Dan Carr on Owning Your Smart Contract | NFTS.WTF Interview

NiftyKit founder Dan Carr explains why NFT artists should mint into their own smart contracts, and how his app made that a same-day task in 2021.Interviewed by David Cash. Book David to host, moderate, or speak: https://davidcash.ca

Dan Carr is the founder and CEO of NiftyKit, a subscription app that lets creators deploy their own smart contracts, mint NFTs, and sell them from their own storefront. In this remote video interview for NFTS.WTF, recorded in 2021, David Cash and Dan talk about turnkey tools versus hiring developers, ERC-721 contracts that work across marketplaces, using Polygon for low-cost collector drops, why minting into shared contracts can come back to hurt an artist's brand, and NiftyKit's plans for licensing, physical goods, and a metaverse artist residency.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

1. 00:00 Welcome and what NiftyKit does
2. 02:07 NiftyKit versus hiring developers
3. 05:04 Smart contracts and the case for turnkey tools
4. 06:13 Bringing creators in from the sidelines
5. 09:58 Accessible pricing on Ethereum and Polygon
6. 11:54 Low-cost Polygon NFTs as a marketing tool
7. 14:45 Shared contracts and protecting an artist's brand
8. 16:20 Draft collections and planning around gas fees
9. 18:47 Roadmap: licenses, physical goods, and more contracts
10. 21:10 Cryptovoxels parcels and an artist residency
11. 23:16 A giveaway for NFTS.WTF viewers

Speakers

• David Cash, interviewer and editor-in-chief, NFTS.WTF
• Dan Carr, founder and CEO, NiftyKit

Key topics

• Deploying your own ERC-721 smart contract without learning Solidity
• When a turnkey tool makes sense and when a project needs custom developers
• Selling through your own storefront, OpenSea, Rarible, or private sales
• Shared versus owned contracts and verifying your work to collectors
• Polygon for collector appreciation drops and other low-cost marketing
• Draft states, collaborative minting, and avoiding surprise gas costs
• Reaching token holders directly through the contract you own
• Smart contracts for licensing, copyrights, and physical goods
• Metaverse land in Cryptovoxels and an artist residency program

In their words

"The beauty of the blockchain and doing these NFTs is you can connect with your buyers just more directly." Dan Carr, NiftyKit

"Who are we to say what the best art is?" Dan Carr, NiftyKit

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2021). Dan Carr on owning your smart contract [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/HhEuWKcYnMw

Chicago: Cash, David. "Dan Carr on Owning Your Smart Contract." Recorded 2021, NFTS.WTF. YouTube video, 25:02. https://youtu.be/HhEuWKcYnMw.

About NFTS.WTF

NFTS.WTF was a Web3 culture publication and interview series edited by David Cash, covering artists, collectors, and builders during the 2021–2022 NFT boom. It ran for two years and closed after a board decision by the NFTS DAO, which left many of its interviews unpublished.

Recording details

Recorded 2021. Original release: NFTS.WTF, January 2022. This edition: archival re-release with chapters and captions, 2026.

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:00] Okay, welcome everybody. This is NFTS.WTF. My name is David Cash. I'm the editor-in -chief and I am here with the one and only Dan, creator of NiftyKit. Dan, how are you doing today? Would you like to briefly introduce yourself and for somebody living under a rock, what is NiftyKit? Tell us what's up. Yeah, thank you everyone for having me and I'm Dan. I am the founder and co-founder CEO of NiftyKit. It's a subscription-based app that allows you to create smart contracts and NFTs and sell them on your own marketplace. We are really heavily focused on creators so we wanted to provide a tool that makes it easy for people to get in and not be super frustrated with all of the unknowns in there so we want to help you go from zero to one and get your smart contract and NFTs out there so that your fans can start collecting. Awesome, a very noble cause. We need more people like you or maybe not, maybe you're just the person. I think a lot of artists lately have had

