The Artifex Project and Metadata
The Artifex Project immortalizes the legacies of top artists who led the early days of the NFT digital art movement.
For the project, a limited supply of 2D and 3D art pieces are being created in collaboration with each artist. The pieces will be released in waves and displayed inside The Artifex Museum hosted in RareRooms as they are sold to collectors.
NFT Permanence
The number one mandate for The Artifex Project is permanence. Every aspect of Artifex NFTs must be preserved for generations.
This means the metadata for each NFT must be preserved. For Artifex sculptures, it is critical that not only the NFT images be a part of the metadata, but the actual 3D models must be included as well.
3D Model information is rarely incorporated into NFT metadata, but without this vital information, how can 3D NFT objects and sculptures be pulled into existing and future metaverses?
On-Chain Metadata
The Artifex Project does not compromise on metadata.
Artifex NFT metadata is stored on-chain in an Ethereum smart contract. The metadata for each Artifex NFT is retrievable in human-readable form by calling getMetadata() on the smart contract.
A mirror of the Artifex metadata is stored on IPFS. Marketplaces can pull the metadata directly from IPFS since they aren’t able to pull on-chain metadata currently (it’s our hope that this will change in the future).
Artifex Assets
Today it is still much too costly to store large, high resolution images on the Ethereum blockchain. For example, on Ethereum it would cost anywhere from $1M-$3M to store just one high resolution image file today.
Most current solutions host NFT images from a web server. For those solutions, it’s not a question of if you will lose access to your NFT, it’s a question of when. Servers go offline, and companies that run the servers go out of business.
To the maximum extent possible, The Artifex Project wanted to eliminate the possibility that collectors might ever lose access to their Artifex assets, whether it’s ten years from now or one hundred years.
IPFS
As a first measure, the images are stored on IPFS. IPFS is a global, distributed protocol and file system for storing and sharing files. IPFS creates a content identifier (CID) for each image, which is simply a unique hash, or fingerprint, of the piece of work. One can use this CID to access the image on IPFS. The image CID for each NFT is stored in the smart contract. This allows anyone to retrieve NFT images from IPFS simply by reading the on-chain contract metadata (or the mirrored metadata on IPFS).
Arweave
As a second, redundant measure, the images are stored on Arweave. Arweave is built on top of “the blockweave”, which is a hybrid blockchain for storing files permanently. For each NFT image, a unique Arweave hash (or transaction ID) is created, which allows anyone to retrieve the images stored on Arweave. This hash is stored in the smart contract and retrievable by reading the on-chain metadata (or the mirrored metadata on IPFS).
SHA256 Hash
While it is unlikely that both IPFS and Arweave go away any time soon, in the event they aren’t accessible, the images can be always be verified for authenticity using their SHA256 hashes, which are stored in the contract.
3D Models
The above not only applies to the rotating NFT images you see on the Artifex website and on marketplaces like OpenSea, but it also applies to the underlying 3D models of the sculptures themselves shown in the images.
The Artifex Project believes it is vitally important to preserve this 3D model data.
It is the difference between owning these 2D cards:
And owning the actual 3D model shown in the card as well:
As you can see, the 3D model is an important part of the NFT, and as such, needs to be preserved. It will allow owners to experience their NFTs in any 3D, VR, or AR environment or metaverse in the future.
The 3D models for all Artifex NFTs are stored on IPFS and Arweave, and the SHA256 hashes of the 3D Models are stored on-chain (same as their corresponding 2D image counterparts).
Summary
To sum up, here is a list of the redundant measures The Artifex Project uses to preserve Artifex NFT data.
Artifex NFT human-readable metadata:
- Stored on-chain (in the Artifex smart contract)
- Stored on IPFS
Artifex NFT images:
- Stored on IPFS
- Stored on Arweave
- SHA256 hash of the image stored on-chain (in the Artifex smart contract)
Artifex NFT 3D models:
- Stored on IPFS
- Stored on Arweave
- SHA256 hash of the model stored on-chain (in the Artifex smart contract)
Links
Artifex: https://artifex.art/
RareRooms: https://www.rarerooms.io/
GigLabs: https://giglabs.io
