A novel way to incentivize WordPress contributions via Web3 technologies.

Web3 WP is a community of WordPress enthusiasts and businesses dedicated to introducing the WordPress community to the decentralized future of the internet – Blockchain, dApps, DAOs, NFTs, and Crypto meet GPL. Though Web3 technologies can be controversial, we believe strongly that once one takes the time to understand the new capabilities Web3 unlocks and actually uses the applications being built with it, it’s nearly impossible to not see this as the future of the Internet. This is often described as “falling down the Web3 rabbit hole”, and is what we hope to achieve for members of the WordPress community – our long-time home. To achieve this mission we are focusing our efforts on:

1. Education through our blog, social, video, and sharing of open source code.
2. Building novel and practical “experiments” demonstrating how Web3 can align with WordPress and Open Source software.

Problem Background

The WordPress project, like any open source software, relies heavily on a community of developers and contributors who patch bugs and develop new features. Most do this on a volunteer basis because they use the software and love the community that has formed around it. This community-based development and ownership is one of the amazing hallmarks of Open Source Software, but also leads to some common problems that often cause projects to languish, lose relevance, or die.

• Contributors are often criminally underfunded, especially when compared to the amount of value they create for the users of their open source software projects. Without financial backing or incentives they are limited on the time they can dedicate to the project, making it more difficult to build complex features and security standards that require strong collaboration and dedicated focus.
• Contributors often are poorly recognized for their contributions and hard work. And yet we expect them to deal with the regular complaints and accusations in tickets and threads from users who want the world, treating their free software as if it was some paid product from a major tech company.

The WordPress project has done a better job than most open source software to address these challenges:

• The Five for the Future campaign encourages organizations to contribute five percent of their resources to WordPress development. The majority of development today is by these sponsored employees of larger WP companies like Automattic, Yoast, 10up, etc. While being a lifeline to keep WordPress relevant, this reliance on sponsorship sometimes brings up questions of these companies’ influence over the direction of the project. Do the goals of commercial WordPress companies always line up with those of most WP users?

• A credits system exists to help give some credit to developers by displaying their names and avatars in the About page that is shown when upgrading WordPress. Also user profiles on wordpress.org show badges to recognize core contributors. However many WordPress users never see these credits or badges, and they can’t be easily shared for social proof. They are also centralized and non-portable, if wordpress.org disappears so does that recognition.

Despite the success of these efforts, we believe that by leveraging some of the capabilities that Web3 technology provides we can build new and exciting ways to improve the WordPress project by incentivizing core contributions.

Proposal

The Web3 WP community is working on our next project to support WordPress by rewarding core contributors for their contributions in the past and into the future. We are creating limited edition collectable “WordPress Core Contributor“ coins for each of the 41 major historical releases of WordPress all the way back to 0.7. We have already compiled at great effort an exhaustive list of all these contributors to be able to reward them with this rare collectible.

Rather than mint and distribute these collectible coins in the real world via post or at events like WordCamps, we will be leveraging the power of Web3 to mint these as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)! These NFTs are distributed essentially as an “Airdrop”, as they can be claimed and minted free of charge only by WordPress Core Contributors. In fact these collectibles will actually be some of the first NFT WordPress swag following in the footsteps of our Wapuu NFT collection that launched Web3 WP.

We imagine a few potential outcomes that might come from this NFT experiment, all of which could work towards our goal to grow and improve the WordPress project.

1. Social Proof

NFTs are not just about art or speculation. One of the most interesting use cases that has emerged with NFTs is that they have become a form of social proof. In the case of CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club they are the digital equivalent of buying a supercar to show off your status around town, both in functionality and price. Being able to cryptographically prove that you own a scarce digital asset representing your membership in an exclusive club is a revolutionary development in a world where our online identity is becoming more separate and important than our IRL one.

While WordPress already provides some forms of social proof to core contributors in the form of the about page credits and wordpress.org profile badges, it could be greatly improved. A badge in the the form of an NFT would be visually appealing, cryptographically verifiable, irrevocable, and portable. If a core contributor decides to mint and hold their NFTs, they can be displayed on our web3wp.com gallery, in their wallet, via any compatible NFT gallery app, and even soon as a cryptographically verified Twitter profile picture!

2. Creating New Incentives

A unique attribute of NFTs is that they are natively portable and monetizable. These NFTs will be inherently rare, as by our calculations even if every contributor NFT was minted for all WP versions through 5.8, there would be only 11,256 for the potentially huge market that the success of the WordPress project creates. Additionally as NFT metadata will be unique for each core contributor, demand can form for specific contributors tied to their stature in the community. For example, how rare and in demand would the WordPress 0.7 NFTs for Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little (the only contributors for the initial release) be?

