Proposal to create NFT Explorer / Rarible Protocol

Proposals Grant Proposals
#1

TLDR

We propose to fund the development of the NFT Explorer for the Rarible Protocol. This Explorer will be displaying the data and analytics on any NFTs that are created on blockchains that are integrated with the protocol.

Problem / Opportunity

Users of the Rarible protocol do not have the opportunity to view data of NFTs created on different blockchains that are integrated with the Rarible protocol.

Competitive Analysis

At the moment there are several applications that display NFTs` data: Ethereum / ERC-721 (NFT) explorer — Blockchair, NFTBank.ai - Make NFT portfolio management smart. However, they do not work with other blockchains and they do not display actual data on specific NFTs from other blockchains. Thus, the user of the protocol cannot easily get data of any NFTs created on different blockchains.

Funding Milestones and Payments

Milestone 1 (Nov 27, 2021 → Jan 10, 2022):

  • Development of all key data for NFTs.
  • Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Flow, Ethereum)
  • Ready functionality for testing.

Milestone 2 (Jan 11, 2021 → Feb 11, 2022):

  • Developing an interface for the NFT Explorer.
  • Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Polygon, Moonbeam, Tezos)
  • Adding a new button to the Rarible Protocol main page.

Milestone 3 (Feb 12, 2022 → Mar 12 2022):

  • Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Polkadot, Binance)
  • Development of analytics based on NFTs history data.
  • Adding analytics on NFT Explorer.

Team Members

VINOGRADOV DANILA. Business Development / Analyst

BOGOMOLOV KIRILL. Strategy Lead / Project Manager

AGIBALOV SERGEI. Back-end Developer

MATROSOV ARTEM. Front-end / Back-end Developer

In addition to the presented members, we are also planning on hiring a designer and another back-end developer for some parts of the work.

Dates may be subject to change, but the team will do its utmost to meet the deadlines.

Total Payments

The total amount that would be needed for the implementation of the proposed idea equals $50,000. This amount will be divided between the milestones as follows:

Milestone 1: $6,000 upfront to pay for hiring, $4,000 upon completion of the Milestone 1;

Milestone 2: $10,000 upfront, $10,000 upon completion of the Milestone 2;

Milestone 3: $10,000 upfront, $10,000 upon completion of the Milestone 3.

Payments will be made to the following Ethereum address:

0x07B2c5CD7723D9E56a544714164904D24ACB7A3d

We consider ourselves independent contractors of the Rarible DAO and will report taxes accordingly. Forms W8-BEN and W9 will be filled out accordingly before funds get distributed to our team.

The contact person for this project will be Vinogradov Danila.

Contact information:

  • vinogradov.do@phystech.edu

  • Discord: DANILA#9864

Use of Funds

The funds will be used to cover the payments to the team members and the expenses for tools and services that the team would need during the implementation. We will provide a detailed report on the use of funds upon request.

Accountability

Our project will attend weekly community calls, and provide updates on our milestones as we make progress. In the event that we can’t fulfill our commitment, funds will be returned to Rarible DAO. We will also work with community members to ensure updates are distributed through the Rarible communication channels.

Why should Rarible DAO fund this?

This will allow the protocol to provide users with new opportunities to explore any NFT created on blockchains that are integrated with the Rarible protocol. It will also allow developers to get up-to-date data on NFT tokens on different blockchains without having to switch to other explorer apps for a particular blockchain.

5 Likes
Proposal Review
#2

Thanks for the updated proposal.

I’m curious to hear more about this " At the moment there are several applications that display NFTs` data: Ethereum / ERC-721 (NFT) explorer — Blockchair, NFTBank.ai - Make NFT portfolio management smart. However, they do not work with other blockchains and they do not display actual data on specific NFTs from other blockchains. Thus, the user of the protocol cannot easily get data of any NFTs created on different blockchains."

Is the idea to basically create NFTBank.ai but make it cross-chain? So end product will look really similar?

For the first milestone “Development of all key data for NFTs.” > what does this mean?
For milestone 3: “Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Polkadot, Binance)” > we are not on those blockchains yet.

4 Likes
#3

Hi Eric.

“Is the idea to basically create NFTBank.ai but make it cross-chain? So end product will look really similar?”

