IF-4-SERE

TD – Blockchain
Topic 2: Metaverse, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Tangle

Scenario

Let’s consider an independent artist who wishes to organize an exhibition of her art pieces for the
public. She is a contemporary artist who works in the digital medium and creates fully digital
interactive art pieces. Each art piece has some parameters that can be modified to set the appearance of
some of its aspects. Only the artist herself and the current owner of the art piece are able to set its
parameters. The artist chooses to hold the exhibition in the metaverse.

The public will need to buy a ticket in order to enter the exhibition. The cost of the ticket will depend
on the level of access. The regular tickets will get access to the general exhibition. Whereas, the VIP
tickets will also get access to some exclusive creations of the artist. The tickets will be sold in advance.
The tickets will be all unique and will themselves be collectible items.

The art pieces will be on sale. The exhibition attendee who pays the price first acquires an art piece and
becomes its owner. However, the digital art piece also remains an intellectual property of the artist
forever. The owner can decide to hold the art piece for as long as he wishes. The owner can also sell it.
When the owner sells the art piece, a royalty fee, which is a certain percentage of the profit (defined
here as the positive difference between the acquisition and sale prices) goes to the artist.

Exercises

1. Write pseudocode for a smart contract that manages the tickets for the exhibition. The smart
contract mints a new ticket for each ticket purchase request. The ticket ownership is required to
be proven in order to enter the exhibition. The ticket ownership is also needed to view the
exclusive pieces. A ticket can be redeemed for entrance only once. It can no longer be used for
entrance after that. However, the tickets are collectible items. They can be resold by the ticket
holders to others at before or after the exhibition.

2. Write pseudocode of a smart contract for the management of access to the art pieces.

3. Write pseudocode for a smart contract that manages the sale and ownership of the art pieces.

4. What are the advantages of NFTs?

5. Discuss the Tangle consensus algorithm, which is an alternative to the blockchain consensus
algorithm. Tangle uses the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) data structure instead of a blockchain
data structure. How does Tangle work? What are the advantages and disadvantages as compared
to blockchain?