**This is a standard interface for smart contracts to handle deeds.** The scope of this interface includes **interrogating the smart contract about deeds**. It also allows **transferring deeds**. We consider use cases of deeds used by individuals as well as consignment to third party brokers/wallets/auctioneers.
The *things* to which deeds express ownership are an implementation detail. While writing this standard we considered a diverse univerise of *things*, and we know you will dream up many more:
- Physical property — houses, unique artwork
- Digital property — unique pictures of kittens, collectable cards
- "Negative value" assets — loans, burdens and other responsibilities
In general, all houses are distinct and no two kittens are alike. Therefore you must track each deed separately; it is insufficient to simply count the deeds you own.
A standard interface allows wallet/broker/auction applications to work with any deed on Ethereum. We provide for simple deed contracts as well as contracts that track an *arbitrarily large* number of deeds. Additional applications are discussed below.
This standard is inspired by [the ERC-20 token standard](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20-token-standard.md) and builds on two years of experience since EIP-20 was created. EIP-20 is insufficient for tracking deed ownership because each deed is distinct (non-fungible) whereas each of a quantity of tokens is identical (fungible).
Differences between this standard and EIP-20 are examined below.
## Specification
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC 2119](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt).
**Every ERC-721 compliant contract must implement the `ERC721` and [`ERC165`](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-165.md) interfaces** (subject to "caveats" below):
function onNFTReceived(address _from, uint256 _tokenId, bytes data) external returns(bytes4);
}
```
The **metadata extension** is OPTIONAL for ERC-721 smart contracts (see "caveats", below). This allows your contract to be interrogated for its name and for details about the *things*.
"description": "A URI pointing to a resource with mime type image/* representing the thing to which the deeds grants ownership. Consider making any images at a width between 320 and 1080 pixels and aspect ratio between 1.91:1 and 4:5 inclusive.",
The **enumeration extension** is OPTIONAL for ERC-721 smart contracts (see "caveats", below). This allows your contract to publish the the full list of deeds and make them discoverable.
The 0.4.20 Solidity interface grammar is not expressive enough to document the ERC-721 specification. A contract which complies with ERC-721 MUST also abide by the following:
- [Solidity issue #3412](https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/issues/3412): The above interfaces include explicit mutability guarantees for each function. Mutability guarantees are, in order weak to strong: `payable`, implicit nonpayable, `view`, and `pure`. Your implementation must meet the mutability guarantee in this interface or you may meet a stronger guarantee. For example, a `payable` function in this interface may be implemented as nonpayble (no state mutability specified) in your contract. We expect a later Solidity release will allow your stricter contract to inherit from this interface, but a workaround for version 0.4.20 is that you can edit this interface to add stricter mutability before inheriting from your contract.
- [Solidity issue #3419](https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/issues/3419): A contract that implements `ERC721Metadata` or `ERC721Enumerable` SHALL also implement `ERC721`. ERC-721 implements the requirements of interface [ERC-165](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/881).
- [Solidity issue #2330](https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/issues/2330): If a function is shown in this specification as `external` then a contract will be compliant if it uses `public` visibility.
- Solidity issues [#3494](https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/issues/3494), [#3544](https://github.com/ethereum/solidity/issues/3544): Use of `this.*.selector` is marked as a warning by Solidity, a future version of Solidity will not mark this as an error.
*If a newer version of Solidity allows the caveats to be expressed in code, then this EIP MAY be updated and the caveats removed, such will be equivalent to the original specification.*
There are many proposed uses of Ethereum smart contracts that depend on tracking individual deeds (non-fungible tokens). Examples of existing or planned NFTs are LAND in [Decentraland](https://decentraland.org/), the eponymous punks in [CryptoPunks](https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks), and in-game items using systems like [Dmarket](https://www.dmarket.io/) or [EnjinCoin](https://enjincoin.io/). Future uses include tracking real-world non-fungible assets, like real-estate (as envisioned by companies like [Ubitquity](https://www.ubitquity.io/) or [Propy](https://tokensale.propy.com/)). It is critical in each of these cases that these items are not "lumped together" as numbers in a ledger, but instead, each *thing* must have its ownership individually and atomically tracked. Regardless of the nature of these *things*, the ecosystem will be stronger if we have a standardized interface that allows for cross-functional deed management and sales platforms.
