Manifold Studio - Tutorial
A product review and tutorial of Manifold Studio, for NFT creators and developers
Intro
When I first stumbled upon Manifold Studio while thumbing through Twitter, it definitely caught my attention.
It is February 2022 and NFT mania is real. While a bubble this size can be dangerous when it pops, it is not all bad. On the positive, it is: (i) giving artists digital means to grow their brands, (ii) onboarding a horde into the web3 ecosystem, and (iii) creating more communities of people across the world.
As a metaphor: it is like we are walking through a worldwide digital art exhibit, and we are all trying to mint our way into the most exclusive clubs of degen high society (and I mean this in the most endearing way).
Well, Manifold Studio is here to help us do just that.
Manifold Studio enables web3 creators to creatively own and mint NFTs across the NFT world.
Back to the metaphor: it is like a way too powerful smart canvas, that both new and veteran digital artists can use to become the next Basquiat, Kahlo, or Da Vinci of the metaverse.
With Manifold Studio, creators and developers can produce an NFT collection, and commercialize it, with only a few button clicks.
Without writing a single line of code, a user can create and deploy ERC721 or ERC1155 contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, and have full ownership over their assets.
That’s big time for sure, so I wanted to see if I could use it myself. Here’s how it went.
Tutorial
Getting up and running in Manifold Studio is simple enough—as long as you have the right tools to get started. Like most web2 apps, you register and verify your email address in order to activate your account. Also, like most web3 apps, you sign a transaction in order to connect your blockchain account to it—for this tutorial, we use an Ethereum account, and the MetaMask wallet browser extension, to handle our web3 interactions.
During the signup flow, you must upload and input an ASCII mark. This was a new concept for me (there’s always something new in the wild west of web3), but it is an essential step. Your ASCII mark acts like a digital signature for your smart contracts, making it unique to you.
For my test drive, I pretend to be a DAO for Animal and Earth Conservation, and my first NFT smart contract would be for a Sea Turtle Community, which wants to mint some NFTs for its biggest donors and activists.
Check out the screen recording video below, along with the a breakdown of steps I followed to make it happen:
[0:00 - 0:12] Connect your web3 wallet by signing the request
[0:12 - 0:18] Sign up by inputting user name, email, and Ascii art signature
[0:18 - 0:22] Generate Ascii Art and copy-paste into sign up form — use a tool like TextEditor
[0:22 - 0:32] Finish sign up: submit form and perform web2 email verification
[0:32 - 0:40] Start a new contract. Keep the type as ERC721, and input contract name and token symbol
[0:40 - 1:34] Deploy contract to the Rinkeby TestNet
[0:42 - 1:02] Switch the network from Ethereum MainNet to the Rinkeby TestNet — first, update MetaMask settings and enable the Show test networks toggle
[1:02 - 1:24] Add Rinkeby TestNet ETH to your wallet by using a faucet — we used the Chainlink faucet
[1:24 - 1:34] Deploy contract to TestNet and confirm web3 write transaction to the Rinkeby TestNet — we pay gas fees because this is a write/send transaction
[1:34 - 1:42] Review and Finalize contract
We didn’t do this in the tutorial. Only do this step when you are ready to Deploy to MainNet
[1:42 - 2:22] Mint a new NFT
[1:42 - 1:48] Go back to My Contracts page and click the more actions button next to the contract you created in the previous step. Select tokens from the menu
[1:48 - 1:58] On the Tokens page, click mint a new token. Then upload your token image, title, and other details about the token — including the number of editions you will mint of the NFT
[1:58 - 2:06] Click Mint to TestNet and confirm web3 write transaction to the Rinkeby TestNet — we pay gas fees because this is a write/send transaction
[2:06 - 2:12] View your newly minted NFT on websites like Rarible and OpenSea
[2:12 - 2:22] View contract transactions on Etherscan — here’s the smart contract used in this tutorial
Review
Using Manifold was fairly pleasant. The UI and UX were very minimal. Even as an average crypto user, it took me some time and fumbling around to get used to things (e.g., the ASCII mark), but once I did it was a smooth experience.
A few highlights:
Short and simple UX, and an easy to navigate UI. While the product feels a bit unpolished, that is understandable given it was launched fairly recently. and how much functionality is packed into it. I think the Manifold team was very thoughtful in their product design.
Documentation, with tutorial videos! This is great to see from an early stage product. It signals understanding of its market and user base.
Robust feature set. Along with contract creation and deployment, there are settings for royalties, approving admins, and more. It seems like this product aims to give you full ownership and control of your smart contracts, without the need for code or in-depth knowledge of web3 infrastructure. No code solutions are starting to trend in the world of web2, so it’s nice to see someone bringing the practice into web3.
A few wishes:
More suggestions and tips. This is the early days, so many people who want to create NFTs aren’t web3 ready. In order for users to have a better new user experience, it’d be nice for the documentation and user guides to be more visible and integrated into the main UI.
Clarification on what ownership means. What is the user getting from this product actually? In one of their community posts, they mention being a protocol and not a platform. I’d like to know more about that as I’m using it.
Bugs. At the time I recorded this tutorial, there was an issue with the contract verification process. I think that’s why I couldn’t see the contract code in Etherscan after my Rinkeby TestNet deployment. That being said, it was nice that they were transparent about the issue, posting a message at the top of the page.
Conclusion
Overall, I think Manifold is a remarkable tool for creators and makers in the web3 space, especially given how early we are in this journey. Manifold seems to cover a lot of ground right now, giving so many people who want to create smart contracts and NFTs a way to do so that’s core to web3: real ownership.
I’m excited to see how it evolves!
Ratings
Scored in the categories: Product and Presence. Each category is out of 10.
Product - 8
Lots of functionality baked into a simple and minimal design, UI and UX
Unique and original value proposition that aligns with web3 principles
Presence - 8
Established presence on typical web3 community platforms
Published content and docs for users