Changelog

Polishing week

This week, we shipped 30+ design updates and product improvements, including:

• A couple of bug fixes including:
  • Clarified auction bid requirements: bids must be at least 5% higher than the current winning bid
  • Resolved dark mode issues: icons now display correctly across all views
  • "Refer and Earn" section is now hidden for unsigned users to prevent referral links without a referrer
• Implemented lazy loading for the Collection Management Dashboard to improve performance
• Highlight marketing banners and logos have been updated to reflect branding

UI updates

This week, we introduced several improvements to our creation flow and token detail pages.

In our creation flow, we added edition type and sale type icons to make navigating between different options more intuitive.

On token detail pages, we added trait rarity data to make it easier to gauge the uniqueness of a given item We also added a “Recently sold” toggle to make it easier to track recent sales activity.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added a default collection banner to all collections (pro tip: you can customize this to make it your own!)
• Introduced a toolbar for collector’s choice artworks with options to expand, view full screen, or open in a new tab
• 30+ other smaller fixes and performance updates

Marketplace token pop-up

This week, we introduced a new feature to improve our marketplace experience. Now, when you click on a token, a modal pops up, giving you the ability to:

• List tokens you own for sale or transfer
• Make an offer on tokens
• View token traits, offers, and details

This streamlined layout lets you seamlessly buy, sell, or manage tokens—all without leaving the main marketplace page.

Exchange currencies

We shipped an upgrade for our swap widget so that users can not just wrap and unwrap, but also swap supported currencies without going elsewhere.

To swap or exchange currencies, click your connected wallet’s balance shown in the top navigation bar. Enter the desired amount in the fields, the chains you’d like to swap from and to, and confirm your transaction.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Edition flow updates:
  • Reordered fields for a more intuitive user experience
  • Retained descriptions for each edition type after selection
  • Separated blockchains into testnet and mainnet, with a search feature for easier selection
• Fixed a bug where trait filters weren’t working
• 20+ other smaller improvements and design changes

Creation flow update

We're excited to introduce an enhanced creation flow that makes bringing your NFT project to life more intuitive than ever. Our redesigned interface guides both new and experienced creators through choosing the perfect project format for your vision.

Each project type now features rich visual examples, detailed descriptions, and clear use cases to inform your decision. Whether you're launching a limited edition collection, a unique 1-of-1 piece, an innovative PFP series, or pushing boundaries with generative art, the new flow makes it easier to find the ideal pathway for your creative goals.

Support for ZERO

ZERO is now live on Highlight. Artists can now create and trade any collection on ZERO.

To create a collection on ZERO, head to your dashboard, click “Create,” and choose “ZERO” under our supported mainnet blockchains in your collection details.

Explore collections on ZERO: https://highlight.xyz/zero

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added "Make Offer" and "Owned by Me" filters/buttons for improved marketplace navigation and functionality
• Updated marketplace display settings to automatically show a grid of 6 items for a cleaner browsing experience
• Fixed a bug where mint counts for editions were incorrectly pulled at the contract level instead of the collection level
• 20+ other design and smaller improvements

Updated mint page

We’ve enhanced the look and functionality of our mint pages for a cleaner, more intuitive experience. Here’s what’s new:

• Key statistics at the top: important metrics are now front and center, giving you a quick overview of a collection at a glance
• Customizable banner image: you can now add a custom banner image directly from your tools dashboard, giving you the freedom to brand your mint page with your own visuals.
• New activity tab: we've introduced an enhanced Activity tab that displays volume and average price in a chart, allowing you to easily monitor a collection's performance over time.

Wrapping and unwrapping ETH on Highlight

This week, we rolled out a swap widget, accessible from Highlight’s main navigation bar, that allows you to wrap, unwrap, and soon swap supported currencies without going elsewhere.

To convert ETH to WETH for marketplace offers and trades, enter the amount and click “Wrap ETH.” If you need to unwrap, just select WETH in the “From” field, ETH in the “To” field, and click “Unwrap ETH.” Currency swaps will also roll out very soon.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improved our global search functionality
• Updated trust and safety tools to provide more context on flagged collections
• Fixed a bug with CSV metadata uploads in the series collection flow
• 20+ design improvements and bug fixes

Creation and marketplace support for Cyber

Artists can now create and trade any collection on Cyber, the L2 for social. With cross-chain minting, collectors can use funds from another chain if they don't have enough ETH on Cyber.

To create a collection on Cyber, head to your dashboard, click “Create,” and choose “Cyber” under our supported mainnet blockchains in your collection details.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Reintroduced the “Owned by me” toggle in our marketplace for easier marketplace browsing
• Fixed an issue where air-dropped tokens weren’t visible on the marketplace
• 40+ smaller product improvements and design updates

Token metadata refresh

This week, we introduced a new feature that lets users refresh metadata for individual tokens, available for all collections across supported chains.

You can find the “Refresh” button on each token's detail page, which will trigger an update for that token's metadata.

To refresh a whole collection, please reach out to gm@highlight.xyz.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed a bug where airdropped tokens weren’t showing ownership updates
• Updated our Edition flow so that the default contract is ERC-1155s, a token standard that supports both fungible and non-fungible tokens within a single contract
• 40+ design improvements and smaller bug fixes

Polishing week

This week, we shipped 30+ design updates and product improvements, including:

• Added helper text to the editions flow to guide artists interested in re-using contracts
• Introduced a pre-deployment check to ensure collections are properly tested before deploying to mainnet
• Unified the design of collection display cards across the explore page and homepage for consistency
• Added red and yellow warning banners on the mint page to alert collectors about collections that violate Highlight's terms of service

Live view: now supporting collections across all platforms

We've updated Live view to now showcase collections from all chains supported by Highlight, no matter the launch platform.

Digital art and culture is 24/7 and Live view is a fun way to watch what’s happening now.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated our mint page banner, moving key statistics to the top of the page for better visibility, and added the creation date
• Added support for minting with $SHAPEPE and $CIRCLE, ERC20 tokens on the Shape network
• Enhanced user profile search to support collection offer searches by name
• 20+ smaller product improvements and design enhancements

Full support for Shape

This week, we rolled out full support for Shape, a Layer 2 network focused on fostering digital art and culture. Now, artists and collectors can:

• Deploy collections on Shape using either an ERC-721 or ERC-1155 contract, across any collection type (Edition, Series, or Generative)
• Buy and sell collections on Shape, whether they were launched on Highlight or elsewhere
• Explore all collections on Shape, allowing you to trade them directly on Highlight

Explore collections on Shape on Highlight here.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Disabled clickable links for unminted tokens in series collections, which were causing errors
• Ongoing updates to our primary and secondary discovery modules
• Extended support for dark mode
• 20+ smaller product improvements and design tweaks

Creation and marketplace support for ZKsync Era

This week, we gave artists the ability to launch any type of collection on ZKsync Era, a leading EVM L2, along with a full secondary marketplace for the chain.

This means we’re indexing every collection launched on ZKsync Era, so you can trade any collection directly on Highlight, even if it wasn’t originally launched here.

To create a collection on ZKsync Era, head to your dashboard, click “Create,” and choose “ZKsync Era” under our supported mainnet blockchains in your collection details. You can deploy your collection with prices denominated in either ETH or $ZK.

Deploy with an ERC-1155 contract

Starting this week, you can now deploy collections using the ERC-1155 standard. This popular token standard supports both fungible and non-fungible tokens within a single contract.

With this, we’ve reduced mint fees for ERC-1155 collections to help drive revenue and reach for creators:

• 0.0004 ETH per mint
• Free mints have an 80 / 20 split — 80% to creators
• Earn 90% via your referral link

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• New landing pages for each supported chain
• Improvements to chain indexing, which we’re shipping continuously
• Some bug fixes, including some issues with credit card payments and token metadata reveals
• 20+ smaller improvements and design tweaks

Full support for Forma

Forma is a blockchain built to empower onchain creativity.

With Highlight’s comprehensive toolkit, artists can now launch any type of collection on Forma, complete with full support for secondary marketplaces.

Additionally, cross-chain support is now live, allowing users to pay with Ethereum or other Layer 2 solutions if they don’t have enough TIA in their wallet.

Updated URLs

This week, we've updated our URL structure to use onchain IDs.

Our new URL schema is as follows: highlight.xyz/mint/{chain}:{address}

• {chain}: Represents the specific blockchain (e.g., Ethereum, Polygon, etc.).
• {address}: Refers to the smart contract or asset address on that chain.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Refined the mint card copy for better clarity
• Updated our the category filter on the Explore page to include collections that have ended or are sold out for better discovery
• Resolved an issue preventing decimal inputs from appearing on some mobile keyboards
• 30+ other product improvements and design refinements

Rodeo × Highlight

As of today, all Highlight users have access to Rodeo. To access, simply sign in with the wallet associated with your Highlight account.

In addition, if you have a pre-existing Rodeo profile, it will now automatically appear as part of your Highlight profile.

For new users who created their Rodeo account after this announcement, you can link your Rodeo account by heading over to your Account Settings. Simply go to your profile, select “Edit your profile,” and link your username under “Rodeo.”

Categories and tags for collections

This week, we introduced categories and tags for collections. Artists can now classify their work however they see fit, and collectors and explore projects across genres, formats, and more.

These can be selected directly from the creation flow.

When applied, categories and tags are viewable on the mint page.

You can also explore collections by filtering tags and categories in our explore section.

Homepage update

We’ve also rolled out updates to our homepage, including a new trending module that highlights top mints, top free mints, and top artists. When you hover over a collection, you'll now see extra details like the collection description, related projects from the artist, or the artist bio.

Homepage refresh

This week, we rolled out updates to our homepage, which include a new header design and the introduction of a dynamic trending module.

The new trending module is designed to help artists and collectors discover popular content on our platform more easily. It features multiple tabs that allow users to explore collections based on different criteria, such as the top mints, top free mints, and top artists.

Support for Scroll

We’re excited to announce that artists and creators can now launch projects on Scroll, a leading Ethereum rollup network.

To launch a project on Scroll, simply select the applicable blockchain under “Network”.

All projects launched on Scroll can be bought and sold on Highlight’s secondary marketplace. In addition, we have cross-chain support live which means if you don’t have enough Scroll in your wallet, you can pay using Ethereum or another L2.

Calendar view

This week, we released Calendar View. This feature lets artists and collectors easily track a curated selection of upcoming drops, whether they're on Highlight or other platforms.

With Calendar View, you can view both upcoming and active drops, along with details like minting status, price, and supply, making it easier to stay informed and up-to-date.

Explore Calendar View here.

Please note that for collections not native to Highlight, only secondary purchases will be available.

Live view

We’re excited to announce the release of Live view on our homepage. This tab is updated in real-time with the newest mints and collection launches on Highlight.

Whether you're an avid collector or just curious about what's trending, the Live view tab makes it easy to stay informed.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added a configuration option to hide the token reveal screen on embeds
  • Updated our support documentation to reflect these changes
• Enhanced the Explore page by adding stacked avatars under the "Minted by" badge
• Fixed a bug where setting the mint price to zero under "Fixed price" wouldn't correctly change the status to "free”
• 20+ other product improvements and updates

Mint with $GRND

Creators can now deploy collections on $GRND. To create a collection on GRND, simply select “Base” as your chain in the creation flow and “GRND” as the currency.

Explore collections deployed on $GRND here.

For more details on ERC20s on Highlight, click here.

Transfer tokens

This week, we introduced a new feature that allows you to send tokens from your wallet to another wallet directly from the Highlight interface.

To use this feature, navigate to the token detail page of a token you own and select “Transfer.” Confirm the transaction, and you're all set!

