the previous stages in which the proposed idea is clearly defined and substantiated such that it can be ratified if the proposal passes with a successful YES vote. Each stage has a quorum requirement in order for the vote to be considered valid.

The quorum for the governance proposal stage is 5% of all $NFT tokens - i.e., ~4.444 million $NFT tokens.

This is a large quorum requirement so if you hold our $NFT token PLEASE VOTE before the proposal ends at 6:45PM CDT on July 21, 2021.

The proposal’s text can be found below for your convenience.

Thank you!

~NFT Protocol

Should a portion of the $NFT token governance pool (size to be determined by the NFT Protocol core team) be allocated towards a "liquidity mining" initiative to coincide with the NFT.org DEX launch?

https://snapshot.org/#/nft/proposal/QmYfxs5WME4GfASGSGgQuZPjVPtN7sed4yXtxAZayKvuAq

$NFT token governance pool:

https://etherscan.io/token/0xcB8d1260F9c92A3A545d409466280fFdD7AF7042?a=0xb2fcf660cd1112d1b735a2831f21686125cb6ac1

The intention behind this initiative is to incentivize use of the NFT.org DEX when it launches, increase the distribution of the $NFT token and grow the NFT Protocol community. Tokens allocated towards this initiative would be claimable by ETH and Polygon addresses which provide liquidity (tentatively defined as "filled swap orders" though the NFT Protocol core team reserves the right to redefine what constitutes liquidity after analyzing swap activity after the DEX launches) to the NFT.org DEX within an unspecified (to be determined by the NFT Protocol core team) period of time after it launches.

The NFT Protocol core team will monitor data regarding NFT.org DEX swap activity after the DEX launches in order to determine a cutoff time and date for the initiative and then select an appropriate allocation size according to the data. If the NFT Protocol core team feels that an allocation larger than was discussed in the temperature and consensus checks leading up to this proposal is warranted, a subsequent proposal will be presented to NFT Protocol governance in order to approve the larger amount.

Temperature Check:

https://gov.nft.org/t/temperature-check-nft-org-dex-launch-liquidity-mining-initiative/43/2

Consensus Check:

https://gov.nft.org/t/consensus-check-nft-org-dex-launch-liquidity-mining-program-parameters/44

Back End Development

The NFT Protocol team spent the month of June putting the finishing touches on its back end infrastructure in preparation for what we anticipate being a late July launch of the NFT.org NFT DEX.

The v2 contract with which we will launch the DEX successfully passed an audit by Peckshield in late June. The issues Peckshield found in the code were relatively minor. All issues that needed to be fixed were fixed and then verified as such by Peckshield. Peckshield has provided us with their final audit report which we will publish when the DEX launches.

While many NFT marketplaces and protocols rely on centralized databases to manage the vast amount of data associated with NFTs, we are determined to build a protocol and DEX that is entirely decentralized. We spent much of the month of June building subgraphs using The Graph that will manage the data we need to regularly and reliably access in order to provide our users the clean and intuitive user experience we intend to provide.

Because The Graph is a relatively new toolset and we won’t know if it will handle the volume of data we need it to handle for the DEX until the DEX is live and in use, we have also developed a proprietary smart contract for managing our data which we are calling NFT NODE at this time. The decentralization of the NFT NODE system would depend on the quantity and distribution of people running nodes across the globe and we believe the utility afforded to the entire NFT space by this system would inspire people around the globe to set up and run nodes for NFT NODE. We have high hopes, however, that The Graph will sufficiently meet our needs and are reassured knowing that we have NFT NODE in our back pocket.

Front End Development

In June we hired a new frontend engineering manager who officially began working for us on July 1st. Remon Nashid comes to us from Polymath and with an abundance of blockchain and Web3 engineering experience. We are very happy to have Remon on board with us crafting the UI/UX that we know NFT.org DEX users will come to love and appreciate.

Having already met with lead developer Joseph Fiscella in the final days of June to establish a plan for building the front end of the DEX, Remon hit the ground running right away on July 1st. He’s already familiarized himself with the DEX’s back end infrastructure and begun building the foundation of the front end around it.

