Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), you have certainly seen or heard of them in a news article or two by now. These types of blockchain tokens are becoming increasingly more popular and that is not surprising at all, cryptofamily.world. These tokens allow people to do some really interesting things! In this article, you will find out what NFTs are, how they work, and what the most popular NFT projects are.
What is an NFT and How Does an NFT Work?
Let’s start with the first two questions; what is an NFT and how does an NFT work? An NFT is a unique, tokenized blockchain asset. If you exchange 1 Bitcoin for another Bitcoin, the bitcoin you now have is actually the same as the Bitcoin you had before. We call this fungibility. Non-fungibility, on the other hand, means that the tokens cannot be exchanged directly for another, hence they are unique.
By linking a unique hash code to an NFT, the transaction history on the blockchain can prove that you are actually the owner of such a digital crypto token. This is because the blockchain registers between whom a transaction takes place. This transaction is irreversible, cannot be modified, and can be fully traced back to the time the NFT was created.
This may all sound a bit boring and technical and you may wonder what this means in practice. Well, quite a lot! In the next section of our article, we will take a look at the history of NFTs. Then we will show you some applications in which NFTs are of revolutionary significance. We will discuss digital art, but also other potential applications such as real estate transfers.
The History of NFTs and Blockchain Technology
The history of blockchain technology begins in the early 1990s when the idea for a digital chain of data was first conceived by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta. Then Bitcoin (BTC) was born in 2008, which officially saw the light of day in the crypto market. But it would not be until almost 10 years later that the first NFTs appeared on the market, cryptofamily.world.
In June 2017, CryptoPunks was one of the first NFT projects launched on the Ethereum blockchain. CryptoPunks are digital dolls that are unique and have specific properties. Today, these CryptoPunks can still be found on NFT marketplaces. This project turned out to be the start of the NFT craze that erupted after the launch of CryptoKitties.
CryptoKitties are similar to CryptoPunks. However, CryptoKitties went viral, causing some of these digital creatures to sell for more than $100,000 at the time. The most expensive CryptoKitty ever was Founder Cat #18. It was sold in 2017 for 253 ETH, which is worth almost half a million dollars at the time of writing.
After CryptoKitties, the hype surrounding NFTs calmed down somewhat, before it fully blossomed again in 2021. Several major artists, performers, and other celebrities launched their own NFT collections and occasionally sold them for tens of millions of dollars. However, as you will read below, NFTs are not all about money. They are also very useful for other purposes.
Applications in Addition to Digital Art, Collectibles, and Fan Tokens
Recently, NFTs have mainly come into the limelight due to the exploding market of collectibles, or digital collectibles to be more specific. These are often digital works of art that are represented on the blockchain by an NFT. This makes it possible for investors and collectors to actually own digital art objects, as is the case with a physical painting in your living room, cryptofamily.world.
While digital artworks are sent from wallet to wallet for millions of dollars, NFTs offer a variety of other uses. Think, for example, of digital baseball cards that can be issued on the blockchain so that you can collect them on your phone and exchange them with others. Festival tickets can also be issued as NFT so that you never have to stand in front of a festival again to be told that you have a fake ticket.
Also, many NFT enthusiasts look to the gaming world. While you now sometimes spend loads of time getting your hands on a unique digital weapon skin, this in-game item has no actual monetary value. Your weapon is only a digital file within the game that can in principle be copied. In this situation, NFTs make it possible to actually make this weapon unique without it being able to be copied. You can then also sell the weapon outside the game to someone else for cryptocurrencies. One of the projects specifically dealing with NFTs and gaming is discussed in the next section.
Popular NFT Gaming Projects
Now that you know the basics of NFTs and what they are used for, let’s take a look at some of the projects dealing with the wonderful world of NFTs. We will discuss Decentraland, Opensea, and Enjin.
Decentraland
Starting with Decentraland, built on Ethereum (ETH), this project is reminiscent of the Second Life game that was hugely popular years ago. Decentraland is similar to Second Life in that it also allows players to communicate with each other, customize their avatars and play other interactive games. The big difference, however, is that the digital plots of land are represented by NFTs. In other words, when you own a piece of land in Decentraland, you actually own it and are able to sell it to other players for cryptocurrency.
Within the Decentraland ecosystem, two currencies play an important role. The first is the LAND token. These are the NFTs that represent the digital plots of land. The second is MANA, which can be seen more like an altcoin as MANA tokens are used to pay for the plots of land.
Opensea
Opensea focuses more on NFTs as collectibles, as described earlier in this article. It is a marketplace where digital art objects can be traded. You will find plots of land from Decentraland at this marketplace, but Opensea also makes it possible to easily create your own NFT collection and sell your own digital art.
Enjin
The next popular NFT project we are going to discuss is aimed at the gaming world: Enjin. The developers of Enjin offer game developers, among others, the tools to store digital objects on the blockchain. As described earlier, this makes it possible, for example, to make a digital sword within a game truly unique. This sword can then also be traded outside the game for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on NFT marketplaces such as Opensea.
The Future of NFTs
NFTs have proven time and again to be a huge success in the market. People like to collect things and with NFTs one now has the opportunity to collect digital items related to the rapidly emerging crypto industry. The ultimate goal, of course, is that these NFTs can actually be used for purposes in which they can also provide practical value cryptofamily.world.
As mentioned in this article, Enjin is such a project that can realize that. But every month we see new projects appearing that use NFTs in their own way for a certain use case. It is therefore expected that NFTs will continue to play an important role in the real-world adoption of blockchain technology.