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Enabled the ability to adjust the end date for ranked auctions during the auction
• Updated the embed option for “Art Only” for auctions to exclude the “Bid” button
• Improved layout of collection information on our homepage modules
• 15+ other design fixes and smaller enhancements

Explore: community tokens

This week, we added a filter on our Explore page for community tokens. Collectors can now browse collections launched on DEGEN, HIGHER, and ENJOY.

Support for additional ERC20 tokens is coming soon.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Enabled searching for a collection by its contract address
• Fixed a bug where ellipses appeared in the collection description regardless of length
• 20+ other fixes and design updates

Support for Mantle

We’re excited to announce that artists and creators can now launch projects on Mantle, the leading Ethereum-based L2.

To launch a project on Mantle, simply select the applicable blockchain under “Network”.

Marketplace support coming soon.

Related projects section

This week, we released a “Related Projects” section on collection pages that showcases other projects from your portfolio, providing collectors with increased visibility into your work.

Feature Preview

This week, we launched Razor Works by Sten on Forma.

Forma is a blockchain designed to enhance onchain creativity by enabling fully onchain metadata that is both readable and actionable from any smart contract. Full support for Forma will be available in July.

For early access to deploying collections on Forma, reach out to us at gm@highlight.xyz.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated our UI so that users can distribute referral links before a mint begins
• Polished our series flow to better accommodate vertical images in our UI
• Added a tooltip for explaining sponsored mints
• 20+ other product improvements and design updates

Sponsored mints

This week, we launched sponsored mints. Sponsored mints allow anyone to prepay for a set number of tokens in your collection, enabling collectors to claim one token for free without mint or gas fees.

As an artist, you can enable sponsored mints for your collection during creation. Toggle it on in the “Mint details” or “Price and distribution” sections for generative and series collections, or in the advanced options for edition collections.

As a collector, you can sponsor collections and claim sponsored tokens directly from the project page.

Note: sponsored mints are currently only available for L2s, not Ethereum mainnet.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improved image sizing for Series collections on project page carousels
• Improved our email notification system to prevent spam offers
• Fixed a bug that prevented artists from adding a private sale to a one-of-one
• 30+ other product improvements and design updates

Knowledge base overhaul

This week, we revamped our knowledge base to enhance user-friendliness for creators, collectors, and developers. Navigation is now simpler, making it easy to find the guidance you need.

Our goal is to make it easy for Highlight users to explore features and find the information you need quickly and easily. As part of this overhaul, we've introduced quick-start guides that provide examples of projects and instructions to assist users through the creation process. This includes guides for:

• Launching an open edition
• Launching an open edition generative artwork
• Launching a PFP project
• And much more!

We’ll be adding additional resources and video tutorials in the upcoming weeks. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach us at gm@highlight.xyz.

Discovery

Building on recent improvements to our Explore page, we’ve now added filters for finding auctions and popular items on the secondary market. To see these in action, head over to Explore on Highlight.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks, including better ways to discover new artists and their works.

Highlight UX Overhaul: Unified Minting, Simplified Creation, and Enhanced Discovery

This week we released some big updates across the entire Highlight user experience:

• Redesigned mint pages that bring secondary marketplace listings into the main collection page
• A streamlined creation flow for Editions, making it faster and easier to create open editions, limited editions, or 1-of-1s from a single place
• Much better discovery on our homepage and a new Explore feed

Read on to learn more about these changes.

Unified mint pages

Our previous mint pages were separate from our secondary marketplace functionality. When primary sales for a collection would end, collectors had to navigate to a separate page to view available secondary listings. With our updated UI, everything is viewable from a single page.

As collections are pre-announced, become available for minting, and tokens then become available on secondary, our new collection pages update dynamically.

These changes apply to all types of collections (Series, Generative, and Editions) and sale types (free mints, fixed price, and English, Dutch or Ranked auctions.)

Simplified creation

This week we unveiled a new flow to create Editions that makes it much faster and easier to release an open edition, limited edition, or 1-of-1. Previously, we had separate creation flows for each of those edition types, which was sometimes overwhelming.

In our new Editions flow, we surface the features available for each of these collection types as needed, removing unnecessary steps and clutter. We also collapsed the flow into a single screen, whereas before it was broken into several steps.

This new process has all of our advanced features — contract reusability, traits, payment configurability, and more — just in a simpler, more streamlined flow.

Enhanced discovery

One of the major pain points we’ve heard from creators is the need for better visibility and discoverability of their projects. This week, we shipped a number of new algorithmic carousels and a redesigned Explore feed to make discovery even easier.

We now surface not just trending projects but trending artists and creators right on our homepage. All of our curated collections are easy to find from the Explore feed, as is a feed of New, Ending Soon, and Free collections. Expect lots of new ways to explore and discover what’s minting and trading on Highlight in the coming weeks.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Various small fixes to our new referral rewards
• Updated layout for token detail pages
• Larger artwork for certain media file types
• Fixed a bug that was preventing token-gated pages from refreshing correctly

20+ other product improvements and design updates

Mint referrals

This week, we shipped mint referrals, a new program that rewards collectors for discovering and sharing artworks.

Each time someone mints a token using your referral link, you’ll earn 10% of Highlight's mint fee, in either ETH or the ERC20 used for the sale.

You can find your unique referral link next to the Mint button on every project page.

For more details, click here.

Ranked auctions

This week, we shipped ranked auctions. In this format, collectors bid, and only the top X bidders can claim tokens based on the supply of the collection.

Ranked auctions are available for Series, Generative, and Limited Edition collections. To create a ranked auction, select “Create a collection” and then choose the type of collection you want. In the mint details section, opt for “Ranked auction”. Here, you can also set a minimum bid and enable rebates if desired.

For detailed documentation on various auction types and setup instructions, click here.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updates to our Profile tab including:
  • Auto-save functionality for all inputs
  • Design polish
• Added support for minting with $enjoy, an ERC20 token on the Zora network
• Fixed a bug where collectors were showing up incorrectly for limited editions
• 20+ other product improvements and design updates

Polishing week

This week, we shipped 30+ design updates and product improvements, including:

• Added fullscreen views for 1 of 1s, editions, and series collection types
• Enabled editing and changing of preview images for series collections. Up to 30 images can now be added
• Fixed a bug where a royalty percentage with multiple decimal places prevented users from deploying collections

Mint with ERC20 with Frames

This week, we shipped minting with ERC20 tokens (think DEGEN and HIGHER) straight from your Farcaster feed.

To share your collection on Farcaster, head to your collection management dashboard and select “Share mint page.”

From here, you’ll be able to share your mint so it’s purchasable directly from a Farcaster feed.

If you need help creating a collection for sale in DEGEN or HIGHER, view our support documentation.

Private Beta: Burn and Redeem

This week, we helped power the launch of Memes by Batz. This collection is sold via burn and redeem— collectors of Batz's previous work can mint Memes by burning four tokens.

Minting for Memes is open until 6/9/24.

Our burn and redeem feature is currently in private beta. Have a project in mind involving burn and redeem? Reach out to us at gm@highlight.xyz.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Resolved an issue where some marketplace pages displayed expired listings
• Improved error messages to help collectors using cross-chain payment with insufficient funds
• 30+ smaller product improvements and design updates

Metadata builder in Highlight Studio

This week, we shipped new functionality to Highlight Studio, our suite of power tools for creators working on more complex Generative and Series projects.

First, we introduced a new tab called “Series Metadata,” which hosts a metadata builder. This tool allows you to navigate to a directory on your local machine, generating a metadata.json file for the images (and/or animations) within that folder. If a metadata.json file already exists, Studio helps you easily modify and validate it.

Please note that this functionality is currently exclusive to Chrome, leveraging its Filesystem API for seamless access to local files.

Full documentation here.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Support for minting with two ERC20 tokens on Base: DEGEN and HIGHER, with more to come
• A set of improvements and bug fixes for browser wallets supported through Wallet Connect
• 30+ other design fixes and functional enhancements

Creator rewards

With creator rewards on Highlight, creators of free collections on Highlight will receive half our mint fee on every mint, automatically. This applies to all collection types, regardless of whether they include gates or not. Please note that auctions are currently not supported.

To check payout earnings, head to the “Creator payouts” tab on your profile.

Full documentation here.

Mint with DEGEN

Degen, an ERC-20 token launched in January 2024, is a key component of the Farcaster ecosystem. It allows Casters to reward quality content creators with DEGEN tokens.

On Highlight, collections can now be purchased using DEGEN. To do so, select “Base” as your chain in the creation flow and “DEGEN” as the currency.

Full documentation here.

Feature Preview

Next week, we’re introducing creator rewards and minting with $DEGEN. Through the creator rewards initiative, the standard 0.0008 ETH mint fee will be split equally between the creator and Highlight for all free collections launched.

We’ll be featuring collections eligible for creator rewards. To participate, reach out to us at gm@highlight.xyz.

Polishing week

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improvements to our marketplace scaling
• Updated our logic to correct the primary sales price displayed for collections sold out through Dutch Auctions
• Fixed a bug where tokens displayed when clicking on them in the marketplace page differ from those shown on the detail page
• 30+ other design fixes and operational enhancements

Polishing Week

This week, we shipped 30+ product improvements and updates, including:

• Added a button on the mint page for collections sold via Dutch Auction to trigger fund withdrawals
• On mint pages, added a “Manage” button visible to creators as a shortcut to manage details about the collection
• On profile pages, sorting has been updated to display the newest minted token first
• Design polish, including copy updates

Mint within Farcaster

This week, we shipped minting straight from your Farcaster feed. Collections deployed to Base, Optimism, or Zora are eligible.

To enable transactions within your Farcaster feed, head to your collection management dashboard and select “Share mint page.”

From here, you’ll be able to share your mint so it’s purchasable directly from a Farcaster feed.

Note: collections deployed to Base or Optimism and priced at or below ~0.001ETH will qualify for minting via warps, Warpcast’s in-app currency. This option will show up automatically if your collection is eligible.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Enabled markdown support for collection descriptions on the user profile page
• Resolved an issue where the control for opening a generative token in a new tab would use a random seed instead of the seed from the preview
• 20+ other fixes, improvements, and smaller design updates

Highlight Studio

This week, we announced Highlight Studio, a companion tool designed to help test and iterate your generative artwork. Quick overview of the Highlight Studio features:

Trait harvester

This tool provides a comprehensive overview of the traits present in your artwork. Running this will provide results which include details of all the traits you've specified, their frequency of occurrence and percentages.

Single artwork preview

A simple interface where you can test and change parameters sent to your artwork.

Multiple artwork preview

Want to ensure that every 100th artwork features a distinct background color? Or that when minting 10 tokens in a batch, everyone will have a different color palette?

With this feature, you can now view how your artwork behaves over a large number of iterations.

See our full documentation to get started.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improvements to our “Farcaster follower” gate, which now allows your to search for the user versus manually entering their FID
• Collections can now be deployed without initial sale details. Specifics such as price, start and end date, etc. can be entered in after the collection has been deployed
• Updating messaging on our creation flow to provide additional context on rebates for Dutch Auctions
• We fixed a couple of bugs including:
  • Resolved issue preventing users from linking their X account to their profile
  • Fixed copy discrepancy regarding reserve status in auctions

Gate by Your Farcaster Following

You can now use Farcaster followings to gate who can mint (or get discounts on) your collections on Highlight.

This feature requires collectors to follow one or more Farcaster accounts in order to access your sale.

Here’s how to implement your Farcaster gate:

• Navigate to the tools dashboard and toggle to “Gate”.
• Select “Create a gate,” and “Gate by Farcaster state.” Find the user who's following you want to reward. You can create gate requirements to follow multiple Farcasters by adding another gating condition.

