NFTs - Performaroo

Creating your NFT Project has never been easier

With NFTs (and smart contracts) growing in popularity, there has been an increase in the number of brands and individuals creating their own projects.

If you’re a developer it may be easier said than done – until now. The rise of new technology has led to the opportunity to create a tool that makes it easy for the non-coders to get in on the fun.

If you happen to be someone who has only just learnt about the gold rush, this platform provides everything you need—from pick to shovel.

Creating your NFT Project with Thirdweb

Creating an NFT project has now become easier than you think. Armed with all the essentials, you can let your imagination go wild. But, before you get started, here’s a quick rundown of everything you need to know about utilizing Thirdweb.

Meet Thirdweb

Thirdweb, which has just undergone a version change, to version 2.0, is backed by Web2 heavyweights Steven Bartlett, Gary Vaynerchuk and Mark Cuban.

This goes to show that it’s really not something to be overlooked. The platform itself is super easy to navigate and the BIG PLUS is that they now take ZERO commission from project owners.

Previously they took 5% of your royalty (so if you had a 5% royalty setup, they took 5% of the 5%).

They have a whole host of contract types available, namely:

NFTs (ERC721 standard)

These are collections or one-of-a-kind tokens with fully customizable properties

Marketplaces (whitelabel)

Your own marketplace to let the community buy and sell tokens and NFTs

Tokens (ERC20 standard)

Custom social tokens, governance tokens and currencies you can control

Packs

Loot boxes full of NTFs with rarity-based unboxing mechanics

Drops (ERC721 with lazy minting; ERC 1155 standard with lazy minting)

Timed drops for users to easily claim NFTs and tokens (V2 allows projects to dictate phases of deployment and the specifics around each phase)

Splits

Royalty splits to manage your project revenue and fund distribution

Within each of these categories, you’ll find a few sub-categories that help you decide which route to take.
There are a few other benefits of Thirdweb that may not be evident to newbies:

Guides (these help you understand each contract in detail as well as help you with implementation)
A very helpful Discord channel
Testnet feature (which allows you trial each contract before spending real money on contract minting)
Access to a few chains (Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche and Flow – with Solana and Flow coming soon)

The true power comes in with their SDK functionality which is, in most parts, editable through their JS snippets. For those that aren’t proficient in coding, the embed feature does the job too. Some of the standout project types include membership NFTs, Public Marketplaces, DAOs, PFP Collections and Blockchain Games.

Teams can also collaborate on projects with ease with the head of projects able to assign permissions to each team member like full permissions, minting permissions, interaction permissions, and transfer permissions.

As mentioned previously, Thirdweb also assists project creators with their own meticulously created and community-tested guides which covers everything from getting started to contract types and implementation of SDKs and embeds.

We will be reviewing other platforms and solutions that make project creation and management easier for non-coders and coders alike, so remember to check-in and see what we’re up to in the NFT & Web3 space.

Important Web3 Concepts: Part 2

NFT, Community, NFTs, Trends and Forecasts / By Ric

We’ve entered a new wave of the web – Web3. The opportunities and possibilities are endless and venture capitalists, developers, and content creators have seen this and they’re getting in early.

However, the majority of online users are still battling to understand basic web3 concepts in the web3 metaverse.

Entering the NFT/Web 3 space? Here are important Web 3 Concepts you need to know!

In our previous piece, Important Web3 Concepts: Part 1, we covered a handful of important concepts – to recap: Blockchain, gas fees, layers, and tokens.

Now we’ll be discussing the second batch of important web3 concepts you need to know if you’re entering the Web3/NFT space.

In this article, we’ll touch on the following concepts:

Address
Alpha
Ape
DAO
Fractionalized

Address (Wallet Address)

Also known as your public key, this is an alphanumeric code that serves as the address for your blockchain wallet – similar to your bank account number.

Other users can send assets (NFTs, cryptocurrency etc.) to your wallet but only you can access them using your private key.

Your wallet address is usually linked to the likes of MetaMask, WalletConnect, or Coinbase. Web3 websites generally request you “connect wallet” in order to either enter or make use of their platform.

Alpha

This refers to valuable or “insider” information regarding the value of digital assets like cryptocurrency and NFTs. An Alpha leak usually refers to a leak from inside a project that could lead to outsized returns that are over and above the return offered by the market or benchmarks – similar to insider trading.

