I signed my first digital NFT autograph
How I signed my first digital NFT Autograph. - Geek Culture - Medium
I have been playing volleyball for about 18 years. I have been a professional for the last 5–6 years. At no point did anyone ask me for an autograph, which is reasonable, given that I play volleyball, which is definitely not as popular as football, basketball, handball, baseball, hockey.But, a few weeks ago, things changed. Technology has allowed me to sign an autograph for the very first time. Using NFT technology (non-fungible token).Digital Autographs on BlockchainOne of the popular things in the world of sports for a single fan is to own a jersey or collectible card of your favorite player or club. Moreover, it a player signs it, it can potentially significantly increase the value of collectible.If you are familiar with the world of NFT, you know that lately everything has started to be tokenized — art, music, virtual worlds, collectibles cards and so on. Now, we have the opportunity to virtually own something unique, valuable and special to us.This story has gained new meaning since we have the opportunity to ask someone to sign it for us, using a web2 identifier (such as Twitter). AlchemyNFT (project, whose one of the main investors is Marc Cuban - American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality and the owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks) has enabled through its project AutographNFT to create new NFTs from existing NFTs by adding additional properties.The StoryBelow I will explain to you how it all works on the example of signing your digital autograph.Recently, I came up with this AutographNFT project and at the first glance, I didn’t understand it properly. Why would someone make new NFTs using existing ones, what happens at the time of creation with the old NFT, why does it matter, where is the value gained or lost, what are the potential use-cases (since this started as proof of concept project).Shortly afterwards, I received my first request to sign via Twitter:A page where you can create remixed NFTs, create signing bids, and make a digital signature can be found at https://autographnft.io/.AutographNFT navigation barTo be able to interact with the marketplace and other users, you need to connect via a web2 identifier (sign in through Twitter). This lets the system know that you are the owner of that Twitter account.To be able to sell or buy some remixed NFT, you need to be connected to a Wallet, such as MetaMask. Another option is to use the WalletConnect protocol (open source protocol for connecting decentralized applications to mobile wallets with QR code scanning or deep linking).You can choose between two networks — Ethereum or Polygon.The AutographThe first digital signature request I received looked like this:User created an NFT with pixelized version of volleyball ball. In order to create an autograph, that existing NFT must be wrapped in a new, remixed (synthetic) NFT that includes a digital signature.In order to accept the offer, I had to verify via Twitter (by clicking on ‘Verify with Twitter). After verification, I was able to review the offer and create an autograph.This process consists of three steps, in which you must use the Autograph NFT platform, along with the Wallet. For simplicity, I used an AlchemyNFT wallet, called AlphaWallet, which has the option for WalletConnect, which makes the whole story easier.Sign Twitter — you have to verify your twitter handle online, which costs nothing.Autograph signing — you give your consent and autographAcceptance of the offer — The offer I received was to give an autograph on the existing NFT in the value of 5 MATICAfter clicking on Step 1 (sign Twitter), if you have an AlphaWallet connected (with WalletConnect), you will receive a notification on your phone:By clicking confirm, you confirm the request. This will enable you to go to step 2 — signing the autograph.Step number 2 is signing the autograph. You will get a new message in AlphaWallet:By clicking confirm, you consent to the digital autograph. This will enable the last step — receiving the offer in your wallet.After clicking on ‘Approve’ on AutographNFT platform, you should be getting a notification in the AlphaWallet one more time:By clicking confirm, you accept the transaction.Congratulations, you signed your first NFT!Transaction DataYou can see the original NFT here: https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x000000000437b3CCE2530936156388Bff5578FC3/136Polygon network contract:https://polygonscan.com/address/0x222222222291749DE47895C0c0A9B17e4fcA8268Certificate (that I signed the autograph):https://autographnft.io/~matic/remix/46/cert/Finally, all the data in one place:https://autographnft.io/~matic/remix/46/Why is this all important?AutographNFT offers an underlaying architecture based on smart contracts, which allows us to wrap existing NFTs into a completely new NFT with a new feature.It allows us to even wrap multiple NFTs into one new remixed NFT, or wrap one NFT into many different remixed NFTs.The idea of AutographNFT is to prove the concept of combining the original NFT’s metadata with a cryptographic proof of Twitter Identification, called as identifier attestation.Apartment listings exampleLet’s take a look at another example — apartment listings.Say each NFT represents one apartment. You want to list your apartment on, let’s say Airbnb or Booking.com. You can wrap apartment’s NFT into a remixed NFT to create a listing token, based on your ‘Apartment Ownership’, which will expire after the time duration. You can also attach utilities like unlocking the mini bar, certain rooms, hot water...On another side, apartment has its owner, so we can wrap the Apartment NFT into remixed NFT that has meta data about the ownership of the apartment (i.e. who currently owns the apartment, ownership percentage, rooms, floors, etc.).Once done, you can unwrap the remixed NFT, to access the original NFT that is locked to create the wrapped, remix NFTs. During this process, synthetic NFT would be burned.This technology provides an indefinite amount of new ideas that can be realised.ConclusionRemixing an existing NFT into a new synthetic NFT is a great way to provide additional utilities and values to an already tokenized item. Destroying a synthetic NFT burns the synthetic NFT and unwraps the original NFT. Ideas are numerous and it will be really great to see what will technology come up with and which parts of our every day life will be tokenized in the near future.