Understanding ERC-6551: Has NFT Composability Finally Been Achieved?

The fall of Azuki has gradually reduced the interest of the NFT market in the original narrative, and everyone is eager to regain confidence in new narratives. Currently, there are two directions that have attracted the market's attention. One is the development of offline economy represented by Pudgy Penguins, injecting value into PFP projects with the narrative of "moving from virtual to real". The second is to continue exploring what else can be done with NFT technology.

ERC-6551 has recently sparked widespread discussion and is undoubtedly the star of the "technical exploration" narrative.

What is ERC-6551?

Simply put, ERC-6551 can turn a "small image" into a "wallet". ERC-6551 will provide a smart contract account for all ERC-721 tokens, which not only allows ERC-721 tokens to have various assets such as ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, but also enables ERC-721 tokens to interact with various applications.

Your "small picture" is your "wallet", which has all the functions of an Ethereum account. This is called "Token Bound Accounts".

Technical Principles

Using this flowchart as an example, the holder of a certain ERC-721 series Token #456 (such as BAYC #456) gains ownership of the account bound to the Token, 0x789..., by interacting with the "Registry" contract. The Registry contract is immutable, permissionless, and ownerless, and deploys a unique, deterministic addressing smart contract account for each ERC-721 Token. The control of the account is solely owned by the holder of the ERC-721 Token, and when the ownership of the ERC-721 Token is transferred, the control of the account is also transferred.

When an ERC-721 Token holder wants to use their Token to bind their account for operations, they actually call the "executeCall" function in their smart contract. This function first verifies whether the address of the operator and the ERC-721 Token holder are the same, and then calls the specified function in the target contract address to complete the operation.

That is to say, your wallet controls a "small image", which is also a wallet. On the surface, the operation is initiated by your "big wallet", but in reality, the interaction is completed between your "small image wallet" and the target contract.

Possibility

There is already a PFP project called "Sapienz" that uses ERC-6551. Sapienz has gone from a minimum of 0.02 ETH to around 0.18 ETH due to FOMO, with a maximum increase of nearly 10 times. This project actually has a big background and is created by "Pigeon King" Jeff Staple.

"Pigeon King" and his designed Nike Pigeon Dunk

However, if you remove the "pigeon king" halo, this project is only about "combinability" in terms of gameplay. Simply put, the characteristics of "small pictures" can be "disassembled", just like dressing up Barbie dolls, you can remove the accessories you don't like or buy the ones you like and put them on the doll. This is not new, and it can be done even without ERC-6551, such as ERC-6059.

Interesting possibilities may be related to blockchain games. In the past, we often saw NFT projects in the gaming category release a "game character" as the genesis series, but the subsequent game assets and "game characters" were separated into another series. With ERC-6551, game tokens and various game props can be directly linked to the "game character". If you want to quit the game one day, just sell the "game character" and you will sell the ownership of the game account, which is very convenient. If there is anything to look forward to in the Sapienz project, it is also from this perspective. After "Pigeon King", should we continue to bring talents to Web3 and design a bunch of virtual fashion items like RTFKT to match Sapienz? This can also lead to the possibility that airdrops may become more convenient, and snapshots may be eliminated. In the era of "small pictures" or "wallets", airdrops can be directly associated with the address of the "small picture".

Another possibility is to integrate DID with on-chain social networking or on-chain behavior recording. Currently, obtaining POAP through airdrops requires the use of various separate platforms. Is it possible to use a single DID for interaction in the future? This may also help eliminate the negative practice of whitelisting PUA. Previously, for many NFT projects that involved derivative works or promotion, the corresponding POAP had to be given by the project party. After accumulating a certain amount, the project party can simply check the "small picture" wallet to determine whether the user is a high-quality user, gradually eliminating the excuses for PUA.

Is it possible to combine music NFTs with ERC-6551 to record how many times they have been listened to, and even allow each person to have their own "record shelf" where they can easily display their collection of various "records" and exchange them? Can game props be more easily used to record multidimensional data, such as "kill count" like CS:GO skins? The efficiency of the market and the fun of NFTs will be greatly enhanced.

At the recently concluded ETHGlobal Waterloo themed hackathon, we have also seen some interesting attempts:

AquaNet: AI generates a social media account based on the metadata of a "small image" and automatically generates posts based on the AI-generated social media account style. From registration to posting, everything is done by AI, bringing your "small image" to life. This actually gives a new meaning to the artistic style of "small images". If you choose a very abstract "small image", its posts may also be very abstract...

Fukuro: The meaning of "福袋" in Japanese, aimed at achieving the sale of asset combinations such as NFTs and ERC-20 Tokens with free matching. The interesting point of this is whether it will eventually become a platform for blind box opening. Customers can try their luck and may get 1 BAYC + 10 ETH, or it could be 1 zeroed-out image + 0 ETH...

Piggybank: On-chain savings jar, the more money you save, the more features will change accordingly. It is very suitable for people like me who always enjoy starting from scratch. I can regularly deposit a little ETH into it every month in the future. When I get old, I can burn the savings jar and claim the ETH, and turn my life around in my old age.

Tokenbound Titans: Chain game, "small picture" has data, and players can fight against each other. It also implements the idea of transforming "game characters" into "game accounts", and the loot will be stored under the "small picture".

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the top feature of ERC-6551 is its downward compatibility, which allows for seamless integration with existing ERC-721 Tokens without the need for deploying new contracts or migrating. This bypasses the significant challenges of consensus forks and market promotion, considering the abandoned ERC-998...

Conclusion

Possibilities still need to be realized through actual applications before they can be implemented, so I dare not say anything too optimistic about ERC-6551 being the future of NFTs. However, it is indeed quite interesting.

It belongs to the category of "I have considered this point, and I have also considered that point", but perhaps it is the most universal when combined, and its downward compatibility is really unbeatable. There have been many similar ideas on Ethereum before, but they may not be as suitable for market acceptance. There are also attempts on Solana, such as Backpack, which is a "programmable NFT", where 1 NFT = 1 App, but the application still has to be used within Backpack, which is not easy to expand.

Finally, ERC-6551 is still in the proposal stage. Keep an eye on it, invest cautiously, and avoid FOMO.

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