• Once created, add it to your mint by applying it in the collection creation process or from your collection’s management page if its already been deployed.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improved the UX around auction reserves for English auctions
• Fixed a bug that was causing a 404 for some users when they tried linking their X profile
• Fixed a bug that was causing screen flashes upon sign-in in some cases
• Fixed an issue that was preventing some mobile users from claiming free mints
• Lots of design polish on our marketplace pages, including updated button styling
• 30+ other bug fixes, UX improvements, and design updates

Email onboarding on Highlight

This week, we launched our integration with Privy, allowing users to create a Highlight account using their email and without need for a pre-existing crypto wallet.

To start, sign in to Highlight, enter your email, and verify it through the login code. Our system will then automatically generate an embedded Ethereum wallet, accessible within the app. You can securely retrieve your private keys and migrate to full self-custody at any time.

Always remember: your private keys should never be shared.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Design polish including:
  • Touching up our collection creation flow for updated error messaging and help text
  • Various UX improvements on our mint pages
• Our “Add-to-calendar” feature for upcoming generative series releases now includes live render previews
• We fixed a couple of bugs including:
  • Some creators were unable to set end dates for their sales
  • Some users were missing tokens on their profile pages
• 20+ other fixes, improvements, and smaller design updates

Generative art previews on Farcaster Frames

This week, we shipped a new Farcaster Frame integration that allows users to preview generative art iterations straight from their feed. To preview your Highlight collection on Farcaster, paste the URL in the following format:

https://highlight.xyz/mint/collection-ID

In addition, collectors can now mint collections deployed on Highlight with warps! Note that your collection must be deployed on Base or Optimism to be eligible for mint with warps and cost less than 0.001 ETH.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improvements to our loading page, including on marketplace and user profiles
• General availability for cross-chain minting—all collectors can now mint artwork from any collection using funds from any supported chain
• Added the functionality to open generative artwork in a new window. This feature can be helpful for interactive works, including permissioned webcam access as in Miss Metaverse
• 20+ other fixes, improvements, and smaller design updates

Performance improvements

This week, we rolled out several significant performance enhancements aimed at optimizing the user experience. With these updates, users will notice a substantial improvement in loading times, with pages now loading 3-5 times faster.

In particular, we’ve fine-tuned our project pages and associated marketplace pages so that users can also expect smoother navigation and filtering when browsing tokens.

Cross-chain minting

This week, we introduced cross-chain minting to enable users to mint from a collection using funds from any supported chain.

For example, this month's Bright Moments Artists in Residence collections are deployed on Base. If a collector doesn’t have ETH on the Base network, she can pay using ETH from Ethereum Mainnet, Zora, Arbitrum, or Optimism.

Note: If you do have enough currency, the option to use an alternate chain will not appear.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Design updates including:
  • Dark mode updates
  • Polish on our generative flow
• Small bug fixes including:
  • An issue that was causing downscaling of images on collector’s choice Series collections
  • Redirect links weren’t working properly in some cases on collector’s choice Series collections
• 20+ other fixes, improvements, and smaller design updates

Profile upgrades

This week, we've introduced two new features to user profiles:

Hide collections: Now, you can hide specific collections from your profile. If you've deployed a collection on the mainnet but prefer to keep it private from collectors, simply navigate to your collection management page and choose to hide it. This gives you more control over what others can view.

Email verification: We've added an option to verify your email address directly from your profile page. Verifying your email not only adds an extra layer of security but also ensures that you receive notifications about offers from our marketplace promptly.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Homepage discovery updates
  • Explore module for collections that are currently minting
  • Explore module for sold out collections with listings on secondary
• Small design fixes, including:
  • Keeping user profile page centered when profile names overflow
  • Updated our creation flow back to dashboard button to say [← Dashboard] vs. [← Back] to prevent user confusion
  • Capping royalties to two decimal places
• Small bug fixes including:
  • Soulbound collections showing as not soulbound on the collection management page
  • Series-style collections not showing the right scroll icon when sold out
  • Tokens page not loading scroll screen at larger screen sizes
• 40+ other fixes, improvements, and minor design updates

Highlight Marketplace

This week, Highlight launched a secondary marketplace for digital artworks created using our toolkit.

Our marketplace offers artist- and collector-friendly features not found in any major marketplace, including:

• Rewards: You’ll automatically be eligible for allow-list spots for curated primary drops by creating and/or buying Highlight-native listings.
• Convenience: A single view of all listings, sent offers, and received offers across marketplaces.
• Artist-first discovery: Because artists have a single profile on Highlight, we make it far more straightforward to find related artwork in one place
• Generative art native: Explore original algorithms and view minted artworks as intended by artists.
• Royalties: We toggle full royalties by default and maintain a 2% minimum for any listing created on Highlight.
• Value: Our 1.5% marketplace fee is 40% lower than OpenSea.

Aiming for transparency, today we’re also releasing in-depth analysis and data dashboards for the community on how far royalties have declined in the past 24 months.

As always, if you have ideas that could improve the marketplace experience for digital artists and collectors, we’re listening.

Read the full announcement

Customizable embeds

This week, we've updated our project page embeds to include extensive customization options. Easily integrate your project into the design of your custom domain using copy-and-paste embed codes.

Updates include:

• Different embed options:
  • Default: full embed card with artwork, “Connect Wallet,” and mint details
  • Without art: add “Connect Wallet” and mint details, and handle art display separately
  • Art only: display your art without either “Connect Wallet” or mint details
  • Compact: a minimal display featuring everything
• Easy ability to customize background color, text color, and text font family
• A web preview to see how your project would be displayed on your custom domain

Sepolia migration

This week, we added support for the new Ethereum testnet, Sepolia. Last year, the Ethereum Foundation announced the deprecation of Goerli testnet in early 2024.

With this upgrade, we’ve also streamlined support for testnets. Creators can now deploy testnet collections to Ethereum Sepolia or Base Sepolia. All collections, regardless of the final chain you deploy to, can be tested on either test network.

In the coming weeks, we will continue to support Goerli-based collections and gates with Goerli-based conditions, but creators should begin migrating their collections to Sepolia.

As you are migrating from Goerli to Sepolia or Base Goerli to Base Sepolia, please keep in mind that Sepolia and Base Sepolia are separate networks and will require network configuration changes. Network and contract details below:

• Sepolia
• Base Sepolia

We also encourage everyone to claim Sepolia testnet ETH in advance of Goerli’s official deprecation. Faucets can be found here:

• https://sepoliafaucet.com/
• https://sepolia-faucet.pk910.de/
• https://faucets.chain.link/sepolia

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improvements to our collection management including:
  • Support for markdown text within the description editor of the collection management page
  • A toggle for pausing sales
  • The ability to batch mint tokens for collectors choice creator reserves
• 70+ smaller fixes, visual improvements, and performance upgrades

Collection improvements

This week, we shipped a few quality of life improvements for collections deployed on Highlight.

Name and Description updatability

Artists can now edit their project’s name or description. To do so, head to the collection management page from your dashboard. Both collection name and description can be changed in their respective fields.

Note that this change requires a transaction as both fields are stored on the blockchain.

Reporting collections

If you suspect that a collection violates Highlight’s community guidelines, you can now report these to our moderation board directly from a project’s mint page. Our team reviews each of these reports and takes actions as appropriate.

To report a collection, scroll down to the bottom of the project page and select “Report this collection.”

Social links to minted token

Tokens minted on Highlight can now be easily shared from the reveal page. Simply copy the link in the bottom left corner to share.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Created a Generative art FAQ guide to help artists with common issues and questions
• Updated our search function to include search by ENS name and wallet address
• Fixed an issue where selecting "Save draft" on the details page of the collection flow failed to save the draft.
• Fixed a bug where collectors information was not loading on mint page links from our sales bot
• 35+ other fixes, improvements, and minor design updates

Introducing: Search

This week, we introduced search to our global navigation bar. Artists and collectors can now search for collections or the artist’s profile name into the search bar. Try it out.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed an error when updating your email address from your account profile
• Squashed a bug that was causing some collection prices to appear incorrectly on our homepage leaderboard
• Improved various cross-browser iFrame settings for rendering Generative Series projects
• 35+ smaller fixes, performance enhancements, and UI/UX updates

Highlight × Foundation Worlds

Starting this week, Generative Series collections created on Highlight can now be imported into Foundation Worlds, offering artists additional opportunities to showcase their art. This collaboration enables artists to retain ownership of their work while connecting with vibrant communities within the Worlds ecosystem. The integration streamlines the experience for artists, collectors, and curators alike.

How to import your Highlight collection to Worlds

Artists partnered with curators can now utilize the integration to list generative series in Worlds. Projects imported into a World can be scheduled as a Dutch auction or fixed-price sale. Progress of the sale is the Highlight (and worlds) dashboard.

For a detailed step-by-step guide on how to use the product flow, please our knowledge base here.

For more answers to questions on Worlds features, fee breakdowns, and more, please consult the Foundation FAQs.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated creator reserves for series collections using Collector’s choice reveals
• Improved load times after minting for tokens appearing in your collection
• 50+ other smaller fixes, performance enhancements, and UI/UX updates

Polishing Week

This week, we shipped 70+ product improvements and updates, including:

• Design polish including:
  • Updating our About page: https://highlight.xyz/about
  • Truncating ENS names that exceed a certain character count
  • Updated designs for embeds—a component for an upcoming integration 👀
• Fixed a bug where users weren’t able to update allocations for public sales
• Fixed a bug where on “Collector’s choice” Series token browse pages which weren’t returning correct tokens when filtered

Onchain Dutch Auctions

This week, we updated our protocols to support Onchain Dutch Auctions, enabling fully onchain auction mechanics.

As part of this release, we automated the ability for collectors to claim rebates.

To deploy a Dutch auction onchain, head to “Create a collection.” When on the mint details tab, select "Dutch auction" on the mint details page and leave the gate field empty.

To collect your rebate, simply visit the mint page after a Dutch auction reaches its resting price or the collection is sold out. Click the "Claim rebate" button to receive the difference between your bid and the final price.

Note that deploying a Dutch auction with a gate will initiate an offchain Dutch auction.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improvements to our homepage to better showcase upcoming events and activations
• Improved share cards for user profiles
• Fixed a bug where embed card mint buttons were changing sizes after a transaction
• 50+ other smaller fixes, improvements, and design updates

Seamless Releases with Dynamic Sales

We're excited to introduce a major new feature: Dynamic Sales!

Over the last few months, we’ve spoken with hundreds of creators about a common issue in the final stages of planning a drop: how should they sell their new collection? Depending on the artist, these concerns fall into two categories:

1. How can I drive more sales and ensure my collection sells out?
2. How can I fairly manage a release when there’s more collector demand than artwork available?

In both cases, Dynamic Sales can help. We designed it to help all types of artists customize and tailor their sales strategy like never before. With Dynamic Sales, you now have the flexibility to set up and manage multiple sales strategies to align with your goals and community.

Cutting-Edge Capabilities

Here are the advanced sale mechanics you can now configure:

• Artist Reserves: Specify a reserved set of tokens just for you as the artist, for free. This is a great option for ensuring specific collectors or friends can get an artwork.
• Allowlists: Create exclusive gated tiers for specific communities. Define custom access and pricing. These can run in parallel or be sequenced over time.
• Public Mints: The classic open mint we all know and love. Set the date, time, and number available to the public.

Mix and match strategies to engage your core community while also allowing new fans to participate. The power of Dynamic Sales is how you can tailor it specifically for your project vision.

More Customization Coming

This first iteration unlocks new possibilities, and we'll continuously refine Dynamic Sales over time with creator feedback.

To get started, find the new features embedded within our collection creation flows in our creator tools dashboard.