Ape

This refers to the act of going all in or investing heavily in a coin or NFT project. This is sometimes a reaction to hype or FOMO, or done without too much know-how of a project or asset. The origins are a bit blurry but carry no negative connotations. If you go “ape”, you generally go all in.

DAO

A DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) is an organisation based on open-source code and completely governed/run by its users and members with NO central authority.

They generally focus on a specific type of project or mission and all functions are fulfilled by guidelines or rules written on the blockchain. Smart contracts lay out the fundamental rules and the code itself can be publicly audited.

Fractionalized

Fractionalisation refers to the process of locking an NFT into a smart contract and then dividing it into smaller parts which are then also issued as their own fungible token. This lowers the price of ownership and allows artwork or other forms of digital assets to be owned by a community.

Fractionalized ownership can be applied to DAOs wanting to purchase blue-chip NFTs, a group wanting to buy a house together, or even a musician wanting to release an album to their fans and have the fans own part of the future success of the album.

Dapp

A dApp or Decentralised Application is an app built on open-source code that lives on the blockchain. These exist independent of centralised people, organisations, or groups and offer an incentive to users for maintaining them through the issuing of reward tokens.

Important Web3 Concepts: Part 1

NFT, Community, NFTs, Trends and Forecasts / By Ric

We’ve entered a new wave of the web – Web3. The opportunities and possibilities are endless and venture capitalists, developers, and content creators have seen this and they’re getting in early. However, the majority of online users are still battling to understand basic web3 concepts.

That’s where we come in – and there’s A LOT to try to digest so we’ve broken it down into two parts with 4 key concepts in each. We’d hate for you to lose interest or simply be overwhelmed. If you’re still battling to grasp what NFTs are, have a read here.

We’d hate for you to lose interest or simply be overwhelmed. If you’re still battling to grasp what NFTs are, have a read here.

Simplifying Web3 Concepts

In this article, we’ll touch on the following concepts:

• Blockchain
• Gas Fees
• Layers
• Tokens

Although we’ve already covered some of these terms in other articles, we’ll dive in deeper and explain these in more depth.

Blockchain

This is where it all begins – it’s possibly one of the most important concepts to grasp. It is essentially the backbone of the entire NFT industry. In a nutshell, one transaction is a “block” with a whole group of these forming the blockchain.

This is a whole new way of logging activity and transactions, security, and more.

Important Web3 Concepts: Part 1 - Blockchain

Blockchains have a few core features which we’ll also dive into:

Decentralised

This means that blockchains aren’t reliant on centralized, Web2 networks to stay online (like an Amazon server). They run entirely on independent nodes and hundreds of thousands of computers from around the world make this possible.

If you’re a miner and you’re one of the cogs that makes blockchain transactions run, you’ll benefit from earning a part of the transaction fee.

Public and auditable

Being publicly available and auditable you’re able to view every single transaction on the blockchain – providing full transparency.

An example of this is etherscan.io – Ethereum-based transactions can be viewed here along with the transaction value, the addresses involved, the type of contract, and the transaction ID.

Incorruptable

Security and corruption are plaguing the Web2 space and have been for decades. By incorruptible it means that once a transaction/activity has been performed it is stored as a hash on the blockchain.

If someone wants to change any aspect of the transaction, the fraudulent transaction would require more “power” than the rest of the network – which is impossible.

Gas Fees

Gas Fee is the transaction fee that users pay when a transaction is performed. These differ from blockchain to blockchain. The fees go to the “miners” that provide the computational power to make the transactions possible.

Ethereum currently has a major issue with gas fees (with Eth 2.0 apparently changing that – but no one knows when it will be launched). This proves to be a huge scalability issue for the chain and causes smaller projects to opt for Layer 2 options like Solana, with Solana’s Gas Fees being pretty close to $0.00.

Gas fees are represented as GWEI – Gigawei – and represent 0.000000001 ETH. These costs are determined by cost and speed.

Important Web3 Concepts: Part 1 - Gas Fees

Layers

The blockchain ecosystem is split between Layer 1 and Layer 2. Layer 1 refers to the blockchain itself (like Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, and Flow). Layer 2 on the other hand refers to a network or technology that operates on top of an existing Layer 1 in order to improve scalability and efficiency.

