In 2022 the market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs)- tokenized images, music, and items, generated $24.7 billion. Just two years before, total sales were just $82.5 million.

This exponential market growth has led to discussions about whether NFTs harm the environment. Activists have expressed concerns about Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains like Ethereum, which have been linked to high carbon emissions. 

However, PoW NFTs don’t cover the entire market. Several NFT projects, such as Oceans and Us, are using blockchain technology to attempt to solve climate change. 

With this in mind, it’s important to consider a balance between environmental sustainability and technological advancements.

How do NFTs affect the environment?

The perception of cryptocurrency’s negative impact on the environment is primarily viewed through Proof-of-Work blockchains like Bitcoin, and specifically for NFTs, Ethereum, which covers 76% of all trading volume. Such networks rely on a process called “coin mining”, which is extremely resource intensive. 

During the coin mining process, computers on a network (also known as miners) race against one another to solve complex problems, with the “winner” receiving the right to confirm a block. Once a block has been confirmed, the miner that has claimed it can collect all gas fees and a reward. 

When the price of a cryptocurrency such as Ether increases, gas fees also rise, and the value of solving a problem is higher. This incentivizes miners to invest more computer power into solving a problem, consequently increasing the amount of power used (and wasted.) It’s estimated that Ethereum miners were using 44.49 TWh per year, or around the equivalent energy of running a house for 2.8 days per transaction. 

These numbers aren’t black and white. NFTs only represent a small portion of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. Therefore it’s difficult to determine whether they’ve significantly impacted the amount of computer power needed to solve problems. While this doesn’t mean NFTs are carbon neutral, their environmental impact may not be as significant as some numbers make it about to be. 

Additionally, Ethereum has recently moved from a Proof-of-Work model to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model, which we’ll cover in greater detail below. 

How Do NFTs’ Impact The Environment Compared to Physical Art

Although NFTs have been in the spotlight for their environmental damage, they may offer an eco-friendly alternative to traditional art. 

Traditional art requires resource-intensive processes, with a return flight from New York to London generating almost 1,000kg of CO2. With every tonne of CO2 released, around three square meters of Arctic ice will melt. 

Physical art also involves extensive production processes, often involving chemicals that can pollute over 10,000 liters of water. These chemicals usually aren’t picked up by treatment plants and can impact the drinking water in cities where a particular piece of art is exhibited. 

The exact numbers for the environmental impact of traditional art are too difficult to calculate, and therefore there are no specific data. That being said, if you look at the creation and distribution of traditional art alone, the carbon footprint is significantly higher than NFTs. 

Let’s consider transport, for example. When an NFT is minted, it can be sent to another individual for a small fee and an even smaller carbon footprint. Compared to this, a physical piece of art would use a cargo truck or aircraft. This doesn’t even include the delivery of materials, which adds even more to the environmental footprint of physical art. 

Proof-of-Stake Is Helping To Reduce NFT-Related Emissions

As mentioned earlier, Ethereum has moved from a Proof-of-Work model to a Proof-of-stake (PoS) model, but what does this mean for NFTs and climate change? 

PoS models use significantly less energy than their PoW counterparts as they don’t require miners to maintain their own mining equipment. With a PoS model, a limited number of powerful nodes run the network validating transactions once they’ve received a certain number of stakes from coin holders.

This prevents the need for large mining operations and lets nodes generate a passive income with staked tokens. Blockchains like Ethereum have now transitioned to a PoS model to reduce carbon emissions, which has made Ethereum 30,00 times more energy efficient. 

NFT Projects Supporting Environmental Change

Most mainstream headlines focus on the environmental damage of NFTs, overlooking projects that are designed to impact the environment positively. While many projects attempt to support the environment, two that have already achieved some success are Greenverse and Moss.Earth. 

Greenverse

Greenverse is a metaverse NFT project designed to help preserve underground resources. The project uses a preserve-to-earn model which tokenizes natural resources. With this model, real-world land is turned into blocks, and each block has an NFT priced on its natural minerals, biodiversity, and carbon emission potential. 

Owners will receive rewards for preserving these resources instead of developing the land. Benefits include biodiversity credits and non-production carbon credits. Greenverse was first pioneered in Jameson Land in Greenland, though it has since expanded to Suriname in South America. 

