In-depth interpretation of ERC-6551: What new possibilities will it bring to the NFT track?

Original author: bayemon.eth, grapefruit

On June 25th, the EthGlobal Waterloo Hackathon officially ended. A total of 11 projects entered the finals, covering NFT, infrastructure, AI, payment and other fields. It is worth noting that among the 11 selected projects, 4 projects revolve around the newly proposed token standard ERC-6551. For example, the decentralized media network platform AquaNet supports users to use the NFT they hold as their own The account and auction platform Fukuro support NFT bundled with ERC 20 or other NFTs for buying and selling.

This is also the real landing project seen by users since the concept of ERC-6551 was proposed, and they quickly attracted the intensive attention of the encryption community.

ERC-6551 is a new token standard released by the Future Primitive team on May 23. It will support NFT to create a Token Bound Account (TBA), that is, NFT can be used as a wallet address or an account on the chain. To NFT is the wallet.

This will open a new door for ERC 721 NFT, because the current NFT is only a static asset stored in the wallet, that is, it cannot interact with other DApps, nor can it be used as a real identity representative on the chain. The identity of the current user on the chain It is still the wallet address. ERC-6551 will support the current ERC 721 NFT to create a smart contract wallet account, and use NFT as its identity wallet account on the chain. The NFT account can contain multiple wallet addresses, NFTs held, and ERC 20 tokens. Let NFT become a real identity account representative on the chain.

This article will focus on ERC-6551's characteristics, implementation principles, and differences from ERC-721, etc., to explore what new possibilities ERC-6551 will bring to the NFT track.

What is ERC-6551?

ERC-6551 concept

In the past, NFT could only be used as a small picture lying in the user's wallet "putting down", and it seemed to have no other purpose except for viewing. The emergence of ERC-6551 may open up a new situation for it. In addition to being an image asset, it also has other functions such as an account on the chain, NFT and NFT can be bundled and packaged for sale, etc., making it more composable and dynamic Sex and interactivity, make NFT assets "live" completely.

How to understand ERC-6551? To put it simply, it is to create a wallet of its own for NFT through a string of fresh codes (ERC-6551), and NFT is this wallet account.

If we put the setting of Legend of Sword and Fairy on the NFT, let’s first assume that Li Xiaoyao is an NFT created under the ERC-721 standard, then the money he got from fighting in the big world, the achievements he got through the plot, the mahogany sword in his backpack, and even The "social relationships" formed by Zhao Linger, Lin Yueru and others do not actually belong to "Li Xiaoyao" himself, but are scattered as separate NFTs in the wallets of players who have purchased stand-alone games. ERC-6551 binds Li Xiaoyao to a wallet account that belongs only to him. All assets, reputation and even social relationships attached to him, as well as subsequent inheritance and continuation, will be written on the chain with the words "the past and the old "Memories" archive form appears under this NFT account, rather than the operations performed by players who purchase games when only the ERC-721 standard is available.

ERC-6551 source

So, why did the Future Primitive team introduce a new development standard, ERC-6551, when there is already ERC-721 and it has already been widely adopted? Is it really necessary to spend a lot of time just to give NFT the so-called "autonomy"? This is mainly because the current ERC-721 still has loopholes.

As we all know, ERC-721 has long been widely adopted in the NFT field, and NFTs created based on this account for a large share of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. However, there are still obvious defects in this standard. At present, the NFT created based on ERC-721 is still only a static asset. Except that it can only be transferred between accounts as a "token", it seems that there is no such thing as an NFT itself. Create your own story as a representation of your on-chain or Web3 identity.

There is no traceable transaction history and no on-chain signature, which means that tokens minted under the ERC-721 standard cannot interact with other smart contracts and DApps like wallets, cannot own other assets, and can only be used as a picture "mascot" "The same existence.

In fact, in order to make ERC-721 a real identity representative on the chain, developers in the Ethereum community have also given endless proposals over the years, defining various extension methods to the ERC-721 standard.

Proposals related to the issue of ERC-721 assets owning tokens

Although there have been proposals to enable ERC-721 to have the ability to own assets, instead of just a "small picture" lying in the little fox's wallet, the biggest problem with these proposals is that it is not compatible with ERC-721. This also means that most of the NFTs currently circulating in the market require developers to modify the code a lot if they want to become "wallets".

Therefore, in order to grant more functions to ERC-721 assets while ensuring full compatibility with previously deployed ERC-721, Future Primitive released the ERC-6551 standard. A member of the team @BennyGiang was also a member of Dapper Labs/CryptoKitties Early project member.

