Pioneering Web3 infrastructure startup NMKR ($NMKR) made an important announcement yesterday, which Tim Harrison, VP of Community & Ecosystem at IOG, called a “groundbreaking innovation” for Cardano NFTs (aka “CNFTs”).

What Does NMKR Do?

Let’s start with a brief history of NMKR.

It all started in April 2021 when Patrick Tobler (@Padierfind on Twitter), a computer science student from Stuttgart, Germany, launched a super easy tool for creating your own non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Cardano.

In July 2022, during an interview with the Cryptonomist, Tobler, explained why his NFT-focused startup had decided to rebrand from “NFT-MAKER” to NMKR:

“NMKR (pronounced as N Maker) is a strategic rebrand of NFT-MAKER to reach new audiences with NMKR products and bring improved experiences for users in the decentralized economy.

“The transition to Web3 will require us not only to specialize in NFTs but also to provide a variety of other utility cases on blockchains for our customers. Our customers have been asking for more than just crypto-collectibles – they want real-world utility cases. The Web3 world is coming, and we’re ready to support our customers in realizing their projects.

“We will continue to mint NFTs the same way we did. However, with recent technical capability advancements, we want to do more and help others realize their dreams of building blockchain products or services or integrating blockchain into their existing ones. We are on a mission to make decentralization even more usable. In the near future, we will tackle real-world problems with blockchain technology. We see the gaming space and beyond as an incredible opportunity for making a true contribution.“

And this is what Tobler, who is the Founder and CEO of NMKR, said about his firm’s main product:

“The NMKR Studio (formerly NFT-MAKER PRO) at the core of NMKR products will provide easy-to-use development APIs and no-code building blocks for modular development needs on multiple blockchains and support various Web3 use cases. Moreover, NMKR Studio will be the backbone of our ecosystem products. We are confident that this will be a successful product in sustaining other use cases because the underlying API technology of NMKR Studio has already minted over 1 million NFTs on Cardano.“

Here are some interesting NMKR stats:

Source: NMKR

Currently, NMKR has the following six products and services:

Source: NMKR

In a blog post published on 15 August 2022, NMKR said that it has built “a Minting API for a new NFT ecosystem, with the goal of making it as easy as possible for anyone to mint and engage with NFTs.” It went on to say that NMKR is “providing the technology on the Cardano blockchain, providing minting services, white label NFT drops and also allow for the migration and integration of NFTs and NFT-related services between Cardano and other distributed ledger technologies.”

It also mentioned that “the collaboration will see the integration of a new FIAT payment option created by NMKR, meaning that users will be able to pay with traditional currencies, as well as crypto currencies. This will enable anyone across the globe to participate in an NFT sale without needing a prior in-depth understanding of the crypto market.”

‍The NMKR CEO had this to say about his firm partnering with IOG:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‍“We are excited to be officially collaborating with Input Output Global. We believe that their experience in building and deploying new blockchain capabilities will be invaluable in helping us achieve our goal of driving widespread adoption of NFT technology on Cardano.“

And IOG Co-Founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson stated:

‍”This is an important step for IOG and our mission to build a better tomorrow for everyone through technology. We are excited to be working with NMKR as they develop an entire minting and payment infrastructure ecosystem, making NFTs accessible for everyone.“

Why NMKR Say 11 October 2022 Was a Historic Day for Cardano NFTs

Here is how World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web, defines Decentralized identifiers (DIDs):

“Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) are a new type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. A DID refers to any subject (e.g., a person, organization, thing, data model, abstract entity, etc.) as determined by the controller of the DID. In contrast to typical, federated identifiers, DIDs have been designed so that they may be decoupled from centralized registries, identity providers, and certificate authorities.

“Specifically, while other parties might be used to help enable the discovery of information related to a DID, the design enables the controller of a DID to prove control over it without requiring permission from any other party. DIDs are URIs that associate a DID subject with a DID document allowing trustable interactions associated with that subject.“

On 6 July 2022, NMKR CEO Patrick Tobler added to GitHub a Cardano proposal (CIP-0066), which defined a standard to verify NFT projects using DIDs. Here is how he defined the motivation for this proposal:

“The verification process of the authenticity of NFT projects is currently a centralized effort, that is completely in the hands of the NFT platforms. Most of these platforms create a centralized database of verified projects and have arbitrary rules that define which NFTs get verified on the respective platform.

“Not only is this not scalable because it relies on a case-to-case verification process often done manually and requires the NFT creators to go through the verification process on an increasing amount of different platforms, but it is also highly centralized and doesn’t utilize a global cross-platform verification method.“

Yesterday, IOG’s VP of Community & Ecosystem explained why he was excited about NMKR Studio’s newest feature, which is support for DIDs:

In a thread post on Twitter yesterday, the NMKR team explained what they had managed to do:

“Earlier this year, we created CIP-066 together with @IAM_X_IDENTITY , which allows creators of NFT collections to connect their Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) with NFTs. ‼️ This allows creators to directly connect their Identity to their NFTs.“

Then then proceeded to explain how to use this new feature in NMKR Studio.

After seeing this announcement, IOG Co-Founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson tweeted that it was “great to see progress with CNFTs.”