Introducing NFTs on Polymesh with version 5.3!

We’re thrilled to announce that Polymesh has been upgraded to 5.3, introducing functionality for non-fungible tokens (NFTs)! 

This minor release enables users to leverage Polymesh’s sophisticated compliance, settlement, and portfolio management features for NFTs. Further enhancement of NFT functionality will be based on feedback from the community. 

The full release notes can be found at:
https://github.com/PolymeshAssociation/Polymesh/releases/tag/v5.3.0

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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

First and foremost, the 5.3 release brings sophisticated NFT features to Polymesh through a pallet for non-fungible tokens that enables users to create, issue, redeem, and manage collections of NFTs. 

NFTs on Polymesh leverage Polymesh’s sophisticated compliance engine and settlement process, enabling token issuers to create compliant NFTs that settle atomically with either fungible or non-fungible assets. 

NFTs on Polymesh allow metadata to be associated with each individual NFT in a collection while having a consistent set of metadata keys across the whole collection. Metadata keys can either be local to an asset or be defined globally across the chain for common metadata types.

Issuing an NFT on Polymesh has protocol fees associated with it, similar to fungible assets. The protocol fee for creating an NFT collection is currently 2,500 POLYX. This collection can contain an unlimited number of NFTs within it (all with consistent treatment across metadata and compliance).  

Note that NFT functionality on Polymesh is in its infancy and it may be a while before there are supporting user interfaces for the community to use. In the meantime, we heavily encourage the community to provide feedback on potential enhancements. 

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Compliance

Since NFTs are integrated with Polymesh’s existing identity, settlement, and compliance engines, they are supported by the usual sophisticated rule engine for compliance purposes. These rules can then be consistently applied to all asset types, both fungible and non-fungible.

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Settlement and Portfolio management

Settlement and portfolio pallets have also been extended to allow the transfer of NFTs as well as movement between portfolios. 

This allows NFTs to be settled atomically with both other NFTs as well as fungible assets such as stable coins or other tokenized assets on Polymesh.

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Coming up next

Our next minor release will focus on Substrate upgrades and adding support for smart contracts written in Ink! 4.0.