Wormhole has now made it possible for anyone to bridge their NFTs to Aptos, and from Aptos to the other chains as well. The Wormhole bridge was already working for the tokens, i.e. you could always convert your tokens like SOL, ETH, and others to Aptos and get them sent onto the Aptos network in the form of either APT or the other tokens that are available on the Aptos network. But this new update brings the possibility of bridging NFTs and getting them sent from other networks to Aptos, and vice-versa.
While the NFT can be transferred from one chain to the other, Wormhole makes sure that the metadata is preserved and shows up on the new chain where it ends up. When an NFT is transferred out of any other chain to Aptos, here is what happens.
- The NFT gets locked up in the NFT bridge smart contract.
- An equivalent wrapped NFT is minted into a corresponding collection on the destination chain.
This wrapped NFT has the same name, looks the same as the original one, and behaves exactly like other NFTs on the chain. On EVM chains, the wrapped NFTs are ERC721 tokens, on Solana, they’re SPL tokens with Metaplex metadata, and on Aptos, they’re instances of the Aptos Token standard.
In addition to the name and look, what makes the wrapped NFTs unique is the ability to send them back to the original chain and unlock the original NFT. This means, for example, that an NFT that originates from Aptos can be bridged to Ethereum, subsequently sold on Opensea and then transferred back to Aptos by the new owner.