‘A historic day for Cardano NFTs’, as ‘Decentralized Identities’ Come to NMKR Studio

In July 2022, during an interview with Cryptonomist, Tobler explained why his NFT-focused startup had decided to change its brand name from “NFT-MAKER” to NMKR:

“NMKR (pronounced N Maker) is a strategic rebrand of NFT-MAKER to reach new target groups with NMKR products and provide improved experiences for users in the decentralized economy.

“The transition to Web3 will require us not only to specialize in NFTs, but also to offer a variety of other blockchain help cases for our clients. Our customers have been asking for more than just crypto collectibles – they want real utility items. The Web3 world is coming, and we are ready to support our customers in realizing their projects.

“We will continue to mint NFTs the same way we did. However, with recent technical capability advancements, we want to do more and help others realize their dreams of building blockchain products or services or integrating blockchain into their existing ones. We are on a mission to make decentralization even more usable. In the near future, we will tackle real problems with blockchain technology. We see the gaming space and beyond as an incredible opportunity to make a real contribution.“

And this is what Tobler, who is the founder and CEO of NMKR, said about the company’s main product:

“NMKR Studio (formerly NFT-MAKER PRO) at the core of NMKR products will provide user-friendly development APIs and no-code building blocks for modular development needs on multiple blockchains and support various Web3 use cases. In addition, NMKR Studio will be the backbone of our ecosystem products. We are confident that this will be a successful product to sustain other use cases because the underlying API technology of NMKR Studio has already minted over 1 million NFTs on Cardano.“

Here are some interesting NMKR statistics:

At the moment, NMKR has the following six products and services:

In a blog post published on August 15, 2022, NMKR said it has built “a Minting API for a new NFT ecosystem, with the goal of making it as easy as possible for anyone to create and engage with NFTs.” It went on to say that NMKR “provides the technology on the Cardano blockchain, provides coining services, white label NFT drops and also allows the migration and integration of NFTs and NFT-related services between Cardano and other distributed ledger technologies.”

It also mentioned that “the collaboration will see the integration of a new FIAT payment option created by NMKR, meaning users will be able to pay with traditional currencies as well as cryptocurrencies. This will enable anyone worldwide to participate in a NFT sales without needing a prior in-depth understanding of the crypto market.”

The NMKR chief had this to say about his regular collaboration with the IOG:

‍“We are excited to officially partner with Input Output Global. We believe their experience in building and deploying new blockchain capabilities will be invaluable in helping us achieve our goal of driving widespread adoption of NFT technology on Cardano.“

And IOG co-founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson stated:

“This is an important step for IOG and our mission to build a better tomorrow for everyone through technology. We are excited to work with NMKR as they develop an entire coin and payment infrastructure ecosystem, making NFTs accessible to everyone.“

Why NMKR Say October 11, 2022 was a historic day for Cardano NFTs

Here’s how the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web, defines decentralized identifiers (DIDs):

“Decentralized identifiers (DID) are a new type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. A DID refers to any subject (eg, a person, organization, thing, data model, abstract entity, etc.) as determined by the controller of the DID. Unlike typical federated identifiers, DIDs are designed to connect to centralized registries, identity providers, and certificate authorities.

“Specifically, while other parties may be used to help discover information related to a DID, the design enables the controller of a DID to prove control over it without requiring permission from any other party. DIDs are URIs that associate a DID topic with a DID document that allows trusted interactions related to that topic.“

On July 6, 2022, NMKR CEO Patrick Tobler added to GitHub a Cardano proposal (CIP-0066), which defined a standard for verifying NFT projects using DIDs. This is how he defined the motivation for this proposal:

“The verification process of the authenticity of NFT projects is currently a centralized effort, which is entirely in the hands of the NFT platforms. Most of these platforms create a centralized database of verified projects and have arbitrary rules that define which NFTs should be verified on the respective platform.

“Not only is this not scalable because it relies on a case-by-case verification process that is often done manually and requires the NFT creators to go through the verification process on an increasing number of different platforms, but it is also highly centralized and does not use a global cross-platform verification method.“

Yesterday, IOG’s VP of Community & Ecosystem explained why he was excited about NMKR Studio’s newest feature, which is support for DIDs: