EnlightenMint Charitable NFT Marketplace

Mint, buy and sell NFTs to benefit charitable projects. Each EnlightenMint NFT is programmed by users to send royalties to vetted regenerative projects whenever an NFT is bought or sold.

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Inspiration

EnlightenMint originated in two places: first, XLS-20d’s innovative royalties mechanism, and second, with the Center for Collaborative Economics' flagship project, charitable crypto donation app Give XRP.

Prior to the debut of NFTs on the XRP Ledger, our team was looking at XLS-20d’s architecture and noticed that it had something many other NFT standards lack: a way to channel royalties whenever the NFT is bought or sold. Obviously, this opens up some great functionalities for helping artists and creators benefit from their creations, but we immediately saw that this could be leveraged for social good.

What if, every time an NFT was bought or sold, part of the price was sent to a regenerative project selected by the NFT creator? This would change the entire marketplace dynamic, making every transaction into a de facto donation. It would benefit all parties involved- opening up a recurring passive income stream for the nonprofit, as well as enabling customers to support causes they believe in while collecting NFTs. Thus, we decided to make a charitable NFT marketplace where users could program the royalties from NFTs they minted, and EnlightenMint was born.

The other, more mundane origin point of EnlightenMint stems from a feature we decided not to include in our flagship app. In Give XRP, when a user makes a donation, they can elect to receive an NFT tied to that donation. Originally, users could donate a pre-set amount to receive a special edition NFT (for example: donate 500 XRP and receive a Golden Koala!), as opposed to donating any amount and receiving a standard NFT.

In order to streamline user experience and simplify database management, we ended up removing the special limited edition NFTs from the app. However, we still saw a lot of potential for charitable NFTs to be used for fundraising- for example, limited edition partnerships with artists, or special fundraising initiatives to support specific projects. This line of thought planted the seed that grew into EnlightenMint.

What it does

Like other NFT marketplaces, EnlightenMint allows users to mint, buy, sell and display their unique, non-fungible tokens. What distinguishes EnlightenMint is its innovative programmable royalty mechanism and emphasis on supporting regenerative charitable projects.

Whenever an NFT is minted on EnlightenMint, the creator sets a royalty level and chooses which of EnlightenMint’s vetted regenerative project partners to send the royalties to.

This way, whenever an NFT is bought or sold, the predetermined amount of the purchase/sale price is sent to the wallet belonging to the charitable project selected when the NFT is minted.

This function leverages the programmability of NFTs on the XRP Ledger to make a real world impact.

For this hackathon submission, our team partnered with two organizations already doing inspirational work on the ground: First, Reserva la Tigra, an agroforestry project working with the indigenous Kogi community on the Colombian island of Santa Marta, which is currently raising funds to buy land for a cooperative regenerative agriculture project. Proceeds from NFTs sold on EnlightenMint will support reforestation: Reserva la Tigra will plant one sapling for each NFT sold.

Second, Pasos de Agua, an ecological education and waterway restoration project in Barichara, Colombia. This beautifully intentional organization provides experiential science and art education for primary school students, including (among other things) a multi-day field trip through the creeks and waterways of the unique Barichara region.

Please see the attached documents for more information about Reserva la Tigra and Pasos de Agua. Additionally, photographs of the work being done by these organizations have already been turned into NFTs, viewable on our test-net deployment of EnlightenMint.

If EnlightenMint is selected as a finalist, it will be our honor to donate part of the prize money to these two regenerative project partners, and when our platform goes live, these two projects will use EnlightenMint to raise funds for their projects.

How we built it

Our team collaborated using regular video calls, Discord and Slack to bounce ideas back and forth and suggest solutions to roadblocks. The bulk of the programming work was completed by Kuyawa, with our lead developer Julian taking a supportive management role for this sub-project.

EnlightenMint was built using Node, Next.js, React, Prisma, MongoDB and Vercel.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge we faced was time. We’ve been very focused on getting our main app Give XRP ready to deploy, so it wasn’t until December 1st that we reached a point where we could consider working on a different project.

The idea of entering a charitable NFT marketplace into the XRPL NFT Launch Party hackathon was brought up at one of our weekly meetings. We made the decision to enter the hackathon as a team, and since then it’s been a race against the clock.

A key technical challenge occurred at the intersection of MongoDB and the various processes being executed on the XRP Ledger. Specifically, when an NFT is minted, the NFT is uploaded to IPFS and Amazon Web Services, and an offer is created on the XRP Ledger.

All together, these processes took about twenty seconds- but MongoDB times out after ten seconds. Therefore, our developers had to find a workaround- splitting this twenty-second process into four processes of five seconds apiece. In other words, after identifying the issue, our development team was able to find a workable, elegant solution, without sacrificing functionality.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First, we’re proud of building a functional charitable NFT marketplace. EnlightenMint is a valuable addition to the Center for Collaborative Economics ecosystem. Now we will be able to offer our nonprofit partners the ability to use NFTs for fundraising.

Second, we’re proud of seeing an opportunity to leverage the XLS-20d NFT standard’s programmable royalty mechanism in an innovative way, and building a platform which uses that functionality in a way that can support the work of regenerative projects worldwide.

Third, we’re proud of partnering with two different beautiful, impactful projects working to protect the environment and support vulnerable communities in Colombia- Reserva La Tigra’s reforestation efforts and work with the Kogi indigenous community, and Pasos de Agua’s innovative, soulful approach to environmental education and watershed restoration.

What we learned

On a technical level: Our developer Kuyawa had to familiarize himself on the fly with some aspects of database management, specifically using MongoDB and Prisma.

On a project management level: sometimes all that is necessary for goals to be achieved is to get a group of talented, motivated people together and set them loose. Micromanagement can be counterproductive. The archetype of the Servant Leader is powerful and can be applied to many situations.

On a spiritual level: When individual or team efforts are in line with the greater good, sometimes the universe conspires to help things come together in ways that are better than could have possibly been planned. Synchronicities, to quote Carl Jung, appear to constitute a “collaboration between persons and events that seems to enlist the cooperation of fate.”

What's next for EnlightenMint Charitable NFT Marketplace

In the immediate future, we'll be devoting about 2-5 developer hours per week to building out the "Curated NFT Collections" side of EnlightenMint and refining the look and user experience. However, we are balancing this task with our priority of rolling out our charitable donation app Give XRP in time for the 2023 tax season.

The goal here is to be able to offer our nonprofit/vetted regenerative project partners the opportunity to lead fundraising drives on EnlightenMint. Working together with the CFCE team, our partner organizations will be able to mint collections of NFTs, with proceeds (and royalties) providing an extra income stream to support the work they are doing on the ground. EnlightenMint will be a valuable part of the suite of turnkey crypto fundraising services we are able to offer prospective nonprofit partners.

EnlightenMint sers will be able to search curated collections according to organization, geographic location, and UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goal category.

After this work is completed, and things like legal paperwork and KYC/AML compliance are finished- likely late Q1/early Q2 2023- CFCE will be ready to deploy EnlightenMint and begin hosting charitable NFT fundraising initiatives, as well as allowing users to mint, buy and sell charitable NFTs on the XRPL main net.

We'll use social media promotion and partnerships with other XRPL projects to drive engagement with our initial core target demographic, XRPL community members, with the goal of facilitating at least 1,000 charitable NFT sales within the first 6 months.

Further down the road, we’re really excited about adding two functionalities in particular to CFCE's NFTs:

-Attaching dMRV (decentralized Measurement, Reporting and Verification) data to NFTs in order to prove and quantify impact, so that NFT owners can see how their donated funds are being used and regenerative projects can show off their work. This is particularly exciting for applications related to carbon credits and other eco-credits. CFCE is grateful to be participating in a working group focusing on this issue with several leading regenerative finance projects across blockchain ecosystems.

-Exploring ways to start using the metaverse to turbo-charge fundraising and community-building. Specifically, we’re interested in building virtual NFT galleries where regenerative projects can show off their NFT collections and host virtual fundraisers, DAO governance meetings or other community events.

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