NFT provenance hash
February 22nd, 2023

Are you familiar with the concept of NFT provenance hash?

Without a provenance hash, projects have the ability to manipulate the metadata of an NFT to their advantage once the minting process has been completed.

The sequence in which NFT tokens are assigned to the metadata is important. If the order of assignment is undisclosed before the mint, buyers of the NFTs have no assurance that the project team will not modify the assignment after the mint to benefit themselves.

To address this issue, projects require a way to demonstrate that the metadata order was established before the mint and was not modified afterward.

The provenance hash provides an elegant solution to this problem.

The provenance hash is created in a few steps:

  1. Create a hash for each image in the collection.

  2. Concatenate the hashes in the order in which the images will be minted to create a large combined string.

  3. Hash the combined string to obtain a provenance hash.

The best way to share the provenance hash with the community is by storing it in the collection's smart contract. This should only be done once before the mint. Updating it after the mint can be interpreted as a sign of potential manipulation.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a prime illustration of a project that utilizes a provenance hash. Anyone can go to Etherscan and read the BAYC provenance hash that is stored in the smart contract.

BAYC also created a UI to showcase how the provenance hash is calculated - https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/provenance

So the question is, do you care about the provenance hash?

Does it concern you whether the metadata has been modified after the minting process or not?

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