Problem: Current NFT Landscape

Macro NFTs

If you are reading this, I imagine you know what NFTs are, why they're useful, what purpose they play on a cultural level and hopefully, how they work technically.

NFTs are essentially digital stamps on a file, often stored on IPFS or another decentralized file storage network. They act as proof of ownership, prove provenance, and ultimately allow ownership of unique (non-fungible) assets to be easily transferred.

These properties makes it perfect for certificates, prize giveaways, souvenirs after events and membership/rewards cards. More in Use-Cases section.

NFT Use-Cases

NFTs allow painters to receive royalties on their artwork forever, event tickets to be verified, users to own their unique digital identity, own portions of tokenized real estate, verify degrees and certificates, secure intellectual property, self-distribute music, obtain exclusive memberships, own domains (URLs) and usernames, decentralized voting, trade in-game assets, and crowdfund amongst many more use cases.

Current State

The majority of NFTs currently owned on blockchains are digital art, IP rights and collectables. This is seen with the rise of digital collectables and the growth of platforms like OpenSea, LooksRare, and SuperRare. This is in addition to countless celebrities purchasing NFT profile pictures and massive brands joining the NFT wave. These are too numerous to mention.

While NFTs as art and digital collectables are innovative and unique approaches for the first wave of NFT adoption, long term NFT use-cases revolve around authentication of documents, confirmation of digital files, and other verification related applications. Online today, there is no standardized approach in minting NFTs step-by-step for the verification of documents, files and NFT airdrops to web2 focused audiences.

There is currently no standard to mint, and distribute NFTs in a professional sense. Multiple NFT entities (i.e. NFT consultancy's, minting platforms, NFT marketplaces ) have their own NFT minting smart contracts for NFT art pieces and collections so it's not standardized but each ecosystem has their own NFT token standard (ERC721 for Ethereum, FA2 for Tezos, BEP721 for Binance Smart Chain, etc.) . Token standards are important for compatibility between platforms, collections and wallets.

For a professional not in the NFT space, who may want to verify their documents with NFTs, how would they go about doing so? How would their audience know if the NFT document is verified / original? How would they distribute these verified documents? If I'm not technical, how can I do this simply?

The following documentation answers these questions.

While this documentation is applicable to all NFT projects, it is made with the use-case of professional verification of files in mind that will be distributed to specifically web2 audiences. This is meant to be a tool to allow anyone to turn their files into NFTs and distribute them and use the originating address as the standard of verification.