Modular

Mockup of crafting an item
Mockup of crafting a rare stone
Mockup when a user doesn't have sufficient resources to craft
Mockup of a users inventory with crafted items

Inspiration

We were inspired by Loot on Ethereum, which popularized a new on chain text primitive. However we envisioned a path to give more power to the user to craft individual items and manage resources because of the speed and cheap transactions on Solana. We took inspiration from games focused on crafting items in a lego block style such as Minecraft and Terraria as well as games with resource management like Age of Empires and the popular board game Catan.

What it does

Modular is a NFT resource and crafting system where the user mints resources and crafts items using the Modulator. All objects are text based NFTs.

The resources are: gold, steel, bronze, silver (NFTs). Base resources are burned when crafting items. Alternatively they can be traded on any NFT marketplace where we are listed.

Items are text objects (NFTs) that we see as being reusable across metaverse experiences and leverageable by others. Initial items will be built by core team, likely melee style primary weapons (Katana, Broadsword etc.).

Our vision is that any team can build items on Modular using the same resource set, creating fun economic supply and demand scenarios for traders. For example, a new project mints and requires only gold resources to craft their golden guns, suddenly gold is in higher demand on marketplaces.

How we built it

I (Camden) spent like 3 weeks just booting up on Solana, Anchor, and how tokens are represented on Solana. Then I worked on the proof of concept, first using the integration testing, then when the program interface was done getting the frontend hooked up.

Challenges we ran into

Product wise, we had ongoing discussion as we refined how the resources and items would work together. This refinement is ongoing and even post launch would likely require tweaking to get just right.

Technically, understanding how accounts and their attributes work was one of the most challenging parts. The anchor framework abstracts away a lot of the complexity of building programs, but I had a harder time understanding what was going wrong when testing the program.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We started midway through the hackathon and have a product that can be tested on devnet as well as a clear picture of how our UI should look.

We’ve also gathered feedback which has been hugely positive from folks deep in the Solana NFT world and built a nascent community which is keen to mint.

What we learned

If you have an idea, it’s really as simple as chatting with people on Discord, finding a good match and getting to work. You miss every swing you don’t take and I’m really glad that Camden and I took this opportunity to take part in Ignition.

I (Camden) also learned a ton about anchor and the solana tooling. Very nascent but already super powerful.