User:Kavigupta/Non-fungible token

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a special type of cryptographic token that represents something unique. Unlike cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and many network or utility tokens, they are not mutually interchangeable, and thus are not fungible.

Applications
Non-fungible tokens are used to create verifiable artificial scarcity in the digital domain, as well as digital ownership, and the possibility of asset interoperability across multiple platforms.

Digital Art
Art was an early use case for NFTs, because of the purported ability of NFTs to provide proof of authenticity and ownership of digital art, which, unlike physical art, does not have a pre-existing concept of authenticity. Although an artist can sell one or more NFTs representing a work, the artist can still retain the copyright to the work represented by the NFT. NFTs representing media have been analogized to autographs.

Games
NFTs can also be used to represent in-game assets which are controlled by the user instead of the game developer. NFTs allow assets to be traded on third-party marketplaces without permission from the game developer.

History
In June 2017 CryptoPunks were released as the first non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain by American studio Larva Labs, a two-person team consisting of Matt Hall and John Watkinson. In late 2017 another project called CryptoKitties was released and went viral and subsequently raised a $12.5 million investment.

In 2018, RareBits, an NFT marketplace and exchange, raised a $6 million investment. Gamedex, a collectible cards game platform made possible by NFTs, raised a $800,000 seed round. Decentraland, a blockchain-based virtual world, raised $26 million in an initial coin offering, and had a $20 million internal economy. As of 2019, Nike holds a patent for its blockchain-based NFT-sneakers called ‘CryptoKicks’.

Dapper Labs, in partnership with the NBA, launched a beta version of their NBA TopShot collectable and tradable NFT-based app in the first half of 2020, which they had been working on since 2018. It sells tokens in packs which they say contain multimedia and data smashed together. On October 1, 2020, it was announced that they had exited the beta and opened to all fans. As of February 28, 2021, Dapper Labs was reporting over $230 million in gross sales in the app.

In February 2021, the musician Grimes sold around $6 million worth of tokens representing digital art on Nifty Gateway. Later in February of 2021, an NFT representing the meme animation Nyan Cat was sold in an internet marketplace for just under US$600000. The American digital artist Beeple's work "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" was the first NFT of an artwork to be listed at prominent auction house Christie's and sold for 69 Million USD on 11 March 2021.

The first NFT to enter auction representing a full album is Whale Shark by Clarian North, which was released on March 4, 2021. Kings of Leon's album When You See Yourself, released on March 5, 2021, had been planned to be the first musical album sold with NFT tokens.

Criticism of trading
The British AI artist Memo Akten created an online CO2 calculator to criticize the unreasonable carbon footprint for Ethereum-based NFT transactions. Another point of criticism is that the massive price increase in early 2021 might hint at an economic bubble about to burst like in the Tulip mania of the 17th century. In early 2021, a German conceptual artist combined both points of criticism by auctioning a single transparent pixel for 1 ETH and thereby emitting 125 kg of CO2. Some critics say NFTs also lead to the use of art without the creator's permission.

Standards in blockchains
Specific token standards have been created to support the use of a blockchain in gaming. These include the Ethereum ERC-721 standard of CryptoKitties, and the more recent ERC-1155 standard. Token standards also exist on other blockchains that support NFT like Bitcoin Cash and FLOW blockchain.

ERC-721
ERC-721 was the first standard for representing non-fungible digital assets on the Ethereum blockchain. ERC-721 is an inheritable Solidity smart contract standard, meaning that developers can easily create new ERC-721-compliant contracts by importing it from the OpenZeppelin library.

ERC-1155
ERC-1155 brings the idea of "semi-fungibility" to the NFT world, as well as providing a superset of ERC-721 functionality (meaning that an ERC-721 asset could be built using ERC-1155).

Bitcoin Cash SLP
"NFT1" was introduced onto the Bitcoin Cash blockchain in 2019 as part of the SLP token structure. You can use the protocol to support non-fungible tokens by minting a non-divisible token supply of 1 without a minting baton, called a simple NFT. The specification codifies a more capable type of NFT that allows grouping of many NFTs together, called NFT1.

FLOW
On the FLOW blockchain, Cadence represents each NFT as a resource object that users store in their accounts. Resources have important ownership rules that are enforced by the type system. They can only have one owner, cannot be copied, and cannot be accidentally or maliciously lost or duplicated. These protections ensure that owners know that their NFT is safe and can represent an asset that has real value.