Inspired by Soul Bound Tokens (SBT), the ERC-6551 standard transforms the "small picture" in the wallet into the wallet itself, creating Token Bound Accounts (TBA) for NFT, allowing NFT to directly Interact on the chain, record transaction history, and be able to hold assets on the chain. The token-bound account belongs to the NFT owner and is authorized to the owner to allow them to directly initiate on-chain interactive operations.

For example, Xiao Ming bought Azuki before and usually stored it in his wallet. Now through ERC-6551, he can create a smart contract account (TBA) for him. NFT is the identity of the account. Under this account system, he can also hold There are other NFTs, encrypted Tokens, POAP identity certificates, etc., that is, NFTs are wallets. As a "wallet", TBA can interact with other DApps, etc.

Standing on the shoulders of giants, ERC-6551 converts NFT into a wallet, expands the originally extremely flat asset into a "life body" that seems to be truly liquid, and becomes an overall proof of agglomeration of ownership and transactions.

ERC-6551 Features

As mentioned above, in order to realize more functions of NFT, ERC-6551 needs to have the characteristics of compatibility, composability and transaction traceability.

Compatibility

In order to improve the versatility, interoperability and scalability of applications, while reducing development and deployment costs. In the day-to-day emphasis on "compatibility" in the Ethereum ecosystem, ERC-6551, as an extension of the OG status standard ERC-721 in the NFT field, naturally engraved the word "compatibility" into the DNA of the new standard. For developers, compatibility means that there is no need to make code-level modifications to the current ERC-721 and smart contracts after Wrapper; for holders, there is no need to perform any additional operations on the NFT that already exists in the wallet.

Composability and traceability

In addition to "compatibility", the standardization and composability of smart contracts has become a mainstream trend. The composability of the ERC-6551 standard is mainly that it allows all token-bound assets to be operated in the same place, providing DAPP with easier and more flexible asset management and bundling. For example, after OpenSea confirms that ERC-6551 can be used one day in the future, artists can package and sell a series of NFTs on OpenSea.

In addition, ERC-6551 supports allowing NFT to directly interact on the chain and record transaction history. This transaction history may provide a traceable transaction path proof for NFT royalties that were not easy to track before, so more and more will emerge in terms of royalty division. feasible solution.

What are the application scenarios of ERC-6551?

Even though ERC-6551 has only been proposed for more than a month, it has set off a frenzy of discussions in the community. To some extent, what ERC-6551 creates is an NFT wallet with "development" ability and infinitely close to reality. Simulate human interaction. Therefore, in terms of games and digital signatures, many excellent use cases based on ERC-6551 have emerged.

Gaming Parallel Colony: NFT as Gamer Account

Parallel Colony is a narrative game that combines artificial intelligence, ERC-6551, and The Sims. The protagonist in the game, Parallel Avatar AI, started his own life with a few dollars in his pocket (the currency in the game is ERC-20 PRIME), a chip and a rifle.

Among them, the virtual character Avatar AI NFT uses ERC-6551 technology, that is, the NFT is used as its own game account, and all purchased items in the game belong to the wallet bound to the NFT. Avatar AI will work with the player to decide how to dispose of the assets in the wallet .

Tokenbound Titans: NFT-like "development" game

Tokenbound Titans is an NPC game developed by HomeDAO in ETH Waterloo 2023. It uses the ERC-6551 standard and combines the NPC game mode with dynamically generated NFT. Players are the owners of NFTs, and each NFT is bound to a character with different abilities and characteristics.

The core gameplay is that characters obtain token rewards through battles, and spend money to fill up attributes such as attack, speed, defense, and blood volume. As the level increases, new moves and combo skills can also be unlocked.

The original NFT chain game model seems to be more like the arrangement and combination of code blocks, and this seems unfriendly to players who love "development" games. The emergence of ERC-6551 has completely changed the integration of chain games and NFTs, that is, character NFTs can continue to evolve and grow during the game, and respond truly to players' choices.

Web3 digital fashion company StapleVerse: Leveraging ERC-6551 to launch NFT signature edition hat

Stapleverse jointly launched a limited edition baseball cap with @ 9 dccxyz on June 21. Unlike other signed limited editions, the signature on the baseball cap is an electronic version. It is precisely because of the launch of ERC-6551 that endows NFT with the right to hold other NFTs. In the joint name of Stapleverse and @ 9 dccxyz, the "hat" NFT becomes the holder of the "signature" NFT. If the "hat" NFT holder makes a subsequent transaction, the "signature" will also be traded into the buyer's wallet as an additional asset of the "hat". From this point of view, ERC-6551 can be regarded as a means to abstract and realize certain "subordination" in the real world on NFT.