What is NFT
From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, artists were generally regarded as mere laborers, because their hands were like carpenters and blacksmiths. During the Renaissance, artists opposed this distinction, but wanted to be seen as innovators, creators, and philosophers. A few centuries later, art was mainly made to order, and people who were wealthy enough gave their ideas and wishes, signed contracts with artists, and the artists made it a reality-therefore, forgery was not a real topic at the time.
According to the late Metropolitan Museum of Art curator and counterfeit expert Thomas Hoving, “Approximately 40% of all art in circulation today is fake or misclassified.” This is a big argument for physical art that is usually difficult to replicate. The probability is correct. In the Crypto field, Crypto forgery is a recurring problem due to the ease of copying and pasting. Since Crypto content can be copied infinitely, it is difficult for artists to benefit from their creations, and it is also difficult for collectors to price their Crypto assets.
This is where the non-fungible token (NFT) comes in. NFT provides a mechanism for artists to “cast” their work, whether it is a song, an image, or anything you can imagine. Minting created a unique token, an NFT, with the artist’s “signature” attached to it, allowing them to prove their ownership. These tokens exist on the blockchain and cannot be tampered with, they can be traded, but they cannot be forged.
The history of NFT
Although the number of NFT projects is currently growing rapidly, the concept of NFT is not entirely new. In the early days of blockchain, several projects tried to enter this field. Today, Bitcoin’s colored coins are considered to be the pioneers of NFTs as we know them. Several blog posts and papers on the subject published in 2012 opened up discussions on the possibilities of such tokens. The famous colored coin BitcoinX white paper mentioned: “Can Bitcoin be used as a Crypto currency alone, or can it have further applications?” They concluded, “(1) Anything can be used as a Crypto asset, (2) Anything Both are a kind of “competitive commodity”-a competitive commodity means that only one person can own it at a time-can benefit from the decentralized and transparent nature. This design and therefore exists in the (Bitcoin) area Block chain.
Although colored coins were launched in 2014, several factors have also played a role in these pioneers in this field, but they have not gained much appeal-in the end, there are not many wallets supporting colored coins, and the market is obviously not enough. Mature, unable to trade real-world assets as Crypto tokens.
There is no doubt that the next big player in this field is called Counterparty. It runs on the Bitcoin blockchain. Counterparty eventually deployed countless products in its ecosystem, including games such as “The Spell of Genesis” and “Power of Will”. Soon after, the meme MEMEs entered the stage in the form of Rare Pepes.
With the help of Ethereum’s ERC20 and later ERC721 technical standards, 2017 is the year of viral spread of NFT and many other concepts. The latter is built specifically for NFT. The first is cryptopunk. 10,000 Crypto 24×24 pixel art images of various characters, mainly punk-looking avatars, were released by the true pioneers of the crypto art movement: Matt Hall and John Watkinson. Initially, these roles can be claimed freely, but when they enter the secondary market, their value rises, and they are still trading today. The cheapest of them was about 13,69 ETH or $37,000 in June 2021.
Cryptokitties—”a game centered on reproducible, collectible and very cute creatures”—is the project that successfully introduced NFT into the mainstream of CNN, BBC, and Bloomberg levels. Everyone either breeds these cute kittens or trades them, and in the process crowded the Ethereum public chain in an unprecedented way.
In 2018, Decentraland came into view and launched a virtual world in which players can explore and design the world. Most importantly, they have the ability to buy and truly own land parcels called continents because they exist in the form of NFTs.
NFT projects in 2021
Although Punks and Kitties set the tone for the Crypto art and game asset verticals in this field, there are still many ways to be explored. With the increasing number of use cases, projects, and ecosystems, the ecosystem itself has developed and matured significantly.
Opensea is to NFT what Amazon is to retail-the largest art, music, domain names, collectibles, trading cards, virtual world land and even utility token markets; as long as it is an NFT, then you can sell, buy, and transaction. There are many other markets online. Mintable is at the top of the list because their main focus is to make the creator’s casting process very simple. Rarible is also another great choice. Its vision is to become the first leading DeFi NFT market, and its governance token $Rari is managed by community holders.
If you need other precious collectibles, you might check out NFT20 ($Muse). NFT20 allows people to put their NFT into a liquidity pool, and in the process tokenize the NFT itself so that it can be traded on exchanges like Uniswap. In essence, you can call NFT20 a gateway between fungible and non-fungible realms.
If the cost of the NFT artwork you are pursuing is too high, or you just treat the NFT artwork as an investment and want to diversify your portfolio — NIFTex allows users to purchase part of the NFT or “fragment”, that is, ERC20 tokens Represents part of a complete NFT.
Alchemist is currently one of the most interesting projects in the encryption field, their Crucible project. Crucible allows people to mint their liquidity pool tokens into the NFT vault, called Crucible, and participate in the pledge incentive plan. So, one price but double reward. At the same time, the concept of the incentive plan they call Aludel is also quite good. Over time, the rewards of participants will increase exponentially. Therefore, the longer you hold, the higher the profit.
In the game field, Enjin is unbeatable. They developed their own blockchain with their own token standard called ERC1155. Their main focus is on the vertical field of in-game assets, so: “Yes, the unique weapon that has just been dropped will indeed belong to you as an NFT forever.”
Are you one of the people who walked aimlessly in the local park in 2016 trying to catch those Pokémon? Or maybe you like the original Pokémon games of the time? You might want to look at Axie Infinity-a Pokémon-inspired game with NFT in-game assets, and a game earning incentive model designed to be more than just another game.
For the collectibles NBA Top Shots is one of the most eye-catching items, which allows fans to buy Crypto cards of their favorite players, teams and memorable moments in the NBA.
Have you ever played fantasy football with your colleagues or partners? Thanks to Sorare, you can now bring your team management skills to the crypto space, and all players can also be used as tradable collectibles.
A rather interesting concept that is currently taking shape is community, which is a project that connects the dots between DAO and NFT-essentially providing a framework for NFT to act as a governance token.
In a world where even half of a decent domain name is occupied, have you ever struggled to find a suitable domain name? Your domain name can also be an NFT and exist on the blockchain, with all the benefits of decentralized use of services such as Unstoppable Domains.
Understanding the above content, we still haven’t touched all the scope of the NFT field, which also involves insurance, gambling, real-world assets, and so on.
The future of NFT
What is the future of NFT? It’s hard to imagine, the only limit is your imagination.
Will NFT be marked on one of Elon Musk’s rockets next year and then go into space?
Will the infamous Gamestop use the NFT method to launch their game rental service?
As Maya Angelou put it: “Every new hour provides a new opportunity for a new beginning-the horizon tilts forward to provide you with space for new steps of change.”