BNB Chain Spotlight: Owl Protocol

2022.11.28  •  8 min read
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Take flight with Owl Protocol! Launch dNFTs with in-game utility, real world use cases, and more.

We've sat down with Owl Protocol's team to learn about their exciting mission to spur development of Dynamic NFTs (dNFTS). Read ahead to find out more about the vision, strategy, and team behind their project.

1. Please describe Owl Protocol for those unfamiliar with it. What's your vision and mission?

Owl Protocol is developing a set of high-quality, flexible smart contracts, standards, and developer tools for Dynamic NFTs (dNFTs). On top of these powerful tools, Owl Protocol is also building a no-code Dynamic NFT Workshop and dashboard where project creators and NFT owners can create, deploy, and interact with an expanding list of different dNFT mechanics such as crafting, breeding, loot boxes, reward/loyalty programs, scavenger hunts, and more.

On the back-end, Owl Protocol is founded and operated by members of Vulcan Link, a top 25 Chainlink oracle node operator and Web3 infrastructure company based in Dubai Internet City (DIC) and part of the In5 Tech / Tecom Group of supported tech startups. This gives Owl Protocol the unique position of being an NFT platform vertically integrated from the front-end to smart contracts and the Web3 infrastructure.

With its strong experience in Chainlink technologies and smart contracts, Owl Protocol is well positioned to deliver groundbreaking Dynamic NFT features: linking real-world data, such as sports, racing, market, or weather data, with NFTs and cross-chain mechanics with Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).

Our extensive set of features will all be accessible through a revolutionary UI that will also integrate Dynamic NFT data to show more in-depth beyond what’s available on current platforms and marketplaces. Like many projects, we envision Owl Protocol’s platform to act similarly to Steam for gaming. Still, specifically, our developer tools will streamline the use of NFT badges, achievements, and sharing NFT assets between different games.

2. When was the idea behind Owl Protocol born, and what led to it?

Owl Protocol was started after the founder Leo Vigna, a smart contract engineer, tried to develop a fully decentralized Web3 game and found that implementing advanced game mechanics on smart contracts was very hard to do well. Also, at that time, many other projects creating common mechanics rarely collaborated and therefore wrote different, redundant custom smart contracts for similar use cases.

He believed that a robust set of standard smart contracts should exist for GameFi and Dynamic NFTs, much like what OpenZeppelin provides for DeFi today. Now Owl Protocol dedicates itself to writing flexible, generic, standard smart contracts that can be used for these game mechanics and much more, we’ve found a variety of new use cases that have opened up due to the NFT industry.

3. Tell us about your team's background.

Owl Protocol is helmed by Leo and Clarence, who met in 2020 at ETHDenver, where they were 3rd place finalists. Both have a history of awards and speaking at various events.

Leo Vigna - CEO & Founder - is also the Founder of Vulcan Link. From a Wharton/UPenn Engineering Jerome Fisher dual-degree program studying Computer Science & Finance to a smart contract consultant on Tracer DeFi protocol and many accomplishments in blockchain, his 4+ years of expertise in Web3 development are unparalleled.

Clarence Liu - CTO - is a Canadian silicon valley trained software engineer and blockchain industry veteran with over 10 years of engineering experience and former CTO and Co-Founder of Tacen, a US-based hybrid-decentralized crypto exchange. He has many years of blockchain experience and advises many projects in the space through his strong background in technology, regulations, and finance as a previous Co-Founder and VP of other blockchain projects.

Harrison Goldsmith - Global BD Lead - has extensive experience in the Web3 gaming industry and underpins our Asia outreach as a Taiwanese native. He was the former CEO at Formless, a P2E game aggregator.

Mariana Bernado - Product Director - Previous Product Manager in EBANX, cross-border payments leader, structuring and launching the acquiring bank business operations. Launched the 1st tokenized condo in Miami, HouseBit COO, and B.Eng. Process & Chemical Engineering.

The rest of our team can be found at: https://owlprotocol.xyz/team.

4. What are the main advantages of Owl Protocol for users, compared to a similar project from a mainstream financial/NFT market?

Owl Protocol focuses on the backend smart contract side of projects. It also provides a readily available, easy-to-use, a no-code interface that allows users to connect their wallets and discover new utilities for their NFTs. From there, users can directly interact with the crafting, claiming, or rewarding smart contracts and claim their reward. In cases where they are missing a few required NFTs to unlock a specific reward, we’ll have helpful search and indexing capabilities to allow them to find out how to get those NFTs.

From the brand or NFT creator’s perspective, we also give them no-code tools to deploy, manage, and promote their projects. For example, a brand or SMB can easily deploy a new NFT reward program or marketing promotion that targets the top 25 NFT projects in a region or category.