Not quite. Well, almost every NFT explorer is similar to each other, because the main idea is to provide detailed information from the blockchain to users. But comparing with other NFT explorers, we found there some things that are not well implemented in current explorers:

  1. current NFT explorers don’t show most types of data from IPFS. I mean, let’s say for example NFT creator uploaded not just an image, but some audio/movie/whatever. Most of the current NFT explorers don’t support displaying it
  2. they provide data mostly about every NFT collection overall, but without detailed information about every single token in a certain collection
  3. They don’t provide information on which NFT marketplaces a collection can be bought
  4. They are not cross-chain, so it’s not easy to find all NFT collections of a certain project if collections are on different blockchains

P.S. by ‘project’ I mean: artists, game developers, and any other NFT creators

So, answering your question: we want to create a better version of NFT explorer which solves the problems I mentioned above, and cross-chain.

“For the first milestone “Development of all key data for NFTs.” > what does this mean?”
It means to finally decide which data is essential (and which is not) for target users and should be displayed on Rarible NFT explorer (e.g. token’s transaction history, age, where can be found for buying, etc).

“For milestone 3: “Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Polkadot, Binance)” > we are not on those blockchains yet.” – Yeah, we know, that’s why we wrote in our proposal that deadlines may be changed (e.g. because the protocol is not on those blockchains yet).

4 Likes
#4

Interesting proposal! I like the idea of having one place to see information about all NFTs that are supported by Rarible Protocol.

Am I right that the thing you are going to build is something in between Zerion and Etherscan but especially for NFTs ?

2 Likes
#5

Thanks for the comment! Yes, you could say that. First, we will give the opportunity to simply get data about all NFTs, and then we will create actual analytics of this data.

1 Like
#6

Hi @DANILA,

Thank you for posting your proposal here.

I get what you’re shooting for - being this kinda Zapper and Etherscan-like tool for NFTs - which seems like a sound product goal, but have a few questions about execution and moats/defensibility:

  • Your protocol enabled route to your technology foundations: could be followed by others, right?
  • It seems once the base technology is built here, this becomes a features and marketing race - would you disagree? Ie you and your competitors seek to become as dominant as MetaMask in its market - and at least as significant as Zapper and Zerion in there’s - via features, engagement and virality
  • If you agree about features and marketing race, how will you execute and compete in this race? I would guess you’ll need a great product designer with UX chops and a growth marketer soon and note your team is currently strong in engineering, strategy and biz dev.

Look forward to your thoughts.

2 Likes
#7

Hey Danila! I’m a fan of this proposal. Things I’d like to see before I would vote for it (not sure where such a vote will happen, so not sure if I’ll be part of the decision yet, but still):

  • For a grant of 10s of thousands of dollars, I would definitely like to see a more detailed specification or brief of the project (e.g. list out the user stories that will be possible, give mock up UI designs, and/or summarize technical architecture)
  • “Users of the Rarible protocol do not have the opportunity to view data of NFTs created on different blockchains that are integrated with the Rarible protocol.” This is not a clear problem statement, in my opinion. I don’t think it’s self-evident that people want to “view NFT
    data” – why would they need to see this data? To inform investments? (I know you probably have ideas, but I’d like to see that clearer in the proposal!)
  • More than linkedIn / githubs (these are hard to parse), I’d love to see a few specific projects built primarily by folks on the team linked in the proposal, so the DAO can get a sense of what kinds of things you all can build.

I think this is a great start, and would love to see something like this!

3 Likes
#8

This is a good call. I’d also love to see this

1 Like
#10

Thanks for the comment!
The answer to the marketing question:

Since, in fact, our NFT explorer will come along with the protocol, we consider it a good decision to add a link to our NFT explorer on the main page of the Rarible protocol.

We agree that once the platform has been developed, its promotion will have a higher priority. We have already thought about this and we have some ideas. We will be hiring new people to promote our project once the final product is complete. So far, we are focused on developing cool functionality.

P.S. A new proposal will be drawn up for the promotion of the finished product.

3 Likes
#11

Apologies to all for late response!

We want to do something similar to an aggregator of information about any NFTs from different marketplaces. The user will be able to view the transaction history, place of creation (marketplace) of any NFTs, depending on the chosen blockchain. This will allow him to aggregate data in one place, and not search for relevant information on the marketplaces of other blockchains integrated with the Rarible protocol. It will also solve the problem of people who, although they buy NFT, do not know on which marketplace and blockchain they are sold.

Next, according to our plan, we will build analytics for NFT. We want to make sure that metrics are displayed for the token from the marketplaces on which the selected NFT is sold so that the user can easily compare them (e.g. it is easy to see where the price is cheaper, etc.)

Also, the NFT Explorer itself will give full information about any selected NFT, including its type (audio/picture / gif / etc)

Our team:

Danila:

  1. Analyst of blockchain projects.
  2. Graduate of the DeFi course from MixBytes () - smart contract audit team.
  3. Organized WorldSkills 2019.

Kirill:

  1. Developed a system to identify the level of wearing masks of people in crowded places (NeuralNetworks, Python)
  2. Worked on web3, also wrote some smart-contracts.
  3. Graduate of the MixBytes DeFi course.
  4. 2019-2020: Was doing marketing, packaging business in order to increace businesses’ income
  5. Passed courses in project management from the Russian IT giant Yandex.
  6. Founder of the service for finding missing animals using urban video surveillance cameras (NeuralNetworks, JS, Python)
  7. (2020-2021, ended up) Startup founder: electronic queue for coffee shops and food courts.

Sergey:

  1. Back-end engineer at Netcracker Technology (https://www.netcracker.com/)
  2. Graduate of the DeFi course from MixBytes ().

Artem:
Frontend engineer at Yandex Plus (Компания Яндекс).

2 Likes
#12

The final version of the proposal:

  1. changed the wallet address.
  2. changed the dates of our plan a little

TLDR

We propose to fund the development of the NFT Explorer for the Rarible Protocol. This Explorer will be displaying the data and analytics on any NFTs that are created on blockchains that are integrated with the protocol.

Problem / Opportunity

Users of the Rarible protocol do not have the opportunity to view data of NFTs created on different blockchains that are integrated with the Rarible protocol.

Competitive Analysis

At the moment there are several applications that display NFTs` data: Ethereum / ERC-721 (NFT) explorer — Blockchair, NFTBank.ai - Make NFT portfolio management smart. However, they do not work with other blockchains and they do not display actual data on specific NFTs from other blockchains. Thus, the user of the protocol cannot easily get data of any NFTs created on different blockchains.

Funding Milestones and Payments

Milestone 1 (Dec 3, 2021 → Jan 10, 2022):

  • Development of all key data for NFTs.
  • Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Flow, Ethereum)
  • Ready functionality for testing.

Milestone 2 (Jan 11, 2021 → Feb 11, 2022):

  • Developing an interface for the NFT Explorer.
  • Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Polygon, Moonbeam, Tezos)
  • Adding a new button to the Rarible Protocol main page.

Milestone 3 (Feb 12, 2022 → Mar 12 2022):

  • Receiving data from Rarible Protocol (Polkadot, Binance)
  • Development of analytics based on NFTs history data.
  • Adding analytics on NFT Explorer.

Team Members

VINOGRADOV DANILA. Business Development / Analyst

BOGOMOLOV KIRILL. Strategy Lead / Project Manager

AGIBALOV SERGEI. Back-end Developer

MATROSOV ARTEM. Front-end / Back-end Developer

In addition to the presented members, we are also planning on hiring a designer and another back-end developer for some parts of the work.

Dates may be subject to change, but the team will do its utmost to meet the deadlines.

Total Payments

The total amount that would be needed for the implementation of the proposed idea equals $50,000. This amount will be divided between the milestones as follows:

Milestone 1: $6,000 upfront to pay for hiring, $4,000 upon completion of the Milestone 1;

Milestone 2: $10,000 upfront, $10,000 upon completion of the Milestone 2;

Milestone 3: $10,000 upfront, $10,000 upon completion of the Milestone 3.

Payments will be made to the following Ethereum address:

0xa38948ca4b9ead48a86972eb42a702544b7903dc

We consider ourselves independent contractors of the Rarible DAO and will report taxes accordingly. Forms W8-BEN and W9 will be filled out accordingly before funds get distributed to our team.

The contact person for this project will be Vinogradov Danila.

Contact information:

  • vinogradov.do@phystech.edu
  • Discord: DANILA#9864

Use of Funds

The funds will be used to cover the payments to the team members and the expenses for tools and services that the team would need during the implementation. We will provide a detailed report on the use of funds upon request.

Accountability

Our project will attend weekly community calls, and provide updates on our milestones as we make progress. In the event that we can’t fulfill our commitment, funds will be returned to Rarible DAO. We will also work with community members to ensure updates are distributed through the Rarible communication channels.

Why should Rarible DAO fund this?

This will allow the protocol to provide users with new opportunities to explore any NFT created on blockchains that are integrated with the Rarible protocol. It will also allow developers to get up-to-date data on NFT tokens on different blockchains without having to switch to other explorer apps for a particular blockchain.

2 Likes
#13

Thanks for the extra info! Good luck!

1 Like
#14

Thank you! Now we are waiting for the final voting!

