Our team is thrilled to announce a partnership between Cardinal and Portals! We’ve aligned with them to bring NFT utility to one of the most promising metaverse projects in all of Web 3, and we’re excited to share a little bit about our progress thus far and the direction we’re heading.
We’re also excited to share the pinned video demo that illustrates the potential of this collaboration. It shows a basic portals-themed p2p rental marketplace flow in which a holder of a Portals NFT access card successfully rents it out to a willing patron that then uses it to access the metaverse. At the end of the rental period, the card is programmatically revoked from the renter’s wallet and returned to the original holder.
For anyone that is unfamiliar, Portals is a browser-based metaverse that focusses on a frictionless and immersive user experience. It facilitates seamless digital interactivity with a variety of settings that include a dense city center and private residences.
Currently, the Portals metaverse can only be accessed with a limited edition Portals access card NFT of which there are three tiers: Ivory, Onyx and Vision. The demand for access has been immense, and the price to acquire one of these cards has risen considerably as a result. For many hoping to participate, it’s no longer feasible to purchase one.
However, the Portals team’s vision extends far beyond limiting access to the “owners” of its virtual real estate. Their aim is to create a digital landscape reminiscent of the real world where people will be able to temporarily and conditionally access spaces/venues for different purposes. Businesses will be able to rent out buildings for virtual corporate events. Friends will be able to vacation for the weekend in high-rise penthouses in the metaverse downtown. Residential owners will be able to grant access to interior designers to decorate their spaces. The possibilities are endless.
In that vein, the team has begun working on renting and lending initiatives, and their efforts have led to a collaboration with with Cardinal where we’ve built a managed NFT utility protocol that facilitates un-collateralized renting/lending on Solana. Leveraging our protocol, Portals users can participate in a fully secure rental economy in which access card owners can securely rent out their tokens to one another.
To rent out a card, a holder can simply navigate to a marketplace like the one shown in the video, connect their wallet, select their desired rental parameters (price, duration, etc.) and issue their card into the available rental pool. At that point, anyone can navigate to the rental pool and claim the token according to the owner-specified parameters.
Once claimed, the token is transferred from the pool into the renter’s wallet where it will remain for the duration of the rental.Because the NFT access card is genuinely transferred to the renter’s wallet, the Portals platform’s check for ownership passes seamlessly when they attempt to enter the metaverse.
What’s special about our protocol is that in spite of the fact that the NFT is transferred, it is still programmatically impossible for the renter to default. It remains locked in the renter’s wallet until the agreement expires at which point it is automatically revoked and sent back to the original owner.
Gated access will be a massive theme in the future of the metaverse, and we’re excited to work with the Portals team to pioneer the evolution of the token economies that surround it.
