What are NFTs?
Let’s start with the basics.
The most common question that people ask me is “what are NFTs”? There are many articles out there that describe what they are in detail, but sometimes we just need them to be explained in more basic terms.
NFTs are Non-Fungible Tokens
Another way to think of an NFT is that it is a digital asset used to represent ownership of a unique item, or access to a product, service, or benefit. You can also think of NFTs as digital collectibles, like baseball cards. Ownership and transfer of an NFT is secured by the blockchain associated with different cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, Solana, and Tezos. The blockchain is simply a digital ledger that tracks and stores data, such as NFTs and the transactions associated with buying and selling them.
What makes an NFT non-fungible is that it can only have one owner at any given time (with the exception of limited editions), and no one can modify the history of the token’s ownership. Any NFT’s provenance is fully transparent and trackable on the blockchain for all to see. Likewise, each person who conducts a transaction on the blockchain will do so via a digital wallet, such as MetaMask, and all of their transactions are viewable to the public.
Transparency is a major benefit of transactions that occur on the blockchain. Nothing is hidden; every wallet, transaction, token, contract, etc. is viewable and traceable via Etherscan!
What does all of this mean for artists?
This technology of minting NFTs onto the blockchain gives artists true ownership of their art. Meaning, there shouldn’t be any question of authenticity of a piece of art, a collectible, a pfp, or any NFT so long as it can be verified on the blockchain and IPFS, which is “a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data”.
In future articles we will discuss the significance of decentralization and Web3, as well as environmental impacts and more, but for now, the most important takeaway is that minting NFTs gives artists full control and ownership of their art, and allows their art to be fully traceable back to them as the original creator of that art.
That means even if someone were to “right-click save” your jpeg online, they still ONLY own a COPY of the original. It is NOT the original. The original piece of art that was minted on the blockchain, lives there. And only one person can own it at a time. It is true, verifiable, immutable ownership of art.
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