There is so much hype going on around the NFT art scene.
An artist that goes by BEEPLE sold one of his NFT art collections at Christies auction for $69 million, the first time ever a digital work of art was sold at Christies!
Kings of Leon released their newest album as an NFT with special perks, generating over 2 million in sales.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes will sell NFTs of digital artwork. “The Museum of Mahomes,” will launch March 17 on the digital art market MakersPlace. Mahomes will donate part of the proceeds to his foundation called 15 and the Mahomies as well as the Boys & Girls Clubs in Missouri.
So what is NFT art?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token… A unique digital file stored on a digital ledger called a blockchain. NFTs are not mutually interchangeable and thus are not fungible. An NFT is created by uploading a file, such as an artwork, to an NFT auction market.
Basically, it is a smart contract that is put together using bits of open source code, which anyone can find from platforms like GitHub, and used to secure that digital item. Then minted, or permanently published, into a token on a blockchain, like Ethereum.
Some sites you can use to mint an NFT are:
Any digital asset that the creator wants to make unique can become an NFT, like articles or event tickets.
Once the NFT is purchased, the owner has the digital rights to resell, distribute or license the digital asset as they please. The creator can program code for how it gets used, and write in any extra bonus’ for the purchaser. NFT creators also have the opportunity to earn royalties off of future reselling transactions.
Things to consider
So there are many uncharted territories when it comes to this digital crypto reality. There are many questions about the carbon foot print of minting an NFT, this is because cryptocurrencies and blockchain are run through an algorithm called Proof-of-Work (PoW). Things in the blockchain world are shifting and changing fast! Proof-of-Stake is happening soon.
Proof-of-Stake (PoS) concept states that a person can mine or validate block transactions according to how many coins he or she holds. This means that the more Bitcoin or altcoin owned by a miner, the more mining power he or she has.
This uses less energy, but it also allows those who hold THE MOST coins to have more power. This is less decentralized then PoW, however there are benefits that we must allow to out-weight the cons, because this is not going away. Blockchain technology is the new digital paradigm. Just like our current system was the new paradigm to the “founding fathers”.
So yeah NFT’s are like collecting digital baseball cards, and are selling for extremely high prices to people who have the crypto to buy them.
But artists can also use NFT’s to create rare one of a kind pieces for their patrons. For example, an image of an actual painting can be sold as an NFT, and with the token the purchaser receives the actual painting. Some artists are also adding bonus’ to the purchase, where you receive a video of the work being created! I really like how artists are adapting to this technology and making it work for them and their patrons!
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