Second poem available as NFT on OpenSea implemented as an animated GIF

My second poem – invented back in 2015 – made it onto OpenSea as a animated GIF – it is called Choices.

I think this poem shows the evolution of choice in peoples lifes. First, we are afraid so we believe there is just one way – represented as OR in propositional logic (in C | ). Later on we learn that to live is rather a rich connected net than a devided decision tree – represented as AND ( in C &). And finally, just because somebody tells you that you have to choose does not actually require you to do so – freedom leads the way to not choose – represented as NOT (in C !).

My first poem as an NFT – not so easy and cheap to do!

While I really like the works of the CryptoPunks as well as the localized version CryptoWiener, it is not as easy to actually make your own Non-Fungible Token (NFT) which certifies a digital asset to be unique and not interchangeable. The reason for this is that most of the established marketplaces like OpenSea (ETH based) or BakerySwap (BSC based) just put the metadata on the blockchain and not the payload data itself due to cost reasons. This could lead to the situation where you own the token but the art itself is gone, as described in great detail here.

InfiNFT is addressing this issue by combining two recent technologies – IPFS and Arweave. By establishing a smart contract, acting like your own store, for around 0.1 ETH (at the moment ~ 250€) you can put your NFTs in it and they take care of the rest. As I’m not an artist who is producing lots of art I was looking for a cheaper but still reliable long-term solution.

BakerySwap has a very simple interface and reasonable price to mint your NFT supporting pictures, gifs, video and audio for currently 0.01 BNB (at the moment ~ 45 €) per item, but there is not much documentation on how they store it nor some advanced interface to provide additional metadata like an IPFS hash or Arweave ID.

OpenSea recently introduced the possibility to create multiple collections and items in it via one initial transaction for currently 0.015 ETH (at the moment ~ 35€) and afterwards auction items without paying any gas fees. I signed in with my MetaMask wallet established my account there with my first collection named 4n3rd5. I created a digital representation of my first poem called “The Paladin” as an SVG file.

To get my IPFS hash I quickly installed the IPFS desktop solution and uploaded my file to it showing it right away. In a linux terminal I used the curl bash command for ipfs2arweave to get the Arweave ID for my file. Both I put in the unlockable content section at the item creation shown later to the buyer as follows:

• https://ipfs.io/ipfs/YOUR_HASH
• https://arweave.net/ARWEAVE_ID

So even if OpenSea is gone sometime the buyer/owner has additional information on how to retrieve his art!