We’ve heard the term on-chain used quite a flake in relation to CyberBrokers. The concept isn’t new and other projects like Avastars are already on-concatenation. But what exactly does that mean and why is it important?

Lets start with a very basic definition of on-chain. “Concatenation” is a reference to a blockchain, e.g. Ethereum. “On” means the data is stored on the blockchain and not somewhere else like a website or file storage service. Each time y’all buy, sell, or transfer cryptocurrency a transaction with the details is created and stored on-concatenation. A permanent tape of what happened that is stored forever and publicly accessible. This is the foundation of blockchains.

Then how does that use to NFTs? Let have a look at the basics of how an average NFT works and so we can talk about what differentiates an on-concatenation NFT from it. The average NFT consists of three parts:

Contract – a smart contract which is uploaded to the blockchain (i.e. Ethereum) and controls the NFT’southward behavior: minting, ownership, attributes, auction (including royalties), and annihilation else the creator wants to add for features. The contract keeps a record of all transactions for the NFT. This role is Always on-concatenation.
Metadata – this is an manufacture standard way of describing the details of the NFT in the JSON (structured data) format. The metadata contains the name, description, a website address for the NFT media (epitome, gif, moving picture file, etc), all the Traits that the NFT has and that make information technology unique, and anything else the creator wants to add to describe the NFT or the project. Traditionally this is NOT on-chain and is either hosted using IPFS (a distributed file sharing service) or the developer’s website.
Media – the text, prototype, GIF, pic, etc. that is what your are buying, what y’all own, and what has value. This also is NOT traditionally stored on-concatenation and is usually stored using IPFS or creator website.

And then why aren’t the NFT metadata and media stored on-chain? One uncomplicated reason – cost. A traditional paradigm (jpeg/png) at loftier resolution is large. For reference a Bored Ape image is 150KB+ and for a collection of 10,000 that is 10MB+ in images. Many NFT images are larger and motion picture files become fifty-fifty bigger. Doesn’t sound like a lot when our computers have Terabytes of storage now, only Ethereum and smart contracts where never designed to transfer or store large amounts of information like that. The price of a transaction on Ethereum is straight proportional to the size of the transaction in bytes. And then storing images like that on-chain would cost a small-scale fortune.

Equally for the metadata, if you aren’t storing the image on-chain there isn’t any real motivation to store the metadata on-chain either.

To epitomize, the average NFT has the contract on-chain and the metadata and media off-concatenation.

If information technology’s so expensive, then why is it important to take your NFT’s metadata and media on-chain? Ane discussion… permanence. If everything is on-chain and so the NFT volition last equally long as the blockchain itself that contains it. If it’s not all on-concatenation then there is the adventure that wherever it is may not exist in x, 20, 100 years. For college values NFTs this becomes a real question given the amount of investment and value.

There is another reason as well – current & future interoperability. If everything is on-chain so the methods to read, write, modify, and interact with the NFT are also on-chain and permanently available. No back stop server that holds the code on how to update the NFT. This opens the door to 3rd party interaction with your NFT through documentation and partnerships.

The average NFT doesn’t need to be on chain. High value NFTs probably should be on chain though. At that place is a barrier to doing that though – cost. Enter the SVG file format – a different manner of creating and storing images that can reduce their size and provide additional benefits at the same time. Run into my weblog mail service Why SVG is import for NFTs for details.

To finish the article out I want to also do a quick comparison between CyberBrokers and Avastars, an existing on-concatenation NFT project. Both are technically considered on-chain, but there is a subtle difference that is very important.

Avastars has a separate contract that handles metadata. You lot can utilize the getAvastarMetadata() method to pull the metadata for any NFT ID. The main Avastars smart contract has a method chosen renderAvastar() that volition provide the SVG format paradigm for whatsoever NFT ID. So technically both the metadata and the media are stored on-chain in the smart contracts.

The same is true for CyberBrokers. A tokenURI() method in both the main contract and the metadata contract returns the metadata for any NFT ID. The renderBroker() method in the metadata contract will provide the SVG format image for any NFT ID.

The subtle divergence is the tokenURI() methods in the main smart contracts for the NFTs. That is the primary interface that tertiary parties like OpenSea apply to call back the metadata of an individual NFT.

The CyberBroker contract returns a JSON formatted gear up of metadata. third parties read this direct and do their thing. The Avastars tokenURI() method returns a URL to retrieve the metadata pointing back to their website. That means that while the metadata IS stored on-chain, 3rd parties are non retrieving it from contract. Rather they are going to the Avastars website to get it. So if the Avastars website goes abroad, and then does access to the metadata – from a 3rd party perspective like OpenSea.

A subtle departure, but yet very important. And so maybe we need ii terms here: “on-chain” for those NFTs that technically have metadata and media on-chain in some form and “on-chain integrated” meaning 3rd parties pull metadata direct from the contract.

Having the contract feed metadata direct to third parties has another pregnant reward. The moment any change to NFT attributes are made, the metadata changes forth with information technology and is fed to tertiary parties. In the Avastar case the contract AND website would accept to both be updated to effect any NFT metadata changes.

I promise this has provided you insight into what on-concatenation means for NFTs, the subtleties of how it is implemented, and why information technology is important to NFTs y’all may exist investing in like CyberBrokers.

CarTarL

This article and Why SVG is important for NFTs support my web log post CyberBrokers: Middle of the Metaverse.