Between 20, the number of NFT companies and projects grew considerably – there was plenty of money to be made.Īs with anything you buy, you need or require a marketplace to frequent, browse, and eventually purchase your items from. This obviously raised a few eyebrows and brought NFTs even more attention. And what exactly is CryptoKitties? It’s simple: you buy, breed, and trade digital cats as NFTs inside the blockchain.Īnd while that might sound completely nuts to most people, Axiom Zen was so successful that it spawned a separate company, Dapper Labs, and managed to secure $15 million in funding from high-roller investors like Google and a16z. This little project, the brainchild of Axiom Zen, launched in 2017 right when crypto was enjoying massive highs and it quickly became so popular that it began slowing down the Ethereum blockchain. One of the most well-known and first ultra-popular NFTs was the CryptoKitties collection. This cemented the idea or, at least, the reality of NFTs into the collective hive mind. Whatever momentum the concept had appeared to double or triple in magnitude, helped no end by extensive media coverage from major news sources like CNN, Fox, The Daily Mail, Coindesk, and The BBC. In and around 2018/19, NFTs really took off. The Explosion of NFTs – Marketplaces, Infrastructure & Games Specifically, NFTs are handled by Ethereum’s ERC721 standard which was designed to track the ownership and movements of NFTs inside the Ethereum blockchain. You can buy and sell your NFTs using cryptocurrency like Ethereum or BTC but an NFT itself is not a cryptocurrency it just works, lives, and is protected by the same technology that powers the Ethereum blockchain. Only in the context of NFTs, the artwork is digital assets created by people you have mostly never heard of before – although plenty of celebs have jumped on the NFT hype train to make some fast bucks. They view them in the same light as art collectors view auctions of famous paintings. This is why many investors are getting excited about NFTs. You can never physically hold an NFT or Ethereum but you can sell them and convert the proceeds into cash. Are NFTs The Same As Cryptocurrency?Īn NFT, like BTC or Ethereum, is just a set of digital codes with value added to it. The Ethereum blockchain is next to impossible to exploit or hack. And with blockchains, your asset is very safe. No one else can own these assets because you have the unique token ID associated with your wallet – this proves you are the proper owner of it.

If you buy an NFT or some Ethereum coins, their unique token is associated with your wallet and your wallet only. Each individual token, either the cryptocurrency Ethereum or an NFT, has its own unique token ID that acts as proof of ownership. This blockchain, like the Bitcoin blockchain, runs on a ledger. Most NFTs are run through the Ethereum blockchain. If you have all of these things, you have yourself a non-fungible token.

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