Purpose
This article explains what it means for users to truly own their wallet and NFTs via the Ethereum blockchain.
Assumptions Made
This article assumes the reader understands the information in the following articles:
Summary
Blockchain technology provides many revolutionary features to users, such as digital ownership of assets like NFTs. Each NFT has its unique record of transactions for every activity, such as its creation and every transaction after that. Whether an NFT is sold, traded, or gifted to another user, the wallets that it's been traded between will have this transaction history forever saved on the blockchain and cannot be altered.
With the main components of a block explained previously, here is an example of how they may be chained together. Assume the first block in the blockchain has an account nonce of 1, “next” hash of 0000xfe19…, and one transaction sending ETH from wallet A to wallet B. If the second block has an NFT being sent from wallet B to wallet C with a “previous” hash of 0000xfe19… (this is to match the “next” hash of the first block, continuing the chain), then a proof of consensus nonce must be calculated to ensure the second block’s “next” hash starts with 0000 as well. Otherwise, the block wouldn’t follow the correct parameters and would not be accepted. Once the valid proof of consensus nonce is calculated, the second block is added to the blockchain, and a third may be added. If anything were to change in the first or second block, the “next” hash would also change, making the entire chain invalid. This is what proof of ownership is. Every transaction is written in stone and cannot be changed. For a visual representation of this, there is an excellent beginner’s guide with educational videos found here:
Each wallet has its unique seed phrase, which gives complete access to the associated wallet, while the private key can be used to import a wallet and sign a message verifying ownership. Gala Games and Entertainment believes users should have complete and sole access to their wallets. To support this, the wallet seed phrase is only shown once during creation and never stored. This ensures it is the exclusive property of the user. Additionally, this means it is also the user's sole responsibility to maintain the security of this wallet because, after creation, they are the only user with access to it.
Please make sure to review the following article on the importance of remembering a wallet's seed phrase and transfer code:
Forgotten Transfer Code and Recovery Phrase
To keep updated on the types of account compromises, please review this article: