Throughout 2023, NMKR has been working on new tools for Cardano, demonstrating unmatched consistency. Before the year began, Patrick Tobler, founder and CEO of NMKR, had already helped the company establish a reputation as the largest NFT infrastructure provider on the Cardano blockchain, minting millions of NFTs and collaborating with everyone from Martin Lawrence to Charles Hoskinson. By continually aligning its trajectory with the pulse of the NFT and blockchain industries, NMKR is supporting the overall user experience in the Cardano ecosystem. I was lucky enough to do an interview with Patrick about some of the new things that have been released in 2023 so far. What he shared gives us a valuable insight into the complexities of Cardano’s development and evolution.
Patrick told me about the NMKR Token Dashboard, which was released in March:
Patrick: “Yeah, the idea of the Token Dashboard is that people who delegate to the NMKR Stake Pool can claim tokens for delegating to the ISPO. The truth is it’s not fully finished yet. So the ‘claiming’ functionality is on my table. It has been for months and months and it’s probably the one point where we really haven’t delivered to the community. And we try to get it out, but there’s always something else. We’re working on that and hopefully we can get it out as soon as possible. And then we want to essentially use the NMKR Token in a new way. We want to integrate it way more into the core functionality of NMKR Studio. We’re adding more and more features to NMKR Studio that cannot really be done on a per-transaction fee basis. We have to accept subscriptions, in a way. That’s a difficult thing for us to do at the moment. With the Token Dashboard, we can basically say, okay, you can lock your NMKR Tokens and you can get a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription NFT back, and then you can use that NFT to connect to NMKR Studio and access those features. So, that’s kind of the approach to it.”
NMKR is collaborating with Genius Yield, the DeFi platform, to boost staking and locking capabilities for NMKR Tokens. I asked Patrick about how the experience has been so far.
Patrick: “So, yeah, I mean, we’ve worked with Genius Yield in the past for minting NFTs and now we are basically using their staking mechanism. Users can lock NMKR Tokens for a certain period of time, and for that they get a yield back. They also get the SaaS NFT, which at the moment hasn’t been used very much. So we are probably going to extend the period for that. It’s actually viable for all holders. It works very well. The dashboard that Genius Yield provides is really good. So, I’m quite happy.”
The concept of NFTs as representations of subscriptions has emerged with a novel twist on subscription-based services. In addition to enabling users to access services, NFTs also allow them to trade and sell their subscription rights on a decentralized platform. I asked Patrick how NMKR wants to utilize this concept, he said:
Patrick: “I like it. It’s basically taking the Software-as-a-Service approach to Web3. Instead of just having a regular subscription, which would also be doable, right? We instead make it as an NFT and basically say, okay, you can at any point just sell your subscription. If an NFT represents a subscription, I could just put it on JPGstore and maybe I only get a fraction of the price back, but at least you get something back and someone else who needs it more can use it. It’s an improvement over the current subscription services. So that’s basically the approach.”
With Project Catalyst Fund10, NMKR and Project Catalyst are working together to advance the Cardano NFT ecosystem with the NMKR Studio API. ‘Building on NMKR’ is a specific challenge in this funding round, aiming to increase accessibility and usability for the NFT community by encouraging the development of tools, integrations, and marketplaces. I asked Patrick about his experience working in the Catalyst ecosystem, he said:
Patrick: “So cool. It’s such an honor that over 50 proposals have been submitted. We’re grateful that people like building stuff on NMKR. I actually took the time to have a call with almost all of them and recorded a short video, and we’re gonna start a campaign for those when the voting period starts. We want to really push all the proposals out there as much as possible. I’m very happy with that part of it. I think that there are some negative sides to Project Catalyst at the moment, too. I’m very unhappy with the Catalyst Operations category. Because it’s pretty clear that if the Catalyst team, the current IOG Catalyst team, doesn’t win this, there’s no plan, there’s no backup. They have to win it. And they’re going in with the anticipation that they’re definitely going to win it, they didn’t even think about a plan B. And that, to me, it’s just a legitimization of them continuing to run Catalyst, which is better than nothing, but it’s not actually a vote. Right?”