How it works

A part of the burden is transferred to an adjacent system or technology
This adjacent technology handles part of the network processing
After all is done the end results are sent to the main blockchain

Important Web3 Concepts: Part 1 - Layers — *Source: Bitlevex*

L2 takes a lot of pressure off the main blockchain and this means the network doesn’t become congested and it becomes more scalable. Polygon and Immutable are the leading L2 solutions for Ethereum. L2 solutions allow the small guy or project to take part in Web3 without having to pay exorbitant gas fees.

Tokens

Tokens represent tradable units on the blockchain. You may have realised already that cryptocurrencies are essentially made up of tokens. The tokens like Bitcoin and Ether are fungible – meaning 1 ETH holds the same value as another ETH – unlike NFTs.

Platforms like Thirdweb make it easier for projects to launch their own token, and decide on the quantity and distribution.

With NFTs, they are Non-Fungible, so each would hold a different value (even if they’re part of the same collection).

In the next part, we’ll discuss smart contracts, Hashes, exchanges, DAOs, and marketplaces.

The future of NFTs: Beyond Art & Gaming

NFTs, Community, Metaverse / By Ric

Apart from those that are heavily involved in Web3, there has been widespread speculation around the future of NFTs, especially how NFTs and Web3 can actually benefit or make inroads into core industries around the world.

Well, it already has and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. From finance to communities, from real estate to events – Web3 and NFTs are here to stay and will more than likely improve our day-to-day.

As it stands, the common uses for NFTs include PFPs (profile pics), art, music, or collectibles. Web3 has become synonymous with phrases like the Metaverse. Yes, those are some of the areas in which Web3 and NFTs are currently known to operate, but there’s so much more to come.

Already companies, dev houses, startups, and VCs are chasing the next big thing – how to put their stamp on the next web. We’ll cover a few core industries that will be changed thanks to Web3/NFTs but feel free to check out our 5 NFT Trends For 2022 for some deeper insight.

The following will be changed thanks to this new tech including:

Music
Real estate
Governance
Raising capital for new ventures

Music

The music industry is already being shaken up by the sudden rise of NFTs and Web3 culture. Gone are the days when musicians lose a large chunk of their earnings to middlemen.

Gone are the days when musicians are disconnected from their fans and followers. A Music NFT is a certificate of ownership of unique audio or a musical piece that can be bought or sold that provides undeniable proof of ownership thanks to blockchain technology.

There are a number of types of music NFTs:

Full songs and albums
Digital art
Tickets
Video content

Artists will now be able to claim full ownership of their work and get closer to their fans than ever before and thanks to blockchain technology they’ll be able to sell their pieces to a wider audience.

Real Estate

You may think that there’s still a good couple of months or years before you’ll be able to buy a house through an NFT. Wrong! Earlier this year a house was sold as an NFT for around $650,000.00 (around 210 Ether) through Propy.

The process involved around 50 people that had to go through verification and show proof of funds – and come auction day there were 2 bidders that had been vetted and had the opening bid amount in a digital wallet.

The property first had to be moved to an LLC from an individual owner and once the winning bidder was determined the LLC was transferred to the new owner and funds transferred to the digital wallet.

Due to Ether taking a slight knock, the “value” of the funds that the seller received dropped by around $40,000 within 24 hours.

With the rise in use cases for NFTs and crypto, Propy aims to appeal to the tech-savvy and younger generation of home buyers that are tired of the archaic processes involved in buying property.

The longest step in the wholesale was a 5 minute KYC verification. Propy also aims to be able to offer mortgages (not straight buy-outs) through a stablecoin like USDC that’s always pegged against a strong currency like the Dollar.

Governance

We’ve all heard the term DAO recently – but what is it exactly and how will it change the governance of communities, businesses, and brands?

Decentralised Autonomous Organisations are set to change the way we function as a society and in some areas eliminate elicit behavior.

There will be no CEOs calling the shots based on a whim or no CFO cooking the books. DAOs are based on the premise that every person involved holds a vote and has a voice.

This trustless system runs on blockchain protocol fully and autonomously in accordance with rules encoded via smart contracts.

Eventually the normal 9-5, one-job-only will be replaced by people engaging with and for a few DAOs – performing pre-determined tasks from anywhere in the world.

What Is A DAO And How Do They Work? | ConsenSys

DAOs have become so popular that some NFT projects are including tokens that act as voting rights for the project’s direction.