Moss.Earth 

Moss.Earth is a tech startup looking to help individuals and businesses offset their carbon footprint with tokenized carbon credits. First founded in 2020, Moss.Earth has sent over $30 million to Amazon preservation projects and has announced the release of Moss Amazon NFTs. 

Each NFT grants the owner a piece of land in the Amazon forest, which can be monitored using remote sensing tools created by Descartes Labs. 20% of each sale will be used to maintain the area’s security and provide satellite images. According to Moss.Earth, its NFT collection sold out in less than an hour. 

Final Thoughts: NFTs Need Time To Become Environmentally Friendly

While blockchain-based transactions used for NFTs do some environmental damage, projects are continuously looking for ways to mitigate their environmental impact. For projects like Ethereum, this means moving to a PoS model, while for projects like Greenverse and Moss.Earth, this means using NFT technology to preserve our natural environment. 

Regenerative Finance, or “ReFi,” is the niche cryptocurrency movement that uses the blockchain to solve a variety of climate and Earth-oriented issues. EcoSapiens, for example, is a metaverse enabling its community to combat climate change by tokenizing and creating a market for things such as carbon credits.

NFT’s potential to solve real-world problems is huge, however, as with all novel technology, NFTs must be given time to innovate. Technology we use daily, including smartphones, laptops, and TVs, all started with great environmental demands, but recent technological advancements have allowed us to limit their environmental impact. 

This could be a similar story for NFTs, which have already taken huge strides to limit their environmental impact in just two years since going mainstream. In just a few years, it’s possible that NFTs could not only become carbon neutral but could even help support our fight against climate change. 

We have been hard at work on the Monet 1.2 Release. This Mainnet upgrade is one of several releases planned for 2023. We are committed to and hyper-focused on creating the best blockchain shaping the future of Web3 infrastructure.

Monet 1.2 is a critical step in our journey. This release includes major updates to our Supernode infrastructure, permanent NFT data storage solution, Cascade, and duplicate detection technology, Sense.

We anticipate this this upgrade will be fully live on Testnet in the next few weeks, with Mainnet activation taking place this quarter. Please see below for more information on specific features that comprise Monet 1.2.

Storage Challenges: Proof of Storage

The most compelling value proposition in Pastel Network’s storage layer, Cascade, is in the trustless decentralization of data that is stored on the network. In Pastel, data is broken up into fragments that are then copied and randomly distributed across validators (Supernodes) operating the network. Monet 1.2 will bring Supernode Storage Challenges to further accomplish trustless data decentralization.

In layman’s terms, the way Storage Challenges work is that Supernodes effectively quiz each other ‘at random’ with spot checks to see whether they are storing the files they are supposed to using a novel Proof of Storage. If a Supernode fails a Proof of Storage challenge or simply fails to respond, they are in essence slashed and lose share of network income.

The core concepts intrinsic to Storage Challenges also permeate across the broader Pastel Network:

1. Trustless — Trust no network participant other than yourself by assuming that other network participants may be both unreliable and malicious.
2. Distributed — Operations, such as Storage Challenges, are performed by multiple active, randomly selected validators.
3. Verify — The outcome of Storage Challenge operations are verified by other fair network operators, and those verifications are further ‘verified’ (Bob performs a task, Alice verifies the task to the network, Eve double-checks Alice’s verification).
4. Open — Supernodes broadcast their Storage Challenges to the entire network so that every actor knows what is going on the entire time.
5. Deterministic — Each aspect in our Proof of Storage is done deterministically, as explicitly proscribed in the underlying protocol using XOR rankings and entropy from mining.

By incorporating Storage Challenges, we are able to achieve a robust mechanism for constantly verifying and validating the contents of Cascade and for ensuring that Supernode operators either remain compliant or incur penalties for violating the protocol (via slashing and network bans). This further guarantees both the decentralization of the files being stored on the network.

To better understand how Storage Challenges are implemented, we encourage you to review and contribute to our public repo.

Self-Healing Data

Storage Challenges in Cascade guarantee ongoing data permanance & decentralization on the network across active & compliant Supernodes. But even with Proof of Storage, what happens if the number of active Supernodes — each holding the underlying, redundant pieces of a particular file — suddenly changes to the point where entire files cannot be sufficiently reconstructed? Monet 1.2 activates the innovative concept of Self-Healing to further promote ongoing data permanence.