Core contributors will be able to mint these collectibles free of any fees. After minting they can decide whether to hold their NFT for social proof, or list it on marketplaces to be sold to other potential collectors. If there is a market demand for these collectibles they could become a way for contributors to receive monetary rewards for their contribution to WordPress. They would receive a fee when selling their NFT, and thereafter receive a perpetual royalty percentage of every trade on NFT marketplaces. We also propose to work with the WordPress foundation so that the NFTs can programmatically send a percentage of royalties of all trades directly to the WordPress foundation as well. This could result in a new market, where by trading and collecting these NFT coins people can support the WordPress contributors and foundation monetarily.

By creating a whole new incentive system for WordPress core contributions, participation should increase as people can contribute to open source and have a way for the community as a whole to sponsor them and help pay some of their bills. Think of it as allowing anyone to “sponsor” a core contributor just as many WordPress companies do today via Five for the Future. And all of this can be built via Web3 to function permissionlessly and trustlessly on the blockchain with no intermediaries or central authorities!

Technical Details

• We have compiled a hopefully complete database of all core contributors for each major WordPress release going all the way back to 0.7. These are keyed by their wordpress.org username. For versions going back to WP 3.2 and into the future we use the official credits API endpoint. For earlier versions we manually compiled contributors from blog post announcements, closed track tickets by milestone, and SVN commits.
• WordPress Core Contributors found in our DB will be able to mint their NFTs after they prove their identity by logging into a Github account via Oauth that is attached to their wordpress.org profile. An undocumented API on wordpress.org already exists for this, used by the Gutenburg Github repository.
• Each NFT will include in its metadata:
  1. A video animation of a 3D rotating coin. This will be a unique design for each WordPress release.
  2. The WordPress version, jazz musician name, and release date.
  3. The WordPress logo, subject to verification that this project is in line with the WordPress trademark rules.
  4. An IPFS immutable link to the zip file download the WordPress release.
  5. The SVN revision number for the release.
  6. The Core contributor’s username, Name, type, and gravatar link and title for the release if available.
  7. Lots of fun nerdy easter eggs in its design and layout.
• We plan to partner with Immutable X to launch this NFT. This is a Layer 2 “rollup” Ethereum blockchain specifically for NFTs, and it already powers many large NFT projects such as TikTok, Disney, Marvel, and more. Using Immutable X instead of Ethereum mainnet directly provides some important benefits:
  1. Free minting and trading with NO gas fees!
  2. Frictionless onboarding using an existing Web3/Metamask wallet.
  3. A carbon-neutral blockchain, no environmental concerns here.
  4. The ability to add multiple levels of royalties. Example even if a contributor sells their NFT, they will continue to receive royalties every time that NFT is traded in perpetuity.
  5. Still powered and protected by the decentralized Ethereum blockchain via zk-rollups. So we inherit the authority of the most established Web3 blockchain, while conducting the normally expensive minting/trading/marketplace transactions on a more efficient layer.
  6. The ability to withdraw NFTs to the Ethereum mainnet (by paying gas) for trade on other marketplaces like OpenSea, or in case of Immutable X going down or discontinuing service (their smart contract has a time-locked emergency withdrawal function).

Conclusion

We are excited about the potential of this experiment to incentivize contributions to WordPress in ways never before possible without Web3 technologies. In fact this may be one of the first attempts to “tokenize” open source software contributions, and depending on how it turns out has the potential to unlock new ways of growing, monetizing, and governing open source software projects in the future. We believe this project fits the Web3 WP mission well, to build novel and practical “experiments” demonstrating how Web3 works and can align with WordPress and other OSS projects.

First a Primer

Open source has been incredibly disruptive in the growth of tech. It powers the web, cloud, and so much more. Vast ecosystems and communities are built around OSS (Open Source Software) projects. It speeds innovation as code can be modified or extended to quickly create novel solutions and apps.

OSS empowers creators to own their own content and data. Instead of creating on Facebook or YouTube, you can install software like WordPress to easily build and run your own site. In fact the mission of WordPress is to “Democratize Publishing”. Yet most sell out and give their data to big tech!

Data is more important than software. Whoever owns the data wins; The money and network effects from data ownership prevent competition and innovation. Some innovation can happen on top of them, but only to the extent they allow with their APIs and Terms of Service. I’ve been a developer long enough that I’ve had to scramble to rearchitect and even retire social plugins that were broken or neutered by changes in Facebook and Twitter APIs. Building a business on the API to centralized data silos is dangerous business!

How can Web3 fix our data problem?

Open Source Data

In Web3, data is on the blockchain decentralized and permissionless. Anyone can build apps that read or write to that data. There are no gatekeepers or censors that can change the API or block access. So developers can extend and build on not just code, but data. This means that Web3 apps can inherit the power and network effects of existing data! This is as new and revolutionary a concept as Open Source Software was when it was first introduced.

