Huge Potentials of NFTs on Kusama, Take 4 Projects as Examples
In a previous post we said that there was an art and NFT boom brewing in the Kusama ecosystem. Now 9 months later, the Kusama NFT ecosystem has evolved a bit more and a number of interesting NFTs have been born.
Let’s take a look at some of the infrastructural developments in Kusama NFT.
Most NFTs in the Kusama ecosystem are currently based on the RMRK standard. RMRK, also known as “NFT Lego”, is Kusama’s native NFT standard and is quite powerful compared to traditional NFT standards such as ERC 721. NFTs created based on the RMRK standard can react to emoticons, have sub-NFTs, have multiple different types of resources, render based on conditions, and can be governed by DAO. This makes the Kusama NFT more playable, more useful, and can evolve over time, making it well suited for use in games and metaverse. The RMRK standard has now been upgraded to 2.0 and has implemented all the advanced NFT features mentioned above.
On April 13, Quartz (Unique’s Canary Network) won Kusama’s 14th parachain, which will become the Kusama parachain focusing on NFT when it goes live. In addition to having faster speeds and lower transaction fees, Quartz has many innovative features. For example, it offers a flexible economic model for NFT projects, where the project owner pays the fees up front, and provides more advanced ownership management, such as the ability to rent, display or manage NFTs on behalf of others, as well as the ability for multiple people to jointly own a piece of NFT.
Elsewhere, Singular and KodaDOT offer NFT trading marketplaces, Talisman and SubWallet wallets both support direct browsing of NFTs in accounts, and Web3 Go provides visual data analysis for RMRK NFTs.
Here we look at a few of the more interesting NFT cases in Kusama.
Kanaria
Kanaria is a limited series of NFTs developed by the RMRK team, and serves as a practical example of the different features of the RMRK standard.
The final form of Kanaria is the Kanaria bird, which hatches from Kanaria eggs, which have four different rarities, corresponding to the number of gem slots and the probability of rare appearance and equipment drops after hatching. The hatching process requires the use of RMRK’s Emote feature, which means that different Emoji emotes can be sent to the eggs, and these emotes may affect the appearance of the final hatching bird. For example, a bird that receives a lot of sun “☀️” emotes may grow parts with a similar appearance.
The appearance of each Kanaria bird consists of seven parts, including the body, left wing, right wing, head, facial expression, legs, and tail. Each part has a different rarity and is randomly generated, but more advanced eggs have a higher probability of hatching a rarer appearance, and Emote may also have an effect on appearance.
In addition to the appearance of the bird itself, each bird has 7 equipment slots, including background, foreground, backpack, necklace, headpiece, left wing holder, and right wing holder. Each equipment slot can be equipped with one NFT item, and extra items that are not equipped for now can be stored in the inventory bar. The RMRK’s “Nested NFT” feature is used here, meaning that one NFT can have other child-NFTs.
Depending on the rarity of the bird, each bird also has 2–5 gem slots, with different gem NFTs having different abilities. For example, the “Legendary” gem Bragi allows you to upload custom artwork for your bird, and the “Epic” gem Kokopelli allows you to get on the early whitelist for certain items.
Some birds can have multiple resources, and you can choose which one to showcase to the public first, which is one of the features of RMRK. For example, in addition to the regular Kanaria bird look above, you can also add custom artwork to the bird, such as the one below.
Overall, the Kanaria bird is very playful and useful compared to the traditional NFT mini-pictures, and fully demonstrates the different capabilities of the RMRK standard. The gameplay of hatching, equipping sub NFTs, and gems with different abilities is very reminiscent of the game and meta-universe. the RMRK team probably thought so too, as they took Kanaria a step further with the Kanaria Skybreach meta-universe for Kanaria.
Skybreach Metaverse
The Skybreach metaverse, also developed by the RMRK team, is an extension of the Kanaria concept and consists of nine continents suspended in the sky, each with 25,000 plots and different biomes, with one continent opening first.
Plots are divided into four classes: Normal, Rare, Epic, and Special, corresponding to different building heights, depths, and decay times. Decay means that a parcel will be reclaimed if it is not developed within a set period of time, thus motivating people to actually develop and use the land instead of simply speculating on it.
The Skybreach metaverse is 2D pixel style. The development team felt that 2D would make the entire metaverse lighter and more mobile-friendly, thus helping to appeal to the mainstream users. I think another obvious benefit is that the development cycle will be shorter, it will be less difficult to develop other gameplay based on it, and 2D doesn’t mean it’s not fun — after all, there are many great 2D games that are small and beautiful.
The characters in the metaverse are various NFTs, initially supporting RMRK’s Kanaria birds and Chunkies, with more to be added through the governance process in the future. As mentioned above, NFTs based on the RMRK standard can have multiple resources, so the Kanaria bird can contain one pixel-style resource to be used in Skybreach.
Skybreach’s governance system is called “World Governance”, and the governing body is all Kanaria birds. This means that Kanaria bird holders can change all aspects of Skybreach through governance, such as available meta-universe characters, backstories, new continents, etc.
Skybreach has a main storyline, and users can choose to explore the main storyline and complete various quests, as well as wander around the metaverse, somewhat similar to some open world games. Users can also develop their own side plots, side quests, or even create a whole other world to customize their own worldview, as long as it is integrated with the main plot. Adding storylines to Skybreach after its launch requires approval from World Governance.
Overall, Skybreach is a community-owned, decentralized, casual-style metaverse.
Moonglade
Moonglade is a series of NFTs combined with real-world reforestation, kind of like an NFT version of “Ant Forest”.
Moonglade is a collaboration between RMRK and the environmental project RMTerra to plant trees in some of the wastelands destroyed by mountain fires in Portugal. moonglade creates corresponding virtual tree NFTs for real trees, created by Georgian artist Masholand.
The initial form of these NFTs is a bag of seeds (blind box), which will be revealed after a month, i.e. the seeds will turn into unique virtual tree NFTs that will display information about the corresponding real trees, such as species, geographical location, planting date, etc. These small tree NFTs may be able to bear fruit NFTs. Since the saplings are fragile, if the real saplings do not survive after a month, then your revealed the NFT will not grow into a tree, but will become a “forest spirit” NFT.
In the official introduction it says “In a RMRK-based metaverse, these trees may have special uses and values, such as the ability to produce virtual fruit, oxygen, lower temperatures, etc.. At this point we can’t promise that these features will actually happen, but the possibility itself is already a big deal.”
Kusama Kingdom
Kusama Kingdom wants to create a “Kusama Kingdom” universe and currently has two limited NFT series, Kusama King and Kusama Queen.
Kusama King has four rarities, Limited, Rare, Ultra Rare and Legendary, and there are only 10 Legendary Kings, which correspond to the 10 “Legend of the Lost Sword” NFTs. “Kusama Queen also has the same gameplay, except that the Lost Sword becomes the cursed Frog Prince.
If you have both King and Queen, then add a wedding ring NFT to give birth to the “Royal Baby” NFT.
The team has taken a number of initiatives to empower NFT. For example, holders of both the King and Queen collections can join the exclusive Discord group “The Great Hall”, where they discuss various NFT projects. Kusama King holders can manage “The King Bounty” fund and participate in other early stage NFT projects through KingPad.
Summary
The NFT ecosystem on Kusama is now taking shape and the infrastructure is relatively complete. The native RMRK standard gives more imagination to the NFT project on Kusama and allows us to see some new ways of playing NFT. In the future, Kusama NFT also hopes to combine with Metaverse, GameFi, etc. to explore more interesting ways to play.
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