NFTs can streamline your wallet experience

ERC-6551 introduces a standard for NFTs by unlocking their ability to be a smart wallet that can interact with various decentralized apps in the Ethereum ecosystem.

When we think of NFTs today, we often envision collectibles, creative artwork, and profile pictures.

ERC-6551, or Ethereum Request for Comment 6551, introduces the ability for every NFT – even those that users already have in their wallets today – to become a smart contract wallet, meaning every NFT can own tokens.

In a conversation with Blockworks, Jayden Windle, co-author of ERC-6551, said he believed that NFTs could be much more than a static asset sitting in a wallet.

“I’ve been working with Future Primitive for the past year and a half, and the ERC-6551 came out of many of the experimental projects we’ve built,” Windle said.

With ERC-6551, when you transfer an NFT, the wallet and tokens that the NFT holds also go with it.

On chain today, actions can be broken down into two very simple actions, Windle explained. You can either own and own assets or use them to participate in the wider ecosystem activities.

“When you give an NFT a wallet, you allow NFTs to participate equally in everything that happens on the chain,” Windle said.

Inventory management through NFTs

By giving each NFT a wallet, it creates a flexible storage system.

“You can find the address of your NFT, copy and paste it into Metamask, and start sending all the assets in your wallet to the NFT wallet. You can go to OpenSea and see all the assets in your NFT wallet,” Windle said. “Everything in Ethereum works with wallets, and wallets are the universal layer of ownership and action on Ethereum.”

A particular NFT project related to ERC-6551 that Windle has worked on is Sapienz.

With Sapienz, each item of clothing owned by an avatar is a separate token, meaning each item of clothing is its own separate NFT that can exist in its own token-linked account.

“If your NFT owns these tokens, it will have the right to equip and unequip them on the artwork, which changes the artwork to the NFT everywhere you can see the NFT,” Windle explained. “We use the mechanics [of ERC-6551] in a limited capacity, but you can see the potential for gaming applications and character-based applications where an NFT can have its own identity.”

Beyond gaming, the ERC-6551 can also be used to organize trips and travel. Andrei Ponivesc from UltimStudio explained in a Twitter thread.

“An interesting use case is a marketplace where tour guides can offer experiences where users have a specific itinerary,” Ponivesc wrote.

Tour leaders could sell an NFT with already planned experiences within the NFT. More importantly, notes Ponivesc, is that “inside that NFT, the tour guide can add more NFTs that can be in the form of instructions or even tickets that they have to present at each part of the experience.”

ERC-6551 tokens will be compatible with all existing ERC-721 tokens, meaning that no new smart contracts need to be deployed to existing NFTs.

Marketplaces that choose to support ERC-6551 tokens must individually ensure that fraud prevention is in place to prevent malicious behavior.

Get today’s best crypto news and insights delivered to your email every night. Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter now.

Want alpha sent straight to your inbox? Get degen trading ideas, management updates, token performance, unmissable tweets and more from Blockworks Research’s Daily Debrief.

Can’t you wait? Get our news in the fastest way. Join us on Telegram and follow us on Google News.