Redeemable NFTs have emerged as a popular application with wide-spread traction across fashion, gaming, PFPs, and many more areas where creators are extending NFT art with utility and experiences. However, these projects have suffered from a lack of adopted standards or UI conventions which forces creators to build custom, often closed experiences, leading to limited discoverability and usability. 

We're introducing an open standard for redeemables of both on-chain (NFT -> NFT) and off-chain (NFT -> goods, services, or experiences) varieties. We’re also making it easier to create, discover, exchange, and redeem these NFTs directly on OpenSea. And in commemoration of this work, we're releasing a proof-of-concept NFT, which you can mint here and redeem right on OpenSea.

First, what are redeemable NFTs?

Redeemable NFTs have some value or utility that can be “redeemed” to receive another on- or off-chain item. They help creators forge stronger relationships with their communities, enable richer membership experiences, and unlock new applications of web3 technology (check out a few examples: GutterMelo by PUMA x Gutter Cat Gang, the Invisible Friends Physical Collectible, and Creature World’s Crowd Phase 3). 

Historically, redeemables have required burning the original NFT to receive the new item (whether that item is an off-chain good or an on-chain NFT). Our redeemables standard and user experience will support and expand on this common implementation with the introduction of trait redemption (more on this later).

The new redeemables standard

We’re publishing two Ethereum Requests for Comment (ERC-7496 and ERC-7498) and two Seaport Improvement Proposals (SIP-14 and SIP-15) to fuel the redeemable ecosystem. For the next few weeks, we’ll be working with developers and creators and soliciting feedback to make sure the standard meets the ecosystem’s needs. If you’re interested in helping shape the standard, or want to partner with OpenSea on a novel redeemable use case, get in touch with us here. You can read more about the technical details on our Developer Blog or in the proposals themselves.

We will be launching additional product initiatives built on top of this standard to support a variety of redeemable NFT use cases, including self-serve tools that shorten the time between a creator’s great idea and having their project live.

OpenSea’s redeemables roadmap

Over the next several months, we’ll be launching a series of initiatives to help creators and developers build novel, powerful redeemable NFT projects:

Milestone 1 (today): An open standard

Our first step is to open-source the redeemables standards we’ve been working on. We’re looking for technical feedback from the community, as well as inviting creators and partners to collaborate with us on the flagship forthcoming releases of redeemable use cases in OpenSea.

Though creating redeemable experiences in OpenSea is not open to the public today, we’ve released a public proof of concept to illustrate the experience: 

Burnie: Our proof of concept redeemable NFT

To highlight a preview of OpenSea’s redeemables standard and experience, we’re introducing Burnie the Flame! You can mint a Baby Burn egg on the OpenSea drop page, then head to the redeem page to burn and exchange your egg for your Burnie. If you look at the item page for your Baby Burn, you’ll notice that you can see the available redeemable right on the item page— a preview of how we’re making this more discoverable.

Get your Burnie here, and keep an eye on him— he may evolve as our product does!

Milestone 2: On-chain redeemables & trait redemptions

Next, we’ll be rolling out on-chain redeemable support to all creators directly on OpenSea. Creators will be able to “attach” redeemables to their collections using our self-serve tool (and there’s no technical skills required!), and those redeemables will be discoverable and actionable right on OpenSea. Buyers will be able to see an NFT’s redemption history and available redeemables on our platform, and they’ll also be notified when an NFT they hold has a new redeemable available.

Additionally, we’ll also be expanding the design space of redeemables by introducing “trait redemptions” — an alternative to the binary “burn-to-redeem” model. In a “trait redeemable”, a user does not have to burn an NFT in order to receive their redemption — “redeeming” just changes one of the traits on the item. This not only lets users keep NFTs in their wallet after they’ve been redeemed, but also allows an individual NFT to support multiple redeemables without having to burn the original NFT. For example, if a creator wants to provide a mint pass to their community, instead of minting a new collection for the passes and airdropping each NFT (which is laborious, costly, and prone to airdrop scams), they can simply add a new trait to their collection that functions as a burnable mint pass.

Milestone 3: Off-chain redeemables

Lastly, we know creators often want to offer “off-chain” redemptions for their community (physical merch, tickets, events, and more), but that it’s often hard or clunky to access those redemptions (or even know they exist!) within OpenSea.

We’ll be extending the on-chain redemption standards to make it easier for creators to prominently link out from items in their collections to off-chain redemption experiences outside of OpenSea — while still tracking redemption state on-chain through either traits or burning. 

We’re also exploring partnerships that will enable no-code solutions that make it easy for creators to enable off-chain redemptions in common verticals (e.g. physical shipped goods), and will have more to share in the future.  If you are a platform or business that powers e-commerce, ticketing, or really any “off-chain” experience you’re interested in tokenizing with NFTs, please reach out to us at partnerships@opensea.io — we’d love to chat.

We hope this foundational work opens the doors to a whole new world of redeemable NFT use cases. Our objective is to create a platform that helps your creativity come to life and make it easier to use for the next million users to engage.

We believe in democratizing access to the latest and greatest functionality that NFTs have to offer, which is why we are building both an open, on-chain standard for redeemables to flourish in the ecosystem and also allowing creators to access this in our UI with no code.

Have feedback or want to work with us? Reach out here.