https://manifoldxyz.substack.com/p/manifold-creator?s=r

After months of working closely with our favorite creators, we’re excited to share our vision for Manifold Creator, a creator-owned minting smart contract, and more.

Collaborating with artists like Mad Dog Jones (REPLICATOR), Pak (ASH), FVCKRENDER (Sotheby’s Auction), we learned three key aspects that a creator-centric minting contract should feature:

  1. Authenticity — true provenance for creators,
  2. Interoperability — works with existing ERC-721/1155 NFT platforms, and
  3. Extensibility — unique, creator-approved NFT applications

And of course, the smart contract should be open source and free to use. In a nutshell, this describes Manifold Creator, but there’s a lot more.

So let’s get into it.

Authenticity

VISOR by Mad Dog Jones. Minted by Mad Dog Jones. View the contract here.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/cebd3a1b-6082-4563-ac6d-f91f14de5eb3/https3A2F2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com2Fpublic2Fimages2Fa6cf979d-0892-4337-af57-480e78c48a52_1018x674.png

Currently, creators typically mint NFTs using the same platform that sells their NFT (eg. OpenSea, Rarible, Foundation). As a result, your NFT is a product of a third party’s minting contract: behind the scenes, your NFT is assigned a random ID by the platform (like Amazon assigns products with random SKUs). Further, your work is listed next to other NFTs using the same contract, oftentimes, completely unrelated.

For creators and brands who place value on their brand and work, we think its important for creators to distinguish their name in this chain of provenance. Your work should stand out based on your name, rather than get lost in the sea of NFTs.

Manifold Creator ensures the NFTs it mints are authentically attributed to the creator themselves. As a result, collectors can be assured the NFTs they purchase are 100% genuine, backed by the creator. As an example, here’s Mad Dog Jones’ first self-minted NFT on the blockchain. The token ID? 1, of course! (Also note total network cost to mint = $25 bucks; total platform fees = $0).

As NFT creators and collectos grow in sophistication, true provenance is a feature high quality creators and collectors care about.

Interoperability

Manifold Creator contract is based on the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards. As such, all NFTs minted with Manifold Creator are recognized on all open NFT marketplaces, including those like OpenSea.

NFTs minted using Manifold Creator work seamlessly with all existing open NFT platforms. This means that you have a choice of listing and selling NFTs using open libraries like the OpenSea SDK, or as you’ll read later, using your own marketplace.

Additionally, the Manifold Creator contract interoperates with NFTs minted from other platforms as well. As described further, Manifold Contracts are not only capable of minting NFTs, but interacting with other NFTs to create new collector experiences.