Where do I start?
A VERO always begins with two things - a real object and a 3D model.
The real object needs to be uniquely identified so that a singular object is identifiable both in a local sense, e.g., in museum collections, and in a global sense, e.g., UUID. There must not be any ambiguity around which item is the real world analog for the digital representation. That real world object must also have an accurate 3D model and exist in perpetuity in the real world, otherwise the VERO will be subject to immediate revocation. The reputation and assurances of continued care from the repositories of the real objects, like museums, builds trust amongst collectors that their VEROs will be there indefinitely. The good thing is that that already aligns with the mission of museums that house our history: be it biological, artistic, or historical.
What makes a VERO? How is it an NFT?
A VERO is a special kind of NFT that uses a VERO smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain to give a collector confidence that their NFT is a digital proxy for a single item in the real world.
The Ethereum blockchain has a creative way of having transactions that execute “smart contracts”, which are accounts that effectively act as applications on the blockchain. Smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain are a big reason for the NFT boom (see the Ethereum RFC defining the NFT standard, ERC-721). The tokenUri for a VERO must point to a public metadata file, which exists off-chain, that conforms to a VERO metadata format. The metadata format is compatible with a lot of existing NFT sales and auction sites, like OpenSea, and is defined here, VERO metadata schema in GitHub. The metadata file must contain a URI to the 3D model that needs to be publicly accessible in the future for the VERO to persist. Sites like Pinata have made storing large models for NFTs cheap, reliable, and easy to use. By using a distinct, custom smart contract that conforms to the NFT standard, a VERO has all of the characteristics of an NFT, which has a proven demand in the market, and is ensured to possess all of the special attributes rooted in a real object that make it unique, collectible, and scarce.
How do I create a VERO?
A VERO is an NFT that only becomes a true VERO once all of the requirements of the specification are met and the VERO Admin Account creates a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain approving the status.
Part of the reason why a VERO should be more collectible than a standard NFT is that a VERO corresponds with a 3D model that is assured to be tied to a unique real world object, where the original object is stored in perpetuity, otherwise the associated NFT stops being a VERO. This symbiotic mechanism makes minting VEROs especially advantageous to museums, which already store real items of historic value and want to create 3D models, and appealing to collectors, who appreciate rare, unique items to own. Ensuring that an NFT can be created that enforces the requirements of a VERO cannot be done automatically right now. There is not a global inventory of real world items that can be leveraged to confirm that a real world equivalent exists. Malicious actors can flood the market with false VEROs undermining the collectability and trust in the concept itself. That is where the VERO smart contract and the VERO Admin Account on the Ethereum blockchain ensure greater confidence in this type of NFT.
Once they decide to sell a virtual equivalent of an object as a VERO, the real world object owner, most likely an authorized delegate of a museum where the object is permanently stored, needs to ensure that their object is ready to become a VERO. The checklist below defines all of the special attributes that a real object must have in order to become a VERO.
VERO Checklist
Your real world object is stored in a location that ensures perpetual storage and care. Recommendation: An existing museum or institution that already houses historic objects.
Your real world object has a URI for the associated 3D model that is as faithful as reasonably expected to the real object. This URI will be part of the reference to the metadata file that becomes unique as an NFT. The 3D model must always be publicly available. Recommendation: Use a high quality 3D model that will enhance the visual display opportunities as well as enhance the collectibility of the VERO.
Your real world object is associated with a globally unique identifier whose metadata is freely accessible over the internet. Recommendation: Use a dereferenceable URI to a record of the real object in a publicly accessible database, e.g., https://search.idigbio.org/v2/view/records/972b7247-f3fe-4a17-a1df-23fc77ef97ef
Your real world object is not an already approved VERO with a separate globally unique identifier or a different model.
Why is there need for administration before an NFT can become a VERO?
A smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain can do pretty much anything you want - but it doesn’t come cheap as it becomes more complex. Administration helps make sure an NFT purporting to be a VERO is actually a VERO.