As always, Highlight is committed to empowering the next generation of digital artists. Questions or feedback? Hit us up at gm@highlight.xyz.

Allowlist Upgrades

This week we shipped dozens of small improvements to our allowlist feature-set, which we call Gates.

Creators looking to grant early, exclusive, or discounted access to their mints can use Gates in a number of ways. Depending on the goals for your release, the following types of Gates can be created:

• An allowlist of wallet addresses
• Holders of any token from a specified collection
• Holders of a specific token from a collection
• Holders of a token with a specific trait
• A minimum amount of cryptocurrency or an ERC-20

All of the above can be stacked together, e.g. you can provide early access to both an allowlist of wallet addresses and holders of a token from a specific collection.

Today’s upgraded Gates release brings many design and functionality improvements.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improvements to generative series embeds
• Better social share cards that now display previews of collections and individual tokens
• Fixed a display bug when selecting a mint’s start and end time
• Resolved an issue that was impacting metadata capture for generative series in some cases
• 25+ other fixes, improvements, and minor design updates

Polishing Week

This week, we shipped 30+ UI design improvements and updates, including:

• Polished our mobile viewing experience:
  • Updated mint pages to include a sticky bottom bar
  • Centered CTAs on the mint reveal page
• Implemented lazy loading to our homepage to decrease load times
• Fixed a series collection embed error where the render didn’t load properly
• Updated redirects on mint pages to match new third party schemas

Polishing Week

This week, we shipped 40+ product improvements and updates, including:

• Updated our Crossmint flow to include validation status on the collection management page
• Revamped the backend for our browse tokens page:
  • Fixed a bug where minting a Series collection on the token browse page didn’t show the preview image
  • Fixed a bug where missing metadata showed as phantom tokens
• Enabled server-side caching for mint pages to decrease page load times

Crossmint support

This week, we introduced credit card payment support for generative and series collections on Highlight. Artists can now easily activate credit card payments in just a few simple steps:

• Deploy a generative or series collection on Highlight
• Register and verify your collection on Crossmint
• Register your collection on Highlight

For a more detailed step-by-step, check out this article here

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Resolved an issue where unfulfilled collection logo images led to deploy failures
• Updated our error messaging to include an “Insufficient funds” error that was not showing on L2s
• Fixed a bug where the mint button was not disabled on L2s if user did not have sufficient funds in their wallet
• Small design updates to our mint card, including:
  • Updating the progress bar of a mint card
  • Visual updates to the number input on mint pages
• 30+ other fixes, improvements, and minor design updates

Generative art embeds

As of this week, artists can now seamlessly integrate generative art collections into any website. Previously, embed cards were static and could only be used for Series, open edition, limited edition, and one of one collection types. The updated embed card now showcases an iframe that can render live images and allow for randomization.

To embed it on your website, copy the embed code from the collection management page and paste it into the website editor. Generative anywhere.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed a frontend bug where occasionally updates to start and stop times on Optimism weren’t reflected on the mint page
• Implemented design updates to our gating tooling
  • Updated visuals to match updated brand guidelines
  • Remove “imported tokens” from gate options
• 30+ other design fixes and operational improvements

How to: download all metadata

This week, we created a walkthrough for how any artist can download the entire metadata or image preview set for an NFT collection launched on Highlight. You can find a comprehensive walkthrough video here and access the GitHub repository here.

With this CLI, you can effortlessly download metadata and token images into a single file. This functionality simplifies the process of analyzing metadata or appreciating entire collections.

Highlight in the wild

Waiting To Be Signed: Highlight CEO Nat Emodi recently went on Waiting To Be Signed, the podcast dedicated to onchain generative art.

Find the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Outland Art: Highlight Creative Lead Duane King recently sat down with Outland Art to discuss the state of the generative art market.

Find the complete discussion on Outland Art.

FWB Fest: On September 7th, Sten dropped UNICURSE on Highlight. Sten is a generative artist known for her systems-based creations, combining elements like maps, machinery, and mysticism. After following her artistic journey for years, we had the pleasure of meeting her in person at our generative NFT workshop during FWB Fest, hosted by Andrew Benson (pixlpa).

Polishing Week

This week, we shipped 40+ product improvements and upgrades, including:

• Contract upgrades that:
  • Allow for pausing of onchain mints (excluding auctions)
  • Allow creators to introduce a block of flexible data to put onchain to augment mints
• Updated our duplicate collection flow so that when clicking into the new collection, it takes artists directly to the “Series detail” tab for a more seamless UX when switching from testnet to mainnet
• Fixed a frontend bug where some Polygon mint transactions were going through but not updating the mint page
• Fixed a bug where some mints on Base or Zora didn’t show the “Insufficient funds” error if relevant

Drop reminders

This week, our team introduced drop notifications. This update allows collectors to receive reminders when a drop is about to happen.

To do so, simply visit the mint page of any collection with an upcoming drop date. On that page, you'll notice an “add to calendar“ button, which enables you to schedule the drop on your Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar.

If you're an artist, this feature will be automatically included on the mint page of all collections.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Upgraded mint pages for all collection types to match our generative collection mint pages
• Fixed a bug where updating the chain from mainnet to testnet during the collection creation process removed preview images
• Fixed a bug where filtering for “Available” tokens on the token browse page sometimes showed minted tokens
• Fixed a bug for series collection browse pages where the preview image did not match the token image in some cases
• 30+ other design fixes and functional improvements

Create. Test. Repeat.

This week, our team rolled out new collection creation tools, making it significantly easier to create, test, retest and deploy collections on Highlight, and keep your project iterations organized. Artists can now:

• Duplicate your draft, active, and inactive collections, making it seamless to create, iterate and experiment on testnets before your final deploy
• Archive your draft, active, and inactive collections, helping to keep your dashboard clean and organized
• Delete draft collections, making it easier to remove any versions that you’d rather remove entirely

With the workflow improvements, we’re excited to help reduce the time required for artists to finalize a collection, and maintain a clutter-free dashboard.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated our collection creation flow to make the contract name and token more prominent
• Updated and refined our instructional docs for creating a generative project on Highlight
• Design polish on our token browse pages including:
  • Added a banner on token browse page for inactive collections
  • Updated the filter sidebar to be “sticky”, i.e. stay in place while scrolling through collection artwork
  • Removed the “View on” button that was cluttering the page
  • Added a “Mint” button back to the top of browse pages
• 50+ other smaller enhancements and design updates

Onchain DIY

Previously, our team had supported select projects in uploading their code and artwork onchain. This week, we rolled out the ability for artists and creators to upload their art onchain themselves.

To do this, head to Etherscan or the applicable block explorer. Verify your contract and go to “Contract” and then “Write as Proxy”.

Step by step instructions here. Video tutorial here.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed an issue where ENS names weren’t displaying in some cases on token browse and token detail pages
• Updated our URL schema to better manage collections across different chains
• Finalized smart contract upgrades for our newest 721a implementation
• Made improvements to our hl-gen.js script and generative tooling documentation
• Created an NPM package to make working with hl-gen.js seamless
• 30+ other functional and design improvements

Dynamic discovery

Our homepage now showcases live rendered generative art, which enables viewers to properly explore artists and their artworks.

Discover new artists, explore generative outputs, and immerse yourself in full-screen art, all directly from our homepage.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed a bug where updating the royalty amount on the token management page in some cases was not reflected in the UI
• Fixed a bug where total sales for Series collections was sometimes reflected incorrectly
• Updated a UI issue where token detail pages were showing both title name and token name
• 25+ system enhancements and design fixes

Pay with credit card

We've introduced support for credit card payments for select projects, which we debuted for all Onchain Summer collections. Now, alongside crypto payment options, collectors can seamlessly complete transactions via credit card.

This feature is available for select projects. Send us an email at gm@highlight.xyz to learn more.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed a bug where some token descriptions set at the individual level weren’t displaying
• Fixed a display issue on token detail pages where traits overflowed
• Added support for our updated mint reveal page on all collection types
• Added a modal to view transactions on the mint reveal page
• Fixed a bug where tokens on the browse page were grabbing the incorrect metadata for reveal on some Series collections
• 30+ design polish items and performance enhancements

Account menu widget

Our account menu widget is now live. Use it to easily see your recent artwork mints or collection deployments, along with gas, network connection, and wallet balance.

For your recent mints, the widget makes it easy to view artwork details and each transaction on the block explorer.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Design polish updates to token view pages, mainly to improve appearance for tokens that don’t have a 1:1 aspect ratio
• Updated our reveal pages for all types of collections to include options for a full size view
• Added links to user profiles across different collection pages
• Fixed a bug on the token management page where changes were not displaying after a transaction confirmation
• 60+ smaller design fixes and functional enhancements

This week, we updated our mint pages to include support for bridging to Base and other L2s. Pages now include modals which:

• Link to support documents on how to add the specific L2 network to your wallet
• Link to the official bridge site to bridge ETH to the chosen L2

These modals appear on mint pages for all collections deployed on an L2.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated our mint reveal pages to include:
  • Larger artwork images upon reveal
  • Call to action modals that lead to the original collection page, the collection token browser, or the OpenSea collection
  • An option to explore other collections
• Updated a bug where the preview image was not loading
• Fixed a bug on edit mint modals where changes were going through to the blockchain but not showing up on the frontend
• 50+ other operational enhancements and small design updates
  

Dashboard sorting and filtering

This week, we updated our creator dashboard to include filtering and sorting for collections. Collections can now be filtered by:

• Status: sort by draft, deployed, or active mints
• Blockchain: the specific chain your collection is deployed on
• Network: filter by whether your collection is on mainnet or testnet
• Type: the type of collection created, whether generative, series, limited edition, etc.

To check it out, head to the tools dashboard and sort by the options at the top.

Stay tuned for more workflow improvements coming soon.

Base mainnet support

This week, Base mainnet launched and was added as a supported chain on Highlight.

To deploy to Base, Ethereum, or other supported L2s, you can choose between options on the collection creation flow.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added links to creator user profiles on mint pages
• Added links below the mint card on the token management page for easy access to OpenSea, block explorers, and Arweave
• Fixed a bug where in some edge cases the mint button was active despite the collection being sold out
• Updated the embed copy code for mint cards
• 60+ other design updates and smaller bug fixes

Direct minting

We have updated our collection flow to enable “direct” minting, which allows collectors to mint directly from the blockchain, block explorers, or other third-party minting sites such as mint.fun.

For creators, this means that collectors can discover and mint from your collections outside of Highlight’s mint page.

To allow direct minting on your contract, select the toggle for on the ‘Mint details’ screen of any collection flow.

Please note: If you create a collection with direct minting enabled, after the collection is deployed most edits will require blockchain transactions. If you’d like a less gas-intensive style of collection – or if you want more control over who can mint from your collection and when – we recommend disabling direct minting before you deploy your collection, which will require all minting to take place from your mint page.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added GPU support for rendering of generative projects
• Updated profile links so that URLs default to ENS name if available
• Updated profile names on mint pages to lead to user profiles
• 50+ smaller bug fixes and design polish

Generative art tooling

This week, we opened up our Generative Series creation flow to the public, which allows code-based artists to seamlessly test, preview, and deploy generative art collections. Features include:

• No fees: You keep 100% of your sales, both primary and secondary.
• Dynamic inputs: Seed your projects with real-time inputs such as transaction hash, timestamp, wallet address, gas used, and more.
• Curated outputs: You have the option to hand-pick the available outputs while maintaining a verifiably random mint reveal.
• Smart contract ownership: You own the contracts you deploy. You can upgrade, extend, or modify your contract independently of Highlight.
• Multiple chain support: Deploy on Ethereum, L2s including Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, or Zora, or testnets.