1 Like
#15

Hi @DANILA,

I’m a little unclear of what is delivered at the end of Milestone 1. Can you be more clear of what you will be presenting and showing us at the end of each Milestone? I get that by Milestone 2 we should be able to see the interace for the explorer and a somewhat working product. But Milestone 1 is unclear.

Payment is provided at the end of a milestone and not prior to it. Even our contributor payments are made in this manner. Can you update this proposal to note that payments will be made at the end of each milestone?

1 Like
#16

Final version.

TLDR

We propose to fund the development of the NFT Explorer for the Rarible Protocol. This Explorer will be displaying the data and analytics on any NFTs that are created on blockchains that are integrated with the protocol.

Problem / Opportunity

Users of the Rarible protocol do not have the opportunity to view data of NFTs created on different blockchains that are integrated with the Rarible protocol.

Use cases:

  1. One place to view all NFTs created on various blockchains integrated into the Rarible protocol.
  • NFT contract addresses / NFT name
  • Token ID (optional)
  • Search for collections by name / address of the contract.
    The user will be able to view analytics on it for any collection (items, floor prices, owners, volume (daily and etc), today’s sales and etc.) and add useful filters.
  1. If a person wants to connect his wallet, he will see his NFT with analytics (items, floor prices, owners, volume (daily and etc.), today’s sales and etc) and can add useful filters.

In the future, the functionality will be expanded.

Competitive Analysis

At the moment there are several applications that display NFTs` data: Ethereum / ERC-721 (NFT) explorer — Blockchair, NFTBank.ai - Make NFT portfolio management smart. However, they do not work with other blockchains and they do not display actual data on specific NFTs from other blockchains. Thus, the user of the protocol cannot easily get data of any NFTs created on different blockchains.

Funding Milestones

Milestone 1 (Dec 4, 2021 → Dec 18, 2021):

  • Developed the logic of interaction with the NFT Explorer.
  • Have done a design of explorer (for the first use case).
  • Developed technical tasks for the implementation of the explorer to work with Ethereum(document).

Milestone 2 (Dec 19, 2021 → Jan 15, 2022):

  • Have done a back-end that is working with Ethereum.
  • Have done a front-end that is working with Ethereum.
  • Added filters for collections NFT.
  • Have done the NFT Explorer documentation (for the first use case).
  • Have made a working version of NFT explorer on Ethereum.

Milestone 3 (Jan 16, 2022 → Jan 21, 2022):

  • Received feedback from users and conducted an analysis (means to get thoughts from users that we should improve).
  • Developed technical tasks for the implementation of the explorer to work with Flow(document).
  • Developed technical tasks for the implementation of metrics that should be added to explorer(document): NFT: info, price chart, history, owners / COLLECTIONS: items, floor prices, owners, volume (daily and etc), today’s sales and etc.

Milestone 4 (Jan 22, 2022 → Feb 4, 2022):

  • Have done a back-end that is working with Flow.
  • Have done a front-end that is working with Flow.
  • Added filters for collections NFT.
  • Have made a working version of NFT explorer on Flow.
  • Have updated documentation.

Milestone 5 (Feb 5, 2022 → Feb 12, 2022):

  • Implemented metrics for NFT and collections (Ethereum).
  • Implemented metrics for NFT and collections (Flow).
  • Developed technical tasks for the implementation of the explorer to work with Tezos(document).

Milestone 6 (Feb 13, 2022 → Feb 22, 2022):

  • Have done a back-end that is working with Tezos.
  • Have done a front-end that is working with Tezos.
  • Added filters for collections NFT.
  • Have made a working version of NFT explorer on Tezos.

Milestone 7 (Feb 23, 2022 → Mar 1, 2022):

  • Implemented metrics for NFT and collections (Tezos).
  • Developed technical tasks for the implementation of the Metamask to work with explorer(document).
  • Have updated documentation (for the second use case).

Milestone 8 (Mar 2, 2022 → Mar 10, 2022):

  • Have done a design of explorer (for the second use case).
  • Have done a front-end that is working with Metamask.
  • Added filters for user’s NFT collections (Metamask).

Milestone 9 (Mar 11, 2022 → Mar 20, 2022):

  • Implemented metrics for user’s NFT and collections (Metamask).
  • Implemented listing of the user’s NFT on the marketplace (Rarible, Opensea, protocol marketplaces).
  • Received feedback from users and conducted an analysis (means to get thoughts from users that we should improve).

Milestone 10 (Mar 21, 2022 → Mar 31, 2022):

  • Developed technical tasks for the implementation of the flow’s wallet to work with explorer(document).
  • Have done a front-end that is working with flow’s wallet.
  • Added filters for user’s NFT collections (flow’s wallet).
  • Implemented listing of the user’s NFT on the marketplace (Rarible, protocol marketplaces).