At the tail end of June we also hired a new UI/UX & brand designer. We are incredibly excited to be working with this designer because not only does he have ample experience and knowledge of crypto, DeFi and current trends in these spaces, but he also manages the UI/UX & branding for one of the world’s top crypto organizations. Remon and the rest of the dev team put together some wireframes in the first days of July for the designer to reference and he’s already come back to us with a first draft design on Figma which we will be refining over the next week or so, but are already quite excited about.

If all goes as planned we should be able to get a fully functional NFT.org DEX with the new design tested and launched by the end of July!

$NFT Tokenomics

After much consideration and many consultations with our legal counsel we are ready and excited to announce the foundation of the forthcoming tokenomics for our $NFT token.

Staking

The basis of $NFT tokenomics will be a staking contract (yet to be written).

$NFT will be staked with a time-lock mechanism (parameters forthcoming) at https://staking.page/nft/. Staking rewards will be distributed in the form of non-transferable $veNFT tokens (“voting escrow $NFT” per the Curve standard) which will be used to participate in NFT Protocol governance. Those who stake their $NFT with a longer time-lock period yield $veNFT at a greater rate. When a time-lock period completes for a given address, the owner of that address may elect to enter into another time-lock period or to withdraw $NFT from the staking contract. If $NFT is withdrawn from the staking contract, all $veNFT owned by that address will be burned.

Governance

$veNFT will be used to participate in the NFT Protocol governance model at gov.nft.org & https://snapshot.org/#/nft/all. NFT Protocol governance owns the fees collected by the NFT.org DEX (the “NFT Protocol Treasury”) as well as the $NFT token governance pool. The function of NFT Protocol governance is to govern the protocol, leverage the governance pool to benefit NFT Protocol and $NFT token holders, and manage the NFT Protocol Treasury which may at some point include $veNFT holders drawing from the NFT Protocol Treasury in some way.

Future Features

NFT Protocol may in the future build and implement into the protocol additional revenue generating features and such revenue is to be funneled into the NFT Protocol Treasury.

DEX Fee Structure

The DEX fee structure, which is subject to change at any time by way of a governance proposal, is initially based upon how many $NFT tokens the swap taker holds in the connected wallet. Users are awarded a 10% fee discount for holding 10,000 $NFT tokens in the connected wallet and this discount scales linearly up to a 100% discount (no fees) at 100,000 $NFT tokens held in the connected wallet. The DEX will be able to read the $NFT token staking contract such that staked $NFT token balances will be reflected in DEX fee calculations.

Blockparty

It was determined in June that NFT Protocol will power Blockparty’s upcoming secondary market. All transactions on Blockparty’s secondary market will thus generate revenue for the NFT Protocol Treasury. Because Blockparty is already selling and will continue to sell whitelabel NFT platforms to its clientele, our hope is that NFT Protocol will also be able to power the secondary markets for Blockparty’s whitelabel clientele as well.

Blockparty is additionally exploring the possibility of adding “membership” features to its platform. Blockparty will be able to reference the $NFT staking contract and thus be able to provide “membership” features to $NFT token holders and stakers. This model is still under exploration and if we decide to move forward with it further details will be forthcoming.

NFT.org DEX Launch & Beyond

As mentioned earlier in this newsletter we are very hopeful that we will be able to launch the NFT.org DEX by the end of July!

Preparations for launch include not only building the front end, but also continuing to refine $NFT tokenomics, establishing a marketing plan that will yield a strong user base, a governance proposal regarding a “liquidity mining” program to coincide with the DEX launch, and networking with popular NFT projects who we hope will direct volume towards the DEX or partner with us in other capacities.

One such NFT project which we know will be directing its secondary sales volume to the NFT.org DEX is generative NFT project Space Shibas. This project is a collaboration between several entities in the NFT space, including our very own lead developer Joseph Fiscella.

Consideration towards where we go next after we get v2 of the NFT.org DEX launched to the public is already underway.

• Blockparty needs its secondary market built.

• We have our next feature set for v3 already planned out which includes adding a social media element to the DEX, auctions, and conditional swap orders (i.e., “I’ll pay 10 ETH for any Crypto Punk with a hat”).

