The Power of Emblem Vault Curated Collections

7 min readDec 8, 2022

After months of deliberation, effort, hard work, and some technical wizardry the team at Emblem is excited to begin testing Curated Collections, and we need your help.

What are “Curated Collections”?

To understand Curated Collection we must first diagnose the complications at hand and then we will be able to understand the solutions proposed later in the post.

Current search of “Emblem Vault” on OpenSea

Emblem Vault’s Opensea listing is approaching 40,000 ETH total volume traded and 7,000 unique owners. That’s a ton of demand, but it’s mainly driven by the Historical NFT community that is educated and willing to do the research needed to sift through the often confusing display of NFTs. We recognize that to onboard the next wave of adopters, we need to streamline the collector’s experience.

Past search of “Art Blocks” on OpenSea in early 2021

As you can see above the popular generative art platform Art Blocks successfully went through a similar transition that Emblem Vault is currently building. Art Blocks Curated, Art Blocks Factory, and Art Blocks Playground are all “Curated Collections” organized by artists under one brand.

Art Blocks “Curated Collections” organized by individual artists

Art Blocks was having no issue with discoverability. The ABCurated collection had surpassed 30,000 NFTs and was growing with new drops every week. The issue was the discoverability of individual artists and their tokenized artwork. Searching through an individual collection of 30,000 NFTs across dozens of artists was negativly impacting Art Blocks ability to grow as a brand, the artists ability to be found, and the collectors ability to spend. It was becoming a lose-lose-lose situation.

Where does Emblem Vault Currently Stand?

Current storefront of Emblem Vault on OpenSea

Today, in 2022, Emblem Vault is facing similar growth constraints that Art Blocks did in 2021. A large storefront of 30,000 vaulted NFTs, and growing by the day, while housing dozens of individual collections…..across multiple blockchains! Unique to Emblem Vault, these collections exist not only on Ethereum but on other blockchains, including Namecoin, Bitcoin, and Dogecoin (with 17 current blockchain integrations). Each blockchain houses their own communities, technical issues, culture, and collectors which crosses into the majority of NFT classifications including Historical, Gaming, Art, and many more.

The current vaulting process is curated as an ERC-721 token (a traditional 1-of-1). But Historical NFTs on Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Namecoin are heavily semi-fungible tokens (1-of-many). This has led to NFTs with dozens or even hundreds of unique NFTs where there should instead be a cleaner user experience similar to that of projects that use ERC-1155 tokens.

Searching through an individual collection of 30,000 NFTs across dozens of artists was impacting Emblem Vaults ability to grow as a brand, the artists and collections ability to be found, and the collectors ability to spend. It is becoming a lose-lose-lose situation…just as Art Blocks experienced.

Are there current Examples of Active Solutions?

Let’s address the problems first:

A crowded Emblem Vault storefront is creating a discoverability problem for collectors.
ERC-1155 like tokens are vaulted individually causing a strain on owners who become time-constrained through the tedious vaulting process.
Non-EVM blockchains have yet to implement Creator Royalties while OpenSea has not only implemented them, but is defending them as well.
A lack of liquidity existing on other blockchains that house NFT Marketplaces.
Technical skills or time requirements that is placed on users to understand the fundamentals of each blockchains “NFT Standard”.

Storefront for 2017 ERC-1155 NFT Collection Curio Cards (with purchase and bidding system)

The 2017 Historical NFT Collection Curio Cards is a great example of how curated collections are best organized. Their OpenSea page is set up as an ERC-1155 NFT storefront. As all of the tokens are ERC-1155 sellers have the ability to sell their NFT in a queue. This generates liquidity as multiples of the same token can be placed for sale, and prospective buyers have the ability to purchase directly for the listed price, or send a bid in the offer pool. Meaning there are multiple paths to liquidity as bidding becomes more competitive due to a larger supply of 1.

