Game7 and Moonstream.to have a common goal to build open source infrastructure for web3 games. We want to advance the web3 gaming industry. Make it sustainable. Make the technology easy to interact with for both developers and players.
What web3 gaming needs, among other things, is a bigger player base. The key to that is more fun games. While that’s outside of our influence, we can create the technology the fun is built upon so that using the blockchain makes sense when you develop a game.
New NFTs
As a part of our long-term partnership with Game7, we released the NFT Inventory: a technology that rethinks what NFT ownership and NFT utility can be.
As the name suggests, NFT Inventory allows game designers to define inventory item slots for NFTs. Items that are equipped in those slots are owned by an NFT and not by a player’s wallet. In addition to items the technology also allows NFTs to accumulate experience, skills, and achievements.
But why?
NFT Inventory translates time spent on a game to NFT utility. Right now player achievements are associated with players’ wallets. Their NFT character’s value depends mainly on the game’s success and popularity with other players. Players can sell an NFT but can’t easily sell a wallet.
With inventory items, NFTs gain not only monetary but also in-game value. Your player character could play a big part in the game’s lore. It could have legendary items. Games can have several instances of the same character avatar with similar stats at the start. Adding items earned in-game can distinguish those characters.
This is an organic way to bring utility to any NFT.
NFT Inventory puts power back into the hands of dedicated gamers. It makes the value of their characters proportional to the skills they develop in the game.
How does it work?
The inventory can hold ERC-1155 (weapons, armors, potions), ERC-721 (unique badges, special titles, player class), and ERC-20(gold, xp, etc) tokens, all of which can be combined together using an on-chain crafting system through the use of “recipes” and tied to the character.
Is it different from the existing ERC-998 NFT standard? Yes, here’s how:
How's #NFT Inventory different from ERC998? A fair question by @juminoz
The answer 🔻 https://t.co/iY7VI6DehG
— Moonstream.to🔜 ETH Denver (@Moonstreamto) February 14, 2023
If you sell an NFT with equipped inventory items, the items are sold with the NFT. If the buyer then decides to unequip those items, they will be sent to the buyer’s wallet.
Next steps
The next step would be for games to use the technology and accommodate the use of it. Another important thing is to have marketplaces that can display items attached to NFTs. It’s probably time for big platforms like OpenSea to get with the times and provide some updates.
We think established platforms that are slow to change stifle development of new NFT mechanics. It’s already clear that OpenSea is terrible for gaming NFTs and has very little functionality.
Open source as always
NFT Inventory is an open source technology and is meant to help developers make engaging games. The smart contract can be found in Game7’s GitHub here. Have additional questions? Ask them on our Discord!