What Advantage Do Programmable NFTs Bring to Users?

Talking about Programmable NFTs with Raunaq Vaisoha, Co-founder at Revise

Ishan Pandey: Hi Raunaq. Welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about your background and the inspiration behind Revise?

Raunaq Vaisoha: I’m a second-time crypto entrepreneur and have been in the space since 2013. In the past, my team and I have built large-scale blockchain projects for the National Stock Exchange of India and many large banks. We were also contributors to Tendermint and early adopters of Proof-of-Stake blockchain. My co-founder Anil and I were inspired to build Revise after helping many of our friends launch their NFT projects. We noticed early that NFTs, as we know, it is just the beginning. NFTs are evolving from static to dynamic objects, with upgradable traits and evolving media. Not just that, it’s also being used as a new form of access management to digital experiences. So, we decided to build Revise to solve the challenges as you add layers of innovation to NFTs.

Ishan Pandey: Tell us all about ‘Program Your NFTs’  and how it works.

Raunaq Vaisoha: We consider it an “If This Then That” for NFTs. For example, let’s say you’re a game developer and want to upgrade a player’s XP based on their game performance; using Revise is a simple program that can execute at scale. Inbuilt in our system is a validium-based chain that keeps track of the changes made to NFTs over time, enabling user to see the complete version history.

Ishan Pandey: What advantage do programmable NFTs bring to users?

Raunaq Vaisoha: When NFTs go from static to programmable, you introduce an entirely new axis of value creation from the user. For example, an owner of an NFT can be rewarded with rarer traits for using their NFT more often. This enables a paradigm of earning rarity instead of simply buying it off a shelf. This has worked very well for play-to-earn as a category but is being applied to NFTs in general now.

Ishan Pandey: For the benefit of our readers who are developers too,  kindly tell us where they can find your SDK ? also throw some light on your collaborations and future plans.

Raunaq Vaisoha: Revise has a JavaScript and Typescript SDK. It can be installed using NPM, Yarn or any other package management tool. You’ll need an auth key to use the SDK. Make an account on Revise (it’s free). You can generate the key once you log in. We plan to be wholly chain-agnostic and cross-chain-compatible. We’re also building out our valudium layer, which will be much like a time machine for NFT metadata and media, enabling Merkle trees for all state changes occurring to NFT media. This is a crucial step in establishing provenance when an NFT is dynamic. As for collaborations, we are seeing usage from large gaming NFT projects and are expanding our support for the gaming space, amongst others.

Ishan Pandey: Recent trouble in the world economy has adversely affected the crypto market and NFTs too. At this juncture how do you see the future of NFTs?

Raunaq Vaisoha: I’m an eternally bullish individual in the space. I think bumps and bruises are a part of growing up; as a space. We are simply moving through these things. The simple fact is with Twitter, Instagram, Shopify and various mainstream platforms offering shelf space for NFTs, the technology is in over a billion pockets, so it provides an unprecedented opportunity for growth from the roughly 300,000 people who own them today. The NFT space will be 100x bigger in the next two years alone. There is no lack of consumer demand, so now is the time to build and have fun.

Ishan Pandey: According to you, how important it is to bring regulations for digital assets and DeFi.

Raunaq Vaisoha: Regulations must caution people from taking an undue risk when they do not understand the landscape well enough to be rational about their decision. In the early days of the Internet, people were afraid of its detrimental potential too. Luckily for humanity, regulators provided enough breathing room for web start-ups to grow and revolutionize the world. We hope this recent learning stays with governments, and they offer guidelines that protect consumers and innovation at the same time.

Ishan Pandey: According to you, what trends are we going to see in the blockchain industry next?

Raunaq Vaisoha: I think we will see a 100X growth in the number of NFT owners. While the Bored Apes of the world will continue to offer value to its users, a new league of more accessible NFTs will emerge through avenues like gaming and entertainment, bringing in the next million users to the space. These NFTs will be programmable and interact with applications. It is going to make Web3 the most fun place on the Internet.

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