Spells of Genesis “Curated Collection” by Leonidas (This is a Mockup and not official)

Spells of Genesis is a NFT Collection that was deployed on Counterparty (Bitcoin) in 2015, it is known as the first “Gaming NFT”. SATOSHICARD and FDCARD are the most prestigious tokens of the collection which hold a supply of 200 and 300 respectively, all while maintaining a floor of 50+ ETH regularly.

Curating an individual collection for Spells of Genesis on OpenSea will unlock additional liquidity to the market as Ethereum NFT marketplaces currently dwarfs existing Bitcoin NFT marketplaces. Additionally this will allow potential buyers the ability to place resting WETH bids.

A dedicated storefront also facilitates an increase in education about the project in addition to discoverability. And finally, this enables the founding person, team, or community to unlock creator royalties. (more on this another day)

Now what is Emblem Vault doing about it TODAY?

Emblem Vault is launching the “EVTEST Curated Collection”. This will enable users to interact with NFTs through the contracts and gives developers the opportunity to take part in the Bug Bounty reward program.

Art work curated by Rare Pepe Artists Zoe Davis and Oliver Morris.
The launch of ERC-1155 Curated Vaults.
An airdrop to 250 winners of our EVTEST Giveaway.
The Launch of our 2-week Bug Bounty Reward Program. (Details to be released shortly on how you can win 500,000 COVAL)
Early introduction to Batch Minting for Curated Vaults.
Early introduction towards ERC-721 Vault migration to ERC-1155 Curated Vaults.

Total Supply

EMBLEMTESTCOMMON: 300 (Divisible)
EMBLEMTESTRARE: 150
EMBLEMTESTLEGEND: 40
EMBLEMTESTEPIC: 10

Holders

Community Airdrop: 250 (50%)
Emblem Vault 150 (30%)
Zoe Davis: 50 (10%)
Oliver Morris: 50 (10%)

Community Distribution

EMBLEMTESTCOMMON: 150
EMBLEMTESTRARE:75
EMBLEMTESTLEGEND: 20
EMEBLEMTESTEPIC: 5

Emblem Vault Distribution

EMBLEMTESTCOMMON: 90
EMBLEMTESTRARE: 60
EMBLEMTESTLEGEND: 16
EMEBLEMTESTEPIC: 4
50 (of Emblem’s Choice) to be additionally distributed by end of December

Artist Distribution (Each)

EMBLEMTESTCOMMON: 30
EMBLEMTESTRARE:15
EMBLEMTESTLEGEND: 4
EMEBLEMTESTEPIC: 1

EMBLEMTEST Details & Goals

There are multiple tests we are looking to accomplish over the next few weeks, some I’ll share and some I won’t for security and auditing purposes.

First, we are airdropping the initial 50% of tokens to devout Emblem community members, Historical NFT participants, and eager crypto natives looking to experiment with cutting edge Web3 technology.

Upfront, we should address the value of these tokens. Could they be worth something? The market will determine that. Do these have utility? As of today, there is no active utility, but there has been discussion on how these may interact with future Emblem technologies, features, and infrastructure. Today, consider them a collector’s piece of Emblem’s history.

Second, we are encouraging YOU (the community of Emblem Vault) to interact and experiment with the collection. We need your involvement to test and try and find bugs in the contracts.

Things that need to be tested:

Purchasing NFTs in ETH.
Selling NFTs in ETH.
Bidding in WETH.
Accepting bids in WETH.
Vaulting EMBLEMTEST tokens.
Crack open (or Unvault) Emblem tokens.
Sending non-XCP tokens inside of the vault.
Experimenting with multiple of the same token inside of a vault.
Experimenting with divisible tokens inside of the vault.
White Hat Hackers participating in the Bug Bounty Reward Program and uncovering minor and major bugs in the contract. (Details to be published shortly)
Suggestions, comments, questions, and solutions to the on-going development of Emblem’s Curated Collections.

Finally, if the Emblem team and community can successfully come together and rigorously test out his new system, then we will all find ourselves in a win-win-win situation…just as Art Blocks and their community did in 2022.