For example, BuddyPress is an OSS social media plugin built on WordPress. While the ability to run your own Facebook seems like a great idea, it has never grown to more than a niche product because social media is much more about the community network effects than it is about the software. A new social network can only succeed if it can get enough of one’s network to adopt it. And as the Facebooks and Twitters of the world gain more power and money as their data grows, they can afford to acquire or copycat any potential competitor into oblivion, stifling innovation and competition.

Web3 is solving this with new blockchains designed for social like DeSo. Imagine a decentralized social network where anyone can build an app on it permissionlessly integrating with the data. A whole ecosystem of apps like BitClout & Diamond are already being built on it. 

It’s not just social though… let’s look at another practical example.

As the popularity of NFTs explodes, anyone can create marketplaces or minting tools like OpenSea, Rarible, etc by simply forking their smart contracts. Because they all share the same blockchain source of data, digital assets, and users, your new marketplace can list every NFT, wallet, and user ever created by those competitors out of the box.

Imagine what you could build if you could fork not only Facebook’s software, but their data and users. Exponential innovation! This puts the power of data back into the hands of user’s and creators. If an app behaves badly or makes choices they don’t like, they can easily vote with their feet to the next app that builds a better product on that open data.

True Composability

In Web3 “any piece from any other app can plug into any other app permissionlessly…it’s almost like building a civilization or city of interconnected apps, instead of these silos in which the data’s not portable, the code isn’t portable, users aren’t portable” – @naval

“Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance. It’s sort of this magical thing where if you get it going, it has a sort of exponential hockey stick.” – @cdixon. Nowhere are we seeing this exponential growth more than the wild west of DeFi.

Innovative “Decentralized Finance” protocols are launching weekly attracting billions of dollars in investment. They are composed of novel combinations of other DeFi apps, generating new and efficient ways of generating passive income via lend, borrow, trade, arbitrage, and tokenomics.

“Composability leads inevitably toward more choice, and better user experiences, because there are no obstacles to someone taking an existing idea and making it easier to use, or adapting it to new use cases.” – @ljxie. Web3 enables the open-sourcing of APIs. No more data silos. 

Decentralized Identity (DID)

Privacy & security has become one of the biggest problems of the web. Our identity and credentials are splintered across a thousand apps, and each owns our data. Passwords are beyond broken.

What if you had ONE identity and credentials for the web THAT YOU OWN?

Web3 enables this by giving everyone a private/public keypair. This key lets you securely login to any site and interact with any app without registering, maintaining a new password, or giving up more data than desired. If you’ve used any dApps in the world of Web3 you’ve already felt this power!

And privacy?

With DID you control what data to share. You can have multiple IDs, anonymous IDs, etc. And with Verified Credentials, you can for example prove that you are over 21 without revealing your birthdate. Or perform KYC (Know Your Customer) verification for a financial app without actually giving them your details, only a cryptographic signature proving that you pass. Some leaders in this space are ENS Domains, Identity, and ION.

Think how much faster open source innovation can happen when Identity and Authorization are decentralized, managed by the user, and shared across all apps! All while maintaining privacy and user ownership of their data. Another pain-point for devs and users removed by Web3.

Summary 

I hope it’s now clear to you how Web3 is unlocking a revolution in Open Source via:

1. Open Data
2. True Composability
3. Decentralized Identity

If you want to know more follow @web3wp as we explore leveraging Web3 for WordPress & Open Source.

Fungi-what-now?

Fungible means that one item can be substituted for another. Generally speaking, one euro, one dollar, one bitcoin is worth the same as another and it doesn’t matter which one you use. An NFT is non fungible – meaning that one is distinct from any other and cannot be readily substituted. A real world analogy might be a rare coin that has a value beyond its face value or a unique original artwork.

NFTs have really taken off in the public consciousness recently and I wanted to write about why I think they are important and interesting and that folks in the WordPress ecosystem should invest some time thinking about them.

Digitally-native property rights

NFTs basically bring digitally native property rights to the web. That’s interesting because it’s never been possible before. So essentially, NFTs now make it possible for people to assert their property rights in a truly digitally native way rather than via recourse to laws and offline institutions.

This is a reasonably new technology in terms of adoption, although the concept has been around since the early days of Bitcoin (~2013) and much more evidently during the previous crypto cycle of 2017/2018 when the crypto kitties project pretty much brought the Ethereum network to a standstill.

This newness means that a lot of the current uses of NFTs are skeuomorphic, much like the early examples of websites, which were basically online magazines. This means that they represent digital versions of real life concepts. More on this concept of skeuomorphism in this Bankless episode which I highly recommend listening to.

