Chainlink 🤝 Nouns ecosystem

Wait, what?

That's it, Gami, creator of Gnars DAO started a project called "Forgeries". And this project gives you the chance to win a Noun (that's right, the one from the DAO with the funny square glasses).

And best of all: this project is using Chainlink VRF. How? I'm going to explain to you!

Let's start by explaining what Forgeries is…

“Inspired by Museum of Forgeries, we've mixed Noun 401 into an open edition of exact forgeries. Scan yours at forgeries.wtf once the drop is complete. One of you will withdraw the Noun from escrow!”

That is, you can mint NFTs and one of them will be the chosen to be linked to the withdraw of an original Noun. After all, they are all forgeries except one.

Technically speaking, one NFT minted will be able to withdraw Noun #401 from the locker contract. Best of all, everything is done in a fair, transparent and verifiably random way thanks to the Chainlink VRF integration!

Forgeries is part of a larger project called Omega

Omega is a free and permissionless protocol on Ethereum, that works as a contract factory, allowing anyone to deploy their own trustless raffle contract. Providing a foundation on which they can build any kind of “last man standing” game they can imagine – ie. Squid Game Onchain.

(Not so) off-topic

Since I became a Chainlink Advocate (thanks, Jeff), I've been translating articles and speaking about the subject in various communities and events. But the first article I translated was about VRF. So this function is significant to my Advocate journey in some way, as I understand that it allows the creation of funny and dynamic things, like Forgeries.

Whenever I see a cool subject related to VRF, I come here to write. The same happened when I won an NFT from my favorite collection (Cool Cats) through VRF.

Well, what does Chainlink VRF have to do with it?

To better understand the Verifiable Random Function, we must understand its need in the universe of Smart Contracts: this type of contract is on the blockchain which is a deterministic environment. This is not a problem, but it is – indeed – a limitation. But at the same time, what adds security and self-execution to smart contracts is this deterministic characteristic that they inherit from the blockchain itself.

Somehow, these contracts need to interact with non-deterministic and unpredictable things like token prices, weather information, dates and times, and also... randomness!

But ok, you can generate random data in another way. But nothing, absolutely nothing, guarantees you that that number is not falsely random. And forgeries here, Nouns #401 are enough.

What Chainlink VRF gives you is the on-chain and decentralized guarantee of the randomness of the data. And not only that! The contract will only consume the random data after consuming the cryptographic proof of the number's randomness!

Using Chainlink VRF, you can build reliable smart contracts for any applications that require unpredictable outcomes to:

• Make games more trustworthy by using a source of randomness that is verifiable on-chain, allowing developers to provide additional proof to security-sensitive users.

• Make games more fun by generating challenging and unpredictable scenarios and environments, and assigning unpredictable player rewards like loot drops.

• Generate provably random assignments of duties and resources, e.g. randomly assigning judges to cases or auditors to firms under scrutiny.

• Choose a representative sample of observers eligible to vote on a proposal the contract needs to establish consensus for (surveys are an efficient way to provide extra sybil resistance). – Source: Chainlink VRF: On-Chain Verifiable Randomness

Forgeries and Chainlink VRF

Well, several other projects use Chainlink VRF to assure their community of the veracity of random information, like Cool Cats or Pool Together. The way to use it is basically the same and the implementation is very simple (isn't it, Gami?)

What Forgeries Collection is doing, then, is linking its collection's contract with the Verifiable Random Function. That is, it created a hybrid contract by adding Chainlink's function. Chainlink VRF will then make the randomness request and thus one of the Forgeries owners will be randomly chosen to withdraw the real one.

This is an amazing way to prove to the community that the “non-forgerie” Noun was actually chosen randomly and it adds TRANSPARENCY to the project.

You can check the Forgeries GitHub **here. **And if you are interested in the technical part of VRF and want to add transparency to your project, click here.

Stay tuned, sales will start soon. Who knows you might be the next nouner…