Wen New Standard (WNS 0.0)

WNS
1

Wen New Standard (WNS 0.0)

Abstract

WNS is an extremely lightweight NFT standard built on top of Token2022 for maximum ecosystem composability, flexibility and backward compatibility. WNS 0.0 starts off extremely simple, with a single instruction for creating a new NFT by locking supply at 1 and giving it 0 decimals. The metadata is embedded in the Mint account and has only 3 fields (name, symbol, uri). New instructions will be added only upon community alignment. The working repository for this project can be found here.

As a result of this simplicity, the token standard is already viewable on Solana explorer - Wen Poem, Genesis NFT

To make it as simple to upgrade the standard as possible, we expect the first few users to be simple NFTs that do not require ecosystem adoption, extensive features or firm standards. We should expect WNS 1.0 to be where it’s ready for general adoption, with a name change likely at that point as well.

Key Objectives

The primary mission of the Wen New Standard is: (1) delivering a composable and on-chain data light means for coordinating asset information, (2) removing rent seeking middlemen for how that information is communicated, and (3) introducing diversity into a landscape of critical technology that has become much too centralized.

Key Functionalities

There are a few critical features to the most popular use cases of NFTs that WNS intends to tackle first.

  • Collections - Grouping of NFTs around a common identifier
  • Identifying Metadata
    • On-chain identifiable information for displaying and verifying asset info including name, symbol and image
    • External data - not actionable on-chain but useful to have a global pointer.
    • Creator royalties - Who should be paid and how much, viewable while executing programs.
  • Royalties Enforcement - The actual mechanism for ensuring that platforms support royalties, as was the subject of months of discussion on Solana in 2022.

Minimizing On-chain Data

Minimizing on-chain data is relevant for two reasons:

  1. End user costs, to leverage NFTs at scale in a composable way, we need to be cost efficient.

  2. Current implementations fall short either by hurting developer experience (via complex proofs and custom RPC handling) or irrecoverable costs (up to 0.03 SOL per token). This implementation will retain a simple UX while being nearly entirely recoverable. Making NFTs up to 99% cheaper.

  3. Program complexity, building on top of NFTs as a core primitive should mean NFTs as a form of tokenized title should take up as little account space and compute as possible for it to be maximally useful.

Decentralization and composavility

Each version of WNS will be fully open sourced, immuatable and verifiable. As they are constructed using the building blocks of Token Extensions, protocols and apps will be able to integrate without fear of lack of future support and compatibility. This also means all critical functions are built in to the foundation of the L1 and once the WNS deploy is immutable, all other features will be as decentralized as the network itself.

Architecture

In the vein of building toward the future of ownership, WNS is built on the Token Extensions program. While Token Extensions does have some issues it also brings several critical benefits:

  1. Key functionality support - From collections to transfer hooks to metadata pointers, all functionality users and protocols need exists in one form or another.
  2. DAS API support - Reading data from on-chain is the most important part of any standard, DAS API powered by Helius already supports this information.
  3. Security - Token Extensions has been heavily audited and inheriting this security for core functionality will make the program much more affordable to maintain.

Initial Features

While there are many interesting ways to extend WNS using token extensions, we will initially leverage a few of them

  1. Metadata Pointer - Enable on-chain, globally accessible data
  2. Group + Member Pointers - Group NFTs by collection, inherent to the token
  3. Mint Closure - Reduce cost of minting NFTs significantly by making the largest cost reclaimable

Planned Extensions

Some additional future functionality that may be beneficial

  1. Transfer hooks - Trigger external royalty program to compute and distribute royalties
  2. Non-transferrable tokens - For use cases like the Saga Genesis NFT, POAPs, and identity.
  3. CPI Guard + ImmutableOwner - Security features that will enable more robust and safe usage of Solana NFTs.

As the core functionality is taken care of by Token22, the main role of WNS is standardizing:

  • How explorers and apps read on chain relationship between assets
  • How apps view asset data
  • How users can be best protected
  • How creators can be best served
  • How assets are created and management tooling

Next Steps

The next steps for WNS are working with the community towards 0.0.1, and from there we will find a suitable small scale project to launch that with.

About WNS

WNS is a distributed coalition of ecosystem partners, beginning with Ovols and Jupiter, building toward a more decentralized future for Solana. It is supported by the Wen Foundation, a Solana public goods organization.

80 Likes
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I agree with you that at the moment custom RPC handling is complex and the irrevocable fees that could be way cheaper for no reason. This problems benefit one person and not the developers or the community.

18 Likes
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It is incredibly interesting to watch how people improve the network, I will look forward to the public launch WNS

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Seeing this possibly being one of the most impactful features of token22 features (token extensions) for Solana in the short-mid term. Not only me but seen some signaling on CT about it too. Hoping that the transferhook feature will be part of the v0.0.1 .

I might be biased re this though as a hackathon-project me and a friend did for the last breakpoint was essentially based on the transferhook feature

Anyway, good things ahead for WNS I see :+1:

18 Likes
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V cool. Does this implement the new Token Metadata Interface that shipped with Token2022?

12 Likes
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Excited about the transferhook feature as well, seems like it’s very extensible.

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it is very complicated work that you have put togather great work team.

11 Likes
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Yes it does! It relies entirely on built in functionality from Token22, so you’ll be able to make WNS compatible NFTs straight from the command line with spl-token commands!

11 Likes
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Yes, it’s very cool. Still some extra work that will have to go into enforcing royalties separate of it however!

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Would love to learn more about your hackathon project! Feel free to shoot me a message in here or on Twitter.

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Nice one. The future looks brilliantly bright. :heart:

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First mint of wen new standard will be assetdash PFP collection as announced. What is the benefit of this new standard for the collections and most importantly for the solana ecosystem?

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The most important benefits of WNS are:

  • No third party fees, saving users a minimum of 0.01 SOL per mint
  • Fully closable mint accounts - This means when you burn your NFTs, you get the entire account back
  • Full integration with Token Extensions and no reliance on third party programs for metadata - This means users and creators can make NFTs using Solana tools directly and only need to touch WNS if you want to support royalties.
  • Convenient royalty distribution - Royalties are distributed to an external account and the claimed by the creator proportionally to their share owed, making it more flexible for programs to integrate as well as more convenient for creators to change or structure best for tax purposes.

There are several other exciting pieces to WNS that we’ll be rolling out shortly, but if you’re interested in getting involved we’d love your help!

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If you want to fill out the form on the site we can get in touch with you ASAP!

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Just submitted! I think this standard will really thrive if parts can be swapped out as needed. I’d love to be able to reap the benefits of all your features but have my own metadata program (which implements the Token Metadata Interface but has an additional feature – “holder metadata” – https://www.holdermetadata.com).

I imagine this wouldn’t require too much – at minimum, 1) an update to the metadata pointer and 2) making sure my metadata program abides by the additional functions WNS requires (I see royalty metadata fields, for example).

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I have only recently been looking into this new standard and of the inherent benefits of assetdash. I must say that I am very impressed with how it is all put together, in such a way that it is of benefit to both users and creators of NFTs. Will be closely following this project as well as reading with interest about the future WNS rollouts that are planned. The newly announced Jupiter Working Group establishment, is also very exciting. I will follow this project with great interest.

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How can we partake and bring our own ideas to the NFT collections I’ve created as an artists? I would love to collaborate with $WEN to incentivize my & the community, get more people to hold long term and benefit from it vs. selling for immediate profit.

2 Likes