The 21st century is considered a century of technological breakthroughs that occur daily. Digital technology is increasingly capturing the life of modern users, forcing them to reconsider their views and opinions on many issues. One of the most discussed technologies today is considered NFT. And in this article, you’ll learn what NFTs are and what they are compared to typical physical art.
What are NFTs
So, what are NFTs? Well, a NFT is a technically provable unique unit of information. This phenomenon has several manifestations. The most famous is that a new multi-million dollar market for digital art has appeared, and now pictures on the Internet are being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now for the abbreviation: NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. And cryptocurrencies are, in fact, tokens. However, there’s a slight difference between them.
For ease of understanding, imagine that you’re playing a board game. And you have board game tokens that can be different: similar and unique ones. So cryptocurrencies are similar tokens, and NFTs are unique tokens. It’s elementary, but it’s not the whole story. The beauty of this is that you can record any information into this “unique token”: a picture, animation, sound, or 3D model.
At the same time, a token has all properties of cryptocurrency: you can transfer, change, or lend it. And here, it’s possible to draw an analogy with bricks. There are straightforward ways to work with bricks: you can load them on a pallet, lift the pallet with a crane, put it in a truck or wagon, transport them, or build a house. In this comparison, an NFT token is a special, unique transparent brick with a tin soldier inside.
In simple terms, blockchain and all this technological magic create an International Non-Corrupted Honest Notary. And this Notary in any city in the world can confirm that your safe deposit box key can open it or can verify that something belongs to you. And you can own anything that doesn’t break the logic of the blockchain. So, for example, you have a picture or a gigabyte video. It could be a movie or a personal video from a family archive.
From that video, you can take a cast that consists of letters and numbers. Without going into technical details, it will be unique. This cast is attached to the brick, written inside of it. After that, any International Notary can confirm that the bearer of the specific data owns a particular brick with some unique string of letters and numbers, essentially encrypting some file. It is the NFT token.
In reality, anyone can violate copyrights, take a picture, logo, or character, make a T-shirt, or put it on an avatar. But some laws forbid it. In the case of an infringement of rights, the infringer can be dealt with by lawyers. It’s the same with the NFT. On average, all the teams that run NFT give the owner the rights he wants.
Here, of course, it is necessary to adhere to the principle of DYOR (Do Your Own Research), but most likely, the required rights are transferred to the token’s owner. The token owner can prove that the rights to some picture “attached” to his token belong to him. NFT contains an image or a link to it or some other thing that uniquely identifies this picture. Thus, NFT token technology makes it possible to transfer to blockchain or tokenize any commodity, even those not in digital form. So what exactly can be transferred to the blockchain:
- Any items within virtual universes
- Game items: characters and weapons
- Digital art: paintings, photos, videos, music, and here we’ll go into a little more detail.
NFT and Art
And now, we’ll talk about NFT technologies within the framework of conventional physical and digital art. First, NFT tokens allow you to become the owner of digitized works of art. In other words, you become the rightful owner or co-owner of a digitized version of a famous painting, sculpture, music track, or anything else in the virtual space. Then, after the transaction token contains the data on your ownership and the monetary amount paid for the commodity.
For example, a digital certificate would indicate that you have acquired ownership of a work of art. For instance, we can take the sale of Morons (White) by underground artist Banksy. First, the Injective Protocol company purchased the painting. Then, the original was publicly burned after its digitalization. After that, a token was attached to the digitized artwork, containing information about the owner and the painting.
NFT tokens also allow you to support your favorite artist. You buy their creation, and with it, the possibility of sole possession of it. In other words, it’s a mutually beneficial deal: you get an exclusive only you can possess, and the artist gets a significant profit. Art never stops evolving, each century acquiring new facets. Digital art has not stopped being art but transferred to another form through new technologies.
NFT art or Crypto-art exists only on the Internet and doesn’t have its physical form. Right now, this market is mainly represented by paintings and photographs, which can’t be called great variety. But it’s all ahead. In any case, modern artists get a lot more opportunities than their predecessors. And the familiar phrase “poor artist” has long since lost its relevance. Today, figuratively speaking, you can create some work, even in Paint, and sell it as a token.
Moreover, artists can make their work on canvas and convert it into an electronic version for sale via NFT, or they can sell it immediately in digital format. And now, a few words about music: one of the first representatives of the music industry who used NFT to make a profit was the singer The Weeknd, who sold his unreleased song in an NFT auction for two million dollars. But, of course, the record will never be released on any digital platform, and the one-of-a-kind ownership belongs to the buyer.
Is NFT a New Stage of Development, and Why is It Worth Buying?
Here we should give an unambiguous, affirmative answer, if only because the growth of popularity in the technology has allowed digital artists to profit from their paintings instead of waiting for months for rare orders of digital works. NFT makes it possible to digitize unique virtual works of art using their unique code. And now, any original today can’t be confused with millions of its copies on the web. NFTs are very expensive, especially for single digital products. So, NFTs are in high demand because:
✔️ They allow you to be the sole owner of a work of art and to claim it as your own.
✔️ Allow you to become a sponsor in an exciting new industry.
✔️ Create new creative associations.
Digital technology is thus our inevitable future. So why not be pioneers and master them in their infancy? Today, there are quite a few transaction platforms: from cryptocurrency exchanges to specialized auctions. The most famous platforms are:
- Foundation
- Rarible
- OpenSea
- Binince
- SuperRare
Despite the excitement around NFT art sales, not all artists are eager to move to digital platforms due to their instability and mining of cryptocurrencies.
Conclusion
NFT technologies make it possible to digitize any art object and create interaction with it more conveniently and faster. Interaction in this context means owning, buying, selling, and confirming its originality. Tokenization adds exclusivity and value to art objects. And to date, it is a fact that this technology has already revolutionized the field in a significant way. It is still difficult to answer if NFT has a future. But we can already say, tokens may forever change the principles by which digital content works now, namely copyright.
FAQ
- What kind of things can become an NFT token?
Imagine anything in the world. And here, you can turn it into an NFT.
- If someone has made an author’s work, can he sell it directly through the platform?
Yes, of course. It’s a free world with blockchain and smart contracts; everyone here can do whatever they want. For example, you can do it on the platform if you’re a freelance artist; you can do it through a contract and stop the platform from using your token.
- When a person acquires the right to a token precisely because they bought it?
Yes, that’s right.
- Does the NFT object have to exist in reality?
That’s a more philosophical question regarding what counts as art and what doesn’t. You have a token and some pictures, and the art may not exist in the physical world, but it exists when the viewer appears. There’s a problem with the physical world: you must store that piece of art somewhere, care for it, and transport it.
You haven’t such a problem with NFT and exhibit the token as you want and sell it effortlessly. It’s elementary to prove that there can’t be a second painting like it, unlike in the physical world. If an artist claimed he would only release one such picture, then everyone can check and make sure there are no copies.
This guest post was written by our fantastic writer, Nancy P. Howard. Nancy has been working as a writing expert at Rated by Students writing company for a year. She is also webmaster at review service Top Writing Reviews. She loves travelling, photography and is always welcome to meet new people.
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