To create a generative collection, head here, select “Create a collection”, and pick “Generative series.” More information can be found in our knowledge base, or see a quick demo in this video.

User profiles

Along with our generative launch, we released user profiles. Each profile is connected to a wallet and displays collections created and tokens collected on Highlight. You can set your avatar as an uploaded image or your unique mint from our genesis collection: Sum by Duane King.

Profiles will also be verified on a case-by-case basis. If you would like to verify your account, please fill out this form here.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• A new UI for our tools dashboard. We’ve revamped our dashboard layout and overall menu navigation for a cleaner, more streamlined experience.
• Gates, pages, and contracts can now be found by clicking the dropdown next to “Collections”
• Lots of design polish across our mint, browse, and token detail pages
• Fixed a bug where edit royalties and claims for auctions were not working
• 120+ other smaller bug fixes and functional improvements

Homepage Launch

This week, we unveiled a new homepage. With this update, visitors can explore featured projects, discover new artists, and learn more about Highlight.

Stay tuned for our fully open access generative art platform on Ethereum launching on July 26.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Design polish for the existing collection flow including:
  
  • Updated font styling throughout the app
  • Updated the layout of the token management page
  • Updated the “Save draft” flow to make it clearer when drafts have already been saved
  • Updated icons and added helper text to various parts of the collection creation flow
• 90+ other small fixes, enhancements, and design polish

L2 support: Optimism mainnet

In our latest update, we shipped support for Optimism mainnet. With this addition, creators can deploy collections quickly and at a fraction of the cost of Ethereum mainnet.

To deploy to Ethereum or supported L2s, you can toggle between the different options on the collection creation flow.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed a bug where select contract error message was visible even when a contract was selected
• Design polish on various aspects of the collection creation flow
• 60+ other design updates and functional improvements

L2 support: Zora Network

This week, we’ve upgraded our contracts to support minting on Zora Network.

Like other L2s, Zora Network allows both creators and collectors to save gas and experience much faster transactions. Zora Network is also based on the open-sourced OP Stack, which helps preserve the decentralization and security of Ethereum mainnet.

To mint on Zora, just select the applicable blockchain on the collection creation flow.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added a larger view of token artwork in the Series token browser
• Updates to Highlight tooltips and quick start guide for new creation flow

30+ other functional improvements and performance upgrades

Gas optimizations: pay less to mint

This week, we upgraded our smart contracts to minimize gas costs for minting NFTs. We modified the ERC721A standard to support non-serial minting. This adapted version will serve as the new base layer for our creator contracts, meaning transactions with multiple tokens minted will be much cheaper than before.

For more details on our latest contract changes, see our knowledge base or GitHub.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Design updates to the mint page adjusting the sticky bottom bar
• Update gating function so that deleted gates do not affect associated mints
• 30+ other fixes, improvements, and visual upgrades

Gas optimizations: pay less to deploy

This week, we upgraded our smart contracts to minimize gas costs for deploying NFT collections.

With these in place, gas for creators is significantly cheaper across the board.

For example, it now costs less to deploy a Limited Edition or One-of-one collection than to mint a token (which will also soon be optimized). Paying less to create art means more revenue from selling your work!

For more details on our latest contract changes, see our knowledge base or GitHub.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Launched our private beta for creating generative art on Highlight!
• Design updates to our mint page, including:
  • Updating title to match heading styles
  • Applying a faint shadow to token iframe
  • Combining the tabs for details and collectors
• Removed the automatic payout address under collection details
• 20+ other optimizations and design updates

Dutch auctions

This week, we shipped Dutch auctions. All collection types can now be distributed via Dutch auction, which differ from English auctions in that they begin at a higher price that gradually decreases over a predefined period.

This functionality simplifies the process of price discovery for creators. Rather than guessing about the market-clearing price for your work, creators can let the market decide via a Dutch auction by allowing collector demand to establish the price.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Removing links to token detail pages until metadata is fully captured
• A number of design improvements for mint pages
• Various updates to refine copy within the app
• 40+ other smaller fixes and improvements

New feature coming soon

The Highlight team is super excited to share what we’ve been hard at work building for the past couple of months.

Private beta coming soon.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fix for a bug in unlinking emails
• Design polish for tooltip colors
• 20+ other design fixes and operational enhancements

Polishing week

Here’s what we shipped this week:

• A fix for a bug where verifying email on mobile took users to the incorrect screen
• Update mint embeds to display “Sold Out” for sold out open editions
• Design polish including:
  • Updated sidebar spacing
  • Updated heading styles on collections tab
  • Additional font and styling fixes
• 20+ other design fixes and operational enhancements

Highlight Protocol upgrades

This week, we’ve updated the Highlight protocol to include a new observability contract.

This update reformats our architecture to allow Highlight and third-party entities to quickly and easily index blockchain data on our app. We’ve also updated our docs to include support for Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism L2s.

As an added benefit, creators now have the ability to edit the contract name, symbol, and contractURI even after deployment.

If you want to learn more about the Highlight protocol, check out our knowledge base or Github repo.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Collection creation polish including:
  • Small adjustments to modal placements
  • Continued updates to error messaging
  • Updates to certain font styles
• Polish to dark mode styles
• 50+ other design updates and optimizations

Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism support

This week, we’ve upgraded our contracts to support minting on leading L2 networks: Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism. By supporting these blockchains, creators can deploy collections at a fraction of the cost and with near-instant transaction confirmations.

To mint on these networks, just select the applicable blockchain on the collection creation flow.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Token browser page polish including:
  • Improved designs for error messaging
  • Updated button text for specific cases
• Fixed a bug where audio NFT collections were displaying as images on Portfolios
• Updated contracts so that Contract Name and Token Symbol are editable
• 20+ other functional improvements

Feature preview

We're developing a new feature to expand our toolkit's capabilities, and a limited number of signups are available for our private beta. If you’re a code-based artist and would like to get early access, contact us at gm@highlight.xyz.

Polishing week

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updates to the Collection creation design including title and font alignment, border formats, and more
• Updates to our Portfolio design including supporting audio tokens, updating open detail button placement, updating icons, and more
• Updates to locked pages including switching the “OpenSea” link to optional and cleaning up visuals for locked requirements
• Improved error messaging for auctions
• 40+ other design fixes and operational enhancements

Markdown support

This week we added markdown support for collection descriptions. With this addition, you can now format your collection descriptions with headings, bold and italic text, links, and more.

To use markdown in your collection description, use the appropriate syntax for the formatting you want to add. When you're done, either deploy your collection or update the description for existing collections and the newly formatted description will be visible on both your mint page and OpenSea token page.

Editable allowlists

Our allow-list gating function has been updated so that existing allowlists are now editable. This means that you can now update a list of addresses without having to create a new gate.

To edit your allowlist, navigate to the Gate you want to change and click on the pencil icon. From there, you can add or remove addresses as needed.

Other improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated metadata upload instructions for Series collection
• Updated Series collections and token browser to show animations
• Fixed a bug where Series token browser mapped to incorrect tokens on third party sites
• Fixed a bug where Series page embeds were not displaying
• 20+ other functional improvements

Dark Mode

Dark mode is now available on Highlight. This feature allows users to switch to a darker interface, reducing eye strain and enhancing the aesthetic experience.

Select the wallet modal in the upper right-hand corner and toggle to “Dark” under the theme section to enable dark mode.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Starting this week, fees for mints will be 0.0008 ETH / 1.43 MATIC per mint
• Updated Series Token Browser to display minted tokens for reveal-style Series collections
• Polishes and improvements to our portfolio, including:
  • Removing grey borders around media assets
  • Fixing the cut off title on the detailed view
  • Adding collection names to portfolios
• Fixed a bug where updating the collection description was not updating on the frontend
• 20+ other design updates and functional improvements

Series Token Browser

This week, we released a new browse experience to help you see all artworks in a Series collection. This addition makes it much easier to peruse all tokens and get a comprehensive understanding of a collection's diversity and scope. For Series collections that are revealed as they are minted, the browse page displays all the tokens minted thus far.

To access the browse page of a series, head over to the mint page and select "View all tokens". From there, you can explore all artwork and refine your search by using various filters. Check out an example here.

Metadata Updates for Series

Just like with metadata updates for limited editions, open editions, and one-of-ones, you can now update the series name, description, artwork, and traits for Series collections whenever you like. These new features allow you to add reveals, refreshes, and evolutions to your collections. As with all our collections, updates are stored in decentralized file storage using Arweave.

To update the metadata of a specific collection, navigate to the collection management page for the desired collection. Find the row for metadata and click on the Edit button. This will open a modal to update all fields you want to change. Once you're done making changes, hit save, and the updates will be recorded on the blockchain.

Note that minting will be paused if you're updating a reveal-based series. No action is required.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated the Contracts tab to filter out draft contracts
• Fixed an error where a contract in drafts could only be deployed once
• Updated error messaging in some parts of our collection flow
• 20+ other upgrades and improvements

Metadata Updates

We've added the ability to update the metadata for collections after they've been created. This means you can update the collection name, description, artwork, and traits for your open and limited editions whenever you like. Use this feature to reveal secret content, evolve existing tokens, and much more.

To update the metadata for one of your collections, head to the collection management page, find the row for metadata, and click the Edit button. In the modal that appears, you can update whichever fields you like and save the changes to the blockchain.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped since our last update:

• Adjusted the Series mint pages to center title
• Adjusted sizing of portfolio gallery to be consistent, regardless of image size
• Added error messaging for Series zip files to notify the creator of errors prior to deployment
• Fixed a bug where multiple collections minted from the same draft would result in an error for metadata appearing on third-party sites
• 15+ other optimizations and functional refinements

Polishing Week

This week, we shipped 30+ speed improvements, visual upgrades, and functional refinements, including:

• Added the ability to upload a contract's final metadata to arweave after tokens are sold out for series collections whose metadata is hidden during minting
• Added a filter on mint card embeds allowing collectors to browse all tokens or available tokens
• Added a column for collector's email address (for those who have provided it) to the collector's tab
• Fixed a bug where emails of collectors were not displayed
• Fixed a bug in which the preview price of free tokens was incorrect during collection creation
• Removed an unnecessary alert when you leave the creation flow but no unsaved changes have been made
• Fixed a bug that resulted in unnecessary rate-limiting
• Fixed a bug where attributes were not updated on OpenSea for collections with MP3
• Updated error alerts regarding files uploaded for Series collections

Series Collections

We’re thrilled this week to launch Series collections — NFT projects with unique metadata and media for every token. Our no-code flow makes launching this complex creation more effortless than ever.

Series collections provide a range of exciting mint mechanics, customization options, and other benefits that are true to our mission of arming web3 creators with the best and easiest tooling in existence.

Creating a Series collection on Highlight comes with three possible mint styles:

• Collector’s choice: Collectors can see all tokens and choose which token they want to mint
• Random mint (hidden metadata): hide all the potential variations in your collection until it mints out. Collectors will receive a random token (using our independently verifiable randomization algorithm) revealed after they mint.
• Random mint (visible metadata): show collectors all possible variations, but have their mint chosen randomly.

