NFTs & Digital Ownership
Research Papers
Academic and industry research
ERC-5643: Subscription NFT Standard
Bradley Allgood, Jason Smythe
ERC-5643 introduces a standardized interface for subscription-based NFTs, facilitating recurring revenue and time-bound memberships on the blockchain. This standard allows creators to define subscription terms directly within the token contract, enabling automated renewal, cancellation, and expiration logic. By moving subscription management to the blockchain, ERC-5643 provides transparency and self-sovereignty for users while offering a predictable income model for content creators and service providers. The paper details the technical specifications, including the 'isExpired' and 'expiresAt' functions, which enable dApps and marketplaces to verify subscription status in real-time. This standard is positioned as a bridge between the traditional 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) business model and the decentralization of Web3, offering a scalable solution for managing digital content access and community memberships.
ERC-4907: Rental NFT Standard
Shuaifeng He, Zhenyu Yan, Douglas Horn, Archer Fu
ERC-4907 provides a standardized approach to the rental and time-limited usage of non-fungible tokens, addressing a significant limitation in existing NFT functionality. Prior to this standard, lending or renting NFTs required cumbersome and often risky escrow-based methods or complex social trust agreements. ERC-4907 adds an 'expires' functionality to the standard ERC-721, allowing owners to delegate usage rights to a user address for a specified duration, after which the rights automatically expire and return to the owner. This is particularly significant for gaming, ticketing, and service-based NFT use cases where temporary access is more valuable than permanent ownership. The standard is designed to be highly gas-efficient and seamless, promoting interoperability across platforms and gaming environments, thereby unlocking new rental markets and utility for digital assets.
The Crypto-Museum: Investigating the impact of blockchain and NFTs on digital ownership, authority, and authenticity in museums
Francesca Giliberto
This thesis explores the intersection of digital heritage and blockchain technology, focusing on how museums can leverage NFTs to redefine digital ownership and audience engagement. Through case studies and qualitative interviews, the author investigates how traditional institutions struggle with concepts of authenticity, authority, and preservation in a digital-first environment. The paper analyzes the potential for NFTs to provide provenance and verifiable ownership for digital museum collections, while addressing the ethical implications of marketizing historical artifacts. It provides a nuanced look at the tension between decentralized blockchain ethos and institutional museum practices. The research concludes that while NFTs offer a powerful tool for provenance and revenue generation, museums must adopt critical policies to ensure cultural preservation remains central to their mission, rather than becoming secondary to speculation.