Many people are attracted to the crypto industry due to the continuous realization of new uses of blockchain technology. Since the inception of Bitcoin, we have seen multiple trends play out — P2P scalable digital currencies, privacy coins, decentralized funding (ICOs), decentralized finance (DeFi) and over the past few months, there has been a resounding interest in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Whereas Bitcoin, Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens are equally interchangeable (fungible), NFTs have specific attributes that make them unique assets on the blockchain. Combined with blockchain contracts, NFTs offer a solution for recording immutable, easily transferable, and transparent ownership of digital assets.
The possibility of creating NFTs has arguably been available since 2012 in the form of Bitcoin’s colored coins. However, a more familiar variation is Ethereum’s ERC-721 tokens (e.g. the recently popularised Cryptopunks that were created on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017). Several catalysts are driving the rapid and recent uptake in NFTs:
- Improved user adoption — browser extensions (e.g. Metamask) have simplified the process of interacting with the blockchain.
- Marketplaces — there are now a variety of options available for trading and selling NFTs such as Opensea and Rarible.
- Timing — the convergence of digital art and blockchain technology offers artists and content creators a unique opportunity to directly monetize their work to a global decentralized market.
- Value Distribution — early adopters of crypto who have made financial gains are now looking for ways to re-invest into the ecosystem and support its continuous adoption.
NFT Projects
The capability of recording unique assets on the blockchain unlocks the potential for the development of many new projects. Trends have focussed on the following categories, all of which have seen parabolic growth in traded volume over the last year:
- Digital Art — Beeple (Mike Winklemann) recently grabbed headlines after selling one of his pieces dubbed ‘The first 5,000 days’ for $69 million through Christie’s.
- Collectibles — from 8-bit Cryptopunks to NBA Topshot moments, digital collectibles in all forms have been gaining traction.
- Digital Land — projects such as Decentraland, Sandbox, and Axie Infinity are unlocking the possibility of building metaverses on the blockchain that can integrate virtual conferences, games, art galleries, VIP events etc.
- Gaming — games on the blockchain can utilize NFTs to represent items, skins, weapons etc. that can be traded on an open marketplace or potentially imported into other blockchain-based games.
- Music — musicians are beginning to realize that they can directly monetize their music without the need for an intermediary, an example of this was Kings of Leon’s recent NFT sale of their latest album.
Numerous other projects are beginning to recognize the value of NFTs and are expected to play a major role in driving crypto adoption, by utilizing domain names, insurance policies, property deeds, event tickets, carbon credits, and physical merchandise connected to digital wearables.
About Nexus
Nexus.io (NXS) is building a new internet driven by a blockchain-based operating system (LX-OS) and routing protocol (Nexus Protocol), creating distributed satellite constellations and ground based content delivery and edge computing. Underpinning the foundation is the Nexus TAO Framework, a seven layer software stack that enables the simplified implementation of smart contracts, Decentralized Applications (DApps), tokens, and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s, i.e. Assets) through a set of extensible Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Contracts: Nexus supplies a 64 bit register-based virtual machine as the heart of its smart contract engine. A suite of APIs gives developers access to numerous ready-made contract functionalities. This relieves DApp developers from the burden of learning a smart contract language.
Tokens & Assets (NFT’s): Basic token creation is simple for even non-technical individuals with the Nexus desktop wallet. Arbitrary data can be stored on the Nexus blockchain in the form of assets. Once established, assets can be transferred to other accounts optionally with specified contract conditions (i.e. exchanging NXS / tokens).
Ease of Use: Nexus’ SigChains addresses a primary blockchain limitation — private key management. Users can login to their Nexus wallet with a username, password, & PIN, providing access to all accounts, tokens, and assets. This eliminates the need to backup wallet.dat files and manage private keys.
Database: Unlike most other blockchains that rely on Google’s LevelDB or Oracle’s BerkeleyDB for blockchain storage, Nexus has developed the Lower Level Database (LLD) that outperforms most storage engines by orders of magnitude and remains constant time, meaning it doesn’t slow down as you add more data to it.
Security: The Nexus security model uses many layers of redundancy to provide security to the system. The primary methods include using uniquely generated private keys for every transaction (attack window reduction), and the secondary use of Quantum Resistant (QR) cryptography such as FALCON and SABER.
