Blockchain

Making a metamarble

Since my previous posts I have been busy refining metamarbles into something of a NFT project. I was not satisfied with the way the last post ended with the frontend layout and design. So, I started tinkering with it and eventually scrapped it completely.  I also found the Thirdweb's dashboard and deployment of smart contracts to be a lot more refined than NFTport.

While working on the frontend, I wanted to add more to the metamarble NFT itself. One of the many ideas for this project was to add stats and eventually bring the marbles in to a game that will read them from the NFT metadata. So, I started refining them and adding and taking away items and ideas.

I added a health and mass set of stats that will be randomly selected on image generation. These stats are meant to be extra powers the metamarble would have in a game. For instance a health of 10, would give the metamarble 110 health points in a game, so ideally the higher the number the more desirable the NFT [also more rare]. I toned down the marble types and also added different colors for the blockchain logos depending on which chain you minted on.

I made a roadmap image to give a general idea of where the project could be heading. 2D launch -> 3D launch -> crypto game. Whether or not I hit that roadmap depends on real life, as this is just a side project for learning purposes.

I built two versions of a minting site linked by a landing page. Each minting site is its own sub domain of metamarbles.xyz. This allows me to further refine the sites for each chain.  It also makes it much more easier and less confusing for wallet connection, I think.

If you are on Avalanche you'd goto https://avax.metamarbles.xyz.

If you are into Ethereum you'd goto https://eth.metamarbles.xyz.

I created a social account 0xMetamarbles on Twitter for announcements and general shilling of the project.

Once I got everything working I deployed the NFT drop contract from Thirdweb multiple times on the testnets. I tested each version to see how they would act in the "real world". Having a testnet is an awesome way to make sure all the kinks on your side are ironed out, but you can still run into issues with 3rd parties.

Once everything was sorted, I soft launched on both Avalanche and Ethereum at the same time. Going live is always nerve racking as you are spending real money to deploy these contracts that will live as long as the public blockchains are around. As mentioned previously, running into issues is always bound to happen.

I ran into an issue with support for Gnosis Safes in general across the various NFT marketplaces. I eventually gave up and redeployed from a basic hot wallet as the hoops to jump through for a multi-sig wallet we too much for a tiny proof of concept project. I am hoping that in the future this changes as Gnosis Safes are really great!

Side note: You may see two contracts in the wild on the Ethereum network. I redeployed thinking that would fix OpenSea's slow indexing, but was wrong.
The real metamarbles contract address is:

0xaa8cbee0be284b80ca587b1a0044443e794a031c

https://etherscan.io/token/0xaa8cbee0be284b80ca587b1a0044443e794a031c

For future readers that would like to know what the cost is in ETH or AVAX to deploy the Thirdweb's NFT drop contract, I wrote these numbers down as I deployed.

Each is the transaction cost (with gas) for each step in the process.

AVAX

  • Deploy contract: 0.0276 AVAX
  • Upload JSON metadata (888 NFT's):  0.00716 AVAX
  • Setup initial claim phase:    0.006 AVAX
  • Mint some example NFTs:   0.006 AVAX
  • I minted 10 NFTs to give away as examples for free since I'm the owner.
  • Reveal NFTs:    0.0027 AVAX

ETH

  • Deploy contract: 0.03 ETH
  • Upload JSON metadata (888 NFT's):  0.0056 ETH
  • Setup initial claim phase:    0.0088 ETH
  • Mint some example NFTs:   0.032 ETH
  • I minted 10 NFTs to give away as examples for free since I'm the owner.
  • Refactor Claim phase:   0.008 ETH

I mainly wanted to deploy on Avalanche as that is where I plan on deploying for the 3D crypto game. Sadly, gas prices are too dang high for gaming on ETH.

BUT, there is something awesome happening on ETH, the Metaverse ;).

I know it sounds weird, but I expect Ethereum to lead the way on that. For example, oncyber has made an amazing leap forward in bringing a 3D metaverse into reality in your browser with their tech. Seriously, go look at the 6529 Museum District: https://oncyber.io/6529om?coords=0x2.8x0x0

I created an oncyber gallery to host a few of the NFTs for metamarbles. This is one of the main reasons to get that smart contract deployed on Ethereum!

You can jump into it in the Iframe below, or go to the link below for the full experience:

https://oncyber.io/metamarbles

I can imagine in the future, instead of going to a person's website or blog, you'd end up in their gallery and be able to hang out together [yes, you can chat in the gallery].

For now, I think I am done working on metamarbles for a bit, I kind of need to let the creative juice simmer down a bit.

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