Mapping the NFT Ecosystem
NFTs have been the hottest topic and frothiest market of 2021, with sales volumes increasing by 100x while also becoming a topic of discussion on evening talk shows. It took crypto nearly a decade to really penetrate the mainstream, but NFTs only needed a couple of years to capture people’s attention.
Now, the most public-facing element of this, at least right now, is NFTs, or ‘non-fungible tokens’, which can be applied to a broad range of products and services, and but are most notably being linked to digital art, and in particular, digital profile pictures on social networks (PFPs).
The NFT movement has now become a key growth aspect of the broader social media space, and while there are many skeptics, and many questions about the long-term viability, and value, of these digital art works, the growth of NFTs is undeniable, with Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Discord all exploring new ways to directly integrate NFT art and ownership.
So what makes NFTs so special? Their non-fungibility. Unlike cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or ethereum, non-fungible tokens represent goods or assets with unique properties and attributes, allowing them to have unique values even if they are part of the same collection.
Whether or not NFTs are actually valuable is a different matter entirely. While they don’t serve an actual purpose as of yet, generally speaking the thing that gives things value in the first place is what people are willing to pay for them. People are paying small fortunes for these NFTs so that they can establish their own identity online, and with the rise of the metaverse and as people start to exist more and more in a digital space these NFTs are only going to keep getting more valuable as time goes by.
If you’re still struggling to get your head around the NFT space, this infographic is for you. The team from Visual Capitalist recently teamed up with Next Decentrum to provide this overview of NFTs and the emerging online art space.
It could provide some valuable perspective for your planning, especially given the emergence of digital contracts and ownership.
