NFT Chat with: Urban 0svald from 0xcert
Talking about the 0xcert framework, NFTs in academia and the Non-Fungible Alliance
Who are you, what’s your background and what are you building?
I am currently the Chief Strategy Officer at 0xcert. My background is quite diverse actually, ranging from elite sports, coaching, operations management, sales, project management, and marketing. I speak four languages and have spent a big chunk of my professional career in China. I have been focusing on early-stage startups for the past half decade and spent most of the last two years with 0xcert — which has been an amazing experience!
We are buidling the future of non-fungible tokens and decentralized applications. We just released the 0xcert framework, which is a essentially an open-source JavaScript library for extremely fast dapp development. 0xcert is also the company behind the reference implementation of the ERC721 token standard, as well as some other awesome tools, like the ERC721 Validator, Specron and Hayspec.
What was the motivation behind 0xcert and what is the value for Dapp developers?
Early on, we saw that the adoption of blockchain-related technologies was slow. Specifically, unique assets were extremely difficult to address, let alone build nice end-user applications. The main motivation with 0xcert was to bridge that gap and make onboarding of new developers easier and faster, but at the same time create awesome and seamless end-user applications.
The value for application developers here is two-fold. First of all, there is no need anymore to become an expert in blockchain, Ethereum or Solidity. With the 0xcert framework, most of the low-level blockchain complexity is hidden away. Giving the application developer the time and freedom to focus on what really matters — building an amazing user-experience for their app.
Secondly, the provided code is audited and tested, making it safe to use. This is actually a critical point when talking about blockchain development. Once anything is deployed on the blockchain it is permanent, making fixes even more difficult.
The combination of these two points saves time and resources, making the onboarding process for new developers much faster and enjoyable. Companies that are not blockchain-first can realistically look at this technology, without dedicating absurd amounts of money and brain power to it.
So far your framework supports the major Ethereum standards ERC-20 and ERC-721. You recently announced that you integrated with Wanchain as the second base layer protocol aside from Ethereum. What is this all about and why did you choose Wanchain?
Wanchain is a fork of Ethereum, making it an ideal candidate for our first non-Ethereum integration. Apart from that, Wanchain offers some awesome cross-chain and private transaction functionality, which we see as an important stepping stone in some applications.
The 0xcert framework is blockchain agnostic and can, in theory, run on any DLT and we do not plan on stopping with Wanchain.
Will you extend your framework to composables (ERC-998 and alike) and semi-fungible token (ERC-1155) any time soon?
We are having discussions about these two standards with the team regularly and are following the development, but have made a strategic decision not to support any new token standards until they become final.
On your website, you list six main use cases from gaming over identity to physical assets. What kind of Dapps are currently being developed with the 0xcert framework?
We are currently working on a few different dapps, all based on the 0xcert framework. One is for instance for academic credentials. This is actually a project that we are working on with The Joseph Stefan Institute and a few other prominent partners. This project is shaping the future of education in Europe and if the stars align, European students will be in a few years time receiving their academic credits in the form of non-fungible tokens.
I am also very happy to say, that other projects are picking up on our tech and are working on their own dapps with help from the 0xcert framework. The list is being updated on our GitHub.
You recently released swapmarket.com. What’s that about?
SwapMarket is a DEX, more specifically it is a tool for atomic swapping. The main purpose of the dapp is to showcase what can be built with the 0xcert framework. Interestingly, SwapMarket does not have any other back-end than the Ethereum blockchain. It can facilitate many-to-many transactions, meaning you can swap multiple ERC20 and ERC721 tokens amongst multiple parties in one single transaction. This is a feature that can be potentially highly valuable in certain use cases outside of gaming and collectibles.
Let’s take the academic credentials example. After a year in school, you are loaded up with academic credits from different courses that are maybe in different departments or even at two different universities. With the many-to-many atomic operations, the student could “swap” all his/her credit for the end degree with one operation.
Enterprise usage and adoption will be heavily dependent on costs and with this technique gas usage is highly optimized, opening doors for potential industry use cases.
What are the use cases for NFTs that you are the most excited about and why?
I am very excited about non-gaming and non-collectible use cases. These might not be as flashy and sexy, but truly have the power to change and disrupt many industries. From the top of my head, I would mention land and real estate, supply chain, government-related use cases (tenders, elections, civil society affairs,…), etc.
Currently the NFT ecosystem is still very Ethereum centric (wallets, marketplaces, common standards etc.). Do you see this changing in the near future?
Yes, definitely. For instance, EOS and NEO both have large developer communities that have a great interest in working with unique assets as well. I would go even further and say that there is a lot already going on, but I do not have enough insight, just because 0xcert is primarily working on Ethereum. We are, however, in touch with a few teams working on NFT-related solutions on other chains, but so far the Ethereum NFT community seems to be the most vibrant one.
To wrap it up, let’s talk about the Non Fungible Token Alliance that the 0xcert team initiated. What was the idea behind it and what are the plans?
As mentioned, 0xcert is working on a lot of open-source tools as well as end-user applications. Although we are focused on high-tech, we recognize the importance of community and ecosystem building. In that regard, the Non-fungible Alliance came to life.
It is first and foremost a network of awesome NFT thinkers and buidlers. We are welcoming anyone who is either already active in the NFT space or is just starting to dive in.
Beyond that, we would like to see the adoption of NFTs outside of the current blockchain bubble, which can happen only if we talk to the the people on the other side. One of the main goals of the alliance is to facilitate exactly that knowledge and information flow. Connecting with industry partners is essential and we will keep on pushing forward on that front.
If anyone who is reading this is interested in joining, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly or through the Alliance web page. I am always happy to jump on a call!
