Simple Assets is a free and open-source standard for NFTs and other tokens on EOSIO blockchains. It launched a little over a year ago, in February 2019, and has seen steady improvements and upgrades.
The recent successful launch of Topps GPK NFT’s on WAX has resulted in a huge increase in visibility forSimple Assets. We are thrilled by all the interest and feedback. Everyone is invited to join the Simple Assets Telegram Channel to get in touch with us.
We’d like to share the following roadmap. Note, this is a roadmap only for Simple Assets, the free and open-source standard, and for Simple Market which has its own plan.
Most Recent Upgrades
Free RAM for GPK card transfers.
Normally, users pay for the RAM that stores NFTs. The WAX team designed a customization whereby users will not have to pay for RAM for GPK NFTs. (The Cryptolions teams is working toward general solution where any author can pre-purchase RAM which would free users from having to pay for RAM for their NFTs.)
Expansion of Field Types
Simple Assets provides a way for NFT authors to specify the preferred display of their assets for third party explorers. This optional feature allows authors to communicate which fields should be displayed as text, images, URLs, etc., to specify the primary image, and also to post some additional information. The challenge for us has been creating a sufficiently rich but still understandable standard. After some feedback from advanced users, we made some improvements here.
Beta NFT interface
For users who don’t want to use the command line, we created this beta GUI for creating NFTs and registering as an NFT author. (Basic NFT functionality can be accessed through the My Assets section of Simple Market.)
Q2 (April, May, June)
Redemption Bank (coupons)
The Redemption Bank is a deceptively simple tool which has the potential to transform the entire digital asset space. It not part of Simple Assets, but a complementary smart contract. Authors will be able to designate NFT coupons. Then, should one of the designated NFTs be sent to the redemption bank, its data together with the memo, will be broadcast in an easy-to-find transaction, and the NFT will be burned.
So what’s the big deal? We think this would allow, among other things, non-blockchain games, and even players with inventories in non-blockchain games, to easily tokenize their inventories and then figure out who burned their coupon, and which user receives the tokenized item.
There’s still a trust problem to overcome to complete this vision. In the short-term, perhaps it can be mitigated by reputation. For the medium-term, we really, really, really, really, really want to build Deru Truth Bonds, which we’ve submitted to numerous WPS systems.
New Simple Asset Website
When it launches, the new https://simpleassets.io/ will include documentation, tutorials, and examples.
Alternative Fee Account for Authors
The regauthor command allows authors to post a desired % fee from marketplaces (which marketplaces can then voluntarily abide by or not). We’ll make a small adjustment to the standard that allows authors to also specify a separate account for collecting this fee.
Add Information Retrieval Functions
At the request of developers, we will ease SA integration by adding public information retrieval functions for easy inclusion of the Simple Assets .hpp file. For example: get_new_asset_id .
Q3 (July, August, Sept)
Better JSON Parser and other code optimization
Though it still needs testing, we think we can switch JSON parsers and reduce the size of that portion of the contract to 30kb, from 140kb.
Allow “more data” storage within Simple Assets
An NFT author is already able to group repetitive data on or off chain, and simply point to those groupings from the NFT itself. However, for the sake of convenience, we may recommend a formal way to do this, and create a table inside of Simple Asset.
New Token Type “Regulated NFTs” (RNFT)
The philosophy of pure ownership remains very important to Simple Assets. Owners of Simple Assets can be confident that ownership functionality (transferring, offering, lending, burning) will never be tampered with.
However, there are some use cases for NFTs which are only allowed to circulated among a whitelisted group of users, or outside of a blacklisted group. To keep the ideological boundaries as clear as possible, we’re going to give this token a different name — probably RNFTs. All transfer functionality will be routed through a blacklist and a whitelist managed by the Author.
Upon creation, something will either be an RNFT, or a regular NFT, and one will never become the other.
Open Source Asset Explorer
We’ll put our version on explorer.simpleassets.io. It’ll be available for anyone. The hardest part of an explorer for Simple Assets is working through all the complexities which authors are able to express with the ` regauthor` action.
Token Backed Assets
Like the Redemption bank described above, the token backed asset contract will not be part of Simple Assets, but a complimentary smart contract. Users will be able to deposit funds into the smart contract, and register NFTs as backed by those funds. Then, if someone sends the NFT to the smart contract, the NFT will get burned, and the sender will receive the funds.
This would allow, for example, users to create an NFT called, “a bag of PGL”, and then back the NFT with PGL deposited into the contract. Users could then buy the “bag of PGL” in an NFT market and burn it to receive the amount.
A design decision still needs to be made regarding how to handle token-backed NFTs which were burned independent of this contract. We will likely zero out the keys to this contract after deploying it so that it lives beyond our control.
Q4 (Oct, Nov, Dec)
Author’s RAM bank
By the end of year, we hope to deploy a generalized solution that allows any digital asset author to reserve RAM, and then have NFTs (and other tokens) stored in their RAM instead of in that of users.
Multi-sig
On all chain with active Simple Asset communities, we will formally seek partners and create multisigs to screen updates. (Note: Right now control of WAX’s Simple Asset contract is shared by CryptoLions and the WAX team.)
Thank you!
Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm. We genuinely enjoy working on this stuff and being a part of the EOSIO community.
If you’d like to support CryptoLions ?, consider any of the following:
- Vote for our Block Producers on any EOSIO chain.
- Support Deru Truth Bonds in the WAX WPS after it launches.
- Use our digital asset marketplace: Simple Market.