This means that the project can’t make any big move without the approval of the community that is invested in it.

Shares in a DAO can be transferred or exchanged/sold as NFTs and some projects offer a limited number of voting tokens per wallet – as to not give too much control to a single individual.

Raising capital for new ventures

Gone are the days when you need to approach VC, Angels, investment firms, your friends and family, or even take some savings out to fund your new business venture or invest in a new product.

NFTs are becoming a great way to raise capital and build a community. And fast.

Projects from all over the world are building utility-driven NFT collections that essentially offer fractionalised ownership to the minter. This ends up being a win-win. The project gets the funding it needs to get built or carry on running, and the minter benefits as the project become successful.

The way that NFTs and Web3 are becoming more and more applicable to our everyday life is astounding and as mentioned previously, it is only going to grow in popularity as mass adoption starts to kick in.

That brings us to our closing point – education. Education is needed to facilitate this mass adoption of the next wave of the web.

Platforms like Inevitable are already offering free courses to educate the masses on how web3 works, what NFTs are, and how they can be used.

Rug pulls – what they are and how to spot them

Metaverse, NFTs / By Ric

Rug pulls are becoming an increasingly popular way to bring the Crypto, DeFi and NFT space into disrepute and to make a quick buck.

Rug pulls are when a project is hyped up, builds a community, and goes to mint only to plummet to zero (or very close) due to the founders jumping ship or simply not following through on their promises.

This leaves investors high and dry and brings the entire industry into question.

Being human means simply coming to terms with the fact that scams will always be around, but if you know what to look out for you can mitigate the chances of you yourself being rug-pulled.

We’ve discussed this topic extensively with industry experts, real users, and platform creators to try and protect you.

Although we’ll only discuss a handful of flags to look out for, we strongly recommend you continue to DYOR (Do Your Own Research) for every NFT project you may be interested in.

Typical types of rug pulls in crypto & DeFi

Stealing liquidity

Simply put, in order for a cryptocurrency to be traded, a liquidity pool needs to be created that holds a certain amount of currency for investors to buy and sell.

In a rug pull, a developer will create a scam token and create the liquidity pool together with a legitimate currency like Ether.

As people start buying in and trading, they deposit ETH for the bogus token and when the time comes, the developer can pull the ETH from the liquidity pool leaving only the worthless scam tokens.

The investors are now left with essentially untradeable worthless tokens and the developer has sailed off into the sunset.

Disabling the sale of tokens

This occurs in both crypto and the NFT space. Essentially the end result is the same as the above but the process is slightly different.

Here, the developer/founder will disallow investors the opportunity to sell or trade their tokens after investing.

When the price is high enough, the developer will sell their share, causing the price to drop and leaving investors high and dry.

Project founders cashing out

Some projects are created for the sole purpose of early exits by developers or founders. They would mint a useless token or “shitcoin” and assign a large amount to themselves before driving the hype or while the price is very low.

Once a rally has occurred and the price is high enough, the developer will sell their large amount of “shares” either at once or in stages (as to not be so obvious).

Red flags of a rug pull

Okay so we’ve discussed the broad types of rug pulls, but let’s see what the warning signs could be. As this is mostly NFT focused content we’ll steer the direction towards NFT project red flags and stay away from the DeFi side.

There are a handful of clear red flags that should give you an indication to watch out or practice more-than-normal caution before getting involved in a project:

Project appeared overnight

Have a look at the project’s timeline (historically). If they have a proven track record of engagement, how long the project has been in the works and how they have been engaging with their community.

One area of this would be their website – if it is flooded with inaccuracies, errors, a vague roadmap, and NO TEAM, this should be an immediate warning.

Undoxxed Founders

We’ve previously discussed the importance of a doxxed (documented) team in NFT projects. In a nutshell, this gives the community and prospective investor peace of mind that the developers and founders can’t just slip away unnoticed.

Yes, there have been some doxxed teams that ended up being rug pulls like Squiggles and similar projects, but this is at least a reassurance that they are willing to put their name and face on a project.

No visibility on launch sites

Before any project launches, they tend to list their project on NFT announcement platforms like UpcomingNFT, NFTEvening, etc. to inform the NFT community of their upcoming mint.

These listings generally include the mint date, information about the project, the chain they’re launching on, and the mint price among other details.

