Learn what is taking the digital art world by storm.
NFTs are singularly owned collectibles that can only be bought with an Ethereum wallet known as Non-fungible tokens. They are non fungible due to the inability for them to be duplicated, because they are verified by their owner on the Ethereum blockchain. Fungible items, are the opposite and able to be exchanged with someone of the same value to itself, such as a dollar bill.
As of now, the most common way of thinking of NFTs, at least in my experience has been funky digital artwork. It is mostly animated and something obscure, artwork that many people refer to as something that can be screen-shotted and duplicated at zero value. However, that is not the case. This artwork is liked to be thought of as very rare, impressive digital art that is increasingly relevant as we enter the world of blockchain. The artwork is easily traced to its creator, with a certificate to verify.
This new industry has been great to creators by giving them recognition and income, pertaining to their artwork. These NFT's can only be bought through a Ethereum wallet to ensure validity and keep under one database. When artist's release these NFT's, they decide the scarcity of the item, meaning: how many replicas they will release to the public. This determines its value, as only releasing one rare collectible is obviously much more valuable than one that exists thousands of replicas.
Now, how does the artist make money from NFT's? Firstly, the artist mints the NFT as their own and puts it on any Ethereum based NFT market for a certain price (1 ETH= 1 USD). Once the artwork is bought, the artist makes the value of the NFT and is then apart of Royalties. Not all NFTs are apart of this, however the ones that are allow creators to make an 8% return every time their NFT is sold on the market. This process is all automatic, allowing creators to sit back and continue to earn money to their crypto wallet with each exchange of their product.
The Future
Fascinatingly, the crypto world strives to make this a possibility for all valuable assets such as real estate, furniture, cars and anything else that is individually owned without replica.
Non-fungible tokens (NFT). ethereum.org. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://ethereum.org/en/nft/