This definition is consistent with the fact that ERC-721 contracts track ownership of other *things*, such as houses, pictures of kittens or collectable cards. If you gain ownership of a house via ERC-721 then the ERC-721 contract manages the *deed* and the place where you live is the *thing*.
We chose specifically to avoid the word "token" because it has a well known, and different, meaning in the Ethereum ecosystem, specifically ERC-20 tokens.
The basis of this standard is that every deed is identified by a unique 256-bit unsigned integer within its tracking contract. This ID number SHALL NOT change for the life of the contract. The pair `(contract address, deed ID)` will then be a globally unique and fully-qualified identifier for a specific deed within the Ethereum ecosystem. While some contracts may find it convenient to start with ID 0 and simply increment by one for each new deed, callers SHALL NOT assume that ID numbers have any specific pattern to them, and MUST treat the ID as a "black box". Also note that a deeds MAY become invalid (be destroyed). Please see the enumerations functions for a supported enumeration interface.
ERC-721 standardizes a safe transfer function `transferFrom` (overloaded with and without a `bytes` parameter) and an unsafe function `unsafeTransfer`. Transfers may be initiated by:
Additionally, an authorized operator may set the approved address for a deed. This provides a powerful set of tools for wallet, broker or auction applications to quickly use a *large* number of deeds.
The transfer and accept functions documentation only specify conditions when the transaction MUST throw. Your implementation MAY also throw in other situations. This allows implementations to achieve interesting results:
- **Disallow transfers if the contract is paused** — prior art, [Crypto Kitties](https://github.com/axiomzen/cryptokitties-bounty/blob/master/contracts/KittyOwnership.sol#L79)
- **Blacklist certain address from receiving deeds** — prior art, [Crypto Kitties, (lines 565, 566)](https://etherscan.io/address/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d#code).
- **Disallow unsafe transfers** — `unsafeTransfer` throws unless `_to` equals `msg.sender` or `countOf(_to)` is non-zero (because such cases are safe)
- **Charge a fee to both parties of a transaction** — require payment when calling `approve` with a non-zero `_approved` if it was previously the zero address, refund payment if calling `approve` with the zero address if it was previously a non-zero address, require payment when calling `transfer`, require `transfer` parameter `_to` to equal `msg.sender`, require `transfer` parameter `_to` to be the approved address for the deed
- **Read only deed registry** — always throw from `unsafeTransfer`, `transferFrom`, `approve` and `setApprovalForAll`
Failed transactions will throw, a best practice identified in [ERC-233](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/223) , [ERC-677](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/677), [ERC-827](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/827) and [OpenZeppelin](https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/zeppelin-solidity/blob/master/contracts/token/ERC20/SafeERC20.sol). [ERC-20](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20-token-standard.md) defined an `allowance` feature, this caused a problem when called and then later modified to a different amount, as [disucssed on OpenZeppelin](https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/zeppelin-solidity/issues/438). In ERC-721, there is no allowance because every deed is unique, the quantity is none or one. Therefore we receive the benefits of ERC-20's original design without problems that have been later discovered.
Creating of new deeds ("minting") and destruction of deeds ("burning") is not included in the specification. Your contract may implement these by other means. Please see the `event` documentation for your responsibilities when creating or destroying deeds.
*Alternatives considered: only allow two-step ERC-20 style transaction, require that `transfer` never throw, require all functions to return a boolean indicating the success of the operation.*
We chose Standard Interface Detection [ERC-165](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-165.md) to expose the interfaces that a ERC-721 smart contract supports.
A future EIP may create a global registry of interfaces for contracts. We strongly support such an EIP and it would allow your contract to to implement `ERC721Enumerable`, `ERC721Metadata`, or other interfaces by delegating to a separate contract.
**Gas and complexity** (regarding the enumeration extension)
This specification contemplates implementations that manage a few and *arbitrarily large* numbers of deeds. If your application is able to grow then [avoid using for/while loops in your code](https://github.com/axiomzen/cryptokitties-bounty/issues/4). These indicate your contract may be unable to scale and gas costs will rise over time without bound.
[We have deployed](https://github.com/fulldecent/erc721-example) a contract to test net which instantiates and tracks 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 different deeds (2^128). That's enough to assign every IPV6 address to an Ethereum account owner, or to track ownership of nanobots a few micron in size and in aggregate totalling half the size of Earth. You can query it from the blockchain. And every function takes less gas than [querying the ENS](https://ens.domains/).
It may be interesting to consider a use case where deeds are not enumerable or deeds are not enumerable by owner, such as a private registry of property ownership, or a partially-private registry. However, privacy cannot be attained because an attacker can simply (!) call `ownerOf` for every possible `deedId`.
We have required `name` and `symbol` functions in the metadata extension. Every token EIP and draft we reviewed ([ERC-20](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20-token-standard.md), [ERC-233](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/223) , [ERC-677](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/677), [ERC-777](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/777), [ERC-827](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/827)) included these functions.
We remind implementation authors that the empty string is a valid response to `name` and `symbol` if you protest to the usage of this mechanism. We also remind everyone that the official contract for tracking 0xProject tokens (`ZRX`) is [0xe41d2489571d322189246dafa5ebde1f4699f498](https://etherscan.io/address/0xe41d2489571d322189246dafa5ebde1f4699f498). Another contract that advertises a name of `0xProject` and symbol `ZRX` is not the well-known (canonical) contract.
How a client may determine which token and deed contracts are well-known is outside the scope of this standard.
A mechanism is provided to associate deeds with URIs. We expect that many implementations will take advantage of this to provide metadata for each deed. The image size recommendation is taken from Instagram, they probably know much about image usability. The URI MAY be mutable (i.e. it changes from time to time). We considered a deed representing ownership of a house, in this case metadata about the house (image, occupants, etc.) may naturally change.
Metadata is returned as a string value. Currently this is only usable as calling from `web3`, not from other contracts. This is acceptable because we have not considered a use case where an on-blockchain application would query such information.
*Alternatives considered: put all metadata for each deed on the blockchain (too expensive), use URL templates to query metadata parts (URL templates do not work with all URL schemes, especially P2P URLs), [multiaddr network address](https://github.com/multiformats/multiaddr) (not mature enough)*
A significant amount of discussion occurred on [the original ERC-721](ERC-721 issue), additionally we held a live meeting [on Gitter](https://gitter.im/ethereum/ERCs?at=5a62259b5ade18be3998eec4) that had good representation and [was](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7r2ena/friday_119_live_discussion_on_erc_nonfungible/) [well](https://gitter.im/ethereum/EIPs?at=5a5f823fb48e8c3566f0a5e7) [advertised](https://github.com/ethereum/eips/issues/721#issuecomment-358369377) in relevant communities. Thank you to the participants:
We have been very inclusive in this process and invite anyone with questions or contributions into our discussion. However, this standard is written only to support the identified use cases which are listed herein.
We have adopted `balanceOf`, `totalSupply`, `name` and `symbol` semantics from the [ERC-20](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20.md) specification. An implementation may also include a function `decimals` that returns `uint8(0)` if its goal is to be more compatible with ERC-20 while supporting this standard. However, we find it contrived to require all ERC-721 implementations to support the `decimals` function.
- [CryptoKitties](https://www.cryptokitties.co/) — Compatible with an earlier version of this standard.
- [CryptoPunks](https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks) — Partially ERC-20 compatible, but not easily generalizable because it includes auction functionality directly in the contract and uses function names that explicitly refer to the deeds as "punks".
- [Auctionhouse Asset Interface](https://github.com/dob/auctionhouse/blob/master/contracts/Asset.sol) — [@dob](https://github.com/dob) needed a generic interface for his Auctionhouse dapp (currently ice-boxed). His "Asset" contract is very simple, but is missing ERC-20 compatibility, `approve()` functionality, and metadata. This effort is referenced in the discussion for [EIP-173](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/173).
Note: "Limited edition, collectible tokens" like [Curio Cards](https://mycuriocards.com/) and [Rare Pepe](https://rarepepewallet.com/) are *not* deeds. They're actually a collection of individual fungible tokens, each of which is tracked by its own smart contract with its own total supply (which may be `1` in extreme cases).
The `onNFTReceived` function specifically works around old deployed contracts which may inadvertently return 1 (`true`) in certain circumstances even if they don't implement a function. By returning, and checking for, a magic value we are able to distinguish actual affirmative responses versus these `true`s.
Test cases for an implementation are mandatory for EIPs that are affecting consensus changes. Other EIPs can choose to include links to test cases if applicable.