All three mint styles come with the following:

• 100% creator-owned smart contracts
• Decentralized metadata storage using arweave
• Beautiful drop pages and embeds
• Easy interoperability with the web3 ecosystem
• Complete control over your mint:
  • Controls to schedule and pause
  • Pricing and distribution mechanics
  • Tools to manage early access through our world-class pre-mint and token-gating flows

See for yourself: find the flow in our creator toolkit under Collections > Create. You can also explore a Series mint page or custom embed, or see our docs for more details.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped since last week:

• We now show your collection description on the review screen before deploy
• We now point to arweave on mint pages for Series (beta versions did not, even though we were still using arweave for file storage)
• Better time zone display for sale start and end dates
• End dates for scheduled mints are now optional
• The ability to edit your creator royalties after collection deployment (previously, this was only possible before deployment)
• Limits on overly broad collection imports, e.g. the OpenSea shared contract, which improves performance for all creators
• Fixed a bug that wasn’t rendering mint buttons correctly in certain contexts
• Fixed an issue with email gates not working from a collection embed
• Fixed a display bug that was impacting projects with mp3 media
• 20+ other improvements, design updates, and functional refinements

Feature Preview: Series Collections

After several weeks in beta, we're very close to launching Series collections, a style of NFT collection in which the artwork and metadata can be unique for each item.

Creating a series on Highlight will automatically generate a mint page showcasing the artwork of your choosing.

With drag-and-drop metadata uploads, decentralized media storage using Arweave, best-in-class features for how artwork is revealed, and a lot more, we can't wait to see what you create with Series collections. As we're putting the finishing touches on this long-awaited feature, check out our Exhibit project and mint page to see the feature from the collector's side. More about Exhibit below.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Major improvements to the transaction flow while minting, ensuring a smoother experience in a variety of edge cases
• Fixed a bug where some collection descriptions weren't appearing on manage and mint pages
• Fixed an issue where some images weren't showing up on the collectors tab
• Improved the collection creation flow, allowing creators to save progress, partially complete, and navigate between different steps
• Improved borders and shadows in image previews on mint pages
• 15+ other visual enhancements, bug fixes, and performance improvements

Exhibit

On Wednesday March, 22, we launched the series mint for Exhibit—a collection of 10,000 NFT artworks that explore how art works on the Ethereum blockchain. The series includes 100+ traits to explore for more context. You can unlock the mint by owning any open edition from Highlight.

Follow us on Twitter for more info as the project unfolds.

Draft Mode

This week we launched Draft Mode, a feature designed to make the collection creation process much more efficient and user-friendly. With Draft Mode, you can start working on creating your collection, save progress, and return to editing at a later time.

While creating a collection, simply click the “Save Draft” button before leaving the page to pick up where you left off and continue working on your collection whenever you want. Previously saved drafts can be accessed under the “Drafts” tab on the Collections tab.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Various improvements to our Portfolios tool, including a toggle between draft and public mode
• Significant speed improvements to our Collectors tab, especially with large imported collections (look for more here in the coming weeks)
• Fixed bugs related to some third-party collections not displaying properly in portfolios
• Fixed a bug where creator royalties were displayed as a percentage of the amount set during deployment
• Corrected an issue where token management pages were not displaying contract addresses
• Improved rendering of video and audio metadata
• 20+ other optimizations, design updates, and functional refinements

Exhibit

Yesterday, we teased the start of Exhibit with a 72-hour Open Edition called Tools by Highlight. Minting this collection grants holders early access to Exhibit by Highlight, a dynamic collection of 10,000 NFTs that explores the intersection of art, technology, and culture.

Exhibit also showcases how creators can use Highlight's rich toolkit to create their own full-featured NFT projects. Along with our own tooling, we used Figma for flushing out designs, Framer for website development, and our toolkit functions for deploying and showcasing our project.

Follow us on Twitter for more info as the project unfolds.

Multiple Editions

This week, we’re introducing the ability to re-use your smart contracts to create multiple limited editions or one-of-one collections using the same contract.

For creators, this helps save substantially on gas costs and improves the collection management experience. For collectors, this makes it easier to find and collect work from multiple collections in one place.

To create a multiple editions contract, select “Create” on the Collections Tab. On the collection details page, you will see an option to select the contract to use for your collection or to create a new one. To keep track of which collections are minted on which contracts, select the “Contracts” tab on the token dashboard.

Please note that this feature can only be used for limited editions or one-of-ones. For more details, visit our Knowledge Base.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added Twitter verification to Portfolios to help creators show that their portfolios are authentic
• Added the ability to sort collections by newest, oldest, alphabetical order, and active
• Updated Portfolio features so that the "View on OpenSea" button is available for collections minted on Highlight
• Fixed an issue where the Portfolio editor would flash an error prior to loading
• Fixed an issue where recently deployed contracts on Highlight weren’t detected for gating or Portfolio features
• Fixed an issue where gating by ERC20 tokens was not validating large balances of tokens in a user's wallet
• 20+ smaller enhancements and usability fixes

Creator Portfolio

We're excited to announce the launch of our newest feature, Portfolio, which offers web3 artists a powerful way to showcase all their NFT collections in one place.

With Portfolio, you can add Highlight collections or import any existing Ethereum or Polygon NFT collection to a clean, customizable landing page that showcases all your work.

Your portfolio is hosted at a branded URL with your primary ENS address. For example, ours is highlight.xyz/@highlightxyz

Check out Highlight’s Open Edition portfolio and create your own in your creator toolkit.

Switch to 0% Fee

Starting this week, we’ve dropped our 5% primary sale fee to 0%, meaning creators pay zero platform fees for collections created using Highlight.

As the NFT space continues to evolve, it’s important to us to provide the best possible experience to all creators, including the cost of our tooling.

We’re committed to sustainable long-term growth for all sides of the NFT market and will evolve our model to ensure we can support creators.

Castaways Collection Launch with 0xen

Today we launched our first-ever “Series” style NFT collection, “Castaways,” by web3-native artist 0xen.

This is a 1,000-piece collection of unique, dynamically generated NFTs. Each is revealed to the owner at mint.

We’ll launch Series-style collection creation for general availability soon.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Collectors can now mint multiple tokens per transaction, saving time and gas fees
• Added a bar to show how many tokens have been collected on mint pages
• Updated copy on auctions when setting a gate
• Fixed an issue with importing duplicate tokens
• Fixed an issue with token claiming after auctions
• Fixed a deploy error for limited editions when no royalty address was set
• 30+ design fixes, performance upgrades, and other improvements

Updated Collection Creation

We’ve completely reinvented our collection creation flow to make it easier, more intuitive, and more powerful to create your NFT projects using your own smart contracts.

Using the ERC-721 standard, our creation tool now includes purpose-built features for creating open editions, limited editions, and one-of-ones. We’ve reimagined the steps required to ensure all the details are clearer and easier to adjust than ever before.

We also introduced the following new features to the flow:

• Customizable metadata attributes
• Re-use the same smart contract for lower gas fees and better collection management
• Better organized in the Collections tab of our creator toolkit to see projects you’ve created, imported, and associated smart contracts all in one place
• Try the flow yourself in our creator toolkit or learn more in this article.

Other Improvements

• Added sorting (newest / oldest) to our Collections tab
• Added status badges to our Collections tab to make it easier to see which collections have active, upcoming, or completed mints or auctions
• Fixed an issue with auctions to support cases where the auction had no bids
• Updated and renamed our tab navigation in the creator dashboard
• Updates across our knowledge base and marketing site
• 10+ smaller fixes, usability improvements, and performance upgrades

Daylight Integration

Last week we added support for Daylight, giving creators using Highlight a powerful new channel for communicating rewards and benefits to their collectors.

Thousands of collectors use Daylight to never miss a mint, airdrop, or token gate. Now, any token-gated mint or page using Highlight will notify eligible collectors that have signed up to use Daylight.

We’re thrilled to partner with the Daylight team and excited to help creators using Highlight to drive more engagement to their projects.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped since our last update:

• Fixed a bug with links to arweave directing to the wrong source
• Added pagination for selecting tokens from your wallet
• Fixed an issue that was causing large animated image types (GIF, PNG, and WEBP) to render statically
• Improved the speed of the Collectors tab on the creator dashboard when sizeable collections are imported
• Updated how we display links to collections that were imported using OpenSea URLs instead of contract addresses
• 20+ smaller fixes, speed improvements, and visual upgrades

Collectors’ List

This week we updated our mint pages to show the collector wallet addresses that have already minted from the collection.

This feature helps creators drive more mints for their projects through social proof, and quickly build allowlists for previous collections.

Where available, we display ENS names and anyone can download a .csv file of collector addresses directly from the page.

To see it in action, check out our latest Open Edition (live through Sunday, Feb. 5) here.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improved latency on our token dashboard and changed the layout to show Created and Imported collections in separate tabs
• Updated our NFT spam filters to make it easier to import tokens from your wallet
• Fixed a bug that was causing audio playback issues for music NFTs
• Fixed an issue with how we display royalties for imported collections
• Various mobile UI fixes
• 20+ additional bug fixes, visual improvements, and performance upgrades

Email Capture

One of the things web3 creators struggle with the most is communicating effectively with their token holders. Likewise, web3 collectors often miss special rewards, new projects, or other updates from their favorite creators.

This week we’re excited to unveil verified email capture, a powerful new tool that helps creators capture verified emails at the point of mint or gate entry.

Using email capture, creators can now view which of their collectors have provided an email using the Collectors tab in our creator toolkit.

To learn more about setting up verified email capture for an upcoming project, see our Gate by Email article.

Primary Sales Recipient(s)

We’ve added support for specifying a different recipient address for primary sale proceeds.

For any mint or auction, creators can now input a different wallet address for receiving sales from the initial purchase.

Using 0xSplits, creators can also now split their primary sales automatically across multiple collaborators.

The setting can be found in our creator toolkit under Tokens > Create > Advanced options.

For details, see this article.

Updated Knowledge Base

This week we released an updated knowledge base that provides how-tos, FAQs, articles, and other content for creators using Highlight.

Check it out here, and please let us know if you don’t see any topics we should cover.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated how page titles display for auctions, mints, and token-gated content
• Fixed a bug that was hiding the 'Embed' option for auctions
• Fixed some issues causing ENS name not to appear
• Updated our smart contract token managers to support metadata updates for soulbound (non-transferable) NFTs
• Adjusted styling for 'delete' modals throughout the app
• Fixed an error with gated mints not unlocking on embedded pages
• Fixed an issue where canceled transactions were appearing as 'Pending' on auction and mint pages
• Addressed an issue on embedded pages that was causing wallets to disconnect if the page was refreshed
• Updated which 'Advanced options' we show during collection creation so that only relevant and editable options appear
• Fixed an issue where the mint button was shown as clickable even if the max number of mints had been reached
• Added tooltips for primary and secondary (royalty) recipients
• 20+ other upgrades, improvements, and design fixes

Checks: An On-Chain Game of Checkers

Checks is a game inspired by artist Jack Butcher. You can find the original artwork here. As it was taking the NFT community by storm this week, we created a derivative project called Checks: An On-Chain Game of Checkers. The rules are simple:

• We dropped 80 free NFTs, with a limit of 1 per wallet
• 80 verified holders are now playing on-chain checkers vs. Highlight
• There’s 1 move per day with verified voting and daily metadata updates as we play
• Any royalties go to Feeding America

We built the whole project using our creator toolkit in minutes. So far, dozens of people have been playing each day, and tokens are selling on the secondary market. For more about the project, see here.

Auction Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

We launched auctions last week and followed up with a series of small improvements:

• Added the ability to edit and re-run auctions. Currently, auctions can have their start date, end date, and reserve price edited unless the auction has received a bid at or above the reserve price
• Added copy to explain the time buffer and minimum bid increase percentage to bidders
• Added full support for auctions on mint card embeds, making it even easier to host your own auction on any custom website and domain
• Improved error messages for bidding, reserve prices, and more
• On the Gates tab, we added visibility into auctions that may be using a token-gate

Other Improvements

• Made it easier to understand your collection metadata on Etherscan
• Added the ability to delete an imported NFT collection or token
• Added the ability to use imported tokens in various product flows
• Improved the ability to select a token from your wallet in various product flows
• Improved the ability to tap on mint page links from mobile
• Cleaned up some scrollbar issues on the transaction history dropdown
• Updated the weekly calendar in various places to begin on Sunday instead of Monday
• Adjust spacing and layout throughout the mint page
• When creating content for token-gated pages, the font selection input now shows a preview of each font
• 20+ other fixes, improvements, and performance enhancements

Auctions

We’re excited to announce the release of auctions, a powerful feature that enables creators to sell 1/1 NFTs with ‘English’ auction mechanics, including a reserve price.

