Few and Far Gives Control to Creators With New NFT Standard

Ethereum’s ERC-721 and its derivatives have put marketplaces, not creators, in control of NFT sales. It’s about time that changed.

Today, some NFT marketplaces do not enforce royalties. This has led to a stampede of marketplaces shifting to optional royalties to compete with emerging zero-royalty platforms in an ugly race to the bottom. It’s not that marketplaces can’t enforce royalties–it’s simply not in their interest.

Marketplaces as gatekeepers of royalty mechanisms present a problem for creators who wish to control their work’s sales conditions, and also create ambiguity for purchasers. We’ve never had a way for NFTs to sell themselves in a trustless way–traditionally, you’ve always had to trust the marketplace.

While marketplaces have come a long way, there is currently no standard for NFTs to transact without a 3rd party. In today’s traditional marketplace paradigm (e.g., on OpenSea or Magic Eden), sale logic is fragmented across two separate contracts. The NFT smart contract is responsible for transferring the digital asset, and the marketplace smart contract is responsible for the distribution of funds–and, ultimately, the enforcement of royalties.

Today is the genesis of the Few and Far (aka FnF) NFT Standard. Our mission is to create universal and flexible NFT standards with control for creators and transparency for collectors.

The FnF NFT Standard provides options for creators to customize sales contracts and enforce royalties.

“Early versions of NFT standards, e.g. ERC-721 and its derivatives, overlook the creator’s control over sale logic in favor of fancy but inefficient 3rd party approval mechanics. This creates untenable dependencies between creators, collectors and marketplaces that are antithetical to the ethos of Web3. It’s time to put sale logic where it belongs — in the NFT contract controlled by the creator — and that is what we are doing at Few and Far.” — Lachlan Glen, Senior Software Engineer at Few and Far

We’ve had the luxury of designing a system from scratch, without any legacy burden–a system where creators can define and enforce the terms on which their IP is bought, sold, and consumed. The new Few and Far NFT Standard allows creators to break the stranglehold of gatekeepers like OpenSea and Magic Eden, with flexible smart contracts that have an architecture just like typical Web2 applications.

Here’s what we did.

We designed our NFT standard in a way that gives creators full control and customizability to create NFT collections and manage their business on their terms. Creators now have options to enforce royalties and other sale conditions, protect their IP, and choose which marketplaces their collections can sell on.

And this standard is no less revolutionary for collectors; now, your purchases will be 3x as fast as traditional marketplace transactions, and you can trade with greater efficiency.

1. The Few and Far NFT Standard’s novel design brings the sale logic to where it belongs — close to the NFTs — so creators and traders don’t need to rely on 3rd party marketplaces to process their transactions. This results in next-generation flexibility and lightning-fast speeds.
2. We consider NFT smart contracts as “Apps” — no different from the typical architecture for native Web2 applications. You can also look at it as a “studio” — a place where you create and sell your collections, and manage your business.
3. These apps can contain many unique, fully customizable NFT collections.
4. App owners can assign roles to team members, allowing you to collaborate together at the smart contract level. Think of an app as the business layer, and a collection as the product layer. You can collaborate with team members at the business level (e.g. co-founders) and also at the product level (e.g. marketers, community managers).
5. Apps contain native sale logic, enabling creators to independently configure and control the sale conditions of your NFT products, at any level of granularity you desire
6. For the first time ever, your NFTs don’t need a traditional, approvals-based marketplace in order to trade, because sales can take place on the NFT contract itself. This also means that royalties can be enforced, if you wish, and NFT sales are ~3x faster than traditional marketplace sales
7. And if you do want to allow traditional marketplace listings, these backwards-compatible NFT contracts facilitate this with the kind of flexibility that you would expect from a Web2 platform, even allowing (and disallowing) 3rd party marketplaces on a case-by-case basis.

Here’s how it works.

The FnF NFT Standard allows owners to specify specific mint parameters and control their sales conditions through Few and Far’s Creator Tool.

1. Quickly select a set of mint parameters, including early-access lists, prices, start and end times, and initial royalties
2. Configure and enforce secondary sales parameters such as ongoing royalties
3. Customize royalties by allowing a combination of a fixed amount or fixed/marginal percentages
4. Customize approval settings to specify which traditional marketplaces your collections can be traded on
5. Add creator promises for utility directly into the metadata, so buyers no longer have to search through endless Twitter, Discord, or Whitepaper threads to understand where the value they’re getting is.

Now what?

We’re just getting started. The Few and Far platform is bringing creator tools that will enable creators to enforce royalties at the smart contract level through our standards. We’re inspired by the possibilities and dedicated to helping creators around the world by enabling the most customizable NFTs to go wherever their audience is. 👀

If you’re interested in working with us, our DMs are always open. Follow us on Twitter, jump into our Discord and get ready to mint some Few and Far NFTs.