• Immutable X has recently begun onboarding additional projects into its ecosystem and it may soon be our turn to implement their tech and thus capture volume from Gods Unchained asset sales and beyond.

• We’d love to begin the process of building onto Flow and other blockchains with high levels of NFT activity.
  
  We’ve got a lot on our plate and an incredibly talented dev team assembled to make it happen! We’ll keep you posted regarding our upcoming roadmap and we’ll see you at the launch party very soon!

NFT.org DEX (v1) on Polygon

In early May we were contacted by the Polygon team through our friends at ETH Global. The Polygon team had heard about our project through the ETH Global NFTHack event in March 2021 of which we were a sponsor. We set up a call with the Polygon team and by the end of the call we were sold on deploying the DEX onto Polygon. The Polygon team mapped our $NFT token onto Polygon, guided us through setting up our own Polygon full node, assisted us throughout deployment and testing of the DEX on Polygon, and offered us a developer grant to boot.

With NFT activity on Polygon continuing to grow and it becoming increasingly appealing to use Polygon as a means of transaction Ethereum assets we believe that our Polygon deployment is going to be a wonderful asset to our user base. Transactions are incredibly fast and affordable and the Polygon network’s proof-of-stake (PoS) model and massive DeFi liquidity pools may present additional opportunities for $NFT token holders. So stay tuned for more details on our Polygon integration as we continue to explore the opportunities to be had therein!

NFT.org DEX Roadmap Update

When Tilo joined the NFT Protocol team on May 1st he immediately dove head first into the DEX v1 smart contract, refined its code and began implementing new features. As a result of his work we’ve had to revamp our roadmap. Features like ERC 1155 support, ETH as a payment option and multi-asset swaps which we had originally planned on implementing after the v1 public beta launch are now complete and built into what we are now calling the DEX v2 smart contract.

The DEX v1 contracts have been deployed both on Ethereum mainnet and Polygon where they’ve been thoroughly tested. The DEX v2 contracts with the aforementioned features are complete and have passed all of Tilo’s unit tests at 100% coverage. At this moment he is making some security refinements but anticipates being able to deploy DEX v2 to Ethereum mainnet and Polygon next week. Although our front end developer has already begun to rework the front end to accommodate v2’s additional feature set, this process will take some time and so once the v2 contract is deployed we will need to initially test it without a front end. We anticipate being able to initiate the contract audit process before the front end is brought up to speed and fully integrated with the deployed contract. We will continue to build and integrate the front end around the v2 contract throughout the audit process. Once the audit is complete and the front end is functional and refined we’ll be ready to launch a beta version of this thing to the public!

We are so close! I can see the light shining brightly at the end of the tunnel!

Governance Forum

In preparation for the imminent public beta launch of the NFT.org DEX we launched our governance forum last week. After the DEX has beta launched to the public governance will become a crucial aspect of NFT Protocol as it continues to transition into more of a fully functional DAO. If you hold $NFT tokens please sign up for our governance forum!

Partnerships

At the tail end of May it was announced that we are going to be involved in the FC Dynamo Kyiv soccer team becoming the world’s first major sports team to sell NFT event tickets. The program is pioneered by our friends at Moonwalk. The tickets will initially be sold on the Binance NFT marketplace. As the program matures, however, our friends at Blockparty will provide the NFT marketplace for Dynamo Kyiv’s website and we will provide the protocol for secondary market sales of the NFT tickets!

CTO Joseph Fiscella also continues to engage with the entities involved in putting together a sort of NFT-DeFi feature set for future iterations of the NFT.org DEX. We’re really excited about this blossoming collaboration and will continue to provide details as they become available.

$NFT Token Utility

Our new legal counsel with abundant knowledge of crypto and DeFi whom we acquired not long ago has been an absolute gift from the heavens. With his help we have gained the clarity we’ve needed to move forward building out and solidifying $NFT token utility. Most notably we will be able to move forward with DEX fee sharing! We are still discussing and refining the details regarding exactly how this will work and would like to involve our governance model at some point as we establish our model for $NFT token utility and fee sharing. This clarity from the legal counsel is hot off the press so stay tuned for more details and perhaps a standalone newsletter on token utility in the near future.

