Unlike the Tate Modern which stands empty once an exhibition is over, the underwater galleries, concert venues or operatic soundscapes you create on Realm are art themselves. Using the Ethereum ERC-1155 token, the entirety of your realm can be minted as an NFT: an entire Metaverse traded and secured.
How you use and profit from your NFT is up to you. Perhaps you rent your realm to an emerging artist or established star: Cryptopunk 8348 could be on show one day, Trevor Jones or pop surrealist Fewocious the next. Then, because your realm is an NFT, it could be bought, sold, or traded with the NFT community at large.
Stay tuned to learn how that is done.
First things first.
What is an NFT?
To understand an NFT it is often easier to understand the use case and work backwards. Imagine an emerging musician — the style doesn’t matter, but for the sake of this let’s use a rock-folk hybrid. Bob Dylan meets Greta Van fleet — writing songs during the day and playing gigs every night. One day he, let’s call him Aaron, writes a song. The crowds love it. Aaron makes a demo, sends it to a record label, they love it too.
One year later Aaron is making 10 cents for every billion listens on Spotify and the rights to his song have been sold. An NFT (non-fungible token) would erase this story. Aaron could have recorded his song and minted it as an NFT, and then he would have had more say on the sales earned by his song. Every sale would have been noted on a ‘public database’ (the blockchain) and, due to the contract decided on when the NFT was minted, Aaron would have taken a percentage of what was rightfully his.
In a world of unscrupulous, centralized parties and institutions, every artist, musician, videographer and content creator can use NFTs to take back control of their vision and creativity. Furthermore, thanks to the crypto currencies which sit atop the blockchains which make this all possible, they can control, and own, their true value.
Realm as an NFT: 3 ERC Tokens
A realm is a virtual space you create on Realm using the Godot creator tools and templates. It can be made of architecture, trees, avatars, pets, real-estate, art, music. You’re perhaps wondering how you can fit all of that into a ‘single’ NFT.
There are three ERC tokens you need to be familiar with. Knowing this will help you understand how Realm works and how you can create an NFT from an entire realm. We are lowering the access bar to NFTs, so if you are familiar with this terminology, awesome. For those who are starting out on your NFT journey, pay close attention.
ERC stands for Ethereum Request for Comment. Catchy. Essentially a set of rules or standards tokens must adhere to function. The number which follows ‘ERC’ indicates what the token can do.
- ERC-20 is a ‘financial token,’- crypto-currency/alt-coin, call it what you will. There are over 250,000 ERC-20 tokens such as Matic, Chainlink, Tether, and of course, $REALM. These tokens are on the Ethereum blockchain. They are identical. They are fungible.
- ERC-721 is the universal NFT token and what gives NFTs their authenticity. An ERC-721 is unique, which is why NFTs are non-fungible. This is the token which could have made Aaron a lot of money.
- However, there are limits to an ERC-721 because each NFT you create needs a new smart contract. As we have already said, one piece of art / music / sculpture / content = one ERC-721 token. Not only does this make creating, trading and minting complex, time-consuming and expensive, it puts more stress on the sustainability of the digital world, (see how Realm offsets its CO2 here) as minting requires energy.
- ERC-1155 is the third token standard and is what allows an entire realm to be an NFT. ERC-1155 tokens allow the bulk movement of infinite NFTs and can include every asset type from music and real estate to digital art and tokens, realms, pets, and other consumables. You can also include ERC-721 and ERC-20 tokens within an ERC-1155. Oh yes!
What does this mean for Realm creators?
The NFT revolution is just beginning. If you’re reading this, you are at the forefront of the next great artistic movement. It isn’t only about art though, it’s about digital ownership; about removing the centralised gatekeepers and taking back the creative freedom and power which goes with it. Being able to mint your realm as an NFT means you have complete artistic license to be as creative as you dream. As collectors and fans you can experience digital art in a unique, immersive and interactive way.
Where we go next is up to you. But wherever you choose, you can take your realm with you. As an NFT.
