The NFT Kit
After months of hard work, we are excited to announce our new open source product: the NFT Kit.
In a nutshell, the NFT Kit enables developers to build applications and end-to-end use cases with NFTs. The idea is to make it easy for developers to (1) create NFTs (2) distribute NFTs and (3) verify NFTs for use cases like access management.
Following our identity infrastructure solutions like the SSI Kit (which makes it easy to use Self-Sovereign Identity) and the Wallet Kit (which extends any app with identity/SSI capabilities), we are now expanding our product portfolio to offer infrastructure for digital assets (NFTs). Considering that NFTs enable exciting novel functionality like ownership-based access management or on-chain identity for non-human entities, building the NFT Kit is the next logical next step on our way to building a world in which every interaction is effortless and worry-free.
Let’s dive in ...
The Developers’ Dilemma (or Why we built the NFT Kit)
Before we decided to build the NFT Kit, we screened the market for similar solutions. Why reinvent the wheel?
However, after some research, we discovered that no one has yet built robust open source infrastructure and developer tooling to unlock NFTs. In fact, the NFT infrastructure landscape appeared almost identical to the landscape of SSI (Self-Sovereign Identity) infrastructure back when we started out: Existing solutions were mostly closed source, often expensive, introduced vendor and/or technology lock-in, only offered limited functionality or support for a limited number of ecosystems.
On top of that, most solutions were (and are still) about creating NFTs only. There is a clear lack of solutions for enabling utility and use cases around NFTs that already exist. In other words, while most solutions are limited to offering simple tokenization of assets, we go beyond this simple use case and we enable developers and enterprises to build unique digital experiences for their customers by unlocking use cases like NFT-based access and benefits (e.g. membership, tickets, vouchers, royalties and more).
We believe that NFTs have the potential to become core building blocks of the digital world (or something like a metaverse). Therefore, it must become much easier and cheaper to build applications and use cases with NFTs.
At the end of the day, it is all about ease of use and the developer experience which requires openness (licenses, standards, interfaces), service composability, interoperability, complexity abstraction, ease of integration with existing infrastructure, tools for development and testing, process and shipping automation, quality assurance and services like documentation and support.
We are building the NFT Kit as a solution to this Developers’ Dilemma, as the infrastructure and tools that developers need to use NFTs with ease.
What is the NFT Kit?
In short, the NFT Kit offers developers and organisations everything they need to use NFTs via a unified solution for building use cases or applications fast and without much complexity or prior knowledge about NFTs.
Here’s the most important things to know about the NFT Kit:
It is open source (Apache 2) so that anyone can use the code for free and without limitations.
It is an end-to-end solution that allows you to mint, distribute and verify NFTs (ownership, metadata) without having to research, combine or tweak different libraries.
It abstracts complexity such as low-level functionality related to key handling, data storage, minting operations and interactions with third party systems.
It enables you to use different blockchains and ecosystems - starting with EVM-compatible blockchains (e.g. Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche).
It is customizable in a sense that you can build NFTs in all kinds of variations based on different smart contracts (e.g. ERC-721, ERC-1155) using various configurations (e.g. supply size, metadata storage).
It gives you advanced features like soulbound tokens (SBT), dynamic NFTs or royalties.
It is modular and composable allowing you to individualize and extend its functionality with your own implementations or remote and third party solutions. This openness prevents lock-in and allows you to build solutions that meet your individual requirements without compromise.
It is flexible in a sense that you can deploy and run the NFT Kit on-premise, in your (multi) cloud environment or use it as a library in your applications.
How does it works?
The NFT Kit is about enabling three different functionality profiles:
“Issuers” create and distribute NFTs to stakeholders (“Holders”).
“Holders” view, manage, present, trade NFTs.
“Verifiers” verify NFTs (presented by Holders).
For example: Artists and gaming studios (Issuers) create and distribute NFTs that tokenize their art and digital assets and provide it to fans and collectors (Holders) who can present these NFTs in order to get discounts for or early access to new art, gaming experiences or attend in-person events.
The NFT Kit bundles three components, one for each of these functionality profiles.
NFT Signatory™ for Issuers enables you to create smart contracts and mint NFTs as well as to offer different distribution mechanisms like collectibles (i.e. send NFTs to people who scanned a QR code) or airdrops (i.e. send NFTs to a predefined list of recipients). In other words, this component enables you to tokenize anything (from physical or digital assets to access rights or even ideas) and distribute these tokens in different ways.
NFT Custodian™ for Holders enables you to securely store and manage keys as well as view (i.e. fetch NFTs and metadata) and present NFTs. (This component also extends our Wallet Kit with NFT functionality, but more on this below.)
NFT Auditor™ for Verifiers enables you to verify NFT ownership and metadata so that you can use NFTs to authenticate or even identify stakeholders and offer frictionless access to your products, services or other benefits. (You can read more about NFT-based access management and identity use cases here.)
Relation to our other Products
It has always been our mission to enable every developer and every organization to build identity and trust into the web and their applications. To achieve this, we started out with the
SSI Kit as an easy way for developers to build applications and use cases with Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI);
Wallet Kit as an easy way for developers to extend their d/apps with identity/SSI capabilities.
Storage Kit which offers zero trust data storage and data sharing for any application (like custodial wallets).
Now, the NFT Kit offers an easy way for developers to build amazing products and use cases with NFTs. As such it complements our existing identity infrastructure products:
The NFT Kit makes it possible to tokenize any asset and use these tokens for access management or non-human identity. In other words, access to information, services, products or any other benefits can be decoupled from someone’s identity. Instead, access rights come with NFT ownership.
The NFT Kit extends our Wallet Kit with NFT capabilities, so that developers can use our Wallet Kit to extend their d/apps with the ability to claim, view, manage and share NFTs.
How to use the NFT Kit?
You can get started with the NFT Kit in two different ways
Self-Managed: Deploy the NFT Kit on-premise or in your cloud environments and connect your applications via REST APIs or integrate our libs directly with your applications. Learn how to get started with our documentation.
Managed Service: We deploy, run and maintain the NFT Kit for you and make it accessible via high-level APIs so you do not need to worry about anything.
In any case, we offer a broad range of services to make life easier for you like consulting, development / integration of pilots and production systems or technical support.
Want to learn more?
Join our community or get in touch. We’re always happy to help.