JPEGs and right click saving

At the moment, we see a lot of examples of NFTs where they are images (of artworks generally), simply wrapped in a token. A typical NFT project right now is a JPEG picture of a monkey or cat, saved on IPFS (a decentralised storage protocol – like a BitTorrent version of AWS’ S3) and referenced by an NFT. The fact that you own the NFT means that you can prove the provenance of the picture within it as well. You can either show that you ‘minted’ (created) that NFT or you can show the chain of ownership back to the originating contract. So, yes, anyone can right click and save the image that is embedded within that NFT. But they can’t prove provenance and that’s the key – because the image isn’t the point. The ownership is the point.

So if these are early and skeuomorphic examples, what might more mature NFT projects look like?

Programmatic assets

Firstly, you don’t necessarily need to store just a reference to an image file within the NFT. You can store code. So for example, you could store the actual code for an SVG for an image or you can store an executable code snippet.

What’s interesting about the fact that you can store code is that you can then have generative or reactive NFTs (beyond the original generation from the smart contract). An NFT could be reactive to the wallet that owns it, or the time of day, or any other external factor. So a single NFT could be different:

• every time it is owned or passed on
• depending on what other NFTs that wallet owns
• even just every time it’s viewed because the time is different
• based on any other programmable factor

It’s exciting to imagine the amount of artistic creativity that this could unlock! I love generative art and the idea of being able to embed that creativity within a token that can be owned and composed with the rest of the web3 ecosystem. So it’s going to be a much more vibrant art form than just a picture of a cat or a monkey.

But what are they actually useful for?

Let’s leave aside the content of the NFT for now – be it a JPEG or anything else. We’ve got an NFT – why does that matter and how can we use it?

1. Provenance – simply being able to prove that you own something (as discussed earlier) can be very useful. It can be used as an open ledger receipt of purchase, proof of ownership, proof of authenticity or proof of a particular transaction.
2. As a key – an NFT could act as a ticket to get into a concert, the rights to access a warranty service, a VIP pass to an on or offline community, or as any other ‘bearer instrument’.
3. Composability – because they are an integral and native part of blockchain/crypto/web3, NFTs can be used seamlessly by any other part of the ecosystem. Enzyme.finance allows any wallet to create a fund with transparent holdings and trades, and for any other wallet to buy or sell shares in that fund. The shares are themselves NFTs, so suddenly I can sell you a share in a particular fund without having to go through laborious paperwork – I can just send it to you. A more fun example might be the idea of a computer game asset that’s an NFT – if you’ve earned a particular achievement in Call of Duty, that achievement could unlock an out-of-game experience elsewhere.
4. Proof of attendance or proof of contribution – if someone attends a football match by using their NFT or wallet as their key, they could receive an NFT in return that verifies that attendance. That NFT could then unlock after-match content, offers or actions (see composability above).
5. Digitally-native business models – keeping things very simple, NFTs allow artists and creators to experiment with monetisation like never before. Let’s say you’re an artist. Do you sell cheap and get fast, sure sales or price high and hope that others will see the value? With NFTs you can set royalties as part of the smart contract that manages transfer. So every sale, you get a cut. But what’s super cool is that the royalty is also composable and programmable. So you could say that for every sale, the royalty % increases or decreases, or has different tiers based on sale price, or is different if a wallet also contains other of your NFTs, or if it’s rainy outdoors or anything else you can program in. This is a huge deal for creators as it gives them access to a secondary market in their creations and the ability to experiment with monetisation. These are totally new concepts and have already proven meaningful for many artists.
6. Asset portability – Reddit gold. Twitter hearts. Call of Duty (yes that’s the only game I know) XP or skins. Currently there is no sane way to transfer assets along with your identity. It’s all constrained within applications or ecosystems. There’s no escape from the tech giants. You want to leave, sure, you might be able to take your content and data, but not the achievements, context and in-ecosystem assets. That’s not a free and open web. The web (and the metaverse) will be much richer when our assets are tied to our identity and we’re free to take them with us.

A new synthesis of utility, aesthetic, status and belonging

Even just examining the JPEG version of NFTs, let’s look at a project called Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). This is currently the second most popular NFT project out there (behind CryptoPunks), and is a collection of 10,000 apes created generatively. They have different characteristics, and a relatively simple program chooses from those characteristics every time an NFT is minted to compose a unique ape every time. People bought them because it’s cool artwork and they loved the idea of some apes being rarer than others due to the combination of characteristics they were ‘born’ with.

Now because it’s become such an iconic project and is contemporary with this stage of the NFT tech journey, these Bored Apes have become a collectible that sits on several important human aspects of human nature to become something more.

The first is our love of shiny things; of collectibles. This has been a human quality long before there was any formal idea of money. We collected things that had natural beauty and we used to trade them, partly because they have an inherent aesthetic quality which is a value that even humans who have never met before can share.

