Case Study - Turn your art into NFTs with a few clicks

Overview

Before the launch of NFT-Inator, the NFT industry was marked by a noticeable divide. While NFTs were rapidly gaining popularity and becoming a buzzword within art and collectible communities, the creation process was mainly the domain of those with technical know-how.

What makes an NFT?

An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a distinctive digital asset that signifies ownership or proof of authenticity for a particular item, often associated with digital art, music, or other digital media. To understand NFTs, it's helpful to break them down into three main components:

Creative: In many NFTs, the artwork is generative, meaning it is crafted by combining multiple layers, or "traits." Designers create these traits with varying levels of rarity to ensure each NFT produced is unique. Traits can include different backgrounds, characters, accessories, and other visual elements that layer together to form the final artwork.

Technical: Behind every NFT is a smart contract, a self-executing code on the blockchain that outlines the ownership, transferability, and unique characteristics of the NFT. The smart contract dictates how the token is sold, transferred, and updated. This includes features like pre-sales, redemptions (exchanging one NFT for another), and other transactional rules that ensure the authenticity, provenance, and security of the NFT.

Utility: The utility of an NFT defines its use and value beyond merely being a digital collectible. This utility can include access to exclusive content, membership perks, or integration with other platforms and services. While NFT-Inator focuses on simplifying the creation and technical aspects of NFTs, it employs standardized protocols that enable third-party applications or custom code to enhance the utility of the NFTs.

The problem

Many artists and creators felt left out, either due to the steep learning curve or the high costs of using the limited platforms available. These platforms were often complex command-line tools, designed with developers in mind rather than artists.

This scenario highlighted a clear problem: the need for a more inclusive, affordable, and user-friendly platform that could serve artists and creators regardless of their technical skills.

Recognizing this gap, we set out to build a one-stop shop for artists looking to create their NFTs. Our goal was to develop a solution that was not only user-friendly and easy to understand but also enjoyable to use. We envisioned a platform where artists could seamlessly generate their artwork, automate the technical aspects of smart contracts, and manage their NFT collections all in one place.

With NFT-Inator, we aimed to demystify the NFT creation process, making it accessible to everyone, regardless of their technical skills, and ensuring that the experience was as engaging and fun as the creative process itself.

Overcoming business constraints

Creating an NFT collection can involve generating up to 20,000 unique images, with each image being 1-2MB in size. This means a single generation could amount to 30GB of data. While modern blob storage can handle this volume, delivering such a massive amount of data to application users poses significant challenges. On slower internet connections, downloading the entire collection could take hours or even days, resulting in a sluggish and frustrating user experience.

To address this constraint, we decided to generate artwork entirely within the browser on the client side. This approach allows us to store and fetch only the metadata required to render each token, which is both fast and cost-effective. However, this method introduces its own set of challenges. We need to selectively render each image as the user views it and ensure that it is cleared from memory when the user moves to the next page. This ensures that the application remains responsive and efficient, even with large collections.

Adding to the complexity, many NFTs are animated, which significantly increases the difficulty of rendering them in the browser.

WASM to the rescue

WebAssembly (WASM) is a binary instruction format that enables code to run at near-native speed in web browsers, making it an excellent solution for computationally intensive tasks. For NFT-Inator, WASM provided the ideal tool to overcome the challenges of client-side rendering, particularly for complex and animated NFTs.

FFmpeg is a powerful multimedia framework used to handle video, audio, and other multimedia files. By compiling FFmpeg to target WASM, we enabled it to run entirely on the client side within the browser. This allows us to support not only GIFs but also videos, including those with professional codecs and transparency, directly within the user's browser.

Using this technology, we can ensure that even complex animated NFTs are rendered accurately and in the highest quality. However, the process can be slow, especially for larger files.

To address this, we developed a second rendering system optimized for static images. This system supports formats like PNG and JPEG and leverages the <canvas> element for rendering. It is an order of magnitude faster than the WASM-based approach, providing a quick and responsive experience for users when dealing with non-animated NFTs.

Exporting rendered tokens

The first step in turning artwork into NFTs with NFT-Inator is to export the artwork and metadata to the user's device. To achieve this, we leverage the File System Access API, a relatively new browser API that allows us to read and write files directly on the user's device.

