What the hell is an NFT?
If you’re working in tech or marketing you must have heard of NFTs. If you still don’t know what exactly NFTs are we are here to help.
What is NFT?
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are artworks created on the blockchain with unique encryption codes that can be validated for authenticity and ownership. An NFT might be anything from a piece of digital art to a whole song or album. A bitcoin, for example, is fungible, meaning you can exchange one for another and get precisely the identical item. A one-of-a-kind trade card, on the other hand, cannot be duplicated. You’d get something altogether different if you swapped it for a different card.
Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum, like bitcoin and dogecoin, is a cryptocurrency, but its blockchain also enables NFTs. Other blockchains like Solana and Luna can also implement their own versions of NFTs. Digital wallets are used to store NFTs (though it is worth noting that the wallet does specifically have to be NFT-compatible).
What's the purpose of creating NFT?
Every transaction from transfers to sales is recorded on-chain once content is entered onto the blockchain, producing an easily accessible trail of provenance and pricing history. The most significant consequence of NFTs is that they make it simple to own and sell digital material. Digital artists, for example, could formerly create enormous social media followings, attract freelance commercial work, and maybe sell prints and other items with their designs, but they struggled to monetize digital art directly.
How to make an NFT?
You can mint your work on an NFT marketplace, such as OpenSea, SuperRare, Nifty Gateway, Foundation, Mintable, and others. The act of minting is the creation of an NFT, which is a smart contract that is kept on the blockchain.
Examples of NFTs?
Beeple’s digital artwork was the first NFT to be sold at a major auction house, and it was exclusively NFT. This item was auctioned off for a whopping $69 million at Christie’s.
“Own the NBA’s Best Plays” is the tagline of Top Shot, an NFT marketplace for buying, selling, and trading films of NBA highlights. Their highest-earning asset is now LeBron James dunking against the Houston Rockets, which sells for $387,000.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 digital images of cartoon apes with different accessories such as hats or spectacles, and its owners include musician Eminem, NBA player Steph Curry, and late-night TV personality Jimmy Fallon.
In a maiden excursion into NFTs for creator Chris Torres, a crypto art recreation of the popular GIF Nyan Cat meme went for $590,000 in an online auction.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweeton Twitter’s first day of existence in March 2006. The tweet’s NFT went for roughly $3 million. According to Dorsey, the money would be converted to bitcoin and then donated to a charity named GiveDirectly.
Grimes, a singer-songwriter, got $5.8 million from the sale of ten NFTs. The most valuable item sold for $389,000. It was a one-of-a-kind film named “Death of the Old.”