The second aspect of our nature that Apes speak to is social status. You cannot buy an Ape for less than ~50 ETH or around $200k (as of mid-Nov ‘21). So if you have an Ape now, you either bought it cheap and have the conviction or love for it that you don’t want to sell it for “Lambo” money, or you wanted an Ape so badly that you were prepared to pay serious money for it. Either way, it’s a status symbol, a way to flex.

I’d argue that demonstrating social status by owning an Ape is much less damaging to the environment than driving a sports car or any other other ridiculous thing that humans create to establish hierarchy.

The third powerful biological trend enough to speak to is our tribalism, our in-group/out-group mentality.

When it comes to behaviour and belonging, everyone wants to feel like a part of something. And Ape ownership allows people to feel like they are part of a club. Even better of course, it ties in with our drives for social status and aesthetics. It feels like a worthy club. A worthy and exclusive club. 

These very powerful components of human nature are combining together to create this strong behavioural reaction to the NFT landscape.

Second order effects

What happens when you have 10,000 people who own Apes and feel like they are part of a group with strong emotional bonds? 

Well, they’re going to get creative and they’re going to start building things. And so your Ape is now your proof that you’re a part of the community. It allows you into private discord groups, it allows you to be part of a network of 10,000 of the wealthiest, most influential, most forward looking people in the crypto space. And that human network is a super powerful force for the people within that community. They’re gonna share things with each other. They’re gonna collaborate.

The BAYC brand and commercial rights

Not all NFT’s convey commercial rights over the images within them. An NFT is created by a smart contract, but a contract is not necessarily a legal contract, and even if it is, the rights that it conveys can be tailored for that specific contract. 

In the case of Bored Apes, it does convey commercial rights. So if you buy an Ape, you also own the commercial rights to use that Ape. So you can print T-shirts, you can use it online, you can create derivative works. You can licence it for use in TV, or films, you can do what you want and the benefits and profits accrue to you. 

That’s really powerful and we’ve come back to this idea of digital property rights that NFTs allow. There have already been examples of celebrities flexing their Apes by wearing them as jewellery or clothing. There was a Tyrese Haliburton (a basketball player) who had their Ape printed on custom sneakers. 

It feels inevitable that there will be books, movie deals and video games. And those profits? They’ll go back to the community of Ape owners (with some royalties to the creators of the project). Compare that with the current business model if you’re a musician!

Meta Apes

And for me, it’s just super clear that we’re gonna be going around the metaverse in five or 10 years. And an avatar will walk past and people will feel genuinely like they are in the presence of a celebrity.

So why does this matter to the WordPress community?

Personally, and for a growing number of people that I find in the space, I see very many opportunities for using NFTs within the WordPress ecosystem. The point of this blog post isn’t to go into those in great detail. It’s to tell you some of the story of NFTs and to encourage you to dig a bit deeper into what’s going on. To think about the importance of digital property rights within an open source ecosystem, so that we can create a rich, resilient, vibrant and trustworthy economy to support this incredible community that we’ve worked so hard for.

So give your brain a few cycles to think about how owning a Wapuu could have similar benefits to owning an Ape. Think about how that community could unlock opportunities for human networks and collaboration. 

I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Experiment #1 Apps

When you visit our GitHub repo you will find all the components needed to set up your project. The apps include:

• The Smart Contract – Solidity
• The Frontend Website App – Nextjs/React
• The Metadata API – Nodejs
• The Image/Trait Generator – Python

In this post, we will provide an overview of each of the apps. We hope they provide a foundation for new users looking to create their own NFT projects.

The Smart Contract

At the core of an NFT is the smart contract. We cover the Wapuu NFT smart contract extensively in our walkthrough video. Smart contracts are programs stored on a blockchain that run when the conditions of the contract are met. They automate the execution of an agreement so that the participants can be certain of the outcome. If you have ever entered a contractual agreement, it is easy to find massive benefits from this technology, such as:

• Eliminating the need for an intermediary
• Ownership verification
• A public record that can not be falsified
• Speed and efficiency when terms are met
• And the list goes on

We built the Wapuu NFT smart contract using the standard ERC1155. For development we use Hardhat which handles compiling, running a local node, automated testing, and deploying to Local, Rinkeby Testnet, or Mainnet.

The config is available in hardhat.config.js file. To use the file for your project, rename sample.env to .env and populate it with the needed config variables. Options for local testing are described in the config file.

Available commands are listed with the source code on GitHub for testing, compiling, deploying, and running the program.

If you have questions, join our community on discord. We are always looking for new applications and would love to see what you are building.

The Frontend Web App

The frontend web app allows our users to mint Wapuus from our website. The website is built with Next.js + Tailwind CSS. It can be deployed to Next.js hosting like Vercel/Netlify, or as we did can be exported as static HTML and deployed on any host or CDN like Cloudflare Pages for unlimited scalability.