Cascade is highly disruptive in its capability to “over-provision” data. To over-provision means to generate many more pieces and copies of data than would be strictly required to reconstruct the original data itself. This is possible because these chunks are not normal disjoint segments of data like BitTorrent, but rather many versions of each chunk — i.e. fungible. These fungible chunks of data are called symbol files.

For example, Cascade can turn a 1MB file into 12MB of 50KB symbol files. And because symbol files are each fungible, Cascade only needs to collect 1MB worth of the different 50KB files to reconstruct the original file. By generating more symbol files than necessary and by ensuring that each symbol is truly being stored via Storage Challenges, Cascade guarantees any file can be reconstructed.

In addition to over-provisioning, Cascade further reduces the risk of data loss with further redundancy by requiring each symbol file to be stored by the 5 Supernodes that are closest to it using XOR distance. XOR is a deterministic algorithm used to define the distance between the PastelID identifier string for each active Supernode and the hash of the previous block. The Supernode’s PastelID that is “closest” to this previous block hash is then considered the “winner.” In the case of these symbol files, the 5 closest Supernodes are the winners.

However, what if these 5 Supernodes storing a set of symbol files suddenly leave the network at the same time, so that there is no chance to conduct a “handoff” of responsibility to other SNs that remain in the network? This is where self-healing comes into play.

There is a specific “seed” property in Cascade that is stored in the Pastel blockchain protocol itself. The seed enables Cascade to, after the fact, use the complete copy of the file (which can be verified by comparing it to the file’s hash — also stored directly in the Pastel blockchain) to reconstruct any of the files from the list of symbol files that were originally created. This means that Cascade can never truly lose any of the symbol files “forever” so long as the original file can be reconstructed correctly.

In practice, we use this to incorporate this concept such that whenever a symbol file goes missing, it is regenerated and redistributed to the network of Supernodes in the same way as all other symbol files: the 5 closest Supernodes to each symbol file must store each of the regenerated files.

Cascade’s self-healing property minimizes the probability of a permanent, irrecoverable loss of data through intrinsic storage redundancy.

To better understand the concept of Self Healing in practice, we encourage you to review and contribute to our public repo.

Other Features in Monet 1.2

In addition to Storage Challenges and Self-Healing, we are excited to share that Monet 1.2 will also bring the following features to Mainnet:

• Activation of Supernode Health and State Challenges: Similar to Proof of Storage, Health & State Challenges will guarantee the ongoing active and enabled state of each Supernode client on the network.
• Stabilization of Sense Protocol: Improvements to Chrome Driver usage, updates to Webtools 1.3, and implementation of additional tickets.
• Release of the OpenAPI Gateway: Production-ready Gateway will be deployed via the Mainnet with support for a number of new endpoints, asynchronous execution, Ansible support for independent deployment, and a graphical user interface for interaction.

The Pastel team is hard at work bringing the highest levels of functionality, reliability, and data permanence to the Web3 ecosystem. The Monet 1.2 Mainnet upgrade is the first key milestone in Pastel’s development roadmap for 2023.

Monet 1.2 will be released in the coming weeks. Follow us on Twitter, Discord, Telegram, & Reddit for the most up-to-date Pastel news!

About Pastel Network

Pastel Network is a fully decentralized, developer-friendly layer-1 blockchain serving as the preeminent protocol standard for non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) and Web3 technology.

Pastel allows for the development of third-party decentralized-applications (“DApps”) to sit on top of its Network, enabling developers to enjoy the scalable registration features, storage processes, and security of the broader ecosystem. Lightweight protocols such as Sense — which was built to assess the relative rareness of a given NFT against near-duplicate metadata — and Cascade — which conducts permanent, distributed storage of underlying NFT data — can be integrated cross-chain across various layer-1 blockchains, layer-2 protocols, or other third-party apps.

Pastel is managed by world-class developers, cryptographers, and technologists, supported alongside an experienced and extensive network of marketers, influencers, and third-party agencies. Pastel is backed by key stakeholders including Innovating Capital, a prominent venture fund.

For more information on Pastel Network, visit https://pastel.network/.

From Pastel Networks Medium Page.

Otherside is a metaverse world designed around the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection. 

“The Otherside” will offer a massive role-playing game where over 10,000 players can interact, complete missions, and voice chat simultaneously. 

