A bold thesis. However, we believe that the message contained in this article is extremely important for any, even moderately serious collector, trader, or NFT creator.
To make things easier, let’s just illustrate the differences between truly Omnichain NFT vs. “bridged” NFT 👇
Before we briefly discuss each of the listed features, let us make it clear that the current solutions that refer to themselves as Omnichain are not omnichain at all. Why? Because they are just plain bridges that use one of the cool new technologies for this purpose.
The NFT bridge works in a really limited fashion — it burns your beloved/valuable/useful non-fungible token on the source chain to mint the new one, almost identical, on the destination chain.
The problem is that from the technical standpoint it’s not the same NFT. Moreover, a user could himself burn the NFT (send to “zero” address), and mint a new one, with the same jpeg linked (if any), on the other chain. Exactly the same result! The bigger problem is that your token doesn’t exist anymore. Your copy has lost its whole on-chain history, which in Web3 is everything, all relations to contracts, its collection, etc. You could have just right-click-saved and mint on the other chain. Worthless.
Did you know that?
Has your bridging app informed you enough? Or are you deliberately misled that this is the same NFT?
This problem in regard to NFTs based on an associated visual or audio file is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine that your NFT is associated with some utility. For example, it is a ticket to an event. The host expects to receive a ticket (NFT) with the exact contract address. If you’ve used an NFT bridge to “transfer” (burn) it, your contract relation is now lost, and you won’t be able to enter! 😵💫
Current Omnichain NFTs landscape
Newly fledged projects based on protocols that allow (if used properly!) the development of Omnichain solutions, follow the same old problem. They do not bring anything new that the existing bridges have brought. Burn & mint.
At Omnisea, we approach it differently. Rather than transferring the NFTs themselves between chains (by burning them), we made ACTIONS such as minting (and soon buying and selling) cross-chain. It also significantly improves UX. The user does not need to change networks and be on the same chain as the NFT to perform an action on it. With our protocol, there are no obstacles to, for example, mint on Ethereum while staying on Avalanche. And in the future, if you want to buy this NFT while being on Fantom, you will not have to “transfer” (burn) this NFT from Ethereum and mint a copy on Fantom. We will enable direct purchase from one network to another keeping all NFT’s history and on-chain relationships.
This change seems philosophical, but in our opinion, it is a determinant of what solution is a real solution to the problem (fragmented NFTs ecosystems) thanks to the omnichain technology (LayerZero, Axelar), and which misleads the user (perhaps consciously) and causes him to lose his NFT, leading not only to a loss of its value but also potentially its utility, as we discussed in the example above.
Cross-chain Composability
In the end, there’s also an additional problem behind a bridging philosophy. That is the ability to make simultaneous interactions (transactions) from many chains against an NFT. With an NFT bridge, you would have to “transfer” the NFT first to your chain if you want to interact with it. In other words, you have to be on the same chain as the NFT itself to perform actions on it (buy, bid, use for something). And if that’s the case, it’s impossible for multiple users, from many various chains, to interact with it — you can’t have the same NFT on many chains at one time. With our approach, which we believe marks what a truly omnichain NFT is, it is possible for these users to perform such actions.
Superior NFT Launchpad
That’s why launching the NFT collection on Omnisea is so beneficial for a creator. Minting is the action that results in an NFT creation. And we allow simultaneous transactions from many chains. Because of that, the target audience for the creators as well as the future collection’s ecosystem is no longer limited to one chain (or one chain at the time). It’s multi-chain forever with the integrated possibility to extend to more chains with time, as our protocol evolves!