The config is located in the next.config.js file. Your config.json file needs to contain the smart contract address and ABI (interface specification in JSON). This is used by the web3.js library to interact with the smart contract via the user’s wallet.

The Metadata App

As was mentioned in our smart contract overview video, NFT smart contracts do not save the metadata for each token as that would be very expensive. Instead, they reveal a tokenURI() or URI() method that returns the URL where you can find the metadata for a specific NFT tokenId. You could save this metadata to the IPFS blockchain, but that would make it possible during the minting process for someone to preview all the NFTs that are yet to be minted and removes the aspect of chance. To resolve this, we used a simple node.js API with the Serverless framework deployed to AWS Lambda for unlimited scalability.

OpenSea Metadata Standard: https://docs.opensea.io/docs/metadata-standards

All API code is in the /api/ directory. Enter that directory then run npm install to install all dependencies. To avoid revealing secret information before all Wapuus are minted, we only include sample config/metadata files. You will need to rename and edit:

• Wapuu metadata (this is generated by our Wapuu generation script): api/all-traits.sample.json to api/all-traits.json
• Configurations for dev/prod stages (same data as config.json and an Infura API url): api/config-dev.sample.jsonto api/config-dev.json
• The whitelist of addresses for distributing our POAP: api/og-collectors.sample.json to api/og-collectors.json

The main code for the API endpoint is in api/handler.js and the main Serverless config is serverless.yml.

The Image/Trait Generator App

Finally, we built a programmatic generator that creates completely unique Wapuu characters based on a random set of more than one hundred distinct traits like hair, hats, accessories, clothing, holding items, and colors. Traits are weighted to have various rarities, some are very common, and some may only be found on a lucky handful of Wapuus. All these traits were created as transparent PNG layers, and the python script combines the layers to create the final Wapuus and their JSON metadata. This can all be found in image_generator/ directory.

The repo only includes some samples traits of each layer as a starting point in the image_generator/trait-layersdirectory. 1-of-1 special edition Wapuus were placed in the image_generator/completes/ directory and their special metadata defined in image_generator/metadata/special-wapuus.json.

Scripts for generating the art, deploying to IPFS, and refreshing the metadata are available on GitHub.

Wrapping Up

When practicing a new coding language we find it incredibly helpful to work with live examples. So, we’ve made everything you need to build your own generative art NFT project available on GitHub. Each section includes a list of commands and scripts for setting up your project.

Web3 WP is working on new projects and we will continue to share our code and findings. If you have questions or create a project using our example we want to hear about it. Tell us about it in the comments or drop us a message on the Web3 WP Discord server.

First, we were able to limit this ability to our POAP holders. As part of the NFT Wapuu launch, we dropped a special collectors pin/badge to holders that purchased in the first 72 hours. It was a way to say thank you. By whitelisting the “OG Collector” badge holders, we are able to show one of the benefits of using POAPs for an event.

Secondly, the Naming app actually allows us to write directly to the blockchain. This functionality shows how much flexibility and control is possible with Smart Contracts and NFTs – change the metadata by writing to the contract from the app.

Name Your Wapuu

Sounds complicated, right? We were actually able to make a really simple interface. Now, when you visit the Wapuu app, you will see a new “Name” option in the menu. Verify your wallet and any eligible Wapuus will be listed. Select the Wapuu you want to name, enter your custom name, and submit.

Check it out in action!

As a collector, it is just a rad way to interact with your Wapuu, and to leave your mark for future Wapuu holders. It’s available to the early collectors today at the cost of gas. We will be making this feature available publicly to all Wapuu holders in a future release. Want an opportunity to name a Wapuu? Mint a Wapuu from our app, or purchase one from our collection on OpenSea.

We will also be adding the code for this feature to our GitHub repository. Web3 WP is more than an NFT project and we want you to be a part. We would love to hear more about your project and how you are using Web3 technologies on your website. Join the discussion on Discord, Twitter, or leave us a comment.

LifterLMS exists to lift up others through education. Their core product is available free in the WordPress repository. It is incredibly powerful and great for course building, membership, gamification, and more.

LifterLMS is making free distributed learning available to tens of thousands of users. The Web3 WP community project is another way they are giving back. Their contribution allows us to build, share, and provide educational resources to the WordPress community.

As one of the Web3 WP sponsors, LifterLMS added their very own Wapuu to the special edition collection. Meet LifterDude!

The lucky minter of LifterDude will not only get a really awesome-looking Wapuu, the collector will also be treated to 1 year of premium service for free.

LifterDude represents freedom, the core benefit of LifterLMS.

