Where is your NFT metadata? – by William M. Peaster
Metaversal is one Bankless newsletter for weekly levels on NFTs, virtual worlds and collectibles
Dear Bankless Nation,
Some popular NFT platforms from the 2017-2018 era, such as Ascribe, Digital Objects and Editional, eventually went under.
These projects stored their metadata on their own servers, so when they broke, the token’s images were lost for the time being.
Lost NFTs are nothing new, then. But these early losses later spurred many advances around decentralized storage networks as well as on-chain NFTs, whose metadata can be forever retrieved from the blockchain.
Not everyone heeds the lessons of crypto history. Consider, for example, Sam Bankman-Fried who is known for FTX. This is what his first NFT minted on FTX looked like around September 2021:
No Picasso, right? Absolutely not, but at least it had pictures and metadata then. Fast forward to today and in the wake of FTX’s collapse, that same NFT, plus all the other NFTs minted on FTX, now have broken metadata:
Why? Because SBF and FTX relied on a centralized server system, and it doesn’t run those servers anymore. This system was “good enough” before, but it is non-existent now!
As such, this episode is the last major reminder of that decentralization metadata—whether through nodes on decentralized storage networks like Arweave and IPFS or on-chain through Ethereum nodes—is part of the magic of NFTs.
All that said, back up what NFTs you can when you can. In the meantime, let’s catch you up on all the latest headlines in the room, have a great weekend everyone ✌️
-WMP
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Obscurity started claim for his second airdrop.
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CoinLedger introduced NFT Tax deficit Harvestooor:
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GigaMarta new general NFT marketplace, launched.
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Ledger introduced Ledger Stax, a new crypto hardware wallet capable of displaying NFTs:
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Manifold added one Token activity overviewfor tracking recent payments and royalties, to Manifold Studio.
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sensea new marketplace for generative art, has arrived:
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Aave Companiesthe parent company of Aave, bought mobile mobiel metaverse sonar with plans to integrate the web3 social infra Lens Protocol into the platform.
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Decentralized country added in support of LAND rental to its marketplace.
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NFTfi Borrowers can now stamp, transfer or sell theirs loan obligations.
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Tesseraa protocol for collective ownership of NFTs, launched.
William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal– a bankless newsletter focused on the rise of NFTs in the crypto-economy. He has also recently contributed content to Bankless, JPG and more!
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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell assets or make financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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