Exploring NFT Expansion Packs
One of the interesting components about NFTs-as-media is that most of them can be programmed. This opens up the possibility of adding additional features (new visuals or functionality) to them in the form of expansion packs. This can either be officially licensed, or in the case of permissible licensing (creative commons), be freely remixed and played with by community members. I want to explore what expansion packs could look like.
Expansion Packs
A common formula for NFT sets are generative art pieces: either hand-coded and picked by the artist, or algorithmically generated.
One of the original digital art projects on Ethereum that also used generative art templates.
One of the first projects to have all the metadata and art on-chain: which is useful for expansion packs.
A platform for the generative artists to release sets.
My own project that has an automated economy, minting and destroying new pieces of neo-plasticism inspired generative art.
Generative art projects even extend to music!
I’ve written about generative art economies before and recently gave a talk on it at ETHDenver.
[apologies for my internet cutting out at random points during the talk]
Generative Art Seeds
In these generative art projects, the eventual art is derived from some internal scheme that uses a hash or a set of numbers to generate the artwork. For an expansion pack, an NFT owner can either stake or destroy the original NFT in order to access the expansion pack. With this, a new set of features can be derived from the same hash, OR, the expansion can introduce a new hash that it uses alongside the original hash.
Using this new hash, the original piece is modified to include a new set generative art features. For example, what if you have a “CryptoPunks With A Body” expansion pack that adds bodies to them? Or, “Neolastics With More Colours” expansion pack that adds new colours to the tiles?
Depending on the way that the relationship between the original NFT and the expansion pack NFT is defined, one could potentially un-stake an expansion pack NFT, releasing it, and turning it back into its original form. While staked, the original NFT can not be traded, as the expansion pack NFT owns the original NFT.
In some cases, it might be that one needs to burn/destroy the original, to burn the bridge to an expansion pack NFT, forever removing the original NFT from circulation. It depends how creators want to structure expansion packs.
It’s a simple model to think about building unique ways to expand on NFT sets. With Neolastics having an automated economy (vs a finite set), the possibilities become even larger as each expansion adds additional value to all extant original Neolastic pieces.
Composables?
These concepts aren’t entirely new. A long-standing proposal from Matt Lockyer is to create such ‘composables’: combining NFTs in unique ways.
The potential is still broad and looking forward to seeing NFTs expand, remixed (where allowed), and played with.
Since this space is moving so rapidly, I might have missed projects that are exploring! Please share so I can add it. :)