New Hires

We recently made an offer to a front end/Web3 developer candidate and this week the offer was accepted! At this time it is unclear when he will be able to start working with us, but we do know that he will need some time to give notice to his previous employer and bring that engagement to a close. We will provide you with more details on this addition to the team as they become available, but for now we are really excited to have this incoming personnel addition who will ensure that our front end/Web 3 work keeps up with the pace that Tilo is setting on the Solidity side of development.

With the NFT.org NFT Protocol DEX deployed both on Ethereum mainnet and an additional Ethereum “layer 2” for testing and refinement in preparation for its imminent audit and public launch, it is imperative that the NFT Protocol community begin to more clearly establish its governance model for the times ahead.

After its DEX launches NFT Protocol will officially be in the wild and increasingly open to contributors taking interest in building upon the protocol and dependent upon $NFT token holders approving those contributions and other proposals affecting the protocol.

The NFT Protocol governance model has been loosely modeled after Uniswap’s governance model and can be found at the forum here, though meta-governance discussion is encouraged in order to further refine the model such that it is optimally applicable to the unique circumstances of NFT Protocol.

$NFT token holders or anyone interested in following or becoming involved in NFT Protocol governance, please register for the forum! We’ll see you there!

~NFT Protocol

NFT.org DEX Enters Alpha Testing Phase

Work on the smart contracts and front end/UI for the beta (v1) version of the NFT.org DEX reached completion in April and what is considered an alpha version of the DEX has been deployed on Ethereum mainnet where it is now being tested by the NFT Protocol team and a small group of verified $NFT token holders.

At the time this newsletter was published the smart contracts appear to be functioning without issue as can be seen in the demo video below, though a small number of issues with the front end/UI have been discovered by the testing group and are currently being addressed by the development team. Once testing has yielded a product fit for public use the code will be handed over to an auditor - we’re looking to work with Peckshield - and the beta (v1) version of the DEX will officially launch thereafter.

While the front end/UI issues uncovered by the testing group are being addressed our smart contract engineers have begun working on the next set of features for the DEX which include ERC 1155 support, asset bundling, minting, social trading and collateralization.

NFT Protocol & Immutable X Partnership

Last week Immutable X and NFT Protocol announced their partnership wherein NFT Protocol will be among the first group of NFT projects to be given access to Immutable X’s revolutionary ZK-rollup L2 for NFTs built directly onto Ethereum mainnet as well as to its developer grants program!

Right now Immutable X is in its DEUS development phase wherein its alpha mainnet trial is underway exclusively with the Ethereum-based online trading card game (TCG) Gods Unchained.

Throughout the DEUS phase Immutable X will refine its product and give NFT Protocol access to its test environment so that our development team may assess the technology and establish a plan for implementing it into the NFT.org DEX once the product is ready to progress into the COSMOS phase.

NFT Protocol’s implementation of Immutable X will allow for gas-free minting, trading and selling of NFTs on its NFT.org DEX for users who’ve deposited assets into the Immutable environment (deposits to Immutable do require gas). Immutable’s revolutionary iteration of ZK-rollup technology allows for transactions to be settled onto Ethereum mainnet via zero knowledge proofs which precipitate state changes to the blockchain that reflect transactions that take place within the Immutable environment. Whereas transactional state changes to the blockchain require gas, zero knowledge proofs do not.

This partnership represents a powerful move on behalf of NFT Protocol towards building the most efficient and cost-effective platform for decentralized minting, buying, selling and trading NFTs.

NFT Protocol Team Changes & Additions

The NFT Protocol team is incredibly excited to announce the addition of blockchain architect Tilo Ochotta to its development team! Tilo has an impressive background which includes work with Block.one on the EOSIO platform and most recently with Immutable. Tilo’s addition to the team will not only expedite development and add dimension to the feature set of the NFT.org DEX, but also facilitate the speed and efficacy of our upcoming Immutable implementation.

At the tail end of April our community manager Jake Cox was also brought on to the team in a full-time capacity and given an additional role as product manager for NFT Protocol. Jake stepping into the product manager role alongside his existing community manager role will not only bring additional clarity and efficiency to the product development process, but also ensure that the NFT.org DEX meets the nuanced needs of $NFT token holders and the NFT space at large.