This API is crucial for handling large collections because other, older APIs either prompt a "Save As" dialog for each file or only allow downloads to the user's default Downloads folder. When dealing with 20,000+ files, it is essential that they are organized into a specific folder.

Simultaneously with the export process, we upload the output images to the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS is a global, decentralized system for storing and retrieving files. It's widely used in NFTs and decentralized technology because it allows any party to retrieve and serve copies of the files, ensuring that the artwork remains accessible even if NFT-Inator or the project creators are no longer available.

With the artwork and metadata securely stored both locally and on IPFS, the final step is to deploy a smart contract. The smart contract is the crucial component that transforms an image into an NFT. It enables the tracking of ownership of each token, ensuring that each NFT is unique, verifiable, and tradable.

Deploying smart contracts

To make deploying smart contracts as seamless as possible, we built an intuitive and easy-to-use wizard for configuring the smart contract. This wizard guides users through the setup, ensuring that even those with minimal technical knowledge can deploy their NFTs efficiently.

There are two main methods of deployment:

• Template Contract: This method uses a pre-deployed contract that we have already set up on the blockchain. When a user chooses this option, the contract is duplicated for their use. This approach offers significant gas savings, making it a cost-effective solution. However, the level of customization available with template contracts is limited, as they are designed to meet common requirements and use cases.
• Custom Contract: For users who need more flexibility and specific features, advanced mode is available. Enabling advanced mode allows users to select the exact features they need for their NFT project. A custom contract is then generated, tested, and compiled directly in the browser. Once ready, the user can deploy their fully customized smart contract from the browser itself. This method provides complete control and customization, at the cost of higher gas fees for deployment.

By offering these two deployment options, NFT-Inator caters to both novice users looking for a quick and cost-effective solution and experienced users needing a high level of customization. This flexibility ensures that all creators can bring their NFT projects to life in a way that suits their needs and goals.

Mint day

The last step of launching any NFT collection is mint day—the moment your collection goes on sale, and all your hard work pays off. This is a crucial moment for any NFT project, and NFT-Inator ensures that this process is as smooth and successful as possible.

NFT-Inator provides an easy-to-use mint embed, allowing projects to offer minting directly on their website. This means your users can mint NFTs without leaving your site, providing a seamless and integrated experience. The mint embed is customizable to match your website's look and feel, ensuring a cohesive brand experience for your audience.

For those who prefer a more straightforward approach, we also offer a hosted mint page. This allows users to share a simple link and start selling their NFTs immediately. Our hosted mint pages are designed to be user-friendly and accessible, making it easy for your audience to participate in your minting event.

Controlling your mint

Managing your NFT collection doesn't end on mint day. With NFT-Inator's dashboard, you have full control over your smart contract, ensuring you can adapt and manage your project seamlessly.

The dashboard provides an intuitive interface for managing and updating all settings of your smart contract. Key features include:

• Price and Sale Stages: Easily update the pricing and manage different sales stages, such as pre-sales, public sales, and special events. This flexibility allows you to adapt to market demand and optimize your sales strategy.
• Team Members: Add or remove team members who can manage the contract, ensuring that only authorized personnel have access.
• Artwork & Metadata: Update and manage the metadata associated with your NFTs, allowing you to change your artwork at any time in future

The dashboard allows you to withdraw the contract balance to your pre-configured payout addresses. These addresses are immutable, providing a secure mechanism to prevent unauthorized changes and ensuring that funds are always directed to the correct accounts.

NFT-Inator's dashboard is designed to give you comprehensive control and insights into your NFT collection, making it easy to manage and adapt your project to ensure its ongoing success.

Our results

NFT-Inator has truly been groundbreaking in the NFT industry. As the first "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) designer and generator for NFTs, it has revolutionized the way artists and creators bring their projects to life. Since its launch, NFT-Inator has rapidly grown to become one of the top-ranking tools in the space.

The platform has garnered millions of visits, demonstrating its widespread appeal and usability. With over 12,000 registered users and more than 20,000 projects live, NFT-Inator has empowered countless creators to easily design, generate, and manage their NFT collections. This impressive adoption and engagement underscore NFT-Inator's impact and success in making NFT creation accessible, efficient, and enjoyable for everyone.

What we did