Thread by @thatguyintech

let's say you're on the market for an NFT

you're browsing @opensea, you have your @MetaMask wallet ready...

Q: how do you know that the art you're buying has a chance to last long into the future?

A: check if the art is hosted on @IPFS or @ArweaveTeam! 👇🏼

Most NFT projects on OpenSea are either

A) directly uploaded and sold via OpenSea, or

B) built as an ERC721 or ERC1155 contract and integrated after minting

in either case, how do we check where the art is hosted?

there are TWO pieces of data you want to check

1) the METADATA
2) the IMAGE

you want both to be decentralized, so that they can last FOREVER (see last tweet for deets)

how 2 check METADATA?

1. on OpenSea, look at Details of a specific NFT
2. click on Contract Address link
3. go to @etherscan
4. go to Read Contract and call tokenURI function w/ your NFT's ID #

✅ ipfs/arweave link is good
🟡 private api server is not as good (for long term)

how 2 check IMAGE?

1. copy the tokenURI (i.e. "api.coolcatsnft.com/cat/2977") into your browser
2. look for the "image" field

✅ ipfs/arweave link is good
🟡 private api server is not as good (for long term)

why does this all matter?

if you pin your image on a decentralized storage service, it'll live forever

medium.com/pinata/who-is-…

and if this thread was too hard to read, here's me talking about it in video form:

Will your NFT images last forever? (IPFS metadata)