The NFT Protocol Agenda for May 2021

NFT.org DEX Beta (v1) Launch Promotion

As testing and the subsequent audit of the DEX progresses and a date for launch comes into view, we will be working on a proposing through governance a promotional program mobilize a swatch of $NFT tokens from the governance pool to be made available to be claimed by those who list and/or purchase on the DEX within the promotional period. Not only could this incentivize use of the DEX when it launches, it could also increase distribution of the $NFT token and subsequent participation in the growing NFT Protocol DAO.

The NFT Protocol DAO

In order to make use of the growing number of contributors interested in being involved with NFT Protocol and progress towards our long-term vision of becoming a thoroughly decentralized organization, Jake has been busy this week working on setting up a Discourse forum for NFT Protocol. Discourse forums are what established DeFi projects and DAOs like Uniswap and Yearn typically use to enhance their governance processes. This is an important step in NFT Protocol increasing the viability of its existing $NFT token governance model, becoming more decentralized and leveraging the $NFT token governance pool for the purposes of attracting contributors to grow and expedite development of the protocol.

$NFT Token Utility

NFT Protocol will launch its beta (v1) version of its DEX with membership-based utility for the $NFT token. Those who hold 10k+ $NFT tokens in their connected wallet when fulfilling listings will not be charged any fees. The fees programmed into the version currently being tested are .001 ETH for ERC 721 <-> ERC 721 swaps and 1.0% for ERC 721 to ERC 20 sales though we encourage the consideration of a fee structure adjustment through a governance proposal in the future.

We are continuing to work with our new legal counsel (who is more than adequately experienced in the DeFi space) to come up with a legally compliant model for bringing further utility to the $NFT token comparable to the models with other governance and utility tokens in the DeFi space. DEX fee sharing among $NFT token holders who stake $NFT and participate in governance is certainly on the table and will become an increasingly viable point of utility as NFT Protocol continues to expand its DAO and become more decentralized.

NFT Protocol also continues to work closely with Blockparty on a regular basis on their efforts to implement the $NFT token into the Blockparty platform. They have come up with a lucrative model that aligns with NFT Protocol’s vision for $NFT token utility that is currently under legal review.

Partnerships & Collaborations

The NFT Protocol team has ongoing dialogue with several entities in the NFT, DeFi and DAO spaces regarding potential partnerships & collaborations. Throughout May these dialogues will continue with the intention to solidify further partnerships and collaborations which will bring more features and utility to NFT Protocol and the $NFT token.

Blockparty continues to engage in regular communication with Dapper Labs regarding the implementation of their Flow blockchain on both Blockparty and NFT Protocol’s NFT.org DEX. It remains unclear when we will begin building the DEX on Flow. When and where we place building the DEX on Flow on our development roadmap will likely depend on a number of variables including Immutable’s development timeline, though building on Flow certainly remains a top priority for us after our Ethereum deployment achieves adequate viability.

Recent Media

https://nonfungible.com/blog/nft-protocol-decentralized-exchange-nfts

The NFT Protocol development team at the tail end of February successfully resolved some issues they’d been facing in the development of the NFT swap and sales smart contracts for the NFT.ORG DEX.

Both the ERC 721 <-> ERC 721 and ERC 721 <-> ERC 20 swap contracts are now fully functional within the development environment (i.e., Ethereum testnet) and we are excited to share with you this short video of developer John Storey demonstrating the functionality of the ERC 721 <-> ERC 721 swap contract within his development environment.

Roadmap Towards the Beta Launch

With the swap smart contracts now fully functional within the development environment, the path towards the NFT.ORG DEX beta launch has become more clear.

Over the course of this first week of March the development team will be focusing on interfacing the smart contracts with the UI we’ve previously shared with you as seen below.

We are aiming to have the smart contracts interfaced with the UI by the second week of March. At that point we will be inviting a small group of community members into a private testing session to help us uncover any possible bugs that need to be addressed prior to launch.

Throughout the private testing session the development team will continue to work on building listing indexing and a cancel listing function which at this point will be the two final features we feel are important to implement before beta launching the DEX.

