Smart Nonces
The nonce field in the order is a number the maker chooses to ensure uniqueness of the order, but it also has some other functions: - To identify the order (in addition to the caller/maker) in cancellation functions. - To identify the order when checking/updating its filled state. - To potentially reuse EVM storage slots that mark an order as filled, which can provide significant gas savings (~15k) when filling or cancelling the order.
Gas Optimized Nonces
The protocol marks ERC721 orders as filled when they either get cancelled or filled. Instead of always using a completely new storage slot for each order from a maker, the upper 248 bits of the nonce will identify the storage slot/bucket/status vector to be used and the lower 8 bits of the nonce will identify the bit offset in that slot (each slot is also 256 bits) which will be flipped from 0 to 1 when the order is cancelled or filled.

To take advantage of this gas optimization, makers should reuse the upper 248 bits of their nonce across up to 256 different orders, varying the value of the lower 8 bits between them.