I stumbled upon RMRK (pronounced “remark”) during some deep reading on different NFT projects throughout Web3. What first caught my eye was the style. It has an edgy, cyberpunk, techno-dystopian feel to it. It hits all the right notes. This hooked me enough to start reading a bit more about their vision. I watched some videos on RMRK in general and on Kanaria, their flagship NFT project. Some exciting and, frankly, mind-blowing realizations crossed my mind. It sparked innovation and creativity; an extremely good sign. So I dug in deeper and here’s what I found.

NFT "Legos"

RMRK (Remark) is an NFT platform that began from the mind of Bruno Skvorc, a Web3 Foundation alumni, who branched out to accomplish his own goal of revolutionizing NFTs by leveraging substrate, the coding language of Polkadot. By using substrate, he and his incredible team are able to compose unique use cases of NFTs that I will describe to you concisely. These 5 features are called “NFT legos” which turns out to be quite intuitive. These legos are able to be combined in many different, arbitrary ways to suit a specific use case of an NFT. Before we go deeper, let’s check out those legos.

Nested NFTs

With RMRK an NFT can own another NFT and can equip this NFT. Think of a character in any game you currently play. There is an in-game marketplace with all of these resources that have no real world value. Now they do, and they can be owned, sold, upgraded expanding on the idea of “rarity”. If your NFT isn’t rare enough, grind and get a rare item that ups the rarity even more. Another straightforward example is a backpack with potions, weapons, etc can be equipped. Maybe you want the character to equip a hat, go for it. All of these can be NFTs with RMRK and nested into the parent NFT. Here’s a nice example of some NFTs equipped to the same bird.

Again, these changes you see are all NFTs. I hope this doesn’t sound redundant because it’s important to understand. They are not simply artistic renditions of the same bird. Instead of this just being multiple varieties of the same base art, your Kanaria (or any other project using the RMRK standard) is able to be upgraded over time with buying rare items and equipping them to your bird.

On Chain Emotes

Check out the emotes feature

Imagine Instagram (or any popular social media platform) with all the emotes available for someone to like, heart, send a sad face, etc. These already create a sense of worth among people as well as create a desire to produce more interaction by creating better content, posting about hot topics, videos or any of the various things people do to generate interest. With this lego, any artist can drive greater social mechanics to their NFT project and create somewhat of a market by more reactions. Even when I browse Singular (singular website) now, my eyes stick on those NFTs with more emotes just a bit longer.

Multi Resource NFTs

Visit Bruno's bird here

Alright, this is a doozy. Any NFT built with the RMRK standard will have the ability to be visualized in the context it is deployed. For example, if you have an eBook that is built with RMRK standard, this can have multiple resources embedded.

A cover resource: Think art and pfps
An audio file resource: Imagine an audible file that automatically plays when you upload that same NFT
An eBook resource: If you load that same NFT into Kindle, it automatically presents as an eBook

Pretty incredible right? But listen my friend, this is just the beginning. The NFT can have multiple resources for redundancy of the same NFT. Multiple versions of the NFT can be stored within that NFT to allow it to be represented differently depending on how the artist desires. Maybe you drop an egg and want it to hatch into something different in a few months. This adds another layer of complexity and a feeling of richness and depth to the NFT. Check out Bruno's Bird again. He has three separate resources for the same NFT to be displayed differently. This is all stored within his Super Founder NFT.

Conditional Rendering

This allows for the NFT’s output (or how we see it) to be determined by certain conditions. For example, if you combine “On-chain emotes” and “Multi-resource NFTs” legos you can imagine an NFT with two resources. The one that is the default (a Mona Lisa) and one that is unlocked when the NFT gets 100 likes (a Mona Lisa smiling). This can be applied to various aspects of the NFT unlocking the creativity of artists and developers alike.

