Since their 2014 kick-off, the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) grew in notoriety and nowadays seem to be the predominant choice when it comes to buying or selling digital artwork. Still in doubt? Think that even Sir Anthony Hopkins launched his own NFT (Eternal) Collection. Seeing that, you may think that's fairly easy to create an NFT. After all, if an 84 years old man did it, why couldn't you? Well, it's not about NFT minting itself, it's more about the resources you are about to spend in the process. I'm sure that you won't see any benefit in trading the environment for some beautiful piece of digital artwork. In the end, you cannot live on colors and bytes.
Fortunately, people developed eco-friendly solutions for the above-mentioned problem. Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems are two such solutions. The DotSama low carbon infrastructure became attractive for the NFT community and more projects started to join - KodaDot is only one example.
What is KodaDot?
KodaDot is a universal NFT explorer and marketplace available on Kusama’s blockchain that uses the RMRK protocol to manage and create NFTs. Initially designed to incorporate the workflow of exploring, issuing, querying, and sending NFTs between users, KodaDot became a marketplace after its transfer functionality was extended with buy and sell features. With the integration of various calls and 3rd party APIs (Subquery, Subsquid, textile, on-chain identity, substrate calls, Cloudflare (speedy object cache for UX, direct upload), Pinata, Estuary, rendering SEO-cards, IPFS gateways, API Coingecko, Azure Computer Vision, GPT3, Minimark minter) KodaDot can start positioning itself as a Metaverse substrate/ middleware for NFT builders.
What is middleware?
I assumed that everyone is familiar with terms like NFT or metaverse so I jumped directly to the part I want to analyze in this article — the middleware. According to the general definition published by Red Hat in one of its articles, middleware is perceived as “software that provides common services and capabilities to applications outside of what’s offered by the operating system. Data management, application services, messaging, authentication, and API management are all commonly handled by middleware. Middleware helps developers build applications more efficiently. It acts like the connective tissue between applications, data, and users.”
According to The Middleware Thesis author, this is exactly what crypto needs nowadays —a strong glue, made from the same principles as the rest of crypto. Something capable enough to enable the existing operating system of blockchains to reach the next level of interoperability while ensuring the longevity of legacy investments, hassle-free scaling, lower development costs, complexity management, and fertile soil for innovation.
As thoroughly explained by Dani Grant and Nick Grossman in The Myth of The Infrastructure Phase article there is no surprise that apps were developed way ahead of the existing infrastructure. It is normal to have apps that inspire the creation of new infrastructure and then the infrastructure which enables new apps. And the cycle goes on.
The same thing happens in the crypto space with the difference that here some user apps (DeFi farms) jumped too far ahead of the existing infrastructure and solutions are needed urgently. For the existing crypto middleware projects, this situation translates into an opportunity to gain notoriety and to improve the underlying tech without altering most of the core values of the crypto movement. Although we are currently limited by defining the underlying infrastructure, or “the stack”, in layers (L1 and L2), the future stack might not be limited to only two layers anymore. In fact, we might have a flexible stack with many different lego blocks, each of them providing a micro-service for the actual end-user use case.
Trying to fit the middleware concept in a crypto scenario we can define it as the stack architecture that encompasses all of the services your dApp requires about which most users have no idea. Something like a dApp for dApps. Speaking about the middleware stack, the IOSG Ventures team stated that “Web 3.0’s middleware stack is between the base layer (layer1 / layer2) of the blockchain and the application layer, which improves the decentralized collaboration capability or the efficiency of token value transmission.”
In other words, Chris Burniske defines crypto’s middleware protocols as developer-geared protocols that provide services in addition to the consensus and core functions of the base layer blockchain. These middleware protocols have the potential to make dApp creation easier, faster, and cheaper, making them attractive to developers to build on. Key middleware protocols could potentially grow to be greater than the underlying consensus chain. While not a perfect mapping to the traditional use of the term middleware, these protocols can be thought of as anything sitting just below the interface layer (i.e., the applications the end user interacts with), but leveraging the lower-level functionality provided by L1 blockchains and interoperability protocols.
As the development of higher-level applications on blockchains continues to grow beyond early DeFi primitives, the need for robust infrastructure and middleware also expands. This ever-growing demand favored the emergence of an inexhaustible stream of data networks, indexers, access controls, and other middleware tools — all critical pieces of glue for the next generation of dApps. Let’s have a quick look over the above-mentioned middleware tools.
Data/ Storage networks
While open source and decentralization are the core ethos of Web 3.0, decentralized file storage is the critical driving element toward success. Although blockchains are built for decentralized storage, they are not designed to store large file sizes. They are meant for handling transaction data, smart contracts, and source code.
In the future, most value creation or value transfer on the internet would involve some kind of content or a file that needs a decentralized, permanent storage solution. Fortunately, storage networks such as Arweave and Filecoin have been around for some time now, offering distributed matching systems for excess storage and storage demand. We can categorize storage into two types of protocols, foundational storage layers, and aggregators that serve as scaling solutions and facilitate wider adoption.
Data Models
We know for sure that blockchains need decentralized storage solutions to work properly and such solutions are already on the market. But what about data models, how can this large amount of data be interpreted? For the applications built on top of these state machines, data production from their activity will require the flexibility of storage and computation beyond account balances.
