v2 Items vs v1 Items

The following page is an in-depth comparison between v2 Items and v1 Items. In order to understand and integrate the item v2 protocol, it is not necessary to read this page. However, it is useful to gain an insight into the evolution of the Items protocol.

Collection

v1 of the Items protocol had it so that an Items Collection corresponds to a stand-alone contract that acts as an ERC1155. v2 of the protocol has it so that all Item Collections are virtualized and stored in the singleton Main Interface contract as collectionIds.

This massively reduces gas costs for creating a Collection.

Batch Operations

This means that in v1, a batch operation using Items of different Collection could not be performed; you could only perform a batch operation such as a batch transfer or a batch burn using different Items of the same Collection.

In v2 you can perform a batch operation, such as a batch transfer or burn, using all existing Items, even across different Collections And since you can, like in v1, Item-wrap all ERC20/721/1155 tokens in v2, you can technically perform a batch operation using all existing tokens on Ethereum.‌

Wrapped Collections

v1 had a Collection for all ERC20s and ETH, and multiple Collections for ERC721s and ERC1155s (one for each unique token address).

v2 has a single Collection for all ERC20s and ETH, a single Collection for ERC721s, and a single Collection for ERC1155s.

Metadata

v1 supported traditional off-chain Metadata represented by a uri parameter.

v2 natively supports the Dynamic Metadata Protocol, so that you can have all the Metadata of an Item or Collection stored and regenerated 100% on-chain. Dynamic Metadata is a fully-fledged, general-purpose, customizable protocol. You can learn more about it here.

If so desired, v2 can also support ‘traditional’ Metadata, using off-chain storage such as IPFS.