@jackbutcher’s Twitter feed is a master class in how building in public can engage and grow a community. Yes, Jack is the leader of the movement he created, with final decision-making authority on the art he produces as well as how, when, and where he reveals it. Still, you can’t help but feel the energy of the interplay between him and his audience. Multiple times I’ve witnessed a single reply ignite a slew of ideation and experimentation. To me, these are critical conversations that breathe life into the art.

Unfortunately, these two things are disconnected.

The NFTs are built on public, immutable blockchains where connecting them to meaningful memories and experiences should be trivial. But the conversations that led to their creation are isolated on Twitter. Go to an individual item on OpenSea, and you reach a dead-end. The only details are as follows:

By visualizevalue

This artwork may or may not be handmade.

There is much to be desired here from a user experience. If you were a child of the 80s and 90s, you may remember what it was like to buy CDs for your collection. You got to experience the artwork, the lyrics, and the occasional liner notes that gave some history behind the music.

NFTs have a significant advantage over CDs. The amount of information, stories, and history we could attach to an NFT could be infinite. And it’s not just BEFORE the mint. All the conversations stories that occur AFTER could be added as well. We discussed this in earlier articles: AF Lore Framework and Metadata Minting. 

To his credit, Jack is aware of this challenge. A week ago, he revealed the beginnings of a website dedicated to the most popular Tweets. This is a great first start. There are several threads that were pivotal moments in the history of Opepen and VV Checks, and those can now be surfaced to buyers and observers alike.

However, I can’t help but think this is a challenge that goes beyond Jack and his communities. What about all the other collections out there (current and future)? And what about the maintenance of this website? Will Jack and the community continue to tweak and iterate this custom webpage for the next 5-20 years? How will the history of these pieces be accessible through other browsers (Wallets, Marketplaces, Displays, etc)?

We need solutions that span space and time. We need solutions that are interoperable with other components of the ecosystem. We need ways to surface this to people who don’t live on Twitter 24/7.

One potential path forward could be a metadata standard for minting NFTs that store, index, and serve additional off-chain data for these NFTs. Here’s what that might look like.

• Capture: Tools like Pin Tweet to IPFS can create a permanent, web-friendly snapshot of a key Tweet.

• Curate: Jack and the community can vote on and filter with Tweets that were pivotal moments to the entire collection or to individual NFTs.

• Connect: Curated Tweets could be minted as new NFTs that contain the IPFS CID.

• Index: Technologies like The Graph could index all of these metadata NFTs and provide a means for Jack’s website to consume the data in a web3-friendly way.

• Experience: Any app/dapp can be provided a link to this index so that they can access this information and provide it to their end-users.

• Standard: If enough people followed this pattern and found it valuable, it could turn into a best practice for off-chain information to be associated with on-chain NFTs.

Imagine a future state where Atomic Form hardware could not only beautifully display your NFT but allow you to see and experience these pivotal moments in history. How it’s displayed could vary greatly. Apple Vision Pro? A companion app that you can pull up history from a QR code?

We know this entire toolchain isn’t available in the market today, but a full end-to-end solution could include and connect the following context (originally published on this Tweet):

• @opepenedition 007

• Created by @jackbutcher

• Dev by @jalil_eth

• w/Tweet by @BoredOpepen

• Archived by "Pin Tweet to @IPFS "

• All linked as metadata by attestations by @eas_eth

• Context added w/hardware displays by @atomicform

so we at Atomic Form are working on a much simpler version we call The Metadata Minter. It picks up where Pin Tweet to IPFS leaves off and allows you to cryptographically sign, search, and serve metadata for a specific NFT.

If you’re interested, please follow us and hit us up at contact@atomicform.com.