By combining “conditional rendering” and “multi-resource” legos, the NFT can be rendered in different hosting servers (different metaverses for example). You want your Kanaria bird to be in Skybreach, the upcoming RMRK metaverse? No problem. You want your bird to be in Bit.Country with 3D rendering? No problem. You want your bird to be pixelated and rendered in Moonsama? No problem. The integrations are endless. If this technology takes off, you can begin to see how the RMRK standard can revolutionize the way we see gaming and NFTs in general. See below for an example of rendering a Kanaria bird as a PFP and then the rendered avatar for Kanaria’s upcoming metaverse, Skybreach

PFP rendering

Metaverse rendering

NFTs as DAOs

NFTs on RMRK will be able to be tokenized as DAOs with the upcoming integration of this technology with smart contracts. This NFT could be utilized to govern the DAO’s function. Should the Kanaria equip a Karura mask or the Phala glasses? What about collaborating on funding a Web3 startup by collatorizing a portion of your Kanaria? What about collectively creating a musical composition and then getting rewards for royalties based on input? These use cases are all possible with RMRK 3.0 which is coming this year.

Bringing it all together

With RMRK technology, artists, developers and users are able to unleash creativity and uses that are currently unforeseeable. Although this may sound complicated at first, it unlocks everything we’ve wanted from NFTs. Ethereum NFTs are great. There is clearly a vibrant community with many creators and developers bringing innovative solutions and unique use cases to NFTs. But RMRK is more, it completely changes the playing field. You can think of it as an upgrade to the ERC 721 bringing significantly more depth. No longer is it just about a PFP, participation in a DAO, access and influence. NFTs with RMRK are usable, upgradeable, robust, complex and yet simple at the same time.

This brings me to the current state of RMRK today. At the time of writing, RMRK 2.0, which incorporates all the “legos” I described above, is only available to Kanaria. However, there are a few other notable projects to keep an eye on. Neon Crisis is a project led by the developer I mentioned earlier, Cicada. He is pioneering the smart contracts that will make RMRK standard EVM aka Etherum compatible, opening up RMRK to the rest of Web3 - this is called RMRK 3.0. Exosama is a brand new project from the mind of Donnie BigBags (creator of Moonsama) that will be deployed on Moonbeam using RMRK 3.0 when Cicada’s work is done.

Within the next few weeks RMRK 2.0 logic will be available to the rest of Singular for artists to be able to create some amazing NFTs similar to Kanaria's functionality today. RMRK 3.0 standard will be available to the greater ecosystem with the launch of their slick, smooth and intuitive marketplace Singular 2.0 on Moonriver. The completion of RMRK 3.0 is moving quickly and Bruno noted they were close to the MVP (minimum value product) on a recent twitter spaces with Polka Haus. If you have a collection on Singular utilizing RMRK 1.0, don’t worry. Migration of current collections will be possible. The roadmap for Singular 2.0 will be released soon for you to see the timeline for these next-level features to be implemented as well. To continue the shipping, RMRK’s is also coordinating with MyNFT which approaches the bridging of assets (and specifically NFTs) between platforms in a unique and inherently more secure way. There is more to come from this project, so stay tuned.

RMRK is one of the most respected teams in the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems because they consistently deliver on their promises. They have already revolutionized how we see NFTs and are constantly working on how to improve their product. I say this to also note that these rollouts may have hiccups and take time to realize their potential. The new rollout of products may not be exactly what you expect from day one, but the devs are working. They are open to suggestions, ideas and contributions to improve their product, and they are even hiring a solidity developer! Contact the team for more information or leave a comment below to get connected

If your mind is racing with possibilities, give it some more fodder for growth. Here are links for more content from the RMRK team:

Intro to RMRK
Skybreach: The Kanaria Metaverse
General documentation with links to developer tools
Another article highlighting RMRK function

Follow RMRK socials for updates:

Contact the team:

Business Development: [email protected]
Marketing offers: [email protected]
Fraud: [email protected]

RMRK: Leading an NFT Revolution