Chromia Fixes This: Centralized NFT Metadata and Images
This Cointelegraph article published last week (on December 8, 2022) caught our attention. It highlights a significant flaw in the current design of NFTs, a flaw which we have set out to correct. Read on to learn more:
What’s the story?
Owners of Solana based NFTs minted on the FTX platform have found themselves holding ‘broken’ tokens which no longer function properly. This is a result of the NFTs using metadata hosted on the FTX.US domain, which now redirects to a restructuring website due to bankruptcy proceedings. While users still retain ownership of the tokens themselves, the images are no longer accessible and do not display properly.
https://twitter.com/jacobdotsol/status/1600526700982710273
NFTs have a centralization problem
This episode sheds light on an issue which many casual users are unaware of. As currently designed, many NFTs rely on some form of off-chain hosting in order to function. These centralized solutions often include web URLs (as in the above example) and/or AWS servers. While a handful of projects have worked to offer fully on-chain NFTs, the inefficiency of data storage on Ethereum (and EVM alternatives) limit their potential.
To learn more about this topic in general, we recommend this excellent article from rameerez, titled “No, your NFT is not on the blockchain”.
How Chromia and Chromia Originals fixes this
The simple answer is that Chromia is far more efficient at indexing and storing data. Originals will be able to hold more complex metadata, and even be embedded with programming logic. The result is a design standard that provides developers and creators with greater flexibility.
In addition, system provider nodes will be able to store files (images, audio clips, etc.) associated with the NFTs. Since these files can be stored in multiple locations across the network, there is no risk of a single failure ‘bricking’ your non-fungible assets.
In conclusion
The majority of NFTs that exist today are a mixed bag in terms of longevity and immutability. While third party solutions like IPFS and Arweave offer improvements over Web URLs and AWS, non-fungible tokens are only as good as the choices made by their creators.
On Chromia, the entire package (token + metadata + associated files) can live on-chain. It will even be possible to migrate NFTs from other chains to Chromia in order fix the flaws that they were created with. Now that’s exciting!
About Chromia
Modern society runs on data and every online service you’re using is built upon underlying databases - ranging from your online bank to music streaming and gaming. Chromia is a relational blockchain - a combination of a relational database and a blockchain - making it easy to develop user-friendly decentralized apps for almost any industry, including DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and more.
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