The market is always looking for new investment targets and new landing scenarios. Judging from the current development of the blockchain industry, NFT is likely to be a door to the future. This series of articles will comprehensively introduce NFT-related content from the aspects of 3 protocols, 6 major fields, and basic data of NFT.

What are NFTs?

• Homogeneous Tokens

• non-homogeneous token

Homogeneous Tokens

• ERC721

• ERC1155

• ERC998

What are NFTs?

Homogeneous Tokens

Fungible Token is a homogeneous token, also translated as a replaceable token. Regular tokens, used to describe a commodity, each unit has the same value.

non-homogeneous token

non-homogeneous token

NFT (Non Fungible Token) non-homogeneous tokens are also translated as non-fungible tokens. Cryptokitties represented by the earliest CryptoKitties are typical representatives of non-homogeneous tokens. Each pass is different, it cannot be used that if you have three encrypted cats and I have five encrypted cats, it proves that I am more valuable than you, because each cat has a different value, maybe one of yours NFT is already worth more than 100,000 US dollars, and mine may only be worth 10 US dollars at present.

secondary title

Three underlying protocol standards for NFT

In this section, you will know how NFT came about, what standards it is based on, and what are the differences between standards.

ERC721

The most common non-fungible token standard is ERC721. CryptoKitties, founded in 2017, was once the first star project of NFT. What many people don’t know is that the ERC721 standard was created and released by the project’s CTO Dieter Shirley . It can be said that Dieter Shirley is one of the founders of NFT. Dieter participated in Bitcoin mining in 2010, and continued to invest in Bitcoin since then. He was also the chief architect of the public chain Flow in the NFT field.

ERC721 is also the most commonly used token form in the NFT field. CryptoKitties, a popular game/collection project that caused congestion on the Ethereum network at the end of 2017, uses the 721 protocol.

The picture is from the official website of CryptoKitties, and it can be seen that the prices of these encrypted kitties vary greatly.

"Every CryptoKitties is unique", this is the slogan on the CryptoKitties official website, and it is also the most important feature of NFT. Even if the same category looks at the same cat, there will be changes in parameters; and these parameters that are invisible to the naked eye are still non-homogeneous tokens NFT, not tokens in the traditional sense.

ERC1155

The establishment of the ERC1155 standard is also inseparable from the CTO of the project party, but this time the business of the project party is game development. Witek Radomski is the co-founder & CTO of Enjin.

Enjin is a game developer. The main reason Enjin CTO Witek Radomski created ERC1155 is that game props are needed when developing games, and multiple props and accounts need to be sent, and it is very expensive to call a contract every time you send it. For example, there is a game with 100,000 daily active users and millions of registered users. Everyone who upgrades the game will get a sword. At this time, if you transfer accounts to one million people on the blockchain, how much will it cost? According to the current ordinary transfer fee - the ETHgas fee of 2 US dollars, it is directly necessary to bear the cost of 2 million US dollars (about 13 million RMB). long.

The birth of ERC1155 has solved similar problems to a certain extent, because this protocol standard has both the characteristics of BFT and FT, and has the characteristics of semi-fungible tokens. The ID here is compared with ERC721 The difference is: ID is no longer an item, but a category (Class). For example, the jacket of the game props collection is a category. When transferring money, set the quantity of the jacket (quantity), so that multiple quantities of props can be sent with only one call to the contract, such as the game upgrade mentioned above. A sword, that's a category. There is no distinction between tokens in this category.

For detailed understanding, we can say that there are 100,000 Dragon Tuning Knives and 5,000 Moon Scimitars in your game service area. With the ERC1155 protocol, there is no difference between Tulong Tuo Dao and Dragon Tuning Knife. There is no difference between a knife and a full-moon scimitar, but there is a difference between a dragon-slaying knife and a full-moon scimitar. But in theory, a strict NFT should be different for each item, so ERC1155 is a semi-fungible token, which is equivalent to a physical semiconductor—between an insulator and a conductor.

It is worth mentioning that: ERC1155 can meet the flexible needs in different scenarios, such as transferring a large number of multi-category assets at the same time, or transfer a large number of assets of the same type, such as 10 coats + 5 hats, which can be completed in one transfer. Greatly improved the speed and convenience of transfer.

ERC998

This standard is not as common as the above two, so that many people have never heard of it. It is called Composable NFTs (abbreviated as CNFT). Its structural design is equivalent to a standardized extension, allowing any NFT to bind other NFTs or FTs. When transferring CNFT, it is transferring the entire hierarchical structure and affiliation owned by CNFT. Simplified understanding: ERC-998 can contain multiple tokens in the form of ERC-721 and ERC-20.

This means that a CryptoKitties cat can have homogeneous assets, such as some ETH tokens, and non-homogeneous props, such as the encrypted cat holding a card or carrying a big gold The chain, this card or the big gold chain is originally an NFT. At this time, you can pack everything with one transfer. ERC998 is a commodity that is sold in a "package".

The above is the first part of this article. Starting from the basic protocol standards, it will take you into the world of NFT. The next article will explain the 6 major areas related to NFT-this is the most critical content.

If you want to understand the logic of the NFT code layer, it is recommended to go to CSDN to search for relevant technical details. The technical explanations in it are more detailed, but for us who have a preliminary understanding of the basic concepts of NFT and common protocol standards, this article is enough.