Scaling The Sandbox NFT Collections dApps
The Sandbox is a community-driven creative platform that allows people who create games, artwork, and stories to produce, share, own, and monetize a wide range of unique content on a decentralized blockchain.
We’ll delve into a segment of The Sandbox platform: NFT collections and the process of crafting them.
So, what exactly do they entail? These collections comprise NFTs unified by a common theme, stemming from various domains like businesses, video games, films, or animations. For instance, The Walking Dead collection exclusively showcases NFTs associated with the franchise. With accessible content, the potential for NFT creation is boundless. Moreover, we can unleash our creativity to fashion NFTs that are one-of-a-kind, trendy, or unconventional.
Creating a Sandbox collection
Designing and integrating the user interface and functionalities for new collections is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Given the perpetual influx of fresh collections, ideas, and adjustments, staying current on these developments is crucial for optimal performance.
It’s imperative to adhere to accessibility guidelines, craft clean and sustainable code, and employ semantic HTML as indispensable norms in web development.
Tech stack
We use Nuxt, a web framework built on top of Vueand Vite for the entire project. It has a straightforward syntax, is simple to use and integrate, and performs well, which is exceptionally beneficial for the application’s front end.
Making a collection is simple; we have a script that takes care of it, but developing one is more complicated. There are two phases to our collection: development and production.
As mentioned, we use a script to generate our collection during development. After the collection has been created, we will work on it. This script aids in automating the project construction process. We use this script to make our work easier because almost every page is the same in some places.
Over the following days, we interact with clients, designers, and managers to ensure the collection is as captivating as possible.
Once everything is prepared, we send it to the production stage. During the production phase, everything is live, and the page is ready for users to view and interact.
Collection content
Every collection has three primary pages: the home page, the mint page, and the unauthorized page. Each page reflects a set of criteria and is unique.
Every user will experience each page based on their actions. For example, if the user accesses the mint page during whitelisting and his wallet is not authorized to mint, he will be redirected to the unauthorized page.
- Home page—The user sees the home page first. The purpose of the home page is to present the IP and the collection alongside the benefits it offers.
- Mint page — To mint avatars, a user navigates to the mint page. He can see all the information required to buy one right here. In addition, he learned about the gas fee and his transaction history. This page also has a video explaining how users can mint an avatar, and helpful information is beneath the video and the FAQ.
- Unauthorized page — Here, an error message will appear, and the user will be prompted to either go back or click the button to exit the page and remove the error. As in this example, this can occur. The current wallet is not on the whitelist.
Steps for creating a collection
As mentioned, a script simplifies generating all the necessary directories and files for the collection’s operation. This script allows us to create the collection and assign a name that fits our preferences.
Following the creation of the project, we will modify the project data to ensure functionality and enable us to begin implementing changes. This includes text, metadata, and a file with additional essential project data, including the contract, Google Analytics, the client key (such as Venly, Bitski, and Moonpay), the collection’s status, and the wave, among others.
Collaborative Development
Once everything has been set up, we will receive the collection’s design, complete with text, names, assets, and much more. To be clear and obtain the information we need, we will work with the collections’ managers, designers, and clients or have someone speak on our behalf.
It gets tricky because the client might want to add more items or remove some of them. In this case, you must exercise patience and deliver quality work.
Development Process
This is where we will begin to work on the page. The page will be responsive using nuxt.js and vue.js, and all the assets we receive will be added. All text will be included using Lokalise. Software developers and companies can manage the localization of their websites, apps, and other digital content with the help of Lokalise, a localization and translation management platform.
Offering collaborative translation, project management, and workflow automation tools facilitates the process of localizing products into multiple languages for teams. We will also need to create the collection contract to test the transactions while they are being developed.
Creating a contract is straightforward because we must follow a few steps to access our backend and API.
This article has a lot of information and can be read in greater detail. Once there, we will use OpenZeppelin to validate the settings and initiate the collection proposal. Next, we must update the collection contract with the necessary data, such as the token price, the total number of tokens to be minted, and so on.
The page will aim to replicate the design closely, except for certain elements that may be impractical. In such cases, we’ll improvise or omit those design aspects.
Next, the page will be forwarded to the quality assurance department for a thorough review. They will assess it for errors, bugs, missing styles, and other issues and provide feedback and recommendations for enhancing the page after their evaluation.
Live sales
Once the page successfully clears quality assurance checks and our preparations are complete, we proceed to the production phase. Here, we closely monitor the collection and user engagement. Upon reviewing and interacting with the page, users have the option to mint or purchase avatars.
Post sale
The avatars featured in the collection will be available for sale a few days or weeks after the online launch. During this period, we will promptly address any issues with the page and implement improvements.
Subsequently, we will add a notification to the page, informing users that the collection has been sold.
What are the essential skills to be part of the Collections team?
- Understand the requirements — Work with your team to comprehend the new collections’ goals, characteristics, and extent. Maintain communication with the managers, designers, and coworkers to ensure quality work.
- Build the front end — Utilize
Vue.jsandNuxt.jsto improve the user experience and ensure that all buttons, links, and pages are accessible. The website should also be responsive on all devices. - Test and debug—Conduct comprehensive testing to guarantee collections function as intended and are free of bugs. Coordinate with the QA team to facilitate this process.
- Ensure performance and scalability — Make sure the pages function correctly and are scalable, especially if you expect the collections to grow significantly over time. Verify that the website functions well and is easily accessible.
- Security — You can ensure your collections are secure by following web development best practices, such as utilizing secure authentication techniques, cleaning user input, and maintaining dependency updates.
- Continuously improve — Learning from your failures and achievements is critical. After conquering something, you should always learn something new and grow.
Conclusion
Designing and growing collections requires careful attention to detail and teamwork. Following accessibility guidelines, writing clean, maintainable code, and utilizing front-end tools like Nuxt.js and Vue.js are all crucial steps in the development process.
The process from creation to live production highlights the importance of communicating effectively with managers, designers, and clients.
Flexibility and patience become essential to accommodate changes and ensure the final collection complies with the requirements and vision.