[1:05] some growing pains. A lot of our audience members are people who have been in the space a little while, be that five months, five years, a whole range of experiences and I think almost everybody who is watching this right now or reading this right now has tried to mint something on OpenSea or another platform that has given them a difficult result to put that very nicely. Or have had a situation where they've minted NFTs and a collector would have liked something different in their smart contract, something not so generic. And then on the other side of things you also have people who are paying thousands and thousands of dollars for front and back end devs to develop something really custom even sometimes when it doesn't require, like what they're working on doesn't require such a custom solution. So I personally really do love your solution and I think it exists somewhere in that really nice

[1:51] sweet spot in the middle of those two places in terms of functionality and being, at least from my perspective, what a lot of people need for their project when it's something not insanely complicated and not something so simple that it's like your very first NFT attempt. You generally know what you're talking about. So from a dGen perspective or from an insider community perspective, why would you recommend somebody choose NiftyKit over hiring devs as a turnkey solution? Yeah. So we focus on mainly two things, saving time and money. The space is moving super fast and if time equals money, then we want to be the shortcut to get your project launched. There's tons of ideas and it's sad that some of these great ideas never see the light of day because sometimes the project owners, they just get too stuck overthinking things.

[2:53] I've been in clubhouse rooms where people looking to get into the space or have their own smart contract are recommended picking up solidity like, hey, it's fine. If you had a MySpace or you've done some HTML before or can do some simple website on Squarespace, then you should be able to pick it up, but it shouldn't be like that. So we created this service to be able to help you channel all that energy and those ideas and make minting and smart contract creation really the least of your problems. That should be the easiest part because if you get stuck and hung up on all that technical stuff under the hood, you're taking away from what you're going to need to market your product and get it out there. So we really want to just shortcut people on time. And then in addition to the time, like saving money on devs, like you were alluding to and mentioning, like, why would you want to go out and hire devs? I think you would not

[4:01] want to use NiftyKit if you need something more special. There's a bit more utility baked in, but what NiftyKit does is it provides that base layer of NFT support to give you your smart contract. And it's a ERC721 smart contract that's interoperable with Rarible and OpenSea. So we really wanted to give you something that base support that gives you the flexibility on creating the NFTs and selling them in different ways, whether you're listing them on your storefront on NiftyKit, or you're taking them over to Rarible and OpenSea, listing them there as well. Or we even have people who just do private sales outside of any of these platforms and just transfer it if you trust people that much. So we really wanted to just get you past this part, zero to one, all in the same day without having to spend days or weeks trying to figure out what do I do with the smart contract and how do I get one? Absolutely. And I feel like smart contracts at this

[5:09] point in time are something that are things that are very oversimplified or made too complicated to understand. It's really like what you can see if you ever go into Etherscan, you see a beautiful smart contract, you can see how simple they can be. And I think there is that learning curve with people because people will try to learn solidity and they'll get overwhelmed. And then they'll just assume that custom smart contracts are not an option for them. I think that turnkey solutions in this space are really the future. And as dApps are built out, not with the requirement of a high level of coding knowledge, we're really going to be able to see this space flourish. So I really believe in the way I phrase it is see DeFi companies in a DeFi space so that we can have small centralized, decentralized organizations that allow for certain solutions to take place so that the space as a whole can be decentralized. And I definitely see you

[6:02] and NiftyKit as one of those examples. You know, there's a few different people who do very specific things. There's Mintgate allowing unlockable access on sites. There's you guys integrating smart contracts. How do you see the future of this space moving forwards more exponentially if more people use solutions like NiftyKit? Yeah, I think, you know, with the speed that everything is happening and where we're at in this whole game, we're still, you know, stage zero and there's still a lot that needs to be built. I think just being able to empower people on the sidelines who maybe don't feel like they can get in because it's too big of a technical or even emotional hurdle. I know it's really tough to feel the FOMO and be on the sidelines. And especially if you're looking at artists now, right, there's a flood of art, musicians, videographers and just creators coming in.

[7:05] We don't want to leave them out and we want to be able to find ways to bridge the gap. And as weird as it feels to say like we're a centralized tool to help manage your decentralized assets, I think that's just, you know, the nature of where we're at right now. We feel that there is going to be tons of dynamic smart contracts and apps coming out later. We're hoping that we can get in early with people, help them own their work, educate them and help them understand like what is a smart contract? Why do you need one? What are the powers of the smart contract owners on other platforms that you might be minting on? And what is the implications of you not owning your tokens or being able to verify to your collectors that, hey, this is actually my art instead of, you know, all the bogus pieces that you're seeing people listing up on tools that just put everything all in one bucket and say, here's all the

[8:13] NFTs in the world. So being able to just give more control to the creators. I mean, the beauty of the blockchain and doing these NFTs is you can connect with your buyers just more directly. So with the tools that we're going to come out with, it's going to be a lot easier to say, hey, select everyone who's purchased the NFT or currently holds my token. You know, you know, those smart contracts, you know, all know, all those people, you don't have to go in and, you know, find all of your tokens spread out across the blockchain or blockchains. It gives you just more power, not only now, but, you know, as more and more apps come out that recognize you as a smart contract owner or more tools come out that give you the ability to interact with your fans in a different way.

[9:04] That's what we're most excited about and what we're driving towards. Awesome. Great answer. And I mean, I'm totally on side with you guys. I think what you're doing is so important. And a lot of people don't understand, you know, NFT is the buzzword and it's the terminology, but the smart contract is really the technology, like the thing driving this whole space forward and what makes the Ethereum blockchain initially, now all the other blockchains that support smart contracts so viable as a vehicle for change in society. I mean, it's really groundbreaking. So when people have the option to use a generic smart contract versus pay such a low rate, in my opinion, you guys are so accessible in your price points. And that's one of the next things I want to talk about, but a really accessible price point to get something custom, which will give you, you know, don't trust verify. This is just like moving

[9:50] past the phase of trust and verifying for your consumer, for the person you're trying to sell to that your project is legitimate. So I'd love to talk about the aspect of accessibility. It was kind of in your last answer because I really do believe it's what you guys stand for. But with such a low price, but on your theory and custom smart contract, which would otherwise cost people thousands of dollars from developers and with your polygon integration in mind, which I also think is brilliant and doing that on a subscription service as well. What was the thought process in making this more accessible and was that your goal to begin with? Yeah, well, you know, when we started this project last year, you know, we came into this year with just everything bursting onto the scene. The way we are approaching our platform is, you know, again, that C word centralized, like having a centralized area where you could manage, you know,

[10:46] think of it as just like your digital asset manager. One place where you could upload your highest quality stuff, manage your campaigns, manage multiple contracts and push them out to whether it's different chains or, you know, maybe there's other apps, metaverses or places that will be able to push your stuff out to. We want to be that one area you can manage all of those smart contracts. So if you look at just what's happening on the Ethereum mainnet with gas wars, gas prices, but Ethereum being the most accessible and most known, if you want the best chance of selling your stuff, you know, we want we wanted to obviously offer that because that's the most popular chain that's leveraging this. But with the Polygon, you know, I think a lot of people know just, hey, list up your collection and sell it or auction it off. But, you know, where we're going with our app is we want to introduce better

[11:48] ways for people to sell and using something low cost like Polygon, there's ways you can use that for marketing. It doesn't have to be your one of one piece that sold. You could mint a hundred, you know, collector appreciation NFTs and that could basically help build more than just collection drops that you're doing on OpenSea or some of these other platforms. So we really want to look at this as, you know, manage and control your full stack marketing and creation of your NFTs versus just trying to pick it up from different other platforms that may or may not do the things that you want it to do as far as marketing or drops. So a lot of stuff is moving pretty fast. We're working pretty closely with the community to see what are those types of tools that are going to help them sell more and going more towards the storytelling route. Like what can we build and help you with that will help you tell the story versus you having

