Pustota.io

Inspiration

We are inspired by the possibilities that using smart contracts to manage real physical assets brings to the table as well as creating a multi-user system that would allow сustomers to use trustless technologies for their business processes across longer supply chains. Specifically, we focused on the complexity and vividness of offline business relationships between counterparties in the field of contemporary art and physical collectibles. We realized that the current generation of NFT marketplaces with simple rules and lackluster role representation do not reflect and reproduce real life commercial interactions and therefore cannot be sufficient for actual customers. We were able to find out what other important business roles are missing and tried to formalize their relationships in order to raise inclusion and protect the interests of meaningful intermediaries in the ecosystem of a real business related to art and other collectibles.

What it does

Our project is a multi-role NFT management engine allowing for various creative industries applications. Currently we have two products in the works: Tokenized fine and contemporary art platform (Pustota.io) and tokenized rare wines and spirits platform (Ullage.io). Our V0 smart contract that we use in MVP and our Metabuild Hackathon submission allows users to act as an artwork creator, collector and a gallery owner. The latter allows them to use their social capital for facilitating the trading of art items without actually owning the artworks based on a simple referral model.

How we built it

We used the following technological stack for our product: Solidity smart contract deployed in NEAR via Aurora for managing token minting and transfer, as well as governing the financial relationships between acting parties Next.js Front-end with implemented Redux and Redux-saga Express.js on Node.js backend Initially built with Firestore database, now migrating to MongoDB Web3 for Metamask login and contract operations signing

Challenges we ran into

Due to hype around NFT a lot of marketplace projects arose, and the main difficulty for us was to adjust our business model so as not to become another ordinary marketplace and find a relevant business niche.

As for technological challenges that we stumbled upon , the biggest ones were: Cost of contract deployment and execution in Ethereum Virtual Machine, which made our migration to NEAR via Aurora bridge so obvious Google Firebase that was our choice for initial MVP development had to be switched for own database server due to high costs of Google services

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made a multi-role NFT platform on NEAR with Aurora bridge, which is unique so far, and also planned a roadmap to introduce new functionality useful for our customers, acquired the first community and organized an exhibition in Shanghai that attracted real artwork sales. In addition, for our wine project, we held the first successful negotiations and are preparing to tokenize the first batch of 150+ bottles of premium alcohol by the end of March. We also secured the first agreements on the logistics of such activities.

What we learned

Since the blockchain is a relatively new area of legal regulation, smart contracts without a legal infrastructure are not yet applicable to the management of real objects. However, the right jurisdiction and a good legal framework will solve these problems and attract clients who want to transfer their business processes to the blockchain.

We have also received very positive feedback from the conservative business community in the field of collectible wines and paintings, which is a sure sign not only of high interest in new formats of business interaction, but also of the correctness of our primary business idea.

What's next for Pustota.io (Ullage.io)

V0 Smart contract application for Metabuild Hackathon - February ’22 V1 Smart contract deployment via Aurora bridge - March ‘22 Items tokenization for Initial customers onboarding in fine art and rare wine markets - April ‘22 Operations Maturation - July ‘22

KUDO’s and Conclusion

We are happy to be involved in paving the way for updating very conservative real world business environments with web3 technology. Real world objects rights bearing and trading is guaranteed to raise adoption in both enthusiast and professional audiences.

KUDOs to the wonderful people of the NEAR community who continue to inspire us daily with all the top work that they do as well as being so warm and welcoming to new projects like ours.

Thank you for your attention!

Have a nice day!