Dear Bankless Nation,

Did you know you can create NFT collections that are supported on multiple blockchains right out of the gate?

One such platform that’s innovating here is Holograph, which supports creating multichain NFT collections across Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and as of today, BNB Chain.

Additionally, today Holograph also just unveiled a Drops functionality for multichain open edition (OE) releases.

All that said, let’s dive into the basics of Holograph and the details of the first Drops project for today’s post!

-WMP

Going Multichain with Holograph

What is Holograph

Holograph is a multichain tool for web3 creativity, allowing creators to mint, sell, and bridge NFTs across multiple networks through a user-friendly, no-code app.

The protocol maintains data integrity as collectibles move between networks and offers support for various chains, such as Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and now BNB Chain.

Why multichain NFTs?

Traditional NFT bridging between two different chains has resulted in a new "wrapped" version of a bridged NFT on the recipient chain. The Holograph team metaphorically likens this process to making photocopies of an NFT.

Inspired by this lack of true cross-chain interoperability, as well as by holography — a physics technique for recreating an image by using the reflections of light waves — the Holograph team thus created a new kind of NFT interoperability protocol that maintains an NFT’s data integrity across chains.

As such, NFTs minted through Holograph are capable of moving readily between any of the protocol’s supported chains, and they can do so natively without creating new wrapped, photocopy-esque versions. In this way, Holograph collapses the distinction between an “Ethereum NFT” and an “BNB Chain NFT,” etc.

With true multichain NFTs now possible, Holograph opens up a range of new uses cases, like artists minting on a cost-effective chain like Polygon before bridging to a more liquid network like Ethereum, or projects deploying a multichain marketplace where traders don’t need native gas tokens for every support chain.

The pulse of Holograph

Since launching its mainnet alpha in January 2023, Holograph has facilitated the deployment of over 130,000 “holographable” NFT smart contracts.

The majority of these deployments have come on Polygon (69,946) and Avalanche (61,963), while the newly integrated BNB Chain (107) has already caught up to the number of Ethereum deployments (104).

As for transactions, Holograph has already facilitated 214,761 on Polygon and 194,941 on Avalanche, with BNB Chain and Ethereum in a distant third and fourth here right now.

How to use Holograph

If you’re interested in minting a multichain NFT collection (JPG, PNG, GIF files currently supported), the steps on Holograph are as follows:

1. Go to app.holograph.xyz and connect your wallet by confirming the prompted signature request
2. Go to the Create tab at the top of the website, click on the Single NFTs button, then press Create Collection
3. Input your Collection Details, like the name, symbol, and royalties percentage
4. On the next page press Create NFT, then upload and fill out the info for each piece of media you want to mint in your collection — for now this process is performed one-by-one

1. Press Deploy when you’re ready to proceed, and then use the ensuing UI to deploy your collection on the networks Holograph supports — keep in mind that you’ll need to deploy on each one in order to make bridging possible among them all, and that you’ll need to pay a deployment fee on each chain
2. Once deployed, your NFTs will be mintable through the Mint button!

If you’re interested in bridging NFTs from a Holograph-based collection to another chain, these are the steps you would take:

1. Go to app.holograph.xyz and connect your wallet by confirming the prompted signature request
2. Click on the Bridge tab at the top of the website
3. In the bridging UI, input the chain you want to send from and the recipient network, e.g. Ethereum to Polygon, then use the Select NFTs button to pick the NFT you want to transfer
4. Press Continue, then Bridge, then confirm the the bridging transaction with your wallet
5. You can use the Bridge Explorer UI to check the status of your transfer — once it’s confirmed, your NFT will have been bridged!

Holograph Drops arrive

Along with rolling out support for BNB Chain today, Holograph also just unveiled its newest offering, Holograph Drops, which are multichain open editions.

Open editions have been all the craze in the NFT ecosystem this year, and now with this offering Holograph is paving the way for them to increasingly go multichain. To demo this new functionality, Holograph has partnered with renowned street artist Dan Witz on the first drop, Most Pit 2000, which costs the equivalent of $45 USD per edition and will run for two days.

The big picture

While the project is still young, Holograph’s innovative multichain approach is already paving the way to a more accessible and versatile future in the NFT world. Additionally, with steadily growing support for more chains and the introduction of new offerings like Holograph Drops, the project is opening up new use cases in the NFT ecosystem.