[12:59] to just go on Twitter and Clubhouse and chill every day. So it's all about the experiences. So that's what we want to build through our tool using smart contracts and, you know, the great stuff that the creators are going to upload. No, absolutely. As a huge NFT nerd myself, I'm very appreciative of you guys facilitating the process for creators because when you enter this space initially, I mean, I send it to everybody because I did a master's thesis on this, but like a lot of this information is not easily accessible. It's there. It's all there because we live in an open source. We live in an open source world, at least the decentralized community here, but it does take a lot of digging to get to any kind of level and very few people have a, you know, a technical academic knowledge in this. And I really also think that that's a reason why companies such as NiftyKit are really important because for people who are entering the space, you keep saying

[13:54] going from zero to one. The easy solution is just to go to OpenSea or Rarible, which are both great platforms. But if you ever want to do something more than just the most simple NFT drop ever, or if you want to experiment with Polygon, I do believe OpenSea is now starting to bring more cross chain integration, but typically you have to go on a site like which is also super not native to most first-time users, and you have to figure out a new platform. So just as my plea to anybody who's listening who might be new to doing custom smart contracts, I really recommend that you check out NiftyKit. And maybe you want to just speak briefly on, I guess, a little bit more, you talked about it briefly, the idea of doing marketing, et cetera with Polygon, but the facilitation of doing a Matic NFT and having your own custom smart contract for it, because all the other turnkey solutions to my knowledge are

[14:42] general contracts. So that's a big deal, at least from my perspective. Yeah. A lot of the places that you're minting into, I know a couple of people offer smart contracts, but you're minting into a shared contract, which is great if you're getting in and you're messing around, but part of the education that we want to let people know about is hopefully we can get to you early so you don't regret having went wild just minting everywhere without really knowing the implications of what that's going to do to your brand and to your art. I would hate for five years from now for some of these top artists who just went crazy and minted their stuff everywhere. How is that going to affect your brand? So we just want to do the education piece and all those other platforms are great. They help support artists in different ways that we do. We're not the sexy curated place where everybody is coming back to NiftyKit every day

[15:55] to just see what the hottest art is because we're not who are we to say what the best art is. So we created the ability for people to create their own platforms, to curate their own artwork. We have a feature on our site that allows you to invite others to come into your smart contract so you can have a collaborative feature there. We also have draft states, so you can try the tool for free, get in there, set up your collection, customize the name, the token ID, and really just see what it's going to look like before you even mint. So it really helps people. We found a lot of people that are just doing it in real time. They'll upload their artwork, be ready to do their drop today, and then gas is ridiculous, something that they didn't expect selling a piece for 0 .1 ETH, but it cost 0 .5 ETH to deploy or something. So we give tools for people to prepare and tee that stuff up, and then we help optimize when that gets sent so that we're not

[17:07] paying a ridiculous amount. And everything is owned through you. You have to connect your metamask. Your smart contract is connected to your metamask or your NFTs. But yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. Helping people get in and creating their smart contract is also good as far as learning because you can actually mint your smart contract. We help you go through, help you explain like this is the token ID, this is the name, you can't change these, here are the things you can change later that aren't in the blockchain. So it's easy to learn once you actually create your thing. You can go into Etherscan, see your name in there. And yeah, just making those steps in there so you don't have to dive right in without knowing how deep the water is. No, absolutely. And it's funny how this conversation comes up in a bunch of different contexts. The idea of like inaccessibility of information, like

[18:09] learning that breakdown of a smart contract. I feel like anybody who's been in the space a while, whether they be a 3D artist, developer, et cetera, has had to watch some video in either a different language or in very broken English, trying to figure out something super specific. So just the fact that they can see things broken down in plain English in front of them, like the average consumer, I think is incredibly beneficial. And with the power of the internet, if that's available, that can be translated into any language. So thereby you just made a smart contract process so much more accessible to people. So, I mean, that's part of why I wanted to have this conversation and just show people how the solution can really help elevate the space and put it forwards. The last question I have for you, I didn't send you this one, but this is just kind of, it's nothing specific about the app. I'm not going to give you a hard time or anything. I love your platform. I'm just

