Cargo 2020 — Non-Fungible Tokens at Scale – The Cargo Times
Cargo launched last June with the mission to make it easy for businesses and developers to create, manage, and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using ERC-721 smart contracts. ERC-721 is a standard interface that describes how to implement an NFT smart contract.
I quickly learned where the pain points were and what needed to be fixed and built in order to transform Cargo into the powerful, scalable platform that it is intended to be. This is the year of that transformation and we’ve already made great strides towards building scalable NFT infrastructure! Here are some of the highlights.
Cargo uses a union of private and decentralized systems that work together to layer on speed and scalability to the Ethereum network.
Cargo uses the blockchain where it matters most — acting as a source of truth for ownership, transferring payments, and divvying up funds for tokens that are sold. After Cargo’s initial launch I realized that reading large amounts of data from the blockchain is slow. I began exploring ways to optimize reading data while still utilizing the security of the blockchain as a source of truth for the important stuff. Because users expect your app to be fast so they aren’t waiting while you fetch data from the blockchain, Cargo syncs with data on the blockchain and provides API’s for reading data at the speed provided by traditional databases. You’ll be able to fetch user information from the blockchain in real time.
I’ve continued to work hard on ways to provide the functionality required to scale NFTs. Last September I wrote about mass minting NFTs with Cargo’s ERC-721 contract. I’ve continued to refine that contract to improve the speed and cost. Three words to sum it up: this thing scales. You can mint and transfer tens of millions of NFTs at once and with Cargo’s ERC-721 contract it costs the same to mint one NFT as it does to mint one hundred billion NFTs. Using Cargo you can mint and update the metadata for millions of tokens in minutes for less than twenty cents.
One of the most powerful things about the Ethereum and the ERC-721 standard is that ERC-721 technology permits digitized assets to be transferred to any comparable wallet or platform, opening up entirely new possibilities in the buying and selling of digital goods. Not only does Cargo allow you to manage and interact with contracts and tokens created on the platform, but you can also see tokens from other ERC-721 contracts that were created outside the platform. You can utilize the Cargo platform to sell, transfer and display these tokens through the dashboard, or use the Cargo APIs to build a custom application.
Cargo continues to provide functionality so you can use NFTs as access tokens to your files. You can associate files with NFTs and only token owners will be able to access the files. Files are secured and stored in an encrypted data bucket.
I’ve continued to enhance vendor and beneficiary functionality. You as the owner of a crate (think of a crate as place to store tokens) can add vendors which are people who can add their tokens to your crate so they would be visible and can be sold from your crate (think Etsy, or eBay). You can set a crate application fee that will be taken from the sale of each vendor token that is sold.
Vendor’s can add beneficiaries which are people who will receive a specified percentage of each vendor token that is sold. To illustrate this let’s say you are minting NFTs to sell and the proceeds will go to specified charities. Each charity can be added as a beneficiary and each will automatically receive their specified percentage from the sale.
Cargo provides new, powerful APIs to manage and display token and contract information that enables builders to create custom, powerful dApps that utilize NFTs. The entire Cargo platform is built using the same APIs that are publicly available. There’s even helpful public APIs that can be used to display tokens in any ERC-721 contract.
Cargo has joined Polyient’s incubator program! The knowledge and skillset of the Polyient team are second to none. We are working together to bring the absolute best NFT platform to the world.
Stay in the loop as Cargo continues to redefine the NFT landscape. Sign up at:
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Published at Wed, 12 Feb 2020 18:26:13 +0000