If a project is hard to find other than their Discord, Twitter and Website, you should practice caution.

Vague roadmap or white paper

Roadmaps and whitepapers detail the proposed direction of a project. This gives prospective minters/investors an indication as to what to expect, the potential utility received, and the timelines.

These vary in technicality and length. Road maps are more often than not both on the website and Discord servers whereas whitepapers live on the website or could be requested from the developers or founders.

Questionable social presence

With influencers running wild on Twitter and Discord, it’s tough to distinguish the real followers vs the fake or “bought” followers.

Adding to that, a disproportionate amount of followers between Twitter and Discord could be a potential flag too. These large amounts of followers could be bots to give an illusion of community, wherein actual fact it’s nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

The above is the basic red flags to look out for – we could get very technical re liquidity, looking into the smart contract code, etc. but we’ll cover those in a future article.

5 NFT Trends For 2022

Trends and Forecasts, NFTs / By Ric

Did you know that NFT was the word of the year for 2021? That alone shows that we can expect a rip-roaring year in 2022 for NFT-related projects. Projects raked in the masses, established huge communities and made decent revenue at the same time.

There were also a few that reiterated the darker side of the hottest trend since Bitcoin by creating hollow projects with little to no utility and even going as far as creating deliberate rug-pulls. 2022 will more than likely be the year that NFTs and the long-term viability of the concept gets realized with mass-adoption and increasing utility.

We’ve scoured the web, liaised with industry professionals and formed our own ideas around what the year has in store for Non-Fungible Tokens:

Mainstream NFT adoption
Charities benefit
Revival of the art industry
Transformation of P2E gaming
Multi-chain marketplaces

Mainstream NFT Adoption

NFTs have already kicked off with a bang in 2022 and there’s no doubt the trend will continue for the foreseeable future. But what will it all come to? How will the majority that are online realize the true value of this digital token?

Charities to benefit from NFTs

Charities are now exploring the potential of NFTs – with the main benefit being the decreased overhead costs due to the decentralized manner in which they would raise funds.

Smart contracts make donating to a charity or fundraising that much easier – you’re able to automatically assign a split for every transaction. One of the major flaws of charities (pre-blockchain and NFTs) is that there was always a doubt that the funds were going to the right place – now with transparent, publicly traceable data everything’s out in the open.

Another revenue stream could be tokenized video-plays – where royalties will automatically be paid out every time the video is played or shared.

Revival of the art industry

NFTs have given artists a renewed sense of hope – and reaffirmed what Bitcoin’s whitepaper envisioned for the industry – true peer-to-peer transfers. Artists are able to sell directly to their fans with zero interference or splits by a middle man.

Fractionalized NFTs also allow artists to involve their fans in the process of a project and allow them to become part of the future success. Artists are also now able to benefit perpetually from future sales of their NFTs through smart contracts.

NFTs aren’t just for the intangible assets – they can also be used to tokenize ownership of tangible assets too – such as Beeples physical artwork that was accompanied by the NFT (which sold for $29 million in November 2021).

Social Perks & Subscription Models

With NFTs offering utility to HODlers, new types of subscription models and social perks could be established in the coming months as adoption increases.

Time Magazine is leading the way here by offering NFTs from 40 distinct artists and makes the NFT owner a community member. TimePieces is basically an alternative to the usual digital subscription model, unlocking all content for the NFT holder and giving them access to exclusive experiences and events.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) offer social perks to their holders. BAYC NFTs essentially give holders exclusive club membership to the Yacht Club – a social club in the Metaverse.

Multi-chain Marketplaces

Right now the largest NFT Marketplace, OpenSea, currently only supports major chains Ethereum and Polygon – with Polygon being it’s “gas-free” marketplace.

However, with Solana and the like gaining popularity on their native chains coupled with the exorbitant gas fees on ETH and the difficulty to bridge MATIC (Polygon), we could potentially see the likes of OpenSea opening up to allow Fantom and Solana onto their marketplace.

Whether or not this leads to a monopoly (which is what Web3 is trying to get away from) is yet to be determined.

———-

The rise of NFTs and them slowly proving their value (utility) could lead to a big year for those that are either active in the space or considering entering it.

NFTs are just one of the building blocks of the emerging Metaverse and investors and creators alike are trying to put their stamp on the market and potentially become the Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates of Web3.