Blocksmith Labs, creators of the popular Mercury whitelist tool and Bifrost launchpad for Solana NFTs, has announced their latest product, Shift. The new offering is a tool that will allow NFT creators to easily change their project's art.
In a Twitter Space yesterday, the Blocksmith Labs team discussed a few uses for the new tool. An NFT project could use Shift to enable their art to be upgraded, should the holder of the NFT meet certain requirements. For example, an NFT project could release new traits that their holders could purchase using the project's SPL token.
Perhaps the biggest use for upgradeable NFT art is in web3 gaming. When a player unlocks a new skin in a game, the player's NFT could be upgraded to display the new trait. Along those lines, one audience member in the Twitter Space suggested that an NFT project could launch with all common NFTs and, by doing work for the project, the holder could upgrade their NFT's common traits to rarer ones.
In addition to art upgrades that can be unlocked by the NFT holder, Shift allows for NFT art to change dynamically based on data from oracles. An NFT could "age" over time with the art changing once certain dates are reached. Individual art layers can also be changed, such as a background changing from night to day based on the current time.
A potentially lucrative use of Shift is temporarily adding branding to existing NFTs. A brand such as Nike could strike a deal with an existing NFT project like Solana Monkey Business that would allow holders to display the Nike Swoosh logo on their monkey's clothing in exchange for a payment.
To utilize Shift, Blocksmith Labs does not require the project to hand over update authority (permission to change the metadata and art of an NFT). Instead, NFT projects utilizing Shift store their art layers on Shadow Drive Storage by Genesys Go and art changes will happen there. This allows for the art changes and upgrades to happen off-chain, which significantly reduces fees compared to on-chain art changes. The ability to upgrade art with little to no fees will be especially important for gaming where art upgrades could happen frequently.
Disclosure: The author holds Solana and Solana Monkey Business NFTs.
