DeluxeKnives | Shopify x NEAR

1 NFT = 1 REAL Knife. Powered by Shopify, Mintbase, & NEAR.

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Giveaway

DeluxeKnives | Shopify x NEAR Integration

Founded in 2016, DeluxeKnives has maintained a Shopify store to sell thousands of novelty knives to enthusiasts in the United Kingdom. Now, we have decided to expand into the world of Web3, starting with NEAR.

To integrate traditional E-commerce with NEAR, we have launched an NFT project that allows users to seamlessly redeem their NFT for a Shopify discount code that gives them the physical knife for free.

What that means is that for the same price as a normal knife, you get 1 NEAR NFT and 1 real, identical, physical knife. We're calling this type of NFT a digital twin, and you can get your own digital twin knife at digitaltwin.deluxeknives.com. We chose to build this because:

  1. Adding ourselves to Web3 opens up a new market.
  2. We believe adding metaverse potential to our products can increase demand.
  3. Mintbase + Coinbase fees are lower than Shopify & PayPal credit card fees.
  4. We like to experiment!

More importantly, with our open source and well documented repository, any other Shopify store can come to NEAR's ecosystem with a digital twin store, powered by Mintbase.

1 NFT = 1 Free Knife

More than an NFT Project

Yes, this is more than just a couple of GIFs. We're talking about impact to the NEAR ecosystem. We have provided an open source repository with excellent documentation for others to use. As of its current iteration, it:

  1. Allows upcoming NFT projects to add a physical touch to their offering via Shopify integration.
  2. Allows existing Shopify-powered e-commerce projects to easily integrate into the NEAR ecosystem.

The only requirements that the codebase requires (as of right now) are:

  1. You use Mintbase to create & sell your NFTs.
  2. Your Mintbase NFTs must have the Shopify product ID within its metadata.

As we improve our offering over time, we will be able to allow preexisting NFT projects to integrate.

As a shopify store, a logical next step is to expand into providing tooling for other stores, since the novelty knife market is too small to truly capitalize on. We hope that Deluxe Knives can act as a precursor for new e-commerce stores on Web3, and that we can eventually evolve into a platform and tooling provider. We believe that there is true value for e-commerce shops on NEAR, and we believe we are primed to capture a portion of that value. The code is built and proven, the next step is to get it out there for other stores.

Proof of Demand

It might not be apparent how helpful the code written is, after all: the only noteable thing about Deluxe Knives' custom frontend is the redeem button and modal. That's only about 10 seconds worth of content.

But that speed is the point.

By increasing the speed between purchase and confirmation, e-commerce on NEAR can become a viable layer on top of preexisting infrastructure, one that can be lucrative alternative payment system to Shopify's, which has a 2.9% transaction fee. Plus, many Shopify stores (like ours) use PayPal, which incurs an additional 2.99% fee. With that in consideration, the 2.5% Mintbase market fee doesn't sound that bad.

How do we know that other projects will want this? Simple. We aren't the first physical NFT project that's out there. We aren't even the first one on NEAR. But, as far as we can tell, our solution is desperately needed.

Take a look at the comparison chart below.

NEAR Digital Twin Comparison Chart

All of the NEAR projects listed have very inconvenient fulfillment channels. Users definitely do not want to have to send an email or join a Discord channel and manually ask for a product that they already bought. Imagine having to send an email every time that you bought something on Amazon!

Of the other projects that we've listed, some of them have better user experiences, such as BlockBar, a liquor NFT marketplace. But the developer experience is still comparatively worse than what it could be. This company has to create their own order management, fulfillment, and marketing channel workflow because they aren't integrated with e-commerce solutions like Shopify that have already built it out. Large companies like the GAP & Adidas can afford to pay for specialized Web3 developers, but most e-commerce stores can't.

We believe that our solution provides the most simplicity for developers and customers alike.

Value Proposition

At the heart of Deluxe Knives are of course the knives. This is what draws customers in, and it's what drives our sales. Fact of the matter is, they're cool.

For those with a business degree, translating "cool" into a value proposition results in the realization that our products provide novelty, entertainment, and personalization to consumers. Most novelty items tend to be this way, and NFTs tend to be no different. Even when adding metaverse, gamification, and so on, most NFTs will provide on novelty, entertainment, and personalization.

There's nothing wrong with this, and it's a valid value proposition for the types of products being sold. What's more interesting, however, is the value proposition of the technique that Deluxe Knives is pioneering for Shopify stores.

Here's a rough value proposition chart that takes customers (Shopify stores) and relates them to the digital twin model (product). Most important takeaways are:

  • Web3 acts as a new market & channel for shopify stores.
  • Sales on Web3 & Mintbase have lower fees.
  • Web3 integrations provide potential integrations that add to products' novelty, entertainment value, and personalization.

Value Proposition Chart

Timeline and the Future

Let's take a look at the future for Deluxe Knives and their e-commerce solution.

Given enough support from NEAR and the NEAR community, we will continue to mint digital twins for new knives every month. We also wish to publish a fast-pased browser game for our users, complete with NFT-related cosmetics and competitions for giveaways.