The Otherside NFTs were originally sold to BAYC holders and went on public sale on April 30, 2022. 55,000 land parcels were sold for over $300 million, though not without controversy. Due to high network usage, transaction fees were extremely high, and some transactions failed altogether. 

In this article, we’ll look at what The Otherside is, how it works, its founders, how you can buy an Otherside NFT, and what happened during the land sale that caused a stir among Crypto Twitter. 

What Is The Otherside?

The Otherside is a 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) focusing on the BAYC community. It’s designed to help expand the utility of the BAYC project, combining the benefits of BAYC with a range of other NFT projects.  

Like other Metaverse projects, players can explore an open world, venture out on quests, buy, own and sell land, and harvest resources to potentially generate passive income. 

There are four unique resources in the game: Anima, Root, Shard, and Ore. 

Players can also find and collect “artifacts,” rare in-game assets. 

The Otherside ecosystem consists of a marketplace for materials called The Agora, a unique arcade machine, and The Codex, which works much like a book telling the tales of The Otherside. In its basic form, The Codex describes the Metaverse. However, it continues to change and can be added by players describing their in-game experience. 

As of January 2023, The Otherside is only accessible to landholders who own Otherdeed NFTs. These can be purchased on OpenSea and have a floor price of around 1 ETH – 1.5 ETH. 

How Does The Otherside Work?

The Otherside operates using several components: 

• Unique playable NFT characters
• Otherside Land NFTs
• Kodas

Here’s how each works. 

NFT Characters

To create diversity in The Otherside, a wide range of NFTs can be used as playable characters as long as the owner holds an Otherdeed NFT. This increases the number of players, as BAYC NFTs would price out many holders. 

Otherside Land NFTs

Otherside land NFTs, also known as Otherdeeds, come in a wide range of unique land types offering a diverse range of terrains for players to explore. Land types include castles surrounded by lava, bone-chilling glaciers, psychedelic realities, and thousands of other options. 

Each piece of land will have unique sediment, including rainbow atmos, biogenic swamps, chemical goo, cosmic dreams, and an infinite expanse. There are 200,000 land parcels, each of which will have one or more resources (Anima, Root, Shard, and Ore.)

Alongside its sediment, each Otherdeed land parcel will also have a range of unique traits, such as:

• Environment
• Resources
• Artifacts
• Sediment tier
• Environment Tier
• Kodas

This makes each plot unique, with resources determining the value and rarity of the land NFT. 

Kodas

Kodas are a new series of NFT characters and will play an important role in The Otherside Metaverse. Initially, there will be 10,000 Kodas for every 100,000 Otherside Land NFTs, meaning players will have a 10% chance of owning one. 

As of January 2023, Kodas remains somewhat of a mystery. There is currently no information on how players will interact with them, and their storyline remains a secret. Nonetheless, many investors believe the value of Kodas will surge in the future. 

Who Created The Otherside?

The pioneer of The Otherside is Yuga Labs, the company that created ApeCoin and BAYC. They are supported by three developers: Andreesen Horowitz, Animoca Brands, and Improbable. 

Andreesen Horowitz, also known as “a16z crypto,” is the venture-capital firm that led the first seed round for The Otherside. One of its partners, Chris Lyons, has since become part of Yuga Lab’s board for the project. 

Animoca Brands is a venture capital and gaming software company. It already has prior success in the Metaverse, having helped build The Sandbox, and is now working on the funding and technology for The Otherside. 

Improbable is a UK-based company pushing the boundaries of Metaverse technology. Using funding from Animoca, Improbable aims to create the largest, most secure, and most interactive platform across a range of virtual worlds. 

How To Buy An Otherside NFT

You can buy Otherside NFTs on OpenSea.

Begin by creating an OpenSea account and connecting your wallet– MetaMask is the best option.

Once connected, search for Otherdeed for Otherside, ensuring the collection has a blue verification tick. 

Search through NFTs based on traits and click “Buy Now” to make your purchase. 

Land Sale Disaster

Despite being a highly anticipated project from a well-known NFT project, the initial Otherdeed NFT drop was a disaster for many investors. Before release, the majority of the 200,000 land plots available were reserved for the BAYC community, which immediately monopolized the market. 