Milestone 11 (Apr 1, 2022 → Apr 12, 2022):

  • Developed technical tasks for the implementation of the tezos’s wallet to work with explorer(document).
  • Have done a front-end that is working with tezos’s wallet.
  • Added filters for user’s NFT collections(tezos’s wallet).
  • Implemented listing of the user’s NFT on the marketplace (Rarible, protocol marketplaces).

Milestone 12 (Apr 13, 2022 → Apr 23, 2022):

  • Implemented metrics for the user’s NFT and collections (tezos’s wallet).
  • Implemented metrics for the user’s NFT and collections (flow’s wallet).
  • Added general charts for the user: dynamics of the average price of all NFTs, trading volumes (Ethereum, Flow, Tezos).

Team Members

VINOGRADOV DANILA. Business Development / Analyst

BOGOMOLOV KIRILL. Strategy Lead / Project Manager

AGIBALOV SERGEI. Back-end Developer

MATROSOV ARTEM. Front-end / Back-end Developer

In addition to the presented members, we are also planning on hiring a designer and another back-end developer for some parts of the work.

Dates may be subject to change, but the team will do its utmost to meet the deadlines.

Total Payments

The total amount that would be needed for the implementation of the proposed idea equals $60,000. This amount will be divided between the milestones as follows:

Milestone 1: $ 4,000 upon completion of the Milestone 1;
Milestone 2: $ 6,000 upon completion of the Milestone 2;
Milestone 3: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 3;
Milestone 4: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 4;
Milestone 5: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 5;
Milestone 6: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 6;
Milestone 7: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 7;
Milestone 8: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 8;
Milestone 9: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 9;
Milestone 10: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 10;
Milestone 11: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 11;
Milestone 12: $ 5,000 upon completion of the Milestone 12;

Payments will be made to the following Ethereum address:

0xa38948ca4b9ead48a86972eb42a702544b7903dc

We consider ourselves independent contractors of the Rarible DAO and will report taxes accordingly. Forms W8-BEN and W9 will be filled out accordingly before funds get distributed to our team.

The contact person for this project will be Vinogradov Danila.

Contact information:

  • vinogradov.do@phystech.edu
  • Discord: DANILA#9864

Use of Funds

The funds will be used to cover the payments to the team members and the expenses for tools and services that the team would need during the implementation. We will provide a detailed report on the use of funds upon request.

Accountability

Our project will attend weekly community calls, and provide updates on our milestones as we make progress. In the event that we can’t fulfill our commitment, funds will be returned to Rarible DAO. We will also work with community members to ensure updates are distributed through the Rarible communication channels.

Why should Rarible DAO fund this?

This will allow the protocol to provide users with new opportunities to explore any NFT created on blockchains that are integrated with the Rarible protocol. It will also allow developers to get up-to-date data on NFT tokens on different blockchains without having to switch to other explorer apps for a particular blockchain.

3 Likes
#17

Awesome :heart_eyes: Really like updated proposal and your milestones

Good luck with the voting!

Hope you’ll have an opportunity to build a really useful product on top of Rarible Protocol

2 Likes
#18

Your proposal has been posted to a Snapshot for final vote:

https://snapshot.org/#/daogrants.eth/proposal/0xf248357818942f86534304d8e38d1bab17d7593b732f5d032604e39fed045978

Thanks and best of luck,
grey

3 Likes
#19

Hey all,

This vote has been rejected in the Snapshot.

I want to try to give a post-mortum of why I think it was down-voted, based on conversations I’ve had with other grant voters. I’m speaking only for myself here:

  1. Unclarity / weakness of the use case – I think there was a perception that
    • the project use-case wasn’t completely clear (who is this for? what is it going to let them do exactly? why does that solve a problem for them?), and
    • why this adds something valuable enough to the DAO as compared to what rarible.com already does or what genie.xyz or NFTBank.ai do.
  2. Worries about delivery – I think there were worries that
    • you have not fully thought through the technical aspects of the project, and that the roadmap reflects this, and
    • there is a lack of examples of prior work delivered by the team to inspire confidence in deliver here.
  3. The funding ask may be too high – given the other concerns, and that this project seems mostly to propose building on existing NFT indexers, the funding ask might be too high. It could be better to break things into smaller pieces in the future until you build up a reputation for delivering well.

All that being said, you’re welcome to propose more in the future! For now, I think we should close this thread.

2 Likes
#20

Thanks for the comment! Our team will definitely come back! We’ll be better prepared.

3 Likes