Recently, however, Paragraph subsumed Mirror, and as of a few weeks ago the merging of the two was completed, which means that my Mirror publication was imported into Paragraph. I now had two publications on the same platform, neither of which had a stated intention. I now felt confused as to what I should post to which publication, and I assumed that readers would also be confused as to why I had two publications with no stated 'goal' and hence what they should expect to be posted to each.

Considering what I had posted so far to each publication, I decided to demarcate them by assigning purposes to each, and last week I did so by changing the name of each publication and changing their description to clarify their respective intentions. Hence the Mirror publication called "OddWritings" - i.e., the publication you are reading now - has now been titled "Web3 Ideas," since this most closely reflects what the majority of its existing posts conveyed, and will convey in the future. These posts will consists of ideas I have on possible improvements to either specific existing Web3 platforms or to designs of new Web3 platforms which could be used to solve various problems. The other publication which was on Paragraph prior to the merge - also called "OddWritings" - is now known as "Web3 Poetry," since this not only reflects its existing content, but also reflects what I feel are the interests of the majority of its subscribers. Read this post in that publication for more information on the how and why of that renaming.

Thanks for your support so far, and feel free to subscribe to the other publication if you feel the topic may be of interest to you.

https://mirror.xyz/10/0xbf8bae607ee229d1a2a1f4d32f49db76034b9dc3

This article considers how maintaining a registry (perhaps itself a blockchain) of authors and their public addresses across blockchains would be helpful in preventing the problem of one individual on blockchain X impersonating an author who publishes NFTs on blockchain Y, given the assumption - raised by the previous article - that literary authors can benefit by creating cross-chain NFTs while simultaneously making the scarcity of those NFTs across all blockchains clear to buyers considering purchasing one of more of those NFTs.

On March 15, 2023, a direct message involving a group of 10 participants was created within the PageDAO discord server for the purpose of coming up with a metadata standard for publishing on web3 (message #1085684897005441114 for those in the group) in general. Those 10 participants then held a discord meeting in which brainstorming commenced, with the chat during the meeting being saved to the direct message. Various ideas were discussed, with plans for a Zoom meeting to occur on March 23, 2023, so that more people could participate in further planning. The group decided to call itself the “Web3 Publishing Metadata Standard Initial Focus Group.”

Among the considerations discussed was basing any standard on Ethereum Improvement Proposal 5375 :

Samuele Marro (@samuelemarro), Luca Donno (@lucadonnoh), "ERC-5375: NFT Author Information and Consent," Ethereum Improvement Proposals, no. 5375, July 2022. [Online serial]. Available: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5375.

In this standard, “authorship” and “author” refer to the creator of the NFT, and do not imply “authorship” in the sense of one who produces literary output. It thus applies to a much wider audience than that envisioned by the focus group, in addition to being specific to ethereum-based blockchains; the output of the focus group is meant to handle “publishing” metadata regardless of blockchain, that is, metadata specific to the book/article/poem publishing industries which would allow dApps based on different blockchains as well as the same blockchain to share information on authors and their NFT creations in a consistent manner. In addition, the thrust of EIP 5375 is addressing the issue of the creator of an NFT wanting to claim that a different individual was the creator or co-creator of the NFT - thus, a method is desired by which a creator can consent to being listed as the creator or co-creator. This misattribution can occur unintentionally due to the non-standard nature in which creators are identified- see the EIP for more info.

One Problem with Regards to Publication Across Blockchains

Imagine, for example, that author Nancy McClure publishes NFT books under two different pseudo-names : “Fred Jones” and “Marvin Bellicose.” She can currently accomplish this on one blockchain (call it B1) by creating two different addresses on B1, one for each pseudo-name. Let’s call them AF and AM (for Address Fred and Address Marvin). She then connects her wallet to an NFT book marketplace (call it M) using AF, which then displays the books she has written as Fred Jones. If instead she connects using AM, she then sees the books she has written as Marvin Bellicose.

However, what if she wanted to publish those same books on a different blockchain (call it B2)?. She would need to create two different addresses on B2 which don’t look at all like the addresses on B1 (because they are different blockchains) - call them AF2 and AM2. She would then connect her wallet to M using AF2 to publish as Fred Jones on B2, or using AM2 to publish as Marvin Bellicose on B2. This assumes that the single marketplace M can handle connecting to both marketplaces.

What is to stop an impersonator (Jack Fakeman) from creating AF2 and AM2 on B2 and then republishing the books as if he were the real Nancy McClure? nothing.

One the Way to One Possible Solution with Regards to Publication Across Blockchains

Imagine that the focus group comes up with a set of metadata which allows the implementation of a registry of NFT literary authors together with their NFT literary creations regardless of which blockchain is used. If the registry could equate the set {B1, AF, AM} with {B2, AF2, AM2} then author identity could be established. HOW this could be done is still subject to brainstorming (for example, how to prevent Jack Fakeman from creating the second set in the registry); however the purpose of the focus group is to come up with what underlying metadata needs to be specified to allow the implementation of solutions, not the solutions themselves; and not just the solution to this one problem, but to other problems involving the correct and consistent identification of authors with their works

https://www.quora.com/Can-you-mint-the-same-NFT-on-different-blockchains

Another reason given is that the definition of ‘scarcity’ becomes blurred if it is not clear that an NFT is available on multiple chains (that is, it is a “cross-chain NFT”) :

https://www.reddit.com/r/ergonauts/comments/q0fo1f/minting_the_same_nft_on_multiple_chains/