Only 55,000 land plots were sold publicly, with a mint value of over $300 million. This made the mint one of the most expensive of any Metaverse projects and immediately priced out many collectors. 

Before the Otherdeeds sale, Yuga Labs announced they wouldn’t rely on a dutch auction, which is known for creating “gas wars” where fees are driven up until only the richest investors can buy into a project. 

Instead, Yoga Labs planned to use a wave system to release their NFTs. Unfortunately, this was even less successful than a dutch auction. Upon release, thousands of investors swarmed the platform to buy an Otherdeed NFT. This resulted in extremely high minting fees, and several transactions failed as collectors couldn’t afford the gas fees. Consequently, investors who experienced failed transactions lost thousands of dollars.

By the end of the sale, only NFT investors with large amounts of capital could buy. Yoga Labs apologized for the incident and stated that in the future, they might need to move the BAYC ecosystem to another blockchain network to prevent similar problems. 

Final Thoughts: Exploring Otherside’s Potential 

The Otherside is an exciting spin-off of the BAYC brand and has the potential to take the community to new highs. 

With many exciting features, interactive gameplay, and a storyline that will continue to develop, The Otherside could change how we interact with blockchain gaming. 

However, despite its potential, The Otherside may be too expensive for everyday NFT gamers to get involved. 

The fact that almost 75% of the total supply went to BAYC holders and investors were priced out of the remaining supply during The Otherside auction means that only a select few collectors can participate. If the project wants to thrive, it needs to consider the wider NFT community and create new ways for collectors to enjoy the Metaverse without a large initial investment. 

Azuki is a collection of 10,000 avatar NFTs inspired by anime artwork. The collection works like most profile picture NFTs (PFP NFTs,) utilizing a randomized selection of traits to create each unique character. 

Released in January 2022, Azuki had one of the most successful NFT launches, selling out on OpenSea and LooksRare in just three minutes. During its release, Azuki generated an estimated $29 million and caught the attention of the entire NFT market. 

In this article, we’ll look at what Azuki is, how it works, what are Azuki’s Beanz, how to buy an Azuki NFT, Azuki Controversy, and the project’s future. 

What is Azuki?

Azuki is a PFP NFT project consisting of 10,000 generative anime-inspired avatars. Its unique aesthetic has been compared to a combination of the 3D game The World Ends with You and the skateboarding magazine Thrasher. 

Azuki was initially planned to be launched using a Dutch Auction (where a set starting price is made and decreases throughout the sale.) The dev team planned to set a starting price of 1 ETH for 8,700 NFTs (1300 were whitelisted) and decrease this by 0.05 ETH every 20 minutes until its price hit 0.15 ETH. However, as the collection sold out in three minutes, it never decreased in price. Instead, all NFTs were minted at 1 ETH- around $3246. 

Post-launch, the value of Azuki increased exponentially, with Azuki hitting almost $300 million in transaction volume across NFT marketplaces like OpenSea. Lower value NFTs were selling for around $36,000, while rare options sold for over half a million USD. Azuki had become the eighth-most traded NFT collection worldwide in just one month, competing with household names like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. 

How Does Azuki Work?

Alongside unique PFP NFTs, Azuki promised investors a long-term roadmap which helped attract the NFT community to the project. This roadmap included immersive 3D experiences, unique Azuki-themed merchandise, in-person exhibits for Azuki holders, and even a native currency called $BEAN.

Since its initial release, all holders have had access to The Garden. Within The Garden, holders can be the first to access collabs with other NFT projects, Azuki drops, clothing, tickets, live events, and more. 

However, this initial roadmap was disrupted in early May 2022 after Zegabond (an Azuki founder) published a blog that mentioned his previous three projects and how each had failed. Each had been a big hit at the time and experienced controversy in one way or another. This decreased the price of Azuki’s by over 45% and caused significant backlash throughout social media, which we’ll go into more detail below. 

As of January 2023, Azuki has continued to follow its roadmap, offering streetwear to members of The Garden, the creation of a Gallery Metaverse, and plans for Meta-games within the community. 

Who created Azuki?

Azuki was created by Churu Labs, a group of artists and developers located in Los Angeles. Each member has a background in technology, gaming, and crypto, using a pseudonymous name to stay anonymous. They go by the names of 2pm.flow, location tba, HoshiBoy, and Zagabond. 

