Exploring Mult-Chain Tokenization with BitBadges

GM, GM. Welcome back to another episode of DevNTell. DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every week allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between to showcase their product. Today I am ecstatic to welcome back to the show, Trevor Miller, who is the founder of BitBadges. BitBadges offers tokenization as a service, gating as a service, and many other tools for you to build your next multi-chain dApp. Trevor will give an overview of all the new things built into the platform. But first, a word from our sponsor, Arbitrum.

GM, GM Trevor. Welcome back to the show. I believe this is your fourth appearance, which makes you a DevNTell champ. Always happy to host you. For those who aren't familiar with you yet, would you like to give a brief introduction?

Yeah, sure. I'm Trevor, founder of BitBadges. Basically, we are trying to build the best token standard out there. The problem we're trying to solve is that while blockchain tokenization is a great primitive, current standards like ERC-721 are outdated and limited to simple mint/transfer/sell functions. Over time, the industry has built up a lot of tech debt. We took the best features of all existing standards and built our own from the ground up with our own blockchain and app. This has been about two or three years of development and now we're ready to take it to the next level.

Amazing. Every time I look into the platform, I see you've gone bonkers and packed it full of awesome features. The docs are like an encyclopedia because there is so much content. Did you start this on your own or with a co-founder?

I still have a co-founder, but more in an advisory role at the moment. We started on a different blockchain as an app and pivoted to our own blockchain because we saw the need for full customization and control to build our vision. Two years later, it's cool to see everything come together.

For sure. I'll let you take the stage now and share your screen. For those watching, if you have questions, please post them in the chat.

Cool, can you see it? BitBadges is one token standard you can use for anything: NFTs, subscriptions, memberships, whatever you want to tokenized. What makes it the best is the amount of features.

The main feature is that it's the same token for any user from any chain. A Solana user and an Ethereum user can own and transfer the same tokens. It's all scoped to the BitBadges blockchain. This is great for companies like Netflix that don't want to split their user base across ten different chains.

Second, everything is no-code by default. We built it with an API format. No smart contracts are needed; you just configure parameters. We are adding an EVM layer and already support CosmWasm, but you don't need them because the core code is battle-tested.

Next is time-dependent balances. We do native accounting for balances down to the millisecond. I can know who owns what supply months from now without updates. You can think of them as ownership rights for specific windows, like 'July' or 'August', which opens use cases for subscriptions and lending.

As a Cosmos blockchain, we support USDC and IBC compatibility. Our tokens are wrappable to the IBC format, so you can create a token on our chain and send part of the supply to another Cosmos or EVM chain seamlessly.

We've also fine-grained transferability. You can control how many transfers, what times, who can initiate, and implement freezeability or revokeability on-chain. You can also gate mints by Discord membership, email, secret codes, or your own AI agent endpoints.

Let's look at the creation process. I'm connected with Solana, but you can sign in with Ethereum, Cosmos, or Bitcoin wallets. We also use Privy for social logins like Google or Twitter, which maps an Ethereum wallet to your social account for mobile ease.

These are the six main services. The first three are on-chain tokens, and the others are off-chain extensions. Subscriptions use a simple form where you set a price like $10/month in USDC, sign the transaction, and you have a no-code recurring subscription on-chain.

For full customization, you use the Badge interface. You can set standards like 'Tradable', 'NFTs', or 'Fungible'. The 'Approval' interface is the core benefit. You can check off-chain criteria from 7,000+ apps. You can authenticate users via Github, Reddit, Slack, or set up a custom API call.

This is a good point for some crowd questions. Tolupe asks about creating cross-chain renting NFTs to tokenize leasing style agreements. Is that possible with BitBadges?

Definitely. Time-dependent balances are perfect for leasing. You can transfer ownership rights for the next 12 months. You can put requirements in the approval logic, like revoking the lease if a condition isn't met. That's not possible with standard ERC-20s or NFTs.

In terms of features, do you plan to integrate any AI into the platform?

We've experimented. You can spin up an AI agent with its own wallet to sign things. The 'Claim' interface allows you to hook into Zapier AI actions. A successful claim could trigger an AI action like sending a custom email. Our architecture is self-custody, so most AI implementation would happen at the wallet or plugin level.

Are there any DeFi use cases Trevor and the team are seeing or ideas for builders to improve the DeFi space using BitBadges?

We offer an order-book style interface for fungible tokens as a proof of concept. Our feature set isn't trying to compete with Hyperliquid or Osmosis directly. However, due to our Cosmos interoperability, you can create a token on our chain and send it to Osmosis to tap into their DeFi protocols. We envision many teams building their own protocols on top of our token standard.

Just to confirm, is the EVM layer live or going to be live within the next month?

It's coming soon. We are waiting on the Cosmos Hub to finish auditing and producing the module. The timeline is around September. The CosmWasm layer will be live in a couple of days actually. With IBC, you could also wrap a token and send it to other EVM chains like Uniswap on Ethereum.

Are all these capabilities also available through an API?

Yes. We have our own indexer and API. You can fetch balances and account info without direct blockchain interaction. Our docs on Stoplight walk through all the message types for creating collections and submitting transactions. The best way to learn is to just go to the 'Create' page on the site and play with the features.

We are in the 'Betanet' phase, shipping fast and ironing out bugs. If anyone needs a development kickstart budget or wants to build on the platform, let me know. We are happy to subsidize developers. Discord is where I'm most active for contact.

Excellent. If you want to get started, give the site and docs a visit. All links will be in the description. Thank you for your time Trevor, and kudos on how far the product has come. Happy Friday everyone, and we'll catch you next week for another DevNTell.