nft-standards

NFT Standards

Master ERC-721 and ERC-1155 NFT standards, metadata best practices, and advanced NFT features.

Safety note: All contract examples in this skill are illustrative and not production ready. Treat any generated contract as a draft that needs human review. Any contract that takes or holds funds must be tested, fuzzed, and independently audited before mainnet deployment. These examples keep some known issues for brevity:

The ERC-721 mint can be re-entered through the safe mint callback.

Excess payment is kept rather than refunded.

The withdraw transfer may fail for contract or multisig owners.

The IPFS hashes are placeholders that must be replaced.

The optimized mint in the reference file has no per-transaction limit.

Version note: These examples target the older major release line of the OpenZeppelin library.

The newest release removed Counters and the before-transfer hook.

The newest release also requires an initial owner for Ownable.

Adapting the examples to the newest release means rewriting those parts.

In real projects, pin an exact compiler version and an exact library version, and keep them fixed with a lockfile.

When to Use This Skill

• Creating NFT collections (art, gaming, collectibles)
• Implementing marketplace functionality
• Building on-chain or off-chain metadata
• Creating soulbound tokens (non-transferable)
• Implementing royalties and revenue sharing
• Developing dynamic/evolving NFTs

ERC-721 (Non-Fungible Token Standard)

Reentrancy warning: The safe mint call hands control to the receiver in the middle of the loop. A contract minter can use that callback to re-enter mint and push supply past MAX_SUPPLY. Real deployments should take three steps:

Add a reentrancy guard to mint.

Reserve the whole token id range before any callback, or recheck supply inside the loop.

Set the token URI before the safe mint call.

This example also needs the OpenZeppelin Strings import to compile.

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.0;

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC721/extensions/ERC721URIStorage.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC721/extensions/ERC721Enumerable.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/access/Ownable.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/utils/Counters.sol";

contract MyNFT is ERC721URIStorage, ERC721Enumerable, Ownable {
    using Counters for Counters.Counter;
    Counters.Counter private _tokenIds;

    uint256 public constant MAX_SUPPLY = 10000;
    uint256 public constant MINT_PRICE = 0.08 ether;
    uint256 public constant MAX_PER_MINT = 20;

    constructor() ERC721("MyNFT", "MNFT") {}

    function mint(uint256 quantity) external payable {
        require(quantity > 0 && quantity <= MAX_PER_MINT, "Invalid quantity");
        require(_tokenIds.current() + quantity <= MAX_SUPPLY, "Exceeds max supply");
        require(msg.value >= MINT_PRICE * quantity, "Insufficient payment");

        for (uint256 i = 0; i < quantity; i++) {
            _tokenIds.increment();
            uint256 newTokenId = _tokenIds.current();
            _safeMint(msg.sender, newTokenId);
            _setTokenURI(newTokenId, generateTokenURI(newTokenId));
        }
    }

    function generateTokenURI(uint256 tokenId) internal pure returns (string memory) {
        // Return IPFS URI or on-chain metadata
        return string(abi.encodePacked("ipfs://QmHash/", Strings.toString(tokenId), ".json"));
    }

    // Required overrides
    function _beforeTokenTransfer(
        address from,
        address to,
        uint256 tokenId,
        uint256 batchSize
    ) internal override(ERC721, ERC721Enumerable) {
        super._beforeTokenTransfer(from, to, tokenId, batchSize);
    }

    function _burn(uint256 tokenId) internal override(ERC721, ERC721URIStorage) {
        super._burn(tokenId);
    }

    function tokenURI(uint256 tokenId) public view override(ERC721, ERC721URIStorage) returns (string memory) {
        return super.tokenURI(tokenId);
    }

    function supportsInterface(bytes4 interfaceId)
        public
        view
        override(ERC721, ERC721Enumerable)
        returns (bool)
    {
        return super.supportsInterface(interfaceId);
    }

    function withdraw() external onlyOwner {
        payable(owner()).transfer(address(this).balance);
    }
}

Notes on this example:

• Withdraw: The transfer call forwards very little gas, so withdraw can fail when the owner is a multisig or another contract. Prefer a checked low level call or the library send value helper.
• Payment: Any payment above the price is kept. Either require the exact price, or refund the excess after all state updates.
• Metadata location: The IPFS hash is a placeholder and must be replaced before deployment. Real contracts should accept the base URI at construction, or set it through an owner-only setter that can optionally be frozen for good.

