NFTs for Dummies: Exploring the Benefits of Non-Fungible Tokens for Digital Art Ownership and Security
Meet Susan, an aspiring painter who wishes to conduct an online painting exhibition for all her digital artworks. However, as the exhibition is online, she is worried that her paintings won’t be secure as anyone could easily forge or replicate them. Her friend Mark came to her rescue with an idea of using Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
What are NFTs?
NFTs are a new way to turn digital assets into one-of-a-kind by creating a unique digital signature which defines the ownership of your assets. They can be bought and sold for real money, cryptocurrency, or any other asset like a Non-Fungible Token (NFT).
Non-Fungible Tokens means that they are not interchangeable, and each of them represents unique assets owned by a specific person. On the other hand, fungible tokens are interchangeable and can be divided into smaller units to form the same value. For example, a one hundred dollar bill is fungible as you can exchange it with five twenty dollar bills or two fifty dollar bills. But the painting of the Last Supper is non-fungible as it cannot be generated in bulk. Even if it is copied, it will not be authentic.
How NFTs Work
Each NFT contains distinguishable information like who owns the digital asset and who sold it, making them distinct and easily verifiable. As it is impossible to forge such a certificate, it will secure the painting’s originality.
NFTs basically create a blockchain-based digital certificate for your digital collectibles, including games, music, art, and many more. This certificate gives your artwork a unique identity. The underlying technology and the programming language used by NFTs are the same as other cryptocurrencies such as blockchain and the programming language ETH.
The majorly exists on Ethereum blockchain, a distributed public ledger that records all the transactions. However, NFTs are quite different from these cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and Ethereum are fungible tokens which means if you trade Bitcoin or Ethereum for one another, you will have the same value or item in return, basically, money. On the other hand, NFT is a unique token, therefore if you try to trade it, you may end up with something completely different in your hands.
The Rise of NFTs
Crypto Punks is a remarkable example of NFT. It enables you to buy, sell, and store 10,000 collectibles with the proof of ownership being stored on the Ethereum blockchain. After exploring NFTs work, Susan was convinced and bought NFTs for all her paintings. Due to this, her artworks were secured from any kind of forgery and also gave her artworks a particular value. This contributed to increased sales too as everyone was easily able to buy the artwork without any fear.
All in all, her exhibition was a complete success. Similarly, NFTs has proved itself to be a boon in the lives of many others like Jack Dorsey, the CEO and Co-Founder of Twitter, with his very first and famous tweet and Vignesh Sandarsen, famously known as Medicovan who bought $69.3 million worth of NFT art on people.
Conclusion
Owing to its increasing popularity, people are now willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for NFTs. NFTs have enhanced media exposure and special perks for aspiring artists like Susan on social media. This popularity of NFTs creates new opportunities for new art platforms, motivating people to buy art from internet platforms, and promoting copyright or originality of digital assets.