When it was announced that the RMRK dev team was working on implementing RMRK 2.0 standards on Singular (Kusama’s premiere NFT marketplace), I leapt for joy because this is what I (and many other forward-thinking creators familiar with the immense power of RMRK’s advanced NFT protocol) have been waiting for. A chance to take the magic of RMRK 2.0 as expressed on Kanaria and create some unbelievably cool projects, the kind of which has never been seen before.

Unfortunately, not many people can appreciate the unbounded possibilities that RMRK 2.0 on Singular will unleash. Thus, I decided to write this article to explain in short details 3 reasons why I am so excited about RMRK 2.0 logic on Singular. My hope is that every creator who reads this article will have a far better understanding of what’s coming and be better prepared for this creatively liberating future.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

1. Infinite NFT composability with Nesting and Conditional Rendering

For the RMRK-uninitiated, nesting is the ability for NFTs to own other NFTs. In RMRK 2.0,

1. Every NFT can own and be owned by other NFTs.
2. There is no limit to the number of NFTs in an ownership chain, such that the parent NFT can own as many children as the creator allows.
3. A child NFT can be transferable or non-transferable. If it’s transferable, then it means that the owner of the parent NFT can send the child NFT out of the parent NFT (to a wallet or another NFT). If it is non-transferable, then it means the owner can’t send the child NFT out of the parent NFT. Vitalik Buterin referred to this as Soulbound. On Kanaria, this is what enables birds to own items and gems. Items are transferable, hence, can be sold; while gems are non-transferable.

On its own, nesting is a powerful feature, but it’s not enough.

To unlock the full potential of nesting, we need conditional rendering — the ability of an NFT to change its look based on on-chain actions.

On-chain actions range from a collector equipping and unequipping child NFTs to the NFT changing on its own when certain conditions are met (for example, the background of the NFT changing in accordance with the time of day).

Put conditional rendering and nesting together and you have unimaginable composability. A few possibilities:

1. The Ring collection, wherein the number of rings on each NFT is determined by the number of rings that have been equipped. Where each ring NFT is an image of a single ring.
2. A podcaster releases 1,000 genesis NFTs. Every new episode of the podcast is sent as child NFTs to the 1,000 genesis NFTs. Thus, only those with the genesis NFTs will be able to listen to the new podcast episode. They can also choose to sell the new episodes as standalone NFTs on Singular.
3. A PFP (profile picture) NFT artist designs a collection with 1,000 genesis skeletons and then makes all body parts and accessories available as NFTs that can be claimed and traded by the collectors to build their unique character. This is a lot more work for the PFP artist, but probably a lot more fun for all involved, especially when a certain combination of skeletons + items/body creates higher subjective value for collectors.

What’s more powerful than one creator taking on the burden of parent-child NFT relationship is multiple creators doing it.

For example, a PFP collection can be created with characters that are programmed to dance to any kind of music. Then collectors can buy these danceable NFTs and equip them with any song they’ve purchased on the Singular platform. If it’s a ballad, the PFP character will dance slowly, if it’s an Afrobeat or EDM song, the character will scatter the dance floor.

The real joy of RMRK 2.0 for creators is the composability that it enables.

2. Smart collections with Multi-resource

Another key feature of RMRK 2.0 is the multi-resource functionality, wherein an NFT can have more than one resource. Resource, in this context, is the file the NFT points to. For example, in NFT 1.0, a PFP character NFT can only point to a resource that is the image of the PFP character. A single resource has two main downsides:

1. It’s harder to ensure forever-availability when there is only one source. If the single resource is hosted on a data storage s that eventually goes down, what next? You have to stay updated to know when this happens and find a way to upload the resource again in a new storage service.
2. NFTs that could be smart become somewhat stupid. What resource do you choose for a book NFT? The PDF of the book, the audiobook, or the book cover? What of a VR NFT, what resource do you upload? The VR file — which will probably not load on mobile devices — or an MP4 file that shows whats in the VR file?

As you can see, these are difficult decisions for any creator to make when dealing with only single-resource NFTs. With RMRK 2.0 on Singular, every creator is empowered to upload as many resources as they like for a single NFT. Just as there are two main downsides to single-resource NFTs, there are two key upsides to their multi-resource counterparts:

1. Multi-resource NFTs enable a more robust NFT storage mechanism that better ensures forever-availability of NFTs. A single NFT resource can be duplicated and stored on different storage networks and protocols, ensuring that when one goes down, others will serve as worthy backups. In this manner, NFT creators no longer have to choose between one service or another (for example, centralized or decentralized storage). Instead, they can have the best of all worlds.
2. Multi-resource NFTs enable the concept of smart NFTs. Smart NFTs are NFTs that load a different resource depending on which platform the NFT is being viewed. Our book NFT above can have 3 resources: a PDF that is loaded on ebook readers; a JPEG book cover that is loaded on the Singular marketplace; and an MP3 Audiobook that is loaded on audio players.

3. Emoting for increased social interaction

We’ll never forget when emoting on Kanaria eggs brought down Kusama…twice!

With RMRK 2.0 on Singular comes the arrival of emojis as an added layer of social interaction for NFTs. This could serve as a method for price discovery, gamification, or something as yet uninvented. We imagine that many creators will be able to find new and unique ways to use the emoting functionality in RMRK 2.0.

Conclusion

With the level of NFT composability enabled by RMRK 2.0 on Singular, I believe sincerely that the only limit to amazing projects and collections is the imagination of the creator.

To stay up to date on the team’s progress, subscribe to their newsletter and follow RMRK on Twitter. You can also chat with the founders and community on Telegram and Discord if that’s your kind of thing.

gbaci is an enthusiast of decentralization who co-maintains a weekly newsletter that covers the latest happenings in the DotSama (Polkadot and Kusama) ecosystem.

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