Churu labs created Azuki to take PFP NFTs to the next level, aiming to impact the real world with in-person events, merchandise, and more. 

What are Azuki’s Beanz?

In April 2022, Azuki launched a second collection called Azuki Beanz. This collection was more affordable than the traditional Azukis and had rumors to be linked to Adidas and Supreme (though these turned out to be untrue.)

The collection consists of around 30,000 NFTs, and each Azuki holder was airdropped a mysterious box that contained a unique character from the Beanz collection.

Azuki Beanz holders receive access to an exclusive Discord channel, with merchandise and collectible drops being announced in the future. 

There are two BEANZ NFTs in total; one red and one blue, each with its own personality. Red BEANZ is a rule breaker, making his way from The Garden into the alley. Apparently, the Red BEANZ bites your Azuki if you tell him what to do. 

The second bean is a blue BEANS NFT. Blue BEANZ is constantly getting into trouble. They annoy Azuki’s and have a bad reputation. 

How To Buy An Azuki NFT

You can buy an Azuki NFT on LooksRare and OpenSea.

Start by setting up an account and collecting your wallet on either platform. MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet are good options for this. 

Once you’ve connected your wallet, search for Azuki in the search bar, ensuring the collection has a blue checkmark to avoid a rug pull. 

Find the NFT you want to buy and click “Buy Now” to complete the purchase. 

Azuki Controversy 

In May 2022, Zagabond announced he was behind three defunct projects; Tendies, CryptoZunks, and CryptoPhunks. CryptoPhunks, in particular, was seen as a huge issue amongst the Azuki community, as it was considered a rug pull after the dev team disappeared. Consequently, many investors started to question the legitimacy of Azuki. 

But the criticism didn’t stop there. After additional research, on-chain data discovered that the founder of CryptoPhunks completed a wash trade (when a buyer and seller collaborate to inflate the market.)This caused the Azuki floor price to plunge further, decreasing from 19 ETH ($ 45,410) to as low as 10.5 ETH ($25,095.)

To address the controversy, Zagabond held a Twitter space on May 10th, hosted by Andrew Wang, a popular cryptocurrency figure. Vagabond claimed that he handed off the communities, then tried to justify his actions by stating there’s no rulebook for creators to follow. 

However, developers who worked with Zagabond took to Twitter to share their experiences. In a detailed Twitter thread, “dvx,” a former CryptoZunks team leader, stated that Zagabond was consistently dishonest about his work, failed to communicate with his team, and abandoned the project despite a roadmap already being in place. Other developers stated that Zagabond was scamming from the start and had no intention for the projects to succeed. 

Despite this criticism, Azuki buyers actually increased by 1200%, with investors capitalizing on the lower floor price. 

Final Thoughts: Is Azuki Still Worth The Investment

Although Azuki experienced negative publicity in 2022, it remains a strong investment option with a floor price of 14 ETH as of January 2023. 

The dev team has successfully expanded the project with Azuki Beanz and continues to pursue the planned roadmap, providing value to holders in the process. This continuous investment shows that the dev team is invested in the long-term success of the project. 

Nonetheless, as with any investment, completing your due diligence is always important. Only invest what you can afford and ensure Azuki is the right project for you before making any decisions. 

2022 was a big year for Pastel Network. In 2021, we made a massive shift to focus on opening our infrastructure such as Sense and Cascade to the entire Web3 ecosystem. By the end of 2021, we were poised to increase exposure and bring our vision of an ecosystem supported by Pastel’s suite of products to fruition. Despite market conditions, we kept our foot on the pedal to develop and refine Pastel’s mission critical infrastructure technology and seek out new partnerships and collaborations. We worked tirelessly to deliver new solutions to the market.

Below, we recap some of our largest achievements of 2022 including the Cezanne Mainnet Release and launch of SmartMint.

Cezanne Mainnet Release — Our Biggest Upgrade Yet

After having been under development for over 8 months, we released Cezanne in August as our largest release to date. Cezanne marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Pastel Network. The release brings countless improvements to both end-user & NFT functionality — such as registration, minting, transferring, and trading — alongside unrestricted access to advanced protocols like Sense and Cascade via interoperable Open-APIs, seamless composability, improved token economics, and the most powerful protocol standard for the Web3 ecosystem.

