Locking Up Privacy in NFT Projects
Cross-Chain Building with Secret Network’s PaaS
As the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) adapts to changing, cluttered markets for better or for worse, NFT builders need to make their projects stand out as a matter of survival. One major factor a builder needs to focus on is how to provide significant utility and value to actually build a community. And though there are some fundamentals to follow, no one really seems to know what’s going on when it comes to building a project that stands the test of a bear market.
That’s why Secret Network’s offering of Privacy as a Service (PaaS) is stepping into the NFT space not a moment too soon.
PaaS is the ability to utilize the power of Secret Network smart contracts on the backend of a project built on almost any major blockchain. With PaaS, builders can start an NFT project or dApp and tap into the power of privacy-focused blockchain applications, while remaining on their blockchain of choice.
While the design space of privacy services may be more limited compared to building directly on Secret Network itself, more and more builders are discovering new possibilities to enhance blockchain projects with the privacy aspects more and more users are beginning to demand.
In other words, you don’t have to build your project on Secret Network for you and your holders to enjoy its privacy benefits anymore. And there’s a reason #privacymatters often trends on Twitter. As much as complete transparency is touted, people still want privacy.
This Is How We Do It
Sister Contracts
We all know the big players in the NFT space are ETH native. Many are the Twitter spaces where people bemoan the need for multichain wallets and express the refusal to even consider another blockchain. Many don’t believe NFTs are worth anything unless they’re minted on Ethereum. And this is despite the fact that ETH gas fees are a real killer to many an incipient project.
PaaS lets builders have their cake and eat it too
With PaaS, builders can create projects with NFTs, certificates, or other non-fungible personally-assigned data objects on Ethereum. The privacy aspects happen when these assets are linked (for example) to counterpart NFTs on Secret Network with a sister contract.
According to this setup, users who own the ETH-based NFTs can verify their ownership to the Secret counterpart contract, revealing additional information that is only visible to them.
“Oh man,” a creative or dev might think, “two blockchains at once? Degens aren’t going to bother if they have to use anything other than Metamask.”
But PaaS is flexible enough that developers can abstract much of the complexity by creating intuitive user interfaces. It all depends on how you code your dApp. If you make a UX/UI that allow people to use the same wallet (such as MetaMask) for both blockchains, there’s no need to explicitly mention Secret Network at all.
An Ethereum dApp could be built as a “walletless application” by using a Secret smart contract to manage the wallet instead of requiring a user to connect a MetaMask wallet.
(An API for this is currently in development by SCRT Labs, BTW)
By building sister contracts with data privacy, devs can add private metadata to their NFTs, provide access-controlled content for marketplaces or content platforms, and securely store sensitive information related to invoices, identities, certificates or whatever else comes to mind. All of this can be achieved while keeping assets or dApps connected to Ethereum, Polygon, etc.
Sealed-bid auctions
Another particular perk Secret Network can offer to the NFT space with PaaS is sealed-bid auctions. Sealed-bid auctions involve bidders submitting only one bid, with the bids remaining undisclosed until the auction’s conclusion. Doing this helps to prevent collusion and encourages bidders to actually name a price they believe the art is worth. In the NFT space, sealed-bid auctions might be the answer to the flood of wash trading the space is notorious for.
Implementing sealed-bid auctions on a public blockchain poses challenges in maintaining bid amounts’ privacy. However, a custom-built solution using Secret Network’s PaaS is currently under development by the Bidshop team.
NFT Bridging
Another NFT-centric use case of PaaS is integrating private content into NFTs on public networks through NFT bridging.
XP.NETWORK is an NFT bridge where people can transfer their NFTs across many different blockchains. With Secret Network, the bridge works by creating wrapped NFTs that preserve the original assets’ metadata. These NFTs, when bridged to Secret Network, obtain all of the Secret NFT privacy perks even though their origin is on another blockchain through a corresponding NFT on Secret Network.
For example, someone could mint just the thumbnail of a famous artist’s work on Ethereum. But to view the full artwork, the NFT has to be bridged to Secret Network. There, the bridged NFT will contain exclusive private metadata that only the holder can access — such as the full-size art file, additional information, etc.
It’s also possible to attach private metadata to an NFT on another blockchain simply with sister contracts, without bridging the NFT at all.
A much less involved way to integrate Secret Network’s PaaS into your project is by extracting data from a Secret smart contract through the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol or cross-chain messaging solutions like Axelar (compatibility with which Secret Network is implementing in a Q3 upgrade). It’s a more limited application of PaaS, but it’s available.
KillRoy Was Here — PaaS In Action
A good example of how we used Secret NFT technology was Kevin Smith’s Killroy Was Here. These 5555 Legendao NFTs employed Secret Network’s novel data-privacy technology to ensure that only the owners of these NFTs can decrypt their contents and, should they choose to do so, share them with others.
This combination of public and private metadata access will revolutionize the future of NFTs for creators and collectors alike.
“Secret Network’s Legendao NFT technology ensures that the NFT content can only be accessed by the owner themselves,” explains SCRT Labs founder Guy Zyskind. “It opens the door for distributing all kinds of digital content as NFTs. Movies, TV shows, music — anything — can be reshaped for Web3.”
PaaS Brings Privacy To All The Blockchains
With PaaS, Secret Network has smashed down blockchain barriers for builders to explore new possibilities in the NFT space. By harnessing the power of Secret smart contracts, sister contracts, sealed-bid auctions and NFT/data bridging, any NFT project or dApp builder can implement Secret Network privacy tools without being blockchain limited.
If you want to learn more about what you can do with Secret Network and PaaS, join the Secret Network Discord and Telegram and ask.
Legendao is an independent project under SCRT Labs auspices.
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