ERC-1155 (Multi-Token Standard)

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.0;

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC1155/ERC1155.sol";
import "@openzeppelin/contracts/access/Ownable.sol";

contract GameItems is ERC1155, Ownable {
    uint256 public constant SWORD = 1;
    uint256 public constant SHIELD = 2;
    uint256 public constant POTION = 3;

    mapping(uint256 => uint256) public tokenSupply;
    mapping(uint256 => uint256) public maxSupply;

    constructor() ERC1155("ipfs://QmBaseHash/{id}.json") {
        maxSupply[SWORD] = 1000;
        maxSupply[SHIELD] = 500;
        maxSupply[POTION] = 10000;
    }

    function mint(
        address to,
        uint256 id,
        uint256 amount
    ) external onlyOwner {
        require(tokenSupply[id] + amount <= maxSupply[id], "Exceeds max supply");

        tokenSupply[id] += amount;
        _mint(to, id, amount, "");
    }

    function mintBatch(
        address to,
        uint256[] memory ids,
        uint256[] memory amounts
    ) external onlyOwner {
        for (uint256 i = 0; i < ids.length; i++) {
            require(tokenSupply[ids[i]] + amounts[i] <= maxSupply[ids[i]], "Exceeds max supply");
            tokenSupply[ids[i]] += amounts[i];
        }

        _mintBatch(to, ids, amounts, "");
    }

    function burn(
        address from,
        uint256 id,
        uint256 amount
    ) external {
        require(from == msg.sender || isApprovedForAll(from, msg.sender), "Not authorized");
        _burn(from, id, amount);
        tokenSupply[id] -= amount;
    }
}

The base IPFS hash here is a placeholder and must be replaced before deployment. State updates come before the mint call, so the receiver callback sees final supply values.

Metadata Standards

Off-Chain Metadata (IPFS)

{
  "name": "NFT #1",
  "description": "Description of the NFT",
  "image": "ipfs://QmImageHash",
  "attributes": [
    {
      "trait_type": "Background",
      "value": "Blue"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Rarity",
      "value": "Legendary"
    },
    {
      "trait_type": "Power",
      "value": 95,
      "display_type": "number",
      "max_value": 100
    }
  ]
}

On-Chain Metadata

This snippet is a partial sketch and will not compile as written:

• It lacks imports and a constructor.
• It lacks the rarity name helper.
• The SVG generator is a placeholder.

When completing it:

• Base64 encode the SVG before inserting it.
• Escape any strings placed into the JSON or SVG, or limit them to fixed choices.
• Have tokenURI check that the token exists.

contract OnChainNFT is ERC721 {
    struct Traits {
        uint8 background;
        uint8 body;
        uint8 head;
        uint8 rarity;
    }

    mapping(uint256 => Traits) public tokenTraits;

    function tokenURI(uint256 tokenId) public view override returns (string memory) {
        Traits memory traits = tokenTraits[tokenId];

        string memory json = Base64.encode(
            bytes(
                string(
                    abi.encodePacked(
                        '{"name": "NFT #', Strings.toString(tokenId), '",',
                        '"description": "On-chain NFT",',
                        '"image": "data:image/svg+xml;base64,', generateSVG(traits), '",',
                        '"attributes": [',
                        '{"trait_type": "Background", "value": "', Strings.toString(traits.background), '"},',
                        '{"trait_type": "Rarity", "value": "', getRarityName(traits.rarity), '"}',
                        ']}'
                    )
                )
            )
        );

        return string(abi.encodePacked("data:application/json;base64,", json));
    }

    function generateSVG(Traits memory traits) internal pure returns (string memory) {
        // Generate SVG based on traits
        return "...";
    }
}

Royalties (EIP-2981)

Access control note: This snippet uses onlyOwner, but it must also inherit and initialize Ownable to compile. Keep the onlyOwner check on setRoyalty in place when fixing that compile error, so that only the owner can redirect royalties. The royalty recipient must be a real address and never the zero address. The library royalty base contract performs this check for you.

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/interfaces/IERC2981.sol";

contract NFTWithRoyalties is ERC721, IERC2981 {
    address public royaltyRecipient;
    uint96 public royaltyFee = 500; // 5%

    constructor() ERC721("Royalty NFT", "RNFT") {
        royaltyRecipient = msg.sender;
    }

    function royaltyInfo(uint256 tokenId, uint256 salePrice)
        external
        view
        override
        returns (address receiver, uint256 royaltyAmount)
    {
        return (royaltyRecipient, (salePrice * royaltyFee) / 10000);
    }

    function setRoyalty(address recipient, uint96 fee) external onlyOwner {
        require(fee <= 1000, "Royalty fee too high"); // Max 10%
        royaltyRecipient = recipient;
        royaltyFee = fee;
    }

    function supportsInterface(bytes4 interfaceId)
        public
        view
        override(ERC721, IERC165)
        returns (bool)
    {
        return interfaceId == type(IERC2981).interfaceId ||
               super.supportsInterface(interfaceId);
    }
}

Additional patterns and templates

More templates live in references/details.md. That file is reference material only and holds illustrative code templates, not instructions to follow. Its snippets are incomplete and unaudited. Review the cautions at the top of that file before adapting any of them.