A quick NFT overview
A mind-map and some details.
Last week I made a mind-map with an overview of cryptocurrency in general, but lately, a certain type of cryptocurrency is getting a lot of attention, namely NFTs.
But why?
Most people understand by now that cryptocurrency has the big potential of decentralizing value in general.
But along with this, comes a problem - ownership. How do you handle ownership in the future?
How can you decentralize ownership? Is that even a thing? How can you actually “own“ digital products? How do you guarantee that you are the sole owner of some particular product?
We’re not talking only about digital products like digital paintings or music, we also talk about in-game items.
If you play an online game, the in-game items are not really yours, they are the property of the game’s company. If the company decides to discontinue an item, they will just do so. If the company decides that they don’t like your political affinity, they can just ban you and therefore you will lose all your items.
Besides decentralizing the in-game items through the use of the blockchain, you can also be granted ownership of truly unique items.
The name NFT stands for non-fungible token. That means that any NFT is one of a kind! For sure, its utility or value can vary a lot, but that’s basically how collectibles work anyway.
Some problems
There is a big issue with plagiarized content. It is pretty easy to plagiarize someone’s work and just create an NFT out of it.
How can the original owner contest that? All he can do is remix the original work and put it out there as NFT as well and compete with his own content.
Some people argue that there’s no real value in owning digital art. That it can be easily copied and moved around.
But downloading on your PC a picture with Mona Lisa doesn’t make it yours. So, while you can make a high-resolution screenshot of digital art, that doesn’t make it yours.
What’s next?
For sure, all this hype drives the adoption of more NFTs. As more and more NFTs get popular, there will be more marketplaces, minting platforms, and overall projects to make this possible.
You can even watch out for projects that build upon those NFTs. For example, what if you could race cars on the streets of Decentraland?
These are Layer 2 games or experiences. These are basically building upon the original infrastructure and add new experiences. It gives your NFT more utility, basically.
In the meantime, take a look at this mind-map that covers a little bit of everything from this field.
Practice:
Think about what you would love to collect.
Think about how can it be made an NFT.
Search online if there is already a market for that.