The items minted on Nifty Gateway Studio (NGS) are designed to stand the test of time. Each item is pinned to IPFS, with the IPFS hash embedded in the token onchain. The following changes have been implemented as of March 2023:
- Both the tokenURI and baseURI fields reference an IPFS link instead of the https://api.niftygateway.com/ field.
- This change will eliminate concerns collectors have expressed around item metadata if the api.niftygateway.com field isn't accessible.
- We also create and pin an IPFS file for each item containing all the asset metadata.
These changes ensure that an NGS minted item has all required metadata hosted on a trusted distributed storage solution, Interplanetary File System (IPFS), removing all previous dependencies on NGS hosted services.
Why are we using IPFS? IPFS is an industry-standard solution to future proof onchain metadata for the following reasons:
- The nature of its distributed model ensures data replication and availability
- It is a well known and widely used storage solution in the Web3 space.
To view the IPFS hash for an item on NGS, visit the Smart Contract on Etherscan, select "Read Contract," and check the tokenIPFSHash field. This will show the tokenId's IPFS hash—This IPFS hash is written directly on chain and immutable. If you go to https://niftygateway.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/{hash} you can view the image for a given hash.