This blurring of the definition of scarcity can then cause a buyer, who has assumptions about the scarcity of the piece and who then discovers the same piece on a different chain, to give you (the creator) a bad reputation :

https://nftplazas.com/learn-about-nfts/sell-the-same-nft-on-different-platforms/

The same point is made in this article, in which the term ‘platform’ appears to mean ‘blockchain’, as distinguished from ‘marketplace’ :

https://nftdesire.io/can-you-sell-an-nft-on-multiple-platforms/

Others, however, point out that minting an NFT on a “different platform” can result in a creator being banned from the platform. This does not make sense if ‘platform’ means ‘blockchain,’ because there is no software-based mechanism by which anyone can be banned from using a blockchain. Only marketplaces (which use blockchains under the hood) could ban users from using marketplaces (not the blockchains themselves), and presumably the terms and conditions of the marketplace would specify when and how this would occur, though I myself have not read any terms which have done so. In fact, the FAQ of a very popular multiple-blockchain marketplace - Rarible - specifically states that they do not enable moving NFTs between blockchains, but that the same effect can be had by minting the same art multiple times on each chain :

https://rarible.com/how-it-works/using-rarible/which-blockchains-does-rarible-support

Despite this alternate definition behind the meaning of ‘platform,’ the avoidance of possibly being banned then becomes another reason given to avoid cross-chain NFTs:

https://www.rennoco.com/post/nfts-minting-and-copyright-what-you-should-know-as-an-artist

Note that at the time of writing, typing the question “can i mint the same nft on multiple blockchains” into the google search engine will result in a quote from the above article (which uses ‘platform’ in the ‘marketplace’ sense), which incidentally is then misattributed to an answer on quora.

Several people are attempting to ease the enforcing of this ‘rule’ by creating tools which allow an NFT to be “moved” between blockchains, such that it would only be ‘unlocked’ on one blockchain at a time :

https://www.finder.com/cross-chain-nfts

Still other investigators recognize that the uniqueness of NFTs is limited to the blockchain on which it is minted and that many people misunderstand this aspect of NFTs, leading to a belief that there is only one “real” blockchain which contains the “real” nft :

https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-dont-work-the-way-you-think-they-do/

In considering this question, a group of Literary NFT creators (that is, creators of NFTs which present poems or other types of literature) note that there are some aspects specific to literary NFTs which further muddy the waters on what is acceptable, given that poems and other literature can be presented in multiple ways - for example, as pure text, or as an audible reading, or as a video overlayed with graphics and the words of the poem as the poem is recited. In this case, is a text version of an NFT poem “equivalent” to the video version of the same poem? What about the same poem being read by different people? Is it ethical, in other words, to mint different presentations of the identical poem as separate NFTs on the same blockchain, let alone across blockchains?

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2AduDPqIfsnpixd163eN3K

One of the conclusions reached by the podcast was that as long as the buyer is AWARE of the existence of different formats of the same poem and/or other mints of the poem on the same or other blockchains BEFORE purchasing, or is aware of the POSSIBILITY that the scarcity of the item may change in the future, then the acceptability of cross-chain poetry NFTs becomes more palatable, assuming of course that the author of the poem is the same individual or group of individuals which has minted all presentations of the poem on all blockchains in which they are found.

To address these concerns, I have opted to mint my poems on multiple blockchains in the following way :

1. I pick one blockchain (e.g. Ethereum), one format (e.g. Text as a JPEG), and one marketplace that supports the blockchain (e.g. Foundation) upon which to make the first mint, WITHOUT listing it. Within the description of the NFT, I include a link to which potential buyers can go in order to determine the cross-chain scarcity of the NFT (e.g. oddwritings.com/details/february.htm).

2. I determine which other marketplaces end up indexing the NFT automatically after I mint to the chosen marketplace, and then provide links to those marketplaces in a drop down for the user.

3. I verify which of those marketplaces failed to copy over my description of the NFT (which contains the scarcity link), and manually update those descriptions to contain the link.

4. I repeat the above steps for a number of different blockchain/format combinations.

5. When I am ready to list, I list the NFT in each chosen marketplace in the currency appropriate for the blockchain, such that at the time of listing the prices are equivalent across blockchains.

6. I repeat step 4, except that I immediately list the NFT for a price which matches the existing prices.

7. As soon as any format of the NFT, on any blockchain, gets sold, I then cease repeating step 4, and update the scarcity link to reflect that the scarcity is now frozen across blockchains.

The above steps provide the benefit of allowing purchasers to pick whichever blockchain / currency / marketplace they prefer, while still understanding the status of the scarcity of the NFT before buying. They also provide the benefit of allowing me, the creator, to broaden my base of potential sales, and they also provide the benefit of helping less popular blockchains compete against more popular ones.

However, there are also some problems with the above steps :

1. The difference in price between the NFT across blockchains, which is initially close to zero in step 6, will increase over time, given that currencies will rise and fall in value with respect to one another. I could mitigate this by accepting payment only in either FIAT or stablecoins; however, this removes the benefit of allowing the purchaser to pick their preferred blockchain / currency / marketplace, not only because it restricts the currency, but also because not all marketplaces allow payment in that manner.

2. Not all marketplaces support providing a description to an NFT (for example, Typed.Art on the Tezos blockchain at the time of writing). I could mitigate this by including a non-clickable link to the scarcity URL within the NFT itself.

The above strategy is therefore obviously not optimal; however, if you also feel, as a writer, that you like the idea of supporting the acceptance of cross-chain NFTs in a way which avoids misunderstandings with purchasers, these steps may give you a starting point on how to go about it, or at least give you some ideas on possibly more effective alternatives.

engage the very heart of that insensate harpy :

perched upon the edge of your insensate brain,

parched with thirst for scrivenings condensing

in the folds of these the pages of your mind

the crabbed unfolding ravings of your muse :

for she is your beginning.

video image created with @NightcafeStudio (https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/eUet0PTsaGwtt3DpJSBo)