It’s important to note that, because we feel it is prudent to make a minimally viable product available to the public as soon as possible, the initial beta launch will commence a prolonged and iterative beta phase of product development and refinement in which features and upgrades will be built, tested and deployed incrementally.

In order to expedite our product’s time to market, it is possible that we will launch the DEX prior to our smart contracts having completed a successful third-party audit and, if so, users will be advised to use the DEX with caution and at their own discretion until an audit is completed. Completing an audit, however, will most certainly be a top priority for us after the initial launch.

It’s been a long time coming to this point, but alas it seems there is clearly a light at the end of the tunnel. We can’t thank you all enough for hanging in there and supporting us throughout the development process and we are very excited to get the NFT.ORG DEX into your hands very soon!

~The NFT Protocol Team

We are pleased to announce that NFT Protocol is now on Discord! It’s no secret that as the NFT space has continued to explode that Discord has become the platform of choice for NFT projects and communities of NFT collectors and creators.

Opening up shop on Discord is thus a timely addition to our presence and footprint within the NFT space as we continue to advance toward the release of the beta version of our NFT DEX.

The process of populating our Discord with content we’ve previously created elsewhere is ongoing, but we’d love to have you join us on Discord as that process continues and have you seed what will soon become a vibrant hub within the NFT space!

You may join the NFT Protocol Discord server using the link below.

https://discord.gg/6QzJSUtA2Z

We’ll see you on Discord!

~The NFT Protocol Team

It is thus imperative if you still have $NFT tokens deposited into the staking contract that you withdraw your $NFT tokens AS SOON AS POSSIBLE if you want to participate in these governance proposals that we would like to publish by the end of the week.

If your tokens deposited to the staking contract have not yet reached their 90 day maturity and yielded their maximum 10% reward, you may opt to keep them ineligible for governance proposals and in the staking contract until they’ve matured for a full 90 days and yielded the maximum reward of 10%.

Please refer to last week’s newsletter for more information on how to assess the maturity of your staked $NFT tokens.

~The NFT Protocol Team

Yesterday, February 10, 2021, marked 90 days since we launched our first staking contract for $NFT holders. This means that those who deposited to the contract when it was first launched are now eligible to withdraw their $NFT tokens without forfeiting any staking rewards to the forfeiture pool. Those who deposited at a later date are eligible to keep their $NFT tokens staked and continue to accrue rewards until they’ve reached their respective 90 day maximum threshold. Stakers may also withdraw at any time and be subject to the terms of withdrawal and forfeiture indicated in the original staking proposal.

In order to determine whether your $NFT tokens have been staked for 90 days, go to the staking page and click on the ‘i’ button next to TOTAL DEPOSITS in the MY NFT box at the top of the page. A box will appear indicating the date and time of your deposit. Make sure that a full 90 days from that date and time have passed. Then confirm that the amount listed in MY EARNINGS is 10% of the amount displayed in MY STAKED TOTAL. If both of these conditions have been met then you have met the 90 day maximum threshold for the staking contract and may withdraw your staked $NFT balance and accrued rewards without forfeiture penalty.

When all tokens have been withdrawn from the current staking contract we will announce details regarding the next staking contract.

Fee Structure Governance Proposal Postponement

It was brought to our attention yesterday that, because the fee structure governance proposal was published before $NFT stakers had a chance to withdraw their tokens from the current staking contract, approximately 6.77 million $NFT tokens were not represented in account balances when the snapshot was taken for the governance proposal and thus not eligible to participate in the governance vote according to the parameters of our current Snapshot strategy.

Because it is important that such a significant portion of the circulating supply of $NFT be eligible to participate in the governance proposal, we are going to need to postpone the fee structure governance proposal.

We will will proceed by implementing what the team considers to be the most lucrative NFT DEX fee structure and will give $NFT holders an opportunity to change the fee structure by way of a governance proposal at a later date when all tokens have been withdrawn from the current staking contract and once we’ve been able to rewrite our Snapshot strategy to account for staked $NFT token balances. It is essential that those who are staking their $NFT tokens are also able to leverage those tokens in our governance procedures.

We apologize for this oversight in how our Snapshot strategy is currently structured and look forward to bringing a fee structure governance proposal back to you in the future.

~The NFT Protocol Team