[18:57] interested in the future of NiftyKit and how you personally see it. What would you love to implement in the next six months or a year? And how do you see maybe cross chain or some of these buzzwordy topics coming into play with NiftyKit specifically? Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Thanks for putting me on the spot, David. But yeah, there's so many fun ideas and shiny objects. There's only a certain amount of time in the day. Sticking with the ethos of giving the creators as much control as possible, we plan on developing the full system to help manage not only the simple smart contracts that we have now, but introducing more and more smart contracts to the system that allow for different things. Not even just art, but thinking about things like copyrights, licenses, assignment, looking at things like physical goods and connecting with existing infrastructure. So a business doesn't have to reset to be able to add NFTs. We'll be able to provide

[20:13] a transition path to help people integrate it as much or as little as possible. We are a pretty quick and nimble team. Everybody here has got hands on it. We're a technical and product team. So we're really just trying to be in tune with what the community needs to sell today and tomorrow. So it's really just trying to find a way that we can build something that's standard enough and helps enough people, but isn't too specific where we're just isolating. It's an interesting threshold, but if you look at us more of like a smart contract management platform, NiftyKit will have different kits that you'll be able to do a la carte or if you want a full suite of something, we'll be able to offer that to you, but it's really to shortcut you. We're also investing a lot in the metaverse. So we have several parcels and crypto voxels and we're working on some programs like an artist residency to help people, give them a space where they can

[21:23] sell with other people they're collaborating with in the metaverse 24 seven and not have to do a drop that's like on this date at this time, they'll have a space where they'll be able to tell their story in a more unique way. So I think I can go for days on all the ideas and things that we could do in six months, but really focusing on that base level of support to just get as many people in the more people we can get in right now on the ground level, the more feedback we're going to get and see which way we go. So yeah, it'll be exciting. You guys are going to love what we're coming out with in the next six months. So stay tuned. That sounds so exciting. And I didn't even expect some of those verticals. I apologize for putting you on the spot, but I think that's not holding you to it immediately, but seeing that that's the future goal to do something along the lines of taking artists, bringing them up, bringing them through a residency program, just

[22:23] finding ways to empower creators really seems to be the ethos of the company. And I love that you guys perpetuate that through all the different things that you guys have planned and are doing. So really Bravo, I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing and hopefully folks watching go to niftykit .com or niftykit .io. Niftykit .com. Yeah. Niftykit .com. We got information on there that will help explain what we do. The tool is free to try, so you don't have to pay anything to go through and see what you can do with your smart contracts or what your art would look like if you were to start sending people to your storefront. So yeah, definitely check out niftykit .com. Check us out on Twitter and discord and definitely reach out to us and let us know what you're thinking. Perfect. Yeah. And all of that information will be linked down below. Additionally, for anybody who is watching this, we have a very special offer.

[23:19] If you've made it this far, you'll be one of the first to hear about it, but I'm sure we're also going to be posting this on our social media. Dan, would you like to tell the folks watching your very generous offer for the folks at WTF, all of our fans? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for sticking with us up to this point and for considering us. We want to offer a free Ethereum mainnet smart contract and 10 NFTs for someone to do their next drop free of charge gas on us. So yeah, definitely stay tuned and we definitely want to give that away to just show our appreciation and thanks for everyone supporting us. And definitely will be plenty more fun giveaways and things that we'll be doing. So we just wanted to kick it off and offer that to you guys. Guys, that is like crazy. Dan, you are too kind. Everybody that's a $250 value US smart contract plus 10 NFTs. And they said they would cover gas. That's insane. And you guys know what gas

[24:21] is like right now. So that's a big offer. So Dan, thank you so much. If people want to enter that, all of the information will be right down below this video. Additionally, we will be tweeting it out on our Twitter NFTS.WTF. If you're not following that already, I definitely recommend you should. It's one of the steps in order to apply to get one of these custom smart contracts. And so without further ado, make sure you go do that. I'm sure everybody already clicked off this video and is going to click that smart contract link right now. But if you are still here, make sure to follow Dan and NiftyKit on all social media. We're also going to be linking that below. And until next time, this was David Cash for NFTS.WTF. I really appreciate you all listening. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, everyone. Take care.