NFT projects quick start

Summary

Vault creation:

• Set up an NFT project on Akord.
  • Use the "NFT Assets" template to create a permanent and public vault.
  • Name your vault (e.g., "NFT Collection").
  • Add optional description and tags for on-chain discovery.
• Creating the vault generates a smart contract.

Uploading files:

• Drag and drop images into the designated area.
• 100 MB free storage available; additional storage can be purchased.
• Files are immediately cached but take 5-15 minutes to commit to Arweave blockchain.
• File status indicated by coloured dots (orange = with Akord, yellow = processing on Arweave)

Accessing file information:

• Click the information icon next to each file to view Gateway URLs.
• Two Gateway URLs provided: Akord Gateway (akrd.net) and arweave.net
• Gateway URLs follow the format: `https://[gateway]/[transaction_id]`
• Arweave URI format: AR://[transaction_id] (not supported by W3C)

Using URIs in metadata:

• Gateway URLs or Arweave URIs can be used in NFT metadata.
• Transaction ID is the key piece of information being recorded.
• Equivalent to IPFS content identifier.

Generating metadata for multiple files:

• Option to create an Arweave manifest (JSON) for all files in the vault.
• Manifest contains transaction IDs for each file.
• Future updates will include support for different standards (e.g., OpenSea).

Additional resources:

• Script available on docs.akord.com to generate Arweave URLs for all assets.
• Vault ID required for the script, found in vault Info menu.
  

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Transcript

Hello Akordians, in this video, I will show you how to get going as an NFT project; how to set up your first vault on Akord, upload files, and get the relevant information needed for the URI fields in your collection metadata.

We have two templates here to help you get started. For NFT project creators, "NFT Assets" is the one you need. It will set up a permanent and public vault. 

Next, give your vault a name; we'll call it "NFT Collection". You can add a description and tags. This can help the vault be discovered on-chain. 

Create vault - that creates a smart contract for the vault, and then you're dropped inside the vault itself.

This section of the screen with a dashed line is a drag and drop field. So I'm just going over to the finder, dragging over a bunch of images, and we can review the images here. You get 100 megabytes free with Akord, but depending on the size of your collection, you may need to add more storage. You can top up with a credit card in the storage screen. But this is all looking good for me, so I'm going to click upload, and we will see the files coming into the vault here.

They're cached on our side immediately, which means we can go ahead and click a file and view it in the media viewer. But it takes about 5 to 15 minutes for the files to be committed on the Arweave blockchain. We see this orange dot here, and that indicates that the file is with Akord. The next step is we're going to bundle it together with other files and then send that bundle of files to Arweave. We can track the status of the files by using these dots here, and they'll change colour as we move to the next step. We can also go over to this storage screen here and we see this Arweave transaction table, and we can see the status of each individual file.

Coming back to the NFT Collection vault here, if you go over to the right side of each row, we see this information icon. If you click that, you will get the Gateway URLs. So akrd.net is the Akord Gateway, and we optimistically cache data so the link is working basically immediately. However, the data itself may still not be committed on Arweave. The scheme is https://gateway/[transaction_id], so that scheme is always the same. Underneath, we have the arweave.net Gateway. You can see it follows the same scheme and the transaction ID. It's not going to change, so even while we're waiting for the files to be committed on Arweave, we can go ahead and use these Gateway URLs in the image field of our metadata forms for an NFT collection.

If we're minting a single NFT and we have a metadata JSON, then there's an image field, and we want to put in the URI for the image. So yeah, we can either put in a Gateway URL. We can also add in a generic Arweave URI which is AR://[transaction_id], but be aware that this is not supported by W3C. If you put that into the browser, it's not going to resolve to a gateway unless you have an Arweave wallet like ArConnect installed, and that will go ahead and resolve that for you to a Gateway.

Some NFT projects will use a Gateway URL such as arweave.net or akrd.net, and other projects like to record the general Arweave URI even if it doesn't always resolve in the browser. The AR://[transaction_id] - really, the important thing that we're recording is the transaction ID. If you come from IPFS, then this is the content identifier because on Arweave, the data is in the transactions on-chain themselves. So, the transaction ID is the key piece of data we're recording.

That's fine for one NFT. We could go over here and grab the information from the info panel. Here you see now that the file is now with Arweave being processed by the network, so it's gone to the next stage. This yellow double ticks, and you can see over here it's a yellow dot now, and that means that the data is in the Arweave mempool. So it's not fully committed, but now it's with Arweave, and it's pending processing by the Arweave network.

Returning to this NFT collection, we've seen where we could get the transaction ID and Gateway URLs for a single file, but we have a bunch here. If we want to get the transaction IDs for all of them conveniently, we could generate some JSON metadata for everything in the vault. So if I click this link up here, currently, the only option is to create an Arweave manifest, and I'll show you that in a second. But what we're working on is different standards. So if you are, say, minting on Ethereum and using the OpenSea standards, which many marketplaces do, then this would generate JSON for each file following that standard. That's not yet out but will be coming soon.

In the meantime, you can create an Arweave manifest, and that JSON will have all of the transaction IDs. So that's selected, click create JSON. This will take a moment or two, and it will be added to the vault. If I sort the file name, then the Manifest is going to come to the top. If I click this, we can view it in the media viewer, and you will see that with each file here, we've got the string, which is the transaction ID. So you have one convenient place with every file and the transaction ID listed.

We also have a script on our docs site, so docs.akord.com, and if you come down to the NFT project section here and "Get the Arweave URLs using a script", you can generate a list of all the Arweave URLs for your NFT assets. All you need is the vault ID. I'll show you that in a second, but with this script here, you would enter your Arweave gateway URL of preference. Here, we have akrd.net, but that could be arweave.net, and in fact, there are dozens, even hundreds of gateways out there.

Coming back to Akord, just to show you where you get the vault ID, click vault info in the vault menu at the top right. You will see the vault ID, which you can copy to the clipboard. This script can generate a list of your Arweave URLs for the assets in your vault.

So yeah, I think that just about covers everything for the basics for an NFT project to get going: to create your first vault, upload your assets, and then where to find the Gateway URL and transaction IDs, which you will need for your metadata. Hopefully, you found this video useful. If you do have any questions, please pop into the Akord Discord. You'll be able to reach myself and other members of the team, and we'll be happy to answer any of your questions. So that's it for me until the next video. Take care.