THE CRAZY WORLD OF NFTS!!

Published in

Aikyataan

7 min readJul 8, 2023

BY: JASBIR PRADHAN

There’s nothing like an explosion of blockchain news to leave you thinking, “Um… what’s going on

here?” That’s the feeling I’ve experienced while reading about Grimes getting millions of dollars for NFTs or about Nyan Cat being sold as one. And by the time we all thought we sort of knew what the deal was, the founder of Twitter put an autographed tweet up for sale as an NFT.

You might be wondering: what is an NFT, anyhow?

WHAT IS A NFT?

NFTs are tokens that we can use to represent ownership of unique items. They let us tokenize things like art, collectibles, even real estate. They can only have one official owner at a time and they’re secured by the blockchain — no one can modify the record of ownership or copy/paste a new NFT into existence.

NFT stands for non-fungible token. Non-fungible is an economic term that you could use to describe things like your furniture, a song file, or your computer. These things are not interchangeable for other items because they have unique properties.

At a very high level, most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin, but its blockchain also supports these NFTs, which

store extra information that makes them work differently from, say, an ETH coin. It is worth noting that other blockchains can implement their own versions of NFTs

HOW DO NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS WORK?

To understand the mechanism behind we must understand what is a blockchain and a digital asset.

Unlike a regular database, a blockchain is a series of data ‘blocks’ that are linked together. This chain of blocks creates a shared digital ledger (collection of data) that records the activity and information within the chain. So, to use IBM’s definition, blockchain is a shared, immutable (permanent and unalterable) ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets.

Put simply, a digital asset is anything that exists in a digital format and has a right to use (a right to copy, duplicate, reproduce, modify and otherwise use). So, for example, things such as documents, audio or visual content, images, and other similar digital data are all considered digital assets

· NFTs are individual tokens with valuable information stored in them.

· Because they hold a value primarily set by the market and demand, they can be bought and sold just like other physical types of art.

· NFTs’ unique data makes it easy to verify and validate their ownership and the transfer of tokens between owners.

POPULAR NON FUNGIBLE TOKENS IN 2022!!

1. NFT-RACING HORSES “YEARLINGS”(SILKS)

2. GARY VEE NFT PROJECT-VEEFRIENDS

One of the most exciting NFTs in the market launched by the famous youtuber, motivational speaker and entrepreneur GaryVee. Owners of VeeFriends NFTs are allowed access to VeeCon, which is a multi-day business event based on entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation. These business events hosted by GaryVee tend to sell out rapidly, so owning a VeeFriends NFT and gaining access is considered a huge benefit.

3. SATOSHI RUNNERS:

Satoshi Runners is a collection of 7,777 cyberpunk-themed NFTs that looks to combine the appeal of digital art with additional investment benefits. The art itself is animated and features characters with unique traits, each holding a different weapon. The development team have already collaborated with leading NFT entrepreneurs, along with a selection of Bored Ape Yacht Club holders, to ensure the digital art is as appealing as possible.

4. AXIE INFINITY: A METAVERSE NFT PROJECT

Another addition to the list of new NFT games is Axie Infinity. Although Axie Infinity was initially launched in 2018, the project has only begun creating momentum in recent months and looks set to grow exponentially this year. Put simply, Axie Infinity is an Ethereum-based virtual world where users can own and breed ‘Axies’ — in-world creatures that have unique characteristics.

5. CRYPTO-BARISTAS

This NFT will launch with 60 caffeine-loving characters whose ownership helps conceptualize and open the World’s First NFT funded Café. Owners of Crypto Baristas enjoy caffeinated perks for life at all future cafe spaces and websites. Owners also control the “Barista Bank,” a 15% fund set aside from the project’s revenue for future use in the coffee space. Some potential uses for the Barista Bank can support charitable organizations in the coffee space, advance the Crypto Barista project, or start something new.

USES OF NFTS.

The use of NFTs in digital art is common.

The public has been paying close attention to high-profile auctions of NFTs tied to digital art. Merge, by artist Pak, was the most expensive NFT, selling for US$91.8 million, with Everydays: The First 5000 Days, by artist Mike Winkelmann (known professionally as Beeple), coming in second for US$69.3 million in 2021.

Generative art is represented by some digital art NFTs, such as these pixels art characters.

Some NFT collections, such as Bored Apes, EtherRocks, and CryptoPunks, are instances of generative art, in which a variety of images are made by combining a variety of simple graphic components in different ways.

In March 2021, the blockchain firm Injective Protocol purchased a $95,000 original screen print by English graffiti artist Banksy titled Morons (White) and videotaped someone burning it with a cigarette lighter. The video was minted and sold as an NFT. “Burnt Banksy,” the individual who destroyed the artwork, described the act as an attempt to transfer a physical work of art to the NFT area.

Tina Rivers Ryan, an American curator and art historian who specializes in digital works, remarked that art museums aren’t convinced that NFTs have “long-term cultural importance.”

Ryan compares NFTs to the dot-com bubble’s net art craze. There is no centralised authentication system in place to prohibit the sale of stolen or counterfeit digital works. Although auction houses such as Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and various museums and galleries around the world began collaborations and partnerships with digital artists like Refik Anadol, Dangiuz, and Sarah Zucker, selling NFTs associated with digital artworks (via NFT platforms) and showcasing those artworks (associated with the respective NFTs) both in virtual galleries and on real-life screens, monitors, and TVs.

NFTs can be used to represent in-game assets such as digital land parcels. If they can be exchanged on third-party marketplaces without permission from the game developer, some observers describe them as being controlled “by the user” rather than the game developer.

CryptoKitties was a popular blockchain-based online game where users could adopt and trade virtual kittens. The game’s monetization of NFTs earned $12.5 million in funding, with some kittens fetching over $100,000 each. CryptoKitties was added to the ERC-721 standard in January 2018 as a result of its success (and finalized in June). Axie Infinity, a comparable NFT-based online game, was released in March 2018.

Valve Corporation banned applications that use blockchain technology from their Steam platform in October 2021. Ubisoft Quartz, “an NFT venture that allows users to acquire artificially scarce digital things using bitcoin,” was unveiled in December 2021 by Ubisoft. The announcement was met with backlash, with a 96 percent dislike rating on the YouTube announcement video, which has since been taken down. Some Ubisoft developers expressed their displeasure with the announcement[clarification needed]. According to the Game Developers Conference’s annual report for 2022, 70% of respondents reported their studios had little interest in incorporating NFTs or cryptocurrency into their games.

For online video game cosmetics, certain premium manufacturers issued NFTs.

Morgan Stanley produced a paper in November 2021 predicting that this use might become a multibillion-dollar market by 2030.