Aptos Labs has recently announced the Token V2 standard, and this brings along a lot of changes for NFTs. The buzz was around for some time, and Topaz and other marketplaces have started showing Token V2 NFTs already. But, for NFT collectors and traders, how does this new standard matter? The Token V2 standard was made with three major ideas in mind: Flexibility, Composability, and Scalability.
There’s an entirely different understanding of things for the builders and creators and some pointers for them are towards the end of this story, but for the regular users and NFT traders, here’s what you need to know about the Token V2 standard from Aptos.
Aptos Token V2 – Changes for users
1. Less gas to transfer
Earlier, it would transfer the whole NFT when you send it to someone, but now it just changes an address. Based on the data in the NFT, the gas is reduced to about 1/10th of the current fees, and this helps when you do bulk transfers.
2. NFTs can own NFTs
You can now trade groups of NFTs, NFTs can own NFTs. Here is the composability part. A PFP with some accessories attached to them, for example, a hat as a separate NFT that can be added or removed from the NFT, and the main PFP NFT could be sent along with the hat in the single trade. The end buyer/user will be able to detach the accessories later, but NFT owning NFT has several possibilities.
3. No opt-in is needed for NFT receiving
Earlier, the user had to send a transaction to enable NFT receiving on their Aptos wallets. A lot of users had requested for this to be changed, and the Token V2 standard does that. Now, your wallet address will automatically be enabled to receive NFTs without having to opt-in. You can directly transfer NFTs without having to confirm with the other person if they have the transfers enabled.
4. Soul-bound tokens are now supported
Soul-bound tokens (SBTs) are the NFTs that are attached to the wallet address and they cannot be transferred. The usage of SBTs has been seen on other chains especially when it comes to memberships and achievements in games, etc. With the recent rise in gaming activity on Aptos, SBTs were a need and MetaPixel had already started using V2 with the SBTs sent to every MetaPixel GSU Idol, and those NFTs already are sitting in the wallets of the idols.
While the above points were for the users, a couple of very important points about Token V2 for creators can be important for users too.
Important changes for the Creators
Collections and tokens as objects
In this Token standard, both collections and tokens will be separate objects. They have their own distinct addresses and can be referenced both on and off chain by address. Each object can contain multiple resources so collections and tokens are extensible by default, allowing the creator to add custom data and functionalities without having to modify the framework.
Custom Royalty for tokens and collections
With the above-mentioned point, the creator can choose to modify the royalty for particular NFT tokens, for example, if there is a set of 1/1s within the collection that you would want to charge lesser royalty or none because they were auctioned off, that can be done. On the other side, in some scenarios, you could set the royalty of the token to the max to prevent any misuse or transfer of the NFT if the wallet is compromised.
Just like how it works on the other blockchains, the creator has to set the permissions and features during the contract creation itself to make sure the changes can always be done later on.
Token burn
Tokens can be burned by the creator if they generated and stored a BurnRef during the creation of the token. While the details of this are yet to be known, but we think this might finally bring the NFT burning option where all the junk that you have in your wallet can be burned but that is only if the contract has the option to allow that initially.
Okay, as mentioned earlier, these changes might seem a bit confusing if you aren’t into the development side of things, but for the end users, the key takeaways are that the NFTs can now be transferred without opt-in, the composability or layering comes in, SBTs are now possible, and gas for transfer is lesser than before.