For our digital twin solution, expect to see a lot more development if the NEAR community decides that this is a critical part of NFT infrastructure:

  1. We aim to create additional options to allow pre-existing NFT projects to retroactively apply. This is not currently possible because Shopify related metadata must be baked into the NFT at time of minting, which is immutable due to Mintbase's infrastructure. However, with a proper smart contract or addition to the backend logic, this issue can be circumvented.
  2. The code at hand can only be applied if you have a frontend to add it to and the ability to run a backend. This process must become easier if we expect the average Shopify user to set it up. We hope to convert the current code into a serverless/dockerized format to make it easier to spin up. We also hope to integrate with preexisting architecture like Gorilla Shops so that non-technical users get the UI they need to interact with such this important sales component.
  3. Our code allows for the NFT -> Physical Item flow, but we also want to power the alternate direction. Purchase physical items, and then get their virtual NFT. This will be more difficult due to the need to work with Shopify's frontend system, the management and creation of new accounts for users not acquainted with Web3, and the question of gas.

Double Roadmap

Gorilla Shops Partnership

The Gorilla Shops team has described this Shopify technique as "a major important piece missing" from their platform today. Deluxe Knives and Gorilla Shops are working together to see how we can best integrate e-commerce powered NFTs into Gorilla Shop's custom NFT market frontends. Expect major developments.

DK x Gorilla

On the Technical Implementation

Like most web applications, there is a frontend and a backend. dApps tend to have a "blockend" (smart contracts) as well, but for Deluxe Knives, Mintbase handles most of the smart contract side.

Our frontend is built in Next.js. It uses the Mintbase SDK to connect to the NEAR blockchain, to interact with smart contracts, and to sign messages. It is hosted on Vercel. While it is not a turn-key repository that any developer can use to make their own market, it serves as a good example of how to use NEAR for e-commerce.

Our backend API is built with Express & MongoDB. It uses the Mintbase GraphQL API & NEAR RPCs to query Web3 related data. This backend is also a custom Shopify app, meaning it has been provided Shopify authentication roles, allowing it to generate discount codes and read product data. This backend is the main repository that can be easily replicated for other projects, and contains the most value that this submission brings to the NEAR ecosystem. As such, it is properly documented. It is currently hosted on AWS, in an NGINX server.

The 2 Processes

We've split the process of using digital twin NFTs into two parts, the listing & the purchase.

Simplified Tech Breakdown

To list the product:

  1. The user must have a Shopify store and list the products they wish to mint into digital twins there.
  2. Then they can add Shopify related metadata to Mintbase during the minting process.
  3. They can list the NFT on Mintbase like they would normally. This minting process can be repeated with as many products as they would like.
  4. The shop owner must configure the backend to query data from the specific Mintbase store (smart contract) that houses their NFTs.

User purchases and redemptions:

  1. They will interact with the frontend to purchase the NFT (typically a simple purchase button). The smart contracts that they interact with to purchase an NFT is provided by Mintbase's factory contract.
  2. They will interact with the frontend to redeem the NFT (we used a button & a modal). This will send a request to the backend for a nonce, then to generate a discount code.
  3. The backend's authentication process relies on a nonce + signed message with the user's wallet. The signature will be checked to ensure that a specific account is requesting the action. If that passes, the backend will then check if that account owns the NFT specified.
  4. Once that (step 3) and all other data validation checks are passed, the Shopify API is called to generate a product.
  5. From the backend, the frontend will receive a discount code & a link to bring the user to a checkout with the code automatically applied.

What Was Built During the Hackathon

Before the hackathon, the only thing that existed was our Shopify shop. During this hackathon, we built:

  • An entirely new frontend that integrated Mintbase functionality, which can be forked by other e-commerce projects.
  • A backend that:
    • Authorizes users based off of their wallet & Mintbase NFT.
    • Generates Shopify discount codes based off of a user's owned NFT.
    • Returns a link for shop owners to use in their frontend that links directly into a shopping cart with the discount automatically applied.
  • Some awesome looking 3D models of our knives to serve as NFTs!
  • (Deprecated in our system) A smart contract that lets owners of a Mintbase NFT announce a message.

About Deluxe Knives

As mentioned before, Deluxe Knives was founded in 2016 and has been selling knives inspired by CS:GO ever since. Many of our knives are inspired by popular skins in the acclaimed FPS game, but to avoid copyright infringements and to not steal from any artists, the knives provided are variations, some of which designed by our own artists. Our knives are perfect to complete a gaming setup, but can also be used on camping trips and other outings. If you're adventurous, you can attempt some knife tricks with them as well!

Team

Deluxe Knives Team

Thanks to the team for making this possible. Some provided development skills, some with e-commerce expertise, and another with mainly moral support and a few pictures. We will leave it to the reader to figure out which is which.

Conclusion

Deluxe Knives has been a shopify store for many years, and has recently decided to add an NFT offering as well. Our NFT shop will serve as a test run for future shopify stores that will integrate Web3 features, and we plan to someday evolve into a provider of these Web3 enabled e-commerce services.

We hope that the judges of Metabuild III and the rest of the NEAR community share our vision for expanding the world of e-commerce.

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