NFTTeleporter.com

Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project was in part due to the lack of innovation we have witnessed in the NFT industry recently, combined with our success at a previous IPFS hackathon for our project - https://yourmetaworld.org/

We felt that we could create a simpler application based on the web browser, which could aid the NFT market in creating more exciting experiences with better use cases relatively easily and quickly.

What it does

NFT Teleporter.com is a no code tool which allows users to create and mint their NFT's online. The NFT's a user creates can have multiple assets attached to them (stored on IPFS), which allows for these NFT's to be used to create exciting and immersive online experiences.

We provide a premade 3D VR experience which dynamically pulls in these assets by "teleporting" them into the Metaverse".

As this is a proof of concept, we have currently only created a basic VR scene which utilises a single 2D image and a 3D GLTF object. This is a simple scene, but one which allows users to view an NFT profile pic side by side a 3D model (presumably of the NFT character, but it can be anything).

The hope is to create more dynamic experiences in the future (details in the "What's next..." section).

In addition to this, our storage of the NFT data on IPFS can always be retrieved by a user at a later date through another application if they decide they do want to build a bespoke app. Our custom REST API will allow them to retrieve all of the assets they pinned to their NFT/'s easily, should they choose to go the custom code route. In this way we both provide an up front experience to the end user, but do not stifle any subsequent innovation within an NFT collection.

This allows rapid innovative building, which we think is a good thing!

How we built it

The app has both a front end and a back end. The front end is a simple vanilla website, which utilises Moralis's API's and IPFS storage to dynamically authenticate user wallets, upload NFT data to storage, and lazy mint NFT's on Rarible on the ETH Mainnet.

The VR scene is built in Aframe.

The back end is an Express server utilising MongoDB, which has been deployed to Heroku and is updated using our custom REST API.

Challenges we ran into

We have been tinkering with NFT's, smart contracts, IPFS etc. For a little while now, so there was no huge technical difficulties we ran into during the development. The main issue for us was time, as we joined the hackathon late and only had about 5 days or so to build everything.

One problem which did need a bit of thought, was how to render a 3D VR scene inside of the web browser quickly and easily. For this Aframe came to the rescue, which is a useful JavaScript framework for rendering VR in the browser.

In addition to this, we did need to come up with an easy way to rapidly save files to IPFS. Moralis came in quite handy for this, as their API allows us to quite easily save files to IPFS storage and save the CID to our Express server.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the fact that we have created a no code NFT maker, that allows users to upload multiple assets to the NFT's metadata in different dimensions (2D and 3D), which can then be viewed simultaneously inside of a VR environment. We think this is really cool!

We also think this sets the groundwork for some very cool and innovative ideas (see "What's next..." section), that we're really proud of.

What we learned

Hackathons are fun.

The NFT space has significant room for innovation, and there is a lot of low hanging fruit which we can all share in.

We also learnt more in depth about how IPFS actually works, and how Filecoin integrates with this.

What's next for NFTTeleporter.com

We would like to offer a handful of experiences which the NFT creator can choose from. These experiences will not just include 2D and 3D images, but also video files and sound files. Imagine sitting in a VR theatre after minting an NFT created on nftteleporter.com, watching a video which was custom made for your legendary rarity NFT.

We would also like to implement a white listing mechanism for viewing these experiences. Currently you need a unique wallet ID, but we would like to add in an actual wallet authentication features (as exists in the wallet authenticator), that allows users who are "whitelisted" to view an experience. This can potentially produce a secondary market in which users can rent out unique experiences to collectors, who may wish to interact with a specific NFT, video, sound file etc. But do not won the NFT. It also can present an income stream for the NFT holder.

Finally, due to time constraints (we joined the hackathon late and only had about a week of dev time) we haven't been able to introduce bulk upload and NFT collection creation features. Creating one NFT at a time is cool, but realistically we would like to be able to create an entire collection. We could also offer some simple tools, such as a random art generator and other popular generators used in NFT creation.

As NFT's become more and more popular, we will see high utility NFT's begin to enter the market which will aid important industries such as property, health care, auto motive and more.

Having said this, there will always be a market for NFT's which are intended for collectors and enthusiasts who want to buy an NFT from their favourite TV show, celebrity, video game, Youtuber etc. In the same way that in present day there is a market for autographed memorabilia and the like.

NFT Teleporter.com is ideally placed to offer this market (which usually consists of less technical creators) custom made experiences and rapid NFT creation through our simple and easy UI.

Built With

• aframe
• express.js
• ipfs
• moralis
• node.js
• vanilla