As with all our tooling, auctions are embeddable in any custom website, allowing creators to self-host auctions on any domain they choose. Auctions can also be token-gated or managed through allow-lists, allowing creators to host exclusive sales for select collectors.

Built from the ground up, auctions help creators capture the highest price for unique artworks. NFTs are held in smart contracts along with the top bid that meets the reserve price, ensuring a safe and transparent experience for both creators and collectors.

You can run an auction by visiting our creator toolkit's Tokens tab and deploying your smart contract.

To learn more about our auctions feature, see here.

Collector Insights

This past week brought another major release with the launch of a new Collectors tab in our tools dashboard.

The Collectors tab gives insight into the holders of your NFT projects, whether for collections deployed using Highlight or those you’ve created elsewhere and imported.

You can now see how many tokens from each collection every collector owns. The default sorting is for the collectors who hold most of your NFTs. Along with sorting, filtering, and searching by wallet address or ENS, you can download a .csv for your collectors.

The Collectors tab is based on the NFTs in your Tokens tab. If you’re curious about the overlap between your NFT projects and others, you can import NFT collections into the Tokens tab.

To learn more about Collector insights using Highlight, check out this article.

Select NFTs From Your Wallet

Creating a token-gate or viewing collector insights is now as easy as selecting NFTs from your wallet.

If you own the NFT you’d like to use for a token-gate or to import for collector insights, you can select it from your wallet. Previously, we required you to look up a contract address or collection URL.

Paragraph Integration

Last week, we launched an integration with Paragraph, the leading web3 newsletter and blogging platform.

Now, pasting a Highlight NFT collection link into your Paragraph post turns it into an embed, letting your readers collect your NFTs directly from your posts or via their inboxes.

We can’t wait to see how creators use NFT embeds within Paragraph. We’ve created a commemorative mint to celebrate the launch, available for the next few days.

Featured Project: VÉRITÉ's Love You Mad Libs

A few weeks ago, we helped VÉRITÉ, a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter, make a fun mini-game called Love You Mad Libs.

It was a case study in community-building and offered varying levels of access to holders of her ~10 NFT projects. To share learnings, we made a video with VÉRITÉ showing how we built it.

If you’re looking to build fun projects in web3, this video gets into the weeds of the project and the Highlight tools that made token-gating a breeze.

Other Improvements

• Updated how we display pagination for some NFT collections
• Fixed an issue with token-gates on mint pages when viewed on mobile
• Fixed a bug with minting on mobile if the connection to a chain changed
• Fixed a problem where markdown text was appearing in collection descriptions
• Improved the responsiveness of the Tokens tab when importing NFTs
• Updated global style settings for mint embeds to ensure they don't interfere with style settings on hosted sites
• Fixed an issue that was causing some ERC20 token-gates to appear as ETH currency requirements
• Fixed a problem with connecting certain wallets with specific browsers on mobile
• Improved NFT collection loading across the app
• Adjusted text sizes in various places
• 30+ other speed upgrades, bug fixes, and visual improvements!

Bring Your Own Token

This week, we’re excited to ship the ability to import an existing NFT — either a collection or an individual token (e.g., a 1/1) — into your creator dashboard.

This feature allows you to see all your projects in one place, whether or not they were deployed with a Highlight smart contract. In the coming weeks, we’ll release more around this functionality to help web3 creators see and manage all their projects with ease.

To add an imported token, it’s as simple as visiting the Tokens tab and selecting Import Token.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated image rendering across the app for faster performance
• Fixed a display bug with the preview window on page creation
• Visual updates to our in-app tooltips
• Many design updates, fixes, and other improvements!

Improvements & Bug Fixes

With most of the team off for the holidays this week, we continued to polish our creator toolkit. Here's what we shipped:

• Updated images displayed for native currencies
• Improved pagination in various places
• Improved font displays
• Improved how mint pages render on Safari, on both iOS and desktop
• Added validation that prevents 0 balance token-gate conditions for ERC20s and native currencies
• Made the loading bar throughout the app consistent
• Fixed some issues with the flow for deleting token-gates
• Fixed an issue where the sidebar was disappearing at different screen sizes
• 30+ other fixes and improvements

We could not be more excited about our mission to empower web3 creators in 2023 and what's in store.

Happy New Year!

Polishing Week

This week, we fixed 50+ usability issues, imperfections, and bugs, including:

• Better token-gating support for shared/marketplace contracts
• Improved the pending and success messages for smart contract deployment
• Improved logged-out states across the app
• Improved the calendar view for selecting mint start/end dates and displaying date formats
• Updated the page creation preview for locked/unlocked states and embed code copying
• Even better share card support, now with dynamic image rendering for token-gated pages
• Fixed a bug that caused a display issue with Firefox
• Fixed a bug that was causing a misleading ‘Insufficient funds’ error
• Fixed an issue that was causing ERC20s to display incorrectly in some places
• More intuitive authentication across various parts of the app

Audience Insight 👀

Looking for insight on your token holders? We’re rolling out tools soon to get a better view of your collector base. Please email us at gm@highlight.xyz to request early access.

Happy holidays ❄️

Announcing Our v1 Launch

This week, we announced the official launch of Highlight v1.

So what does v1 do?

Token Gate Anything™: make a gate in minutes with any Ethereum or Polygon contract, any OpenSea collection URL, any balance of ETH, MATIC, or ERC20, allow-lists (wallet address), any specific trait or attribute in metadata.

Create an NFT Drop With Style: 100% creator-owned smart contracts, fixed or open edition, limit mints per wallet, gated mints & allowlists, protect your royalties

Generate Custom Landing Pages: polls, surveys, raffles, merch, mints, and rewards for your collectors

Embeds: Add any of the above to your website to fully customize the look & feel of your project. Highlight allows embeds for both NFT mints and gated landing pages onto third-party websites.

Commemorative Mint & Win a Ledger Stax

To celebrate our launch, we made something fun and mintable for you here.

Once you mint, go here to enter a token-gated contest to win a new Stax hardware wallet designed by Tony Fadell, courtesy of Ledger. Entry closes Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022, at 11:59 pm Pacific.

Support for Operator Filter Registry

Recently, there’s been a fierce debate about whether NFT marketplaces should enforce creator royalties. At Highlight, we believe this should be up to creators – not marketplaces – to choose.

To provide tools to help creators protect their on-chain royalties, we rolled out support for adding the Operator Filter Registry to your smart contracts using Highlight. Tokens using the Operator Filter Registry may not be sold on marketplaces that do not enforce royalties.

Learn more about the Registry here or see this week’s interview with our CEO, Nat Emodi, in Peter Yang’s Creator Economy.

To add support for the Registry to your NFT collection on Highlight:

1. From the Tools dashboard > Tokens, select 'Create a token’
2. Under Advanced, hit the toggle under Operator Filter Registry

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improved the social share cards that appear when sharing a link to an NFT drop or token-gated page using a Highlight URL
• Added the Zora NFT API to improve how we display Zora NFTs minted using their shared contract
• Added a sidebar button for our Quick Start Guides
• Fixed how the delete gate modal displayed linked pages/mints
• Fixed how Polygon NFTs displayed the link to Polygonscan
• Fixed a bug affecting how theme colors were shown in preview mode
• Added support for ENS names in the Royalty payout address field
• Updated the Token Management page layout
• Fixed a bug with video and audio NFTs not loading on mint card embeds
• Fixed an error when saving a page
• Improved how we link to OpenSea in various screens
• Improved the error message during gate creation if an NFT collection on an unsupported blockchain was entered as an OpenSea URL
• Dozens of other speed improvements, bug fixes, and visual updates

Token-Gating By Attribute

One of the most exciting things about NFT projects is the variation within collections – traits, attributes, and rarity. It’s no surprise that within PFP communities such as Bored Apes and Moon Birds there are sub-communities formed around specific traits. The same applies to art, music, and many other exciting parts of web3.

What’s more, artists have often used a shared smart contract to release separate projects. This means that to reward collectors of a specific project, they couldn’t easily limit the gate at the contract level.

Until now, creating a gate based on a specific trait or attribute was hard and usually required custom code. Today, we’re excited to roll out the latest addition to our powerful token-gating feature – the ability to create a gate based on specific attributes:

Creating an attribute-based token-gate is simple:

1. From our Tools dashboard, create a Gate by adding a conditional with ‘Holds a token with a specific attribute’
2. Enter the smart contract address or OpenSea URL
3. Select the relevant attribute from the drop-down list

For the creators who’ve asked for this, we’re excited to see all the uses of attribute-based gates.

Mint Card Embeds

Hosting mint drops on your custom domain is one of the primary things our creators care about. We’re excited to extend our ability to embed NFT drops with new mint cards that fit neatly into any website with a simple code snippet.

First, to embed a mint card, deploy an ERC-721 collection using the Tokens tab from our creator dashboard. Then, select ‘Custom site embed’ and copy + paste the code under ‘Mint card.’

Quick Start Guide & Tooltips

This week we shipped a new Quick Start Guide and in-product tooltips to help creators get more value out of Highlight faster.

The Quick Start guide links out to specific guides covering our three most-used features: token-gating for anything, NFT creation/drops, and gated NFT drops.

In a similar vein, we released contextual tooltips throughout the product. Mint a token, create a gate, or build a gated page, and you’ll learn more about how these features work and can be combined.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improvements to our links out to OpenSea collections
• Updated the icons throughout the app for consistency
• Fixed a bug where editing a gate opened a new tab
• Fixed an issue where gated pages weren’t displaying a share card on Twitter
• Fixed a bug that prevented token-gated minting even when the user had the required tokens
• Fixed an issue where some token metadata was displaying incorrectly
• Fixed an issue where editing gates from “any” to “all” requirements wasn’t saving
• Refactored various modal screens throughout the app
• Adjusted the in-product feedback form to the left-hand navigation bar
• Added clearer error messages for when a live smart contract without any tokens minted from it was input into the gate creation flow
• Many other bug fixes, system upgrades, and visual improvements

Allowlists

This week we added another powerful feature to our creator toolkit: allow-lists for both NFT drops and gated content or rewards.

Now with just a few clicks, you can add a list of approved wallet addresses to anything you want to gate. Offer pre-mint access, collector rewards, raffles, or exclusive content — all just by pasting in a comma-separated list and applying it to your gated project.

Create an allow-list using these simple steps:

1. From our Tools dashboard, create a Gate and select “Is on an allowlist of wallet addresses”
2. Paste in up to 5,000 comma-separated wallet addresses and click ‘Add condition’
3. Apply your gate to an NFT drop using the Tokens tab or something else using our Pages tab

“Consensual” Soulbound Tokens

We created a smart contract extension that can allow the recipient of a soulbound token to transfer the token back to its creator, making the soulbound mint “consensual.” We now offer two different soulbound extension modules, which you can choose from.

