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Instantiating Your Art

The PCOArt system empowers Artists to create both stand-alone works and "collections" of partial common ownership art. There are two creation methods:

  1. By minting a new token
  2. By wrapping an existing NFT
    • This second method provides a method for adding PCOArt's Stewardship mechanisms to an existing ERC-721 or ERC-1155 NFT while maintaining the original metadata. This feature is not yet enabled through the app, but the beta contract functionality is available for use as-is without any representations of its efficacy or security.

Metadata​

PCOArt utilizes the ERC-721 standard as the foundation of its smart contract system.

It's a flexible, widely supported, and battle-tested method for digitally representing unique objects, like art, on Ethereum-based blockchains.

Artists ultimately have unlimited configurability to define the attributes of work within their PCOArt tokens, but industry-standard fields integrated into the PCOArt app include the following:

Collection Data (ERC-721 Standard)

  • Collection Name (even if just 1 token)
  • Collection Symbol
  • URI (allows for further arbitrary metadata definition)

URI Metadata (Commonly Supported)

  • Name (Note: this is for an individual token, not the collection)
  • Description
  • External Link
  • Image
  • Properties

Additional Metadata Standards Reference

info

Metadata Upload Instructions

Individual token metadata is commonly implemented with a simple JSON schema and embedded folder structure. The recommended process for uploading your token metadata and creating a token (collection) through the PCOArt app is as follows:

  1. Download & unzip our sample metadata folder template
  2. Add all of your art's media files to the assets folder (and remove the sample file)
    • Number the files 0, 1, 2, 3... N (also include the appropriate file extension--.jpeg, .png, etc) according to the desired order of tokens in the collection
  3. Upload the assets folder to the IPFS storage provider of your choice
    • Pinata offers a free account with generous limits. You also might consider a paid account with Pinata or an alternative provider with single-payment perpetual storage like NFT.Storage or Lighthouse to ensure your NFT Media never disappears.
  4. Copy the IPFS CID of the folder you just uploaded
    • It should start with Qm or baf depending on the CID format version used
  5. Open the 0 file from the template metadata folder with a text editor
    • Update each metadata field for the first token you want to mint in your collection
    • The image file path should be constructed as follows:
      • Start with ipfs://
      • Then paste the IPFS CID of the assets folder (copied in step 4)
      • Add a / and the appropriate file name with file type extension (e.g. /0.png)
      • Result: ipfs://bafybeidxfej5cokgom5ticchwgdwge3sibxdk73ua7s3tlmrxcydhhktjy/0.png
  6. Save and close the 0 file
  7. Make a copy of the 0 file in the metadata folder for each token you wish to create
  8. Update the file name of each copy so they are numbered sequentially to match your media files (1, 2, 3,... N)
    • Important: Do not add a file extension to these files
  9. Update and save the metadata file for each token as appropriate—-including the image path (e.g. /0.jpeg to /1.jpeg)
  10. Upload the entire template folder (i.e. the folder that contains both the image & metadata folders) to your storage provider
  11. Copy the IPFS CID of the folder you just uploaded & add it to the URI (Metadata) with a leading ipfs:// identifier (i.e. ipfs://QmVL...).

Mint Timing​

The PCOArt system allows the Artist to defer the minting of tokens in their collection until the end of their first Stewardship Inauguration. All of the art and metadata are still defined during the creation process, but the on-chain representation of the asset won't be created initially.

This can save the Artist gas costs if they're creating an especially big collection. As PCOArt is initially targeted for support on Ethereum L2s, gas costs shouldn't be prohibitive regardless.

The app sets the Artist's address as the initial Steward by default if the tokens are minted during creation. The Artist can subsequently transfer the NFT to a new address before the first on-chain Stewardship Inauguration takes place and the PCO system takes over. This setup gives the Artist additional flexibility in launching their collection:

  • The artist could set the first on-chain Stewardship Inauguration to the equivalent of 1 Stewardship Cycle into the future, run an offline auction, and manually transfer the token to the winner.
  • The artist might want another address or multi-sig to receive the initial auction proceeds. They should mint the token during the creation process and transfer it to the desired address, so it receives the winning bid proceeds.
danger

While the app defaults the initial Steward address to the Artist's, direct interaction with the contracts allows for configuration. This should never be set to a 0 or null address or else the initial Stewardship Inauguration proceeds will be lost.