Having all these in mind, let’s have a look over the Ceramic network which, at its most basic level, is a decentralized data model network. Why is this infrastructure important for decentralized applications? As stated in The Middleware Thesis Vol. 2, “Layer 1 (L1) stores the state of account balances (accounting data). Where KYVE seeks to provide a data validity solution to L1 state transitions, Ceramic seeks to store the state and models of applications’ data beyond base layer account information. Users of the network are able to create collections of IPFS data (streams) allowing for static data (such as that on Filecoin or Arweave) to become higher-order mutable content.”
Indexers
With an ever-growing amount of data produced by apps and networks, interpretation layers are more than required. In other words, dApps need a way to get and transform data from basic data sources while storing them in a format that can be directly used in applications. Due to the nature of the distributed systems, the data can be siloed across various locations and difficult to retrieve. Indexation layers help expedite the query process and create standardization procedures.
Already integrated into KodaDot, Subsquid takes a multilayered approach to indexation of on-chain data in a decentralized manner. Their ultimate goal is to support Web 3.0’s next generation of APIs. Supporting both Substrate and EVM ecosystems, the protocol defines types, schema, and definitions of on-chain data and subsequently enhances the retrievability of the newly indexed data by switching it to their API-based call solution instead of RPCs.
The layering is composed of two types of nodes: Squids categorize and support subsequent API querying of the data, while Archives continuously ingest the raw data from the underlying state machines and save it to the database.
Access Controls
One of the most important and historically underrepresented missing pieces of Web 3.0 app infrastructure is access controls. Their role is to control who can see what is on the internet. The semantic nature of public blockchain/ Web 3.0 technologies enables us to better differentiate which users should be able to access what and how. Despite the inherent openness of these systems, an access control framework would allow for encryption/decryption based on a specified provisioning framework. One example of access control is token gating.
Token gating is a new way to control and restrict access to exclusive content by requiring customers to acquire a specific NFT or number of tokens. The NFT or token essentially acts as an access key that is verified by connecting your cryptocurrency wallet.
Integration Platforms
To further integration and fitting of blocks together that we imagine in our 3D bridge world, Polywrap (formerly known as Web3api) is pushing integrations of Web 3.0 protocols to much higher degrees of efficiency making Web 3.0 protocols as universally accessible as traditional web services.
Polywrap makes the integration of different SDKs easy by leveraging standardized schemas & WebAssembly. Instead of pre-bundling the various protocol’s SDKs into your application, a Polywrap integration can simply make invocations against an easy-to-read schema. This will cause the wrapper to be downloaded, and executed within the application at runtime. In plain terms, this means any application equipped with Polywrap can gain access to any Web 3.0 protocol.
What KodaDot ecosystem can offer?
- a general NFT marketplace (main KodaDot engine) with lots of insights on collections for collectors;
- scaffolding/ fast prototyping interface to cut development costs;
- API for your blockchain games to bootstrap your game much faster with Game ready endpoints;
- minting integrations into game engines like GoDot/ Unreal/ Unity;
- NFT primitives like Collab, Auctions, Royalties, Make Offers, Revenue Share, Verification by holding token, Reactive Actions, Advanced Traits System (GameFi-ready), Fractions, Equip, Scheduler, Protocol Native licensing, Forking/ Remixing, Loot/ Bundles, Unlockable, Conditional Rendering.
What is a Reactive NFT?
Based on what gbaci wrote in his article A Brief Overview of NFT 2.0, reactive NFTs are made possible by conditional rendering. This means that an NFT changes its resource based on certain criteria being met. Simply put, an NFT of a landscape alternates between 2 resources (nighttime and daytime variants) based on the time of day. When it is night, the NFT shows the nighttime variant, and when it is daytime, the NFT switches to the daytime variant. For this to work, it means that the NFT must have 2 resources (pictures in this instance) and the condition for prioritizing one over the other.
The idea behind KodaDot Reactive NFTs was to enable creators to collaborate on crafts together, matter if it’s about game items or about a series of their emotional production, they should have the ability to share and influence their features. If it’s just simple items for identity, access lists for your community or smart (with custom-designed utility) items in your game, part of your complex game mechanics, or bootstrapping your gaming community around a cause or particular alignment. See below the KodaDot Reactive NFTs protocol presentation delivered by KodaDot co-founder Viki Val at amsterDOT 2022:
Do you want to read more about RNFTs? You can find a very good article about KodaDot RNFTs, written by Mandela Amoussou, here ▼:
Why someone should use KodaDot to build on?
- development costs — by dropping the “cost of development”, a broader set of devs will find dApp development accessible, making some middleware protocols the platform of choice for many;
- blockchain games APIs — by providing a complete development package, KodaDot is fast-forwarding blockchain game development;
- minting integration — through this integration KodaDot is enhancing the benefits of Web 3.0 gaming. The devs have the possibility to allow users to mint game assets as NFTs is that players can truly own their in-game assets without additional effort.
Instead of a conclusion
Kodadot is a Kusama Native NFT platform that prides itself on its carbon neutrality. Artists are able to offset their mints to create a carbonless NFT environment. KodaDot is providing a solid Software Development Kit (SDK) which will ease devs’ work and cut costs for blockchain games development — an advantage that is not negligible at all. Even if it’s a long way ahead, I truly believe that the Reactive NFTs will be the foundation stone of the metaverse and soon we will see more projects joining the club.
