Utilities can be assets if they can be bought and sold. The commodities markets in traditional finance are proof of this. You can buy and sell contracts in the “utilities” space (gas, electric, oil, etc). However, access to those utilities is not what is bought and sold. In fact, there are few to no markets where access to a utility (and utility here is defined as anything that allows a person to take some action) can be bought, sold, or traded.
NFTs change this.
Right now, we are living in a speculative bubble. …
Using Pinata Submarine, Hardhat, and Ethers.js
NFTs aren’t just digital pieces of art. They are layered mechanisms for proving ownership, access, rights, and more. NFT avatars (sometimes knows as PFP—ProFile Picture) have been one of the most popular use cases for NFTs. You can see this with CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), and more. But the reason they are popular doesn’t end with the profile picture you get access to. These PFP NFTs are membership tokens more than anything else.
Owners of BAYC tokens can update their profile pictures, sure. But they also get exclusive members-only access to content, Discord channels, web pages, and more…
And Share Them Through Pinata
Are you a Bored Ape? Maybe you’re a CryptoPunk? No? Maybe a little more Meebit than Genie? Regardless of your flavor of NFT avatars, it’s clear there is a new world emerging around persona-based art. Some of these avatars are already 3D and others require the creativity of a broader community to breathe 3D life into them. No matter what, though, we’re seeing the world of persona-based art pushed to the limits thanks to NFTs.
Today, we’re going to break through the limit and show you how to make your 3D avatars more exciting, more fun, and, hopefully, more viral…
The beautiful thing about NFTs is the way that they have pushed the creator economy forward. Marketplaces are great for aggregation, simplicity, and getting started, but many creators want to provide a dedicated experience for their NFTs on their own site. Fortunately, that’s possible with OpenSea, Squarespace, and Pinata.
In this guide, we’re going to walk through how to add NFT files to IPFS through Pinata, mint NFTs on OpenSea, and display our NFT collection on Squarespace—all without writing any code!
Let’s get started. First, you’ll need to sign up for your accounts. …
There is a myriad of reasons someone chooses to store their files on Dropbox. Ease of use, price, etc. Interestingly, one of the reasons many people add files to Dropbox is to share them. But there’s a problem with this.
It’s a terrible experience.
Dropbox is great at storing files. It’s not designed around sharing and displaying files in the way the creator economy of today requires. It was never meant to be a creator’s distribution platform. And because of this, sharing a file link on Dropbox looks a lot like this for the people you share with.
Instead of Google Poly or Sketchfab
If you’ve been paying attention to the art world over the last 10 years, you’ve seen a huge spike in the use of 3D modeling in art. This spans personal art pieces to video games to NFTs. The pandemic even gave rise to the concept of virtual events and conferences that take place in 3D worlds. 3D objects are everywhere.
Except on IPFS.
While these 3D objects can easily be stored on IPFS, viewing them is a different story. And viewing the models is the whole point to creating them, right? Let’s explore how we can move away from platforms…
A Faster, More Efficient Way To Create NFTs
The gas fees on Ethereum are currently astronomical. It makes sense that layer 2 solutions are seeing a boom in usage. However, it’s important to ensure NFTs that start their lives on a layer 2 solution are created in a way that makes them portable and verifiable.
One of the most known and most-used layer 2 solutions in the Ethereum space is Polygon (formerly Matic). Polygon enables smart contract deployment and transactions with significant performance and cost benefits. When it’s time to move assets to and from the main Ethereum chain, Polygon makes this easy.
Today, we’re going to build…
Hi Dan!
The answer is sort of. You could already host an IPFS website on your own domain. The dedicated gateways can be thought of as a host that allows you to serve up any content you pin on Pinata. Rather than a single website, it is the place where you can pull any files you've pinned on your account.
And yes, you can have more than one domain on the Professional account. Each additional gateway is an extra $10/month FYI.
Fast and Branded For You
Today, we’re excited to release dedicated IPFS gateways. While the public Pinata gateways will continue to exist, dedicated gateways will give NFTs and DeFi applications a fast, branded way to serve content.
Why Might You Need a Dedicated Gateway?
If you’re fetching content from IPFS, you want it to be fast. But the more content that’s fetched, the slower the response times can be. It’s like waiting at a busy deli counter for a nice pastrami. You know you’ll eventually get it, but you don’t know how long it’ll take for everyone else to get their delicious lunch. …
A Defined Relationship Among Many
You’ve seen this title before. Countless publications and even mainstream news organizations have tried to answer this question. Unfortunately, they are providing answers to questions that may not have been asked. Yes, the technical implementation of NFTs is important in the same way that the technical implementation of your dishwasher is important. But you don’t need an article explaining that. You need a quick guide that explains how to use your dishwasher and why you shouldn’t be hand-washing your dishes.
We’re going to tackle this article from strictly a utility and best practices approach. No blockchain descriptions. Keeping it simple…