For those familiar, this is similar in approach to EIP-5484. While we’re not adhering to this specific standard, we are following its ethos by allowing our soulbound tokens to be transferred back.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Improved gate creation from within the page creation flow, avoiding the need to open a second tab
• Improved the flow for deleting a gate, especially in cases where the gate was in use
• Updated our APIs for better consistency and error handling during gate creation
• Fixed a calculation issue in our "Earned" revenue summary on token management pages
• Fixed a display bug with very long token IDs
• Fixed a bug that was preventing gates from being saved
• Fixed an issue where certain master smart contracts weren't displaying in gates properly
• Fixed some display issues with embedded mints and pages
• Added a sign-up link to receive our weekly changelog via email
• Lots of other visual improvements, smaller bug fixes, and speed upgrades

Host Your Own Token-Gated NFT Drops In Minutes

This week we released a powerful new feature to help creators gate their NFT drops by requiring ownership of existing NFTs.

Now, web3 creators can offer existing collectors exclusive NFTs as rewards – or provide pre-mint access to an upcoming drop – in minutes, all using our creator-owned smart contracts and embeddable mint pages.

To our knowledge, nothing this easy or elegant exists in web3.

Launching a token-gated drop is accessible in a simple series of steps using our no-code web3 toolkit:

1. From our Tools dashboard, create a Gate comprised of one or more NFTs or NFT collections across Ethereum or Polygon, or a minimum amount of ETH, MATIC, or an ERC-20.
2. Using our creator-owned Tokens tool, deploy a smart contract and ERC-721 edition for your NFT drop.
3. Once deployed, you can select the tokens required to access your mint from the token management screen:

Importantly, adding a gate to your NFT drop is editable. So if you’d like to give collectors early access to your mint, you can apply the gate (and lower or remove the price if you wish to do so.) Once collectors have had access, you can remove the gate (and adjust the price) for your public drop.

For creators, this new feature means you can now offer collectors of any project (including both NFT and social token holders) exclusive or early access to new NFT drops, all within a few clicks.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Added more help resources to our global navigation menu
• Fixed an issue where deleting a page caused a related gate to be deleted
• Fixed an issue where some images weren’t rendering on gate modals or the create gate grid
• Updated all footers throughout the app
• Updated our 404 and 500 pages for clearer navigation when something goes awry
• Updated the fonts needed for our page editor
• Improved the date display for token sales
• Lots of other smaller fixes, speed upgrades, and design improvements across the entire toolkit

Token-Gate Anything With Multiple Types of Token

To help creators easily build token-gated rewards and experiences, we released a series of updates this week on our “token-gate anything” toolkit. Using Highlight, creators can now make token-gates with multiple requirements in seconds, and save that gate for easy re-use.

If you're a creator with more than one NFT project, this means you can now offer every type of holder (including both NFT and social token holders) all types of rewards and experiences.

Token-gates now include support for:

• Any NFT from a specific contract address on Ethereum or Polygon
• Any NFT from any OpenSea collection URL
• Specific NFTs from any contract address or collection
• A minimum amount of ETH, MATIC, or an ERC-20

Because token-gates can now be stored, creators can save even more time providing rewards or experiences.

This week the Highlight creator toolkit also evolved to provide gates, pages (for token-gated rewards, experiences, media, polls, etc.) and token-minting in separate tabs. Now applying a gate for all your NFT projects is as easy as selecting it from a drop-down menu:

Embeds: Simple No-code Snippets for Custom Sites

We’re also excited to unveil our first copy-and-paste embeds for bringing your NFTs and token-gated experiences to any custom site.

Our release this week is for adding a full Highlight mint page to your own domain. Instead of a Highlight-hosted drop, use our embed to host your own sale using our beautifully designed mint pages.

Our creator-owned contracts and mint pages currently support ERC-721 tokens on Ethereum or Polygon; creator royalties; visual, video, or music NFTs; limits per mint; and open editions. We’re adding new features here every week so stay tuned for updates on what you can embed.

Royalties for NFT Minting

You can now add a creator royalty fee and recipient address when minting an ERC721 on either Ethereum or Polygon. This includes support for auto-populating royalties for your NFT collection on most major marketplaces.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Updated how we upload NFT metadata to Arweave
• Updated how we auto-populate OpenSea collections for contracts deployed using our minting tools
• Fixed a bug that was causing mint pages for music/audio NFTs to crash
• Updated the link from a mint page to Etherscan to direct to the token page instead of the proxy contract, which was confusing
• Verified our mint manager contracts on Etherscan, giving buyers more confidence in creator-owned contracts and NFTs minted using Highlight
• Updated how we display calendar dates for setting start/end dates for a mint
• Fixed a bug that was preventing a user's active wallet from displaying correctly
• Adjusted how we display our creator toolkit, gated pages, and mint pages on mobile vs desktop
• Fixed how we display the remaining quantity for open edition mints
• Many other small bug fixes, speed improvements and visual updates

NFT Collection Deployment Improvements

NFT collection deployment and token minting has been live for a week and we are glad to see people start using it. With usage, comes some additional features, improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Non-transferable (aka ‘soulbound’) tokens for both Ethereum and Polygon. To prevent a token from being transferred or sold, simply toggle “Make this token non-transferable” under Advanced options in the creation flow:

• We now display the ENS name of the creator of the token on the mint page
• Gas optimization of all contracts to keep things as inexpensive as possible!
• We made it easy to copy the contract address to the clipboard on the mint page
• More detail under the “pending transactions” dropdown so you can see what each blockchain transaction is doing (deploying, minting, which token, etc)
• Prettier icons for different blockchains when deploying a collection

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Fixed a bug that made it difficult to edit HTML embeds on a custom page
• Added a link to our tool dashboard from any minting page
• Added a feedback form! Please send us any feedback from anywhere within our tool dashboard

NFT Collection Deployment

We’re really excited to announce the next major feature on our platform - NFT collection deployment and token minting. If you have always wanted to create NFTs and sell or give them away, but lack a dead simple way of doing so, this feature is for you. Just navigate to our Dashboard, select your blockchain, tell us about your token, set your price, and click “Deploy”. No engineering skills necessary!

Our contracts support the following features:

• ERC-721
• Deploy on Ethereum mainnet, Polygon mainnet, Mumbai (Polygon testnet), or Goerli (Eth testnet)
• Create 1/1, 1/N, or an infinite numbers of tokens
• Support for images, videos, and music NFTs!
• Limit the number any single wallet can hold to prevent hoarding

Token Minting

Deploying NFT collections doesn’t do much good if you can’t distribute them. Therefore, we are also launching the ability for people to mint tokens through a beautifully designed mint page.

To mint a token, first deploy a collection, then click “View Sale”, then “Mint Token”.

Now, using Highlight, you can deploy a collection, mint tokens, create gates using those tokens or tokens minted elsewhere, and create custom pages available to only those token holders. It’s starting to come together and we love being on this journey with you all!

Edit HTML Embeds in the Page Editor

Wow, that’s a mouthful of a feature description! Let’s break it down. Highlight allows you to create custom pages that can be token gated. Custom pages can be anything - text, images, audio, video….and HTML embeds. Embeds allow you to put other website content in your custom page such as YouTube videos, Disqus comments, StrawPoll polls, photo galleries, Dropbox links, etc.

Before today, there was no way to edit the HTML embedded in the page, which was a giant pain. But no longer! Now you can mouse over the area in the editor, click “Edit”, and change what you need.

Emoji Support in Page Editor

When creating custom pages to token gate, you can now easily insert emojis into the page using our new emoji picker. Sometimes, it’s the small things that are the big things! And everybody loves emojis.

We were heads down working on a new major feature this week. In the words of our lead designer it’s “super dope” but in the words of the eng team it’s “not ready to launch yet.” But don’t despair! We shipped a bunch of improvements that benefit you, the end user, and here they are:

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• MP4s weren’t displaying as playable images on gated pages. Now they are, which is way better.
• On the Page List, we fixed how we display the gate requirements so you can better understand them
• In our Community Building App, we changed the account creation flow so it succeeds even if two browser tabs try to create a new account at the same time
• We improved the look and feel of gated pages (consistent font sizes, etc)

Stay tuned to this space for feature announcements, easter eggs in screenshots, and weekly witty banter and jokes that crack me up (sometimes only me).

Non Transferable Token Minting

This week we enabled non-transferable token minting in our Community Builder app. Non-transferable, or “soulbound” (editor's note - soulbound is a weird word for this) tokens prevent users from selling the tokens, which disincentivizes speculation. This can lead to more true fans and healthier community engagement. Create a community here in order to mint tokens.

Gate Pages with ETH or MATIC

Now, you can gate any page based on the amount of ETH or MATIC in a user’s wallet. This is useful for verifying that a user has sufficient currency to mint tokens on a gated page, for instance. Or targeting whales (100 ETH, anybody?). Or targeting fans of Tommy Tutone (deep cut!).

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Custom theme css now works better on locked pages. This avoids problems where buttons became impossible to read based on which colors were chosen.
• Hid the “Buy on OpenSea” button for ERC-20 tokens since it doesn’t make sense.
• Fixed bug preventing saving of page titles. Life is better when data persists properly.
• Made the alert banners prettier. Everybody likes prettier things.

Enabled ERC-20 Token Gating

You can now gate pages with ERC-20 tokens, not just NFTs. This is useful for easily creating token-gated experiences for any creator, community, DAO, or other project that's launched its own fungible token.

Enabled Gateless Pages

You can also create pages that have no gating requirements. This is useful for creating publicly accessible pages for drops, for instance.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• We now display the creator name on every token-gated page to help verify identity
• We now show ENS names instead of wallet addresses throughout the UI
• Adjusted the max column width of pages for better content layout
• Adjusted how we display the example use-cases
• Fixed a bug with bullet points in the content editor

Launched New Marketing Site

Our new brand identity and marketing website is live at https://www.highlight.xyz. There’s lots more to come here as we unveil new features. Check it out!

Added examples to the List Pages screen

We added example use-cases to the List Pages screen to help spark ideas for token-gated experiences. We’ll be adding to these over time to help users find inspiration and quickly create things for their communities.

Other Improvements

• Improved the Metamask login experience on Android
• Save button provides error and success feedback
• 15 small CSS improvements that were bugging the Design Team (rightfully so!)
• Replaced HTML Embed / Media preview with a static image to avoid bugs related to multiple embeds on the page at once
• Fixed bug for embeds in the Content tab showing up out of order
• Fixed how small images were being expanded beyond their resolution

The team spent the week at an offsite, working hard on new features for upcoming releases (stay tuned!).

Despite the heads down building of future features, we still took the time to fix up a variety of bugs.

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Twitter sharing didn’t show a preview card
• 12 CSS bugs that were small but super annoying
• Fixed the List Pages screen when a user has not created any pages
• Modal corners not always rounded

HTML embeds

This week we shipped the ability to embed any HTML in a gated page. This opens up a world of exciting possibilities for what can be gated. For instance, using HTML embeds, you can token gate live polls through StrawPoll, entire comment threads using Disqus, or any other site on the internet that supports embed sharing codes.

Here is just a sample of what can be done with this new feature:

• Token Gated Polls
• Token Gated Music Release with Comments

Other Improvements

Here’s what else we shipped this week:

• Made the Page title editable on the header
• 18 small CSS fixes
• Fixed a problem deleting pages from the Page List screen

Token Gate Anything

This week we released an entirely new, modular application that allows you to token-gate anything in 3 easy steps. It is live now at gate.highlight.xyz. Go check it out!

To create a token gated page, first, determine which content to gate. Pages can contain text, images, music, videos, or media from over 1900 other sites on the internet.

Once the content is defined, optionally customizing the look and feel of the page so it matches your own unique brand or style.

Finally, determine which tokens are required to open the gate. We currently support 721 and 1155 NFTs on Ethereum and Polygon.

Click Publish and we will give you a link to share with your token owners on social media. That’s it!

This is the easiest way to create an Ethereum or Polygon token-gate on the internet and we can’t wait to hear your feedback.