OpenSea, one of the largest platforms for the creation and marketing of non-fugible tokens (NFT) based on Ethereum, will allow to store part of the data of each token (metadata) in the network of decentralized files IPFS and Filecoin.
The announcement was given from the official Twitter of the company. He also communicated about a new immutability system for NFT called Frozen (Freeze). This guarantees that, once a token is created, its metadata cannot be modified, such as its original name, photograph and personal attributes, among others.
Last May, as reported by CriptoNoticias, the Filecoin platform, in conjunction with the IPSF protocol, launched the NFT file system.Storage, dedicated to the storage and safeguarding of this type of non-expendable tokens. This is the system that OpenSea will use.
The metadata of an NFT is all of these values and attributes that are not stored on the blockchain. For example, in a CryptoKittie, the image or photo of the cat along with the different attributes that characterize it, are not stored in the Ethereum network.
The NFT, within their protocol, possess an attribute called tokenURI. This assigns the address where the token metadata will be stored, either a server or any other web service.
The reason why some values are not stored within the network it has to do with network cost, since exchanging this type of NFT would require very high mining fees. However, there are projects that do store all their values within the Ethereum blockchain, as is the case of Larva Labs ‘ Autoglyphs platform.
On the other hand, the servers in which metadata is stored are usually centralized, either in Google Cloud Service, Amazon Web Service, or any other. This represents a serious problem in the immutability of NFT, because, in case a server stops working, the data that an NFT points to would be invalid.
In this perspective, NFTSARE seen more as a property contract, registered on some blockchain, than an asset itself.
Decentralized web storage services
IPFS or Inter-Planetary File System, is a decentralized web protocol, which allows to store different types of documents and files (images, videos, text) in a decentralized network.
With the NFT platform.Storage, is intended to mitigate this problem. It functions as a decentralized file system with unique identifiers. When acquiring an identifier, which would be homologous to a web domain (for example, criptonoticias.com) this will be resistant to any type of modification.
IPFS is the storage protocol, but Filecoin is the file system. All the data that IPFS handles needs a physical place to store it. In this case, that place is provided by Filecoin, which operates through a decentralized distributed network, which has its own cryptocurrency (FIL).
With this type of system, tokenURI attributes can now point to addresses within the IPFS network called CID (Content Identifier), which will not depend on a single central entity, as they are located in a distributed network.
In other words, the place to place http://www.criptonoticias.com in the tokenURi of an NFT, whose content is stored on a centralized server, you can now point to links of the type ipfs://bafybeigvafaks2bvivtv46n2z7uxszpvl25jhvzc6dbhnjjgjkbeia5jta / nft. mp4, which are located within the IPFS network.
More immutable NFT
OpenSea’s bet is to create more decentralized and immutable tokens, which cannot be modified and stand the test of time. With function Frozen, NFT creators will be able to know how “immutable” their tokens are.
Choice Frozen (freeze) will allow creators to freeze all the metadata of an NFT, including: name, media (JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG, MP4 and many others), description and statistics.
As the metadata is “frozen” it is guaranteed that whoever acquires the token will not be able to modify any of its attributes created by its original owner.
This option has no cost, however, users will have to pay the gas necessary to process the transaction on the Ethereum network.