This upgrade includes:

• Improvements to NFT Minting and Collections
• Support for NFT Transfers, Trades, and Auctions
• Interchain account identification via PastelIDs
• Cross-chain network access via Web3 APIs
• Dramatic upgrades to Sense (our near-duplicate NFT detection protocol)
• Enhancements to Cascade (our distributed NFT storage protocol)
• User-friendly utility services via PastelUp
• Improvements to network optimization and security
• And more!

SmartMint by Pastel — A No-Code NFT Minting Platform.

SmartMint is a no-code NFT minting platform where creators can easily create, manage, and mint NFTs on their own custom smart contracts. The tool also provides creators with additional peace of mind as it leverage Pastel’s infrastructure for near-duplicate NFT detection (Sense) and permanent NFT data storage (Cascade). SmartMint enables creators to mint NFTs on Ethereum, Solana, Pastel, and more.

SmartMint by Pastel enables creators to do what they love without the hassle and complexities of minting and deploying NFTs across various platforms and blockchains. Easily create smart contracts and NFTs in seconds via our no-code tool powered by Pastel’s advanced technologies for guaranteed NFT security, storage, and counterfeit protection.

Below is a detailed list of all our accomplishments from 2022.

2022 Overview of Pastel Network

• Partnership with Nervos: to provide permanent storage to and protect their NFT ecosystem against NFT copymint, fraud & scams
• Launch of the SuperNode Founder Program: this program was created to reward early network users/participants for their contributions and activity in Pastel’s ecosystem as well as encourage long term decentralization.
• Ambassador Program: this was launched to strengthen the Pastel Community and ensure its growth and long term social media success.
• PSL Listed on KuCoin: KuCoin began the trading of Pastel’s native utility token, PSL, on the KuCoin Exchange and commenced a PSL Staking Program
• Cezanne Testnet Release: Cezanne brings countless improvements to both user & NFT functionality such as registration, minting, transferring, and trading.
• Collaboration with Polygon Studios: to bring Sense and Cascade to the Polygon NFT ecosystem
• Milestone Launch of SmartMint: a no-code NFT minting platform where creators can easily create, manage, and mint NFTs on their own custom smart contracts. The tool also enables creators to mint NFTs on multiple networks while leveraging Pastel’s infrastructure for near-duplicate NFT detection (Sense) and permanent NFT data storage (Cascade).
• Partnership with Ava Labs: to bring Sense and Cascade to the Avalanche NFT ecosystem
• Partnership with Parity Technologies: to bring Sense and Cascade to the Polkadot NFT ecosystem
• SmartMint Banff Upgrade: refined functionality of SmartMint’s core workflows, added a number of features to enhance user experience and minting capabilities, and extended SmartMint compatibility to support minting NFTs directly on Solana.
• Cezanne Mainnet Upgrade: having been under development for over 8 months, Cezanne is Pastel’s largest release to date that brings significant enhancements to the Pastel blockchain and improved functionality.

2023 Roadmap

This year, we aim to capitalize on the momentum we created over the past year and focus on what is vital for Pastel Network to continue to cement ourselves as the preeminent Web3 protocol standard. We will continue to execute our vision across interoperability, user experience, and versatility.

In 2023, we are focused on:

• Expediting development release cycles of Testnet and Mainnet upgrades — such as with versions Monet and Van Gogh;
• Building stronger cross-chain bridges, specifically with Ethereum Polygon, and Polkadot;
• Enhancing SmartMint and developing new features;
• Refining user and partner experience with the roll-out of new technical resources and tools;
• Expanding our network of partners across more L2s, DApps, enterprise user-cases, native L1s; and
• Further increasing our exposure to the community of technical users, non-technical users, and creators.

In spite of the broader uncertainty in the market and ever-changing landscape, we believe that delivering upon our roadmap will position Pastel for success in years to come.

Please see below for Pastel Network’s target 2023 release schedule. Note that all releases and milestones are subject to change.