Chris Badgett

Web3 technologies are showing up in all kinds of products and services but it is still out of reach for most WordPress users. We want to lower the barrier to entry. Our Wapuu NFT project was built to help introduce smart contracts to the community in a fun way. We are looking at how things like NFTs and POAPs can be used to shape and grow:

• In-person events (WordCamps, Meetups, etc.)
• Virtual summits
• Bridge the gap for hybrid events
• Online communities
• Rewarding community contribution and participation
• And, much more

Contributions from sponsors like LifterLMS allow us to make all our code and learnings available to the WordPress community.

Join Our Learning Community

We want to make Web3 available to everyone. First, when you mint a Wapuu, you are helping expand the project. If you’re just looking to learn more, all our resources are being made available for free. Join the discussion on Discord, follow us on Twitter, and join our mailing list. Finally, sponsorships are open. Add a Wapuu to the collection and be a part of growing the community. Help us shape the future of the internet and provide more free resources.

One of our main reasons for creating Web3 WP is education. We want to make it easier for WordPress users to build and monetize with the blockchain. In this tutorial, the developer of our Wapuu NFT project walks step-by-step through the smart contract.

Even if you do not code, this walkthrough provides insight into reading smart contracts and understanding how the technology works. In the Web3 world where code is trust, this is an important skill to learn.

The tutorial covers:

• Solidity – The programing language used for coding your own smart contract.
• Etherscan – How to view a contract publicly on Etherscan.
• Standards – Why we chose the NFT contract standard ERC1155.
• Tokens – What they are and how to create them.
• Efficiency – Bulk transfer and other tactics for keeping gas fees low.
• Contract customization – Features we added that are not part of the normal NFT standard.
• How to read a smart contract – Go item-by-item through the contract and explore its logic.
• Calls – Interact with smart contracts directly on Etherscan without an API connection.
• Events – Using events to publish transactions and other activities to the blockchain to save gas and allow other applications to trigger actions in response.

We are committed to making Web3 WP experiments available to others in the WordPress community. This in-depth walkthrough is a foundation for further exploration and provides a look at the possibilities available with smart contracts and tokens.

Tokens, token limit, metadata URI, the GPL license, fee amounts, and custom names are all stored in the Wapuu NFT custom smart contract. The contract is open source with a MIT license, verified, and visible on Etherscan. Users will be able to interact directly with our smart contract to mint or transfer Wapuus even if our site no longer exists in the future.

• Contract Address: 0xd5e793c08ce6e4bc225b64f19496629a81873c22
• Visit the official collection on OpenSea

Follow our projects on GitHub for access to code and future experimentation. Join the discussion on the Web3 WP Discord server. If you are a business that would like to sponsor Web3 WP experimentation, learn more about how you can get involved on our sponsor page. The community is open to everyone. We would love to hear your feedback and see the projects you are building. Leave a comment or message us on Twitter.

WP Pusher owner and developer Keanan Koppenhaver is constantly giving back to the WordPress community. He is a speaker, mentor, and committed to creating tools that “just work.” His participation in the Web3 WP community is a welcome addition.

As one of our sponsors, WP Pusher added their very own custom Wapuu to the special edition collection. “Wapuusher” includes a secret one-time use code for a 1-year free WP Pusher membership.

Our sponsors have stepped up HUGE with more than $15,000 in backing and services to help explore new technologies. The NFT Wapuu project is our first blockchain experiment. It is a great opportunity for us to gather like-minded developers and users curious about Web3 and it allows us to create new code for integrating NFT creation with WordPress. By having multiple people engage in the project we are also able to incentives our collectors with additional benefits with POAP badges.
We are just scratching the surface of smart contracts and backing from products like WP Pusher goes a long way in pushing the needle.

Interested in Participating?

We are just getting started! Join the community at the level that’s right for you. For starters, you can join the discussion on Discord, follow us on Twitter, and join our mailing list. Next, you can mint a Wapuu! There are only 2,222 Wapuus and when they are gone, they are gone. Who knows you may be the lucky collector of Wapuusher. Finally, sponsorships are open. Add your Wapuu to the collection and be a part of growing the community.

Whether you follow, share, mint, or sponsor, we have space for everyone. We look forward to developing useful projects that introduce the WordPress community to the decentralized future of the Internet.

What You Will Learn

The process is designed to be simple and our hope is to demystify the basic functionality of buying, selling and trading NFTs.

This tutorial covers:

• Connecting your MetaMask crypto wallet.
• The process of mint a Wapuu
• Tricks for saving on gas prices
• Checking the status of your transaction
• Viewing NFTs in your wallet
• How to access special edition Wapuu secret content

Why Purchase a Wapuu?

The Wapuu NFT collection was created to help introduce Web3 WP experiments to the WordPress community. This generative art project is digital swag that marks the launch of the project. NFTs invite participation and a way for the community to support further experimentation.

We believe NFTs are the perfect on-ramp for people into blockchain technology because it combines existing concepts they already understand – Art, collecting, and trading.