5. What is the security strategy of your project?

Owl Protocol’s core smart contracts are open-source, one of the keys approaches to development in Web3. We will be actively working with other developers, employing bug bounties, and more to get as many eyes on our contracts as possible.

Also, we have been in extensive discussions with smart contract auditors and are currently evaluating them on a technical basis. Leo Vigna, the CEO, and Founder of Owl Protocol, already has extensive experience in auditing smart contracts, and therefore multiple internal rounds of testing will be conducted first. We believe that even the best auditors may miss things if they do not understand the complexities, especially for smart contracts as advanced as the ones we’ve developed, so we’re taking a broad approach to secure our smart contracts.

Furthermore, our smart contracts are geared towards lower-value NFTs and a higher volume of interactions; this limits the exposure and reward of exploiting any potential vulnerabilities. For example, many of our crafting smart contracts only output pre-minted NFTs or have limited mint permissions.

We use some of the top ERC standards from OpenZeppelin, battle-tested, and the latest methodology for deploying and securing our smart contracts. Our early version of the smart contracts can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/owlprotocol/owlprotocol.

One extremely important aspect of how Owl Protocol differentiates itself from other NFT platforms is that we run our Web3 infrastructure. Vulcan Link shares the same team as Owl Protocol and has been a Top 25 Chainlink node operator and blockchain oracle provider for over 2 years. Owl Protocol leverages this same infrastructure to have secure, trusted, and high-speed access to the over 10+ blockchains we support or plan to support.

As an expert in Chainlink technologies, this also underpins our confidence in rolling out randomized mechanics (VRF), real-world data linking with NFTs through Chainlink, and cross-chain mechanics using Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).

6. Let's say I want to start using the Owl Protocol. Where do I start? Where can I find some how-to guides?

The team is focusing on BD efforts to be able to support and mentor projects entering the blockchain development space, which is a friendly and closer way to be onboarded. The best way to reach us is by entering our Discord community (https://discord.com/invite/7sANzfGUfe) or sending us a direct email (harrison@owlprotocol.xyz). Our documentation is also helpful for a quick start, and all projects can check it here https://docs.owlprotocol.xyz.

7. Why did you decide to migrate/build on the BNB Chain?

BNB Chain earns top marks in proven reliability and a diverse ecosystem of projects that would work well with Owl Protocol’s technology. When we evaluate different blockchains, we also highly favor EVM-based chains, as our smart contracts are best audited and developed for Solidity.

8. What do you hope to see next from the BNB Chain community?

OWL Protocol is about supporting the game and NFT community, creating the bases for thriving projects/games, and helping users constantly find new utilities for their assets. What we expect from the chain are ways to increase the onboarding of more users and products. The incentives can be related to gas fee incentives, incubation, grants, infrastructure improvements, education, and proper documentation. After attracting more builders, it is very important to support the growth of their projects with co-marketing, technical support, and connections. It is all about creating space to spread the people's word and nourish the ecosystem.

9. Where do you position your brand in the NFT space?

Our positioning in the NFT space is on the advanced smart contracts side. We support consulting firms, NFT projects, and game developers in efficiently integrating Dynamic NFTs into their projects.

10. How can GameFi users get started with your product?

First, we recommend reading our documentation at https://docs.owlprotocol.xyz to get a basic understanding of our Dynamic NFT on-chain data encoding standard. From there, our smart contracts are open source and can be viewed at https://github.com/owlprotocol/owlprotocol.

Feel free to reach out and share your project and feedback; we believe in listening to developers and implementing any new mechanics that are commonly in demand. We work with projects to explore how their use case can be solved with our existing smart contracts as much as possible. Our goal is that Owl Protocol’s platform can reduce up to 80% of the work necessary to launch the smart contract side of even complex projects.

The following are some of our common supported mechanics:

11. Please share your impression of BNB Chain.

BNB Chain is one of the most genuinely supportive, transparent, and pro-ecosystem chains we interact with. The ecosystem being built has a lot of potential with the tech developed, plus the investment and the high-level team behind it.

We have a Features Book which highlights our primary features: https://docsend.com/view/v3evu9rjmz79pfbu.

13. What can you share about your tokenomic model?

Owl Protocol currently does not have a token but has plans to have one in the future. As soon as we have more details, we will share them with the community and partners.

14. Finally, are you planning any upcoming events?

As we have a team presence and strong partnerships in Miami, Owl will be supporting some local events in Miami Art Week, having a panel on December 3rd in the Bit Basel event talking about the intersection between Web3 GameFi and NFT with Gameswift and Obsidian.

In the past Owl Protocol has participated in numerous events globally with over 30+ partners, which they are working closely to launch in the coming months.

In 2023 after we launch our full NFT workshop, we’ll support and be part of several events. More information will be announced on our social media channels (Twitter: @owlprotocol)

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