Q1 2023

Mainnet Upgrade: Monet Release 1.2

• Supernode Storage Challenges— A novel mechanism by which Pastel Supernodes verify that other nodes are following the rules of the protocol and storing all files they are supposed to be
• Self-Healing — Intrinsic storage redundancy of Cascade to replace lost or missing symbol files resulting from Supernodes leaving the network
• Supernode Health and State Challenges
• Sense Stabilization — Includes refactoring of the core protocol and asynchronous execution

Explorer

• Upgrade for additional features and analytics including support for parsing of comprehensive ticket data and additional historical statistics

OpenAPI

• Production OpenAPI 2.0 supported via Mainnet
• UI/UX for user account management

Network Tools

• Release of Testnet Faucet

Smartmint

• Integration of Pastel’s Sense & Cascade protocols
• Additional network support (Binance Smart Chain)

Documentation/Services

• Complete overhaul of documentation including client setup docs for Node, Walletnode, and Supernode
• Endpoint exposure via PastelID RPC

Business Development Tools

• Cascade Demo for third party partners

Q2 2023

Mainnet Upgrade: Monet Release 1.3

• Further support for ownership transfer —Gifting of NFTs, Bridging NFTs and assets across Ethereum, enhancement of PastelID
• New PastelId APIs to work with light wallets
• PastelId Blockchain-less API Mode — API execution via light clients (i.e., does not require running a full copy of the blockchain)
• Wallet Enhancements — Support for new address types and additional functionality such as import/export
• Objectless Ticket APIs — Buy, sell, trade and return both created and signed TXs as ‘hex’ instead of submitting it directly to the blockchain

Open API

• ERC-721 NFT functionality with to bridge and Wrap/Unwrap
• API for ownership transfer (e.g. gift, wrap/unwrap PSL/wPSL)
• API to expose set of core Pastel APIs to work with blockchain-less API, such as acceping ticket TXs

Network Tools

• Release of DevNet
• Streamlined support for multiple networks (across Mainnet, Testnet, and Regtest)
• Continuous running of automatic stress tests

SmartMint

• PFP Generator
• Additional Network Support (Pastel, ImmutableX)

Documentation/Services

• PastelId blockchainless API mode

Bridges

• Ethereum
• Polygon

User Tools

• Pastel Hub — Browser-based application that interacts with Wallet via Web App and support consumer facing services for direct exposure to just Sense and Cascade

Q3

Mainnet Upgrade: Van Gogh Release 2.0

• Hardening access protection to NFT and Cascade files — IP whitelisting layer (e.g. Supernodes will only respond for file access calls from other registered Supernodes)
• Activation of WN-2-SN-2-SN encryption
• Sense Enhancements— Support for additional file types
• Bug fixes

Open API

• “Host your own OpenAPI” package — dockerized or containerized solution that any user can acquire and run to have their own OpenAPI server for whatever purpose)

Light/Mobile Wallet

• Browser extension wallet

SmartMint

• Additional Network Support (Flow, Avalanche)

Documentation/Services

• PastelId blockchainless API mode (see above)

Bridges

• Polkadot — Includes the native deployment of a Parachain to seamlessly interact with the Polkadot ecosystem

Q4

Mainnet Upgrade: Van Gogh Release 2.1

• NFT Auctions — Add functionality to run various auction formats
• Sense Enhancements — Includes sharding, correlation optimization techniques, and tSNE
• Client Reputation Tracking — Include across various client types to aggregate various indicators like Supernode storage challenges, successful registrations, and manual user complaints
• Bug fixes

Security / Infrastructure

• Harden against DDOS attacks (random IPs via VPN / whitelist / blacklist)
• Simple load balancer

Business Development Tools

• Sandbox for Layer 1 Partner PoC

Bridges

• Avalanche, Solana

About Pastel Network

Pastel Network is a fully decentralized, developer-friendly layer-1 blockchain serving as the preeminent protocol standard for non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”) and Web3 technology.

Pastel allows for the development of third-party decentralized-applications (“DApps”) to sit on top of its Network, enabling developers to enjoy the scalable registration features, storage processes, and security of the broader ecosystem. Lightweight protocols such as Sense — which was built to assess the relative rareness of a given NFT against near-duplicate metadata — and Cascade — which conducts permanent, distributed storage of underlying NFT data — can be integrated cross-chain across various layer-1 blockchains, layer-2 protocols, or other third-party apps.

Pastel is managed by world-class developers, cryptographers, and technologists, supported alongside an experienced and extensive network of marketers, influencers, and third-party agencies. Pastel is backed by key stakeholders including Innovating Capital, a prominent venture fund.

For more information on Pastel Network, visit https://pastel.network/.

Originally Published on Pastel Network’s Medium