NFTs — the building blocks of reality on-chain — have come to Altair!
We’re happy to announce that Altair’s first dApp, NFT Playground, has gone live! Built on the Altair Network, the NFT Playground lets users create, view, and collect NFTs, and it serves as an essential building block to the future of Altair and Centrifuge Chain’s on-chain asset financing capabilities.
NFTs — and explorations of utility that NFTs can have — are vital to Centrifuge’s mission to create fairer, more transparent financial infrastructure. With Altair, we can begin to experiment with new ways of financing and borrowing from NFTs on-chain.
Centrifuge already uses the ERC721 NFT standard on Ethereum with our asset financing platform, Tinlake. On Tinlake, NFTs represent real world assets on-chain — and these assets are then financed with liquidity from the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Now on Altair, we have built the on-chain NFT logic ourselves rather than relying on standardized token contracts (like ETH’s ERC721 contract). As a result, there are endless capabilities to continually upgrade what is possible with NFTs on Altair. As a Kusama parachain, Altair is built for community engagement, experimentation, and (as is the Kusama mantra)… .
Let’s dive in.
What can I do on NFT Playground?
In accordance with its namesake, NFT Playground is the proving ground for NFTs in the Altair ecosystem. We focused on the three core functionalities needed to interact with NFTs:
- Viewing
- Minting ⛓
- Listing
We’re not trying to recreate your favorite NFT marketplace, but rather we’re building the foundations for fairer, more flexible financial infrastructure — for which NFTs are a vital part!
How do I get started with NFT Playground?
NFT Playground is easy to use! First, you need a DotSama wallet set up in your browser, like Talisman or Polkadot.js.
Once you’ve set up your wallet and funded it with Altair’s token AIR, connect your wallet by going to the NFT Playground and clicking Connect at the top right.
Once your wallet is connected, you can browse and purchase NFTs from other members of the Altair community. Or, you can create your own collection, mint your NFTs, and list them for sale! You can transfer NFTs between wallets as well.
Gas fees are incredibly inexpensive on Altair (<0.1 AIR). In order to mint an NFT, you need at least 1 AIR in your wallet as a deposit.
Altair’s first NFTs
We’ve invited a wonderful group of artists to be the first to use NFT Playground. Many of these creators have listed their pieces for sale, making this an opportunity to own some of the first NFTs ever minted on Altair ✨.
We think the art is super cool, too. And these pieces may be able to be integrated with future Altair financing capability . More on that later in this post!
Here are the artists’ collections — and links to their websites / socials. Check them out!
Joan Sandoval: Secondary Perspectives
Instagram
Website
Ferran Belda: AixòNoÉs_3D
Twitter
Instagram
Rusa Tavartkiladze: Simulacrum
Behance
Lil’ Scribble: Worlds collide
Instagram
Website
Twitter
Jessie Idowu: Kartoonie
Instagram
William Fairbrother: ALPHA
Website
Twitter
Payton Rose & Tim DiBiase: Payphone Poetry Collection
Twitter (Payton)
Twitter (Payphone Poetry)
Araya Wongwan: Mono No Aware Vol.2
Twitter
Instagram
What’s next for Altair?
Our team has in parallel been working on the next generation of Real World Asset (RWA) financing on Centrifuge Chain. We’re building on-chain RWA pools like those you can see on our Ethereum dApp, Tinlake, but built directly out of our own chain (Altair and Centrifuge Chain!).
This creates a ton of possibilities, from low on-chain fees to novel new methods of token utility that will interface directly with Real World Assets on-chain. See our recent roadmap post for more info about what’s next!
So how does NFT Playground play a part in this?
Imagine being able to borrow stablecoins off of your NFT collection — funded by liquidity providers on-chain.
This is the lens through which we see Altair, and we’re looking forward to letting the community experiment with these first asset financing pools utilizing NFT Playground. Keep an eye out for the first release of RWA Pools on Altair — that’s where we will continue to deploy and experiment.
One more thing:
There’s been whispers of a NFT competition that members of our community are putting together. Details TBA!
Be sure to follow Altair on Twitter and to join our Discord to hear about the competition first.
Introducing the NFT Playground was originally published in Altair Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