With NFT Pal, NMKR combines layering, minting, and metadata generation. Artists and creators can streamline their workflow while getting instant previews and intuitive metadata management. I asked Patrick about this and he said the following:
Patrick: “So, NMKR is mostly being used just for minting, right? So most people that use NMKR Studio go in there, they mint their collection, and then maybe if we’re lucky, they go in there again to do an airdrop. Those are like the two use cases. I want to enable creators to go in there and have a full end-to-end experience. So, they go to NMKR and they don’t have any NFTs ready, and they can make those NFTs with NFT Pal now. And then, basically, NFT Pal is like a step before the core functionality of NMKR Studio. So they can come in, make the NFTs, upload them directly to NMKR studio, start the sale, you know, then do an airdrop if they want to. So, they stay in the NMKR ecosystem for longer, which is great for us. And, uh, and great for them because they don’t have to switch tools. And then on top of that, I want to expand it even further. So we introduce a system called plugins, which NFT Pal is one of them, where we can basically introduce more third party projects and say, okay, you can manage your whole NFT project from NMKR Studio. It should really be a powerful dashboard that you can use all the time. That’s kind of the goal and that’s the direction that we’re developing into.”
NMKR and IAMX have merged traditional email with Web3 utility by creating ADAmail. Users can log in to their accounts and send emails to Cardano wallets. I asked Patrick about this new release, and he said:
Patrick: “What I really like about ADAmail is that it’s actually just a tangible product that we built and released, and it solves some real issues, you know? Because you can suddenly talk to anyone on the chain. You can just send an email to anyone. As a project owner, you can basically start a newsletter for all the holders of your NFTs or your tokens or all your stake pool, delegators, this kind of stuff. So I really liked that. And, and what Charles said was, you can talk to all your dRep delegators. Which is also great. That’s amazing, I think. We’re not really reinventing the wheel. We’re just taking what already exists, what already works, which is email, and we’re adding this Web3 component to it and making it better. Something you can do already is you can write an email and then you can sign it with your Cardano wallet, so you can prove that this email was actually sent off by your wallet, which is amazing. And if you take that a step further, especially with IAMX, you could do KYC, create a DID for that KYC, attach it to your wallet, and then sign it with that DID. And then the other person would always know, ah, okay, Patrick Tobler is actually talking to me. It’s not a scammer, it’s not some random email. And that becomes extremely interesting. Then you can do so much more. You could have zero knowledge proofs attached to it. You can have document signing attached to it. You can have an instant smart contract transaction standard sent by email, where you can just click a button and then it opens up your wallet and you just have to sign it to accept a trade or something like that. So, the possibilities are really endless, and it all comes from this very simple idea, which I like.”
I followed up with a question about the potential for direct integration of ADAmail into NMKR Studio and Patrick had this to say:
Patrick: “So… we’ll see <laugh>. It’s not really like we’re partnering as NMKR. It doesn’t really have anything to do with minting NFTs. It’s actually just a new product developed by NMKR and IAMX together. It’s not really a joint venture, but it could be going in that direction and we have some plans. So, for example, I really want to do whitelist minting via email. I think that’s really cool. We want to integrate that more into NMKR Studio, but what form will that take… I don’t know yet. We’re just gonna try things out and we’re gonna see if people like it or if people enjoy it and use it. And if they do, then we continue going into that direction. And if they don’t, we go into a different direction. But that’s kind of the approach.”
Cardano fans and developers alike are turning their attention away from the relentless price speculation that once dominated the headlines. Rather than focusing on price, the Cardano Community is embracing a problem-solving ethos. I asked Patrick what motivates him when he wakes up in the morning. His answer gives us a look at his optimistic perspective:
Patrick: “I’m really excited just about the general direction that crypto is taking at the moment. People stopped caring about price, because price is tricky <laugh>. People have started thinking about, okay, how can we build things that solve real problems? That’s way more important because if you take the time to solve these real problems, price will follow. And you know, of course, the low Ada price is very difficult for all of us. We all don’t have any money, but if we can actually just use the time to build tools for normal people to come into the space, then in the next bull run, we will be positioned, as a whole, way better than in the past. Hopefully we won’t have as many FTXs in the world, and we will just have real use cases. And that’s what I’m excited about. That’s why we need projects like ADAmail, book.io, nucast, and all the others who’re building.”
For NMKR and its partners, 2023 has been an important year so far. As NFTs on Cardano continue to pioneer pivotal new use cases, we may look back on this period as a foundational time for the ecosystem. The community is eagerly anticipating what NMKR has in store for the rest of the year. I am very grateful to Patrick for taking the time to talk to me for this article, and I look forward to providing an update in the future!
