About Semi-Fungible Tokens
Hey there, It’s been a while. I was planning to work on this article for some time now. Since I have the flu and need to get some rest I believe this is the right time during the night for me to make some noise!
In this short article, we will talk about semi-fungible tokens, for those who are not familiar with non-fungible tokens, you can find a short article on my profile that provides an overview of it in my humble view. Basically, semi-fungible tokens are regular NFTs with multiple copies. I know it does not make any sense, but imagine that you have something rare, but it is not truly unique like a pawn, or a knight in your chessboard. Yeah, actually they are good examples I guess. On a chessboard, you have 8 white pawns, they are identical in terms of movements, right? So that means, they must share the same attributes. Same for the 2 white knights. These two are semi-fungible tokens, they have some attributes, and they have multiple copies in that sense. No one can tell the difference if you switch one white pawn with another, this is brought by fungibility and if you try to play your pawn as a knight then people will notice, right? And that can explain by its non-fungibility. Because we know how should it move what is allowed, what is not, which color it has, etc. All of these are the attributes of those tokens, and here we can open a discussion about the metadata because that will bring non-fungibility as a feature to those assets. And one queen, of course, RIP Queen Elizabeth, and that is the real NFT without a question.
Basically, the metadata is invented for not storing all data on the chain, it is so expensive because all of the node operators would have to store these data and it would be such a waste of resources. (OR initiates such a cool project like Filecoin!) We basically store some reference values on this data including a path to its exact location. Put it into a file and push it to some storage and generate a link that redirects us/ points us to the metadata file. It sounds like a linking-ception but I believe an NFT solution without decentralized storage it’s against the nature of blockchain. Of course there are some use cases that require permissioned chains but I am referring to public and permissionless NFT solutions.
Semi-fungible tokens are widely used in online gaming today. In-game items, characters, gold, and coins are perfect examples of it. You can push your imagination, the possibilities are endless I guess, for example I really like the idea of Steve Jobs’s semi-fungible figure on the Sandbox. As you can see it’s minted as 100 and that indicates 100 different owner has a right to use it in their game basically. (or only one owner can use it 100 times of course, it’s some sort of licensing in that sense)
In metaverse, you can organize an event for Lord of the Rings fans and can mint semi-fungible tickets and everyone who has that ticket will be welcome to the event. You can create bronze, silver, and gold ones with different amounts and utilities/attributes behind them. Like bronze can only have a Gollum avatar but if you have a gold your avatar will be Gandalf the White?
Even though given examples from gaming and metaverse conceptually, semi-fungible tokens have a wide range of use cases in real-life scenarios like gift cards, vouchers, and sometimes even fractionalizing and NFT itself.
Author
Boğaçhan Yiğitbaşı is a technical product manager at Concordium which is the world’s first business-oriented, regulation-ready Layer-1 blockchain with a built-in ID framework. He primarily drives the NFT roadmap and is responsible for integrations of NFT, gaming, and metaverse projects.
His fields of interest are primarily blockchain, NFTs, gaming, and metaverse and he has a real passion for this brilliant technology and outstanding excitement for improving/educating himself.
He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering and completed several certification programs at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (FSBC).
You can contact him via LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter (@BogacYigitbasi)