The reason why blockchain technology is so appealing is that there isn’t a single source for exploit, and so this provides defense through numbers. Transactions that are posted to the Ethereum blockchain are run against every node in the network to make sure they come to a consensus conclusion. That’s a whole lot of computing power! In order to incentivize those nodes to run your transaction, you have to supply some “gas”, and running compute and/or data intensive applications cost more gas to run. Gas isn’t some esoteric ideal, it’s paying folks to run your stuff with money - Ethereum money called “Ether” (or the far smaller, more convenient subunit “wei”). Paying for more computations on the network is the incentivization mechanism to keep things efficient and only as complex as it needs to be when transacting on the network. We want the VERO concept to scale to be useful to the real object owner community and the collector community far into the future. Allowing VERO transactions to be as low cost as possible while still ensuring that all of the criteria of this special class of NFT are met warrants some administration from outside of the smart contract.
Another impediment to auto-approving VEROs with a smart contract or with an external application is that there are not universal data sources that are needed to validate a VERO. There isn’t a universal register of real world objects with associated metadata that can be leveraged to affirm a real object exists and provides a unique identifier for it. There is not a registry of depositories of real objects where only the depository administrator or delegate can authorize a real object to be minted as a VERO. There also isn’t a centralized repository that can confirm if a 3D model is associated with a separate identifier, or vice-versa, that may invalidate the uniqueness of a real object as a VERO. Rather than allowing the advent of VEROs begin like the Wild West, we have chosen to apply initial administration until the VERO community decides how the verification and approval process can be streamlined. The nice thing is that all of these needed resources can be created, if there is a market for VEROs! A fully decentralized VERO ecosystem that gives all parties involved the confidence that their VEROs are as authentic as any other one that preceded it isn’t a pipe dream. It will just need to be handled outside of the Ethereum blockchain but transacting upon it.
Will you always be the sole administrator to approve a VERO?
Please, no! We have no desire to be a bottleneck for progress and further adoption of VEROs by more and more museums.
Once there is established demand for VEROs that make this special class of NFT more collectible than any old NFT, then we will work with all of you to create an organic VERO community to take ownership over administration. There are some principles that we will not compromise on as part of the VERO administration community:
Decisions must be clear, transparent, and openly available - The open source software community has taken this approach to make software decisions inclusive and not dictated by a cabal of the powerful. We like the sound of that. If your VERO is rejected or rescinded, everyone will know precisely why and that decision will live in public for posterity. You can always still use it as a generic NFT, though. We created a GitHub repository that will house all of the decisions and attempt to democratize the decision-making process.
VERO smart contract must be public, tested, and auditable - Real object owners and collectors shouldn’t have to reverse engineer the contract on the blockchain to figure out what it’s doing. The smart contract is available on GitHub in a public repository with copious annotations and automatically tested to assure its accuracy. If the community determines that a modification to the contract is absolutely needed, the entire process will be visible to all. We want to avoid including too many loopholes in the smart contract for upgradability and defer to a community-migration approach for creating new VERO smart contracts (see this blog post). Ultimately, we want the community to decide how to proceed with contract changes.
Centralized software managing the VERO approval process must be open source - A real community is built through encouraging others to contribute their time, energy, and ideas to something that is meaningful to them. We desire a healthy, respectful developer community with developers who choose to use their time for an initiative that will help fund collections that house our history. It’s a mission that really matters to us. We believe that the best way to build that community is by removing roadblocks and other secret channels that can discourage folks from contributing. This means keeping all of the administrative software open source. A public GitHub repository that provides a clear pathway for developers to contribute sounds like the right solution.
Ownership over the VERO Admin Account - The VERO Admin Account is the only account able to execute VERO admin functions. Eventually, the community will decide how the admin account will facilitate administrative functions and the options are endless. Ownership of the admin account may persist in the hands of the VERO creators or be transferred to another account that may utilize software to streamline administration around validating VEROs. The VERO smart contract supports changing ownership to another account, so the same contract can be used indefinitely as the admin account is adjusted in the future.