Ways to Get Involved

Don’t have the resources to purchase but want to get started? We want you to get involved too. Follow us on Twitter and join the discussion on Discord. You can win 1 of 6 Wapuus by following us on twitter and retweeting the giveaway tweet.

You can also get a submission by joining our mailing list. We will be randomly selecting our lucky winners shortly after the launch.

Final Thoughts

Even if you do not plan to collect or trade Wapuus, this tutorial is for you. Learning how your wallet can be used to seamlessly interact with Web3 decentralized applications (smart contracts) to purchase, verify ownership, login, collect, and trade is your onramp to the future of the Internet.

Whether you are a user or a developer, we hope this helps inspire your next project and gives you fresh ideas on how to simplify complex tasks with Web3 technologies. We would love to hear your ideas, If you have questions or thought leave them in the comments bellow so we can learn together.

Before you can enter the wide world of Web3 applications you need to install a wallet application that is Web3 compatible. On blockchains, your identity, address, and bank are all tied to a pair of cryptographic keys. The public key is your public wallet address on the blockchain. Anyone can send ETH or tokens to your wallet, and you can send ETH or interact with smart contracts by signing transactions with your private key. The most important thing to remember is keep your private key safe! There is no bank or organization that can help you if loose or leak your private key. Your funds will be gone. That’s why it’s very important to follow best practices and write down your passphrase on paper when setting up your wallet. If it’s never in your computer, phone, photos, or anything digital then it can’t be hacked, and it will be much harder to be tricked into giving it to someone.

Installing MetaMask

There are many Web3 wallets, but the gold standard is MetaMask, which a free browser extension that is fairly user-friendly. So this tutorial will walk you through setting up MetaMask.

Funding Your Wallet With Ether

Once your MetaMask Wallet is set up, it’s time to go purchase some Ethereum so that you can get busy buying, selling and trading NFTs. Ethereum is the main cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain network, which powers other tokens and decentralized apps through smart contracts. In order to perform any transactions on the Ethereum network, you have to pay a fee known as “gas” which is paid to the miners (thousands of servers around the world running the blockchain) as an incentive for them to pickup and process your transaction. Gas prices are dynamic and vary widely based on how busy the network is. With the popularity of Web3 and Ethereum, gas has been getting quite expensive at busy times. It can literally pay to wait to do your transactions on mornings and weekends when gas prices are low.

Buy in MetaMask

If you are brand new to cryptocurrencies, then probably the simplest way to purchase some ETH with your local currency and deposit it into your wallet is to use the built in “Buy” button in MetaMask. This will direct you to some of their partner companies that allow you to purchase using a Debit card. Simply click the button and follow the directions to make your purchase. Note that these partner companies might not support users from every country/state due to various regulations. If they don’t work for you keep reading.

Transfer From an Exchange

A more traditional way to purchase ETH and other cryptocurrencies is by using a centralized exchange. These may have lower fees, and support accounts from more jurisdictions. Some of the most well known and trusted are:

• Coinbase – ($10 free Bitcoiin)
• Gemini – ($25 free Bitcoin)
• Kraken
• Binance

Exchanges have high security, insurance, and other protection methods to try to keep your funds safe. They are also very easy to use using their apps and websites, and they tend to have the lowest fees for converting cryptocurrencies back and forth to your local currency. However, to do this they work more like a traditional bank. They own the wallet and private keys, and you have to trust them to keep that safe.

Most importantly when your funds are in an exchange then you are not able to use them to interact with the world of Web3 applications. So once you purchase Ether (ETH) in an exchange, you will still need to setup a Web3 wallet like MetaMask, then transfer or withdraw your ETH from the exchange to your wallet address. How you do this will depend on your exchange, but it might look something like this:

First choose Send/Withdraw/Transfer, then enter the amount to send to your wallet. If you want to purchase one Wapuu NFT then we recommend at least 0.03-0.04 ETH to cover the mint fee and gas fees. Finally you will enter the public address of your wallet! This can be found prominently in your wallet application with an easy way to copy it or generate a QR code to scan with your exchange mobile app.

Once you’ve entered your wallet address you can go ahead and initiate the transfer. Your exchange should give you an estimate of how long it will take, but usually it’s at most a few minutes before your ETH will appear in your MetaMask wallet balance! Note that most exchanges will have a holding period when you purchase cryptocurrency before they will allow you to transfer it out of the exchange. This is to cover them in case there is a problem with a payment from your bank or debit card. So it’s important to do this ahead of time so you will have liquid funds to purchase your Wapuu while they are still available!

Summary

Whoo, that was fun! But I promise that was most of the battle. Once you have your wallet setup and funded then you are ready to explore the world of Web3 decentralized applications like tokens, NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, the Metaverse, games, and so much more that is just being invented!

In our next post we will walk you through purchasing, listing, or trading your first Wapuu NFT!