One article to understand what is NFT and its application

foreword

I saw the community activity essay about NFT on Matters, and I thought it was interesting to write one, but this one is mainly about the introduction and application of NFT, as well as my own views on NFT. I will write another one in the future. How to buy your first NFT, and how to make your own NFT and auction it, so that everyone can start playing in the NFT world! (But it may only be this one QQ)

What is NFT?

The full name of NFT is Non-Fungible Token. What is Non-Fungible Token? Since there is a "non" word, does it mean that there are still homogenized tokens?

First of all, the token referred to here is actually a kind of cryptocurrency. Just like the New Taiwan dollar in our hands and the tokens in the video game square, it can be regarded as a kind of currency. As long as these currencies exist, they will naturally have their value.

The so-called homogenized tokens are like New Taiwan dollars and US dollars. Suppose I borrow you a 50 yuan coin and ask you to pay me back 50 yuan next week. What I expect is that you pay me back 50 yuan equivalent coins, and I don't care. Did you pay me back the 50 yuan coin I borrowed from you? In other words, in the homogenized token, your 50 yuan and the new 50 yuan that the bank exchanged for me are different 50 yuan, but they are exactly the same token with the same value.

Non-fungible tokens are completely different. You can think of coins as paintings. There are a series of paintings by a master painter. Each work can be called a master's painting, but each A painting cannot be repeated, it is an independent new work. As long as different people appreciate and buy different paintings, it gives the painting value, so each painting has its own independent value.

It can be said that NFT is a concept, each token is independent when it is created, and can even have its own independent value!

Types of NFTs

Although it was said before that NFT is a token, maybe you may think of coins like bitcoin, ether, and new Taiwan dollar; banknotes, but in fact, the establishment of NFT is usually used for Store multimedia digital assets, such as pictures, sounds, texts, or even an image, and because it is so flexible, making NFTs becomes a very creative thing, and gradually create with artists, musicians, etc. The circle of creators established connections and opened the era of NFT frenzy.

Next, I will give some examples. By understanding the different types of NFTs, it should help us better understand what NFTs are playing.

Text NFT - Loot

This is super cool! It is an NFT in the form of ultra-minimal text with white characters on a black background. There are only three descriptions of Loot on the official website:

The translation is probably "Loot will randomly generate adventurer equipment and store it on the blockchain. Statistics, images and other features are omitted for everyone to interpret. Feel free to use Loot in any way you want. ”

This is what Loot looks like, each "Loot" is a set of combination packs, containing 8 kinds of equipment, namely: Weapons, Chest Armor, Helmet Head Armor, Waist Armor, Foot Armor, Gloves Hand Armor, Necklaces, Rings.

In other words, it can be thought of as a game. Loot provides an equipment name with only a text description. The rest of the game content and the appearance of the equipment are left to the user's imagination.

Musical NFT - NFT released by singer-songwriter Huang Mingzhi

More and more artists are also starting to make their own songs into NFTs and put them on the secondary market for trading, but it is different from buying albums and buying copyrighted music. In traditional physical music or digital music, only one album, Only the owner of a CD or authorized music can hear the music of these creators, while the music-based NFT puts the songs into the blockchain. The feature of the blockchain is that all content is public, that is Say, everyone can listen to the song anytime, anywhere, but the data on the blockchain will show which buyer currently owns the song.

Tokens for a song? What would that be? Here is an NFT released by singer-songwriter Huang Mingzhi to experience it:

( https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/9572774013177171971115635293488127638016027307193824706556743695997649236787649)

After entering Opensea, you will see a window with a player, you can play the song by pressing the button! You will also see Owned by next to it, indicating who owns the NFT now. You can even click on the owner's address to see what other NFTs are collected in the owner's wallet.

Graphical NFT- CryptoKitties Obsessed Cat Game

Image-type NFTs can be said to be the pioneers of NFTs. As early as 2017, the "CryptoKitties Obsessive Cat Game" (cryptokitties.co) appeared. This game is like a similar card game, and each card has a unique The cat owner can decide whether to keep it for collection or resell it, and even if the owner has more than two, they can mate and breed by themselves to produce a new cat, which caused a great sensation at the time. Let Ethereum be blocked, causing the transfer transaction to be delayed.

After this year's wave of NFT frenzy hit, later image-based NFTs appeared in various types, including those who made stickers, limited signature models of idol stars, and some painters who made their own paintings. It can be said that there are hundreds of ways to play, but there are many fake products issued by non-originators circulating on the Internet. If you are really interested in buying, remember to check more.

Film NFT - Director Wong Kar Wai In the Mood for Love – Moment

Director Wong Kar-wai extracted about 92 seconds of video clips from his 2000 work In the Mood for Love and released it as NFT:

( https://opensea.io/assets/0x6c1c637ec31081ea67ca4c909e04c3273f88f640/0)

And along with this NFT, the work guarantee issued by Zedong Treasury and personally signed by Wang Jiawei was attached. In the end, the NFT of this film was sold for 3,436.05 ETH, which was about more than 15 million Taiwan dollars at that time. With a short MP4 file, there are also such crazy investors who are willing to pay a high price to buy it!

Game Asset NFT - Blockchain Game (GameFi)

In the last part, I want to introduce the NFT of game assets. This part is related to the later GameFi boom. Those who have played games must know that when playing games, in addition to earning game currency, if it is a game of fighting monsters and practicing exercises, they will definitely There are game assets such as props, equipment, pets, etc. For blockchain games, these game assets are also a kind of NFT. Now many games can allow these in-game assets to be exported in the form of NFT, allowing players to freely If you can make a profit from trading with each other on the high-level market, it will be the so-called "Play to Earn" model.

This picture is currently (2021/11/10) of the blockchain game tokens that are in the top 100 encrypted market capitalization. Only four of them can be seen that this field is a very new part of the entire district fast chain. Because this field It is still very new. Most of the current blockchain games are just modifying the existing games on the market, and then throwing it on the blockchain. Whether it is game experience or game content, many of them are quite good. Bad... For example, pet card type games need to be uploaded to the chain for each operation of the player, which means that a handling fee will be deducted for each action, and it seems that these games do not play the blockchain well However, because this field is very new, there are many new game projects appearing every day. I believe that it will not be long before I can see the blockchain that makes me feel interesting. Play it!

My thoughts on NFTs

When trading these works in the traditional market, as mentioned in Huang Mingzhi's NFT song, brokers who transfer several lots in the middle may draw commissions, banks will also earn handling fees, and then some international exchange rates, and the rest earned The money has to be recovered by the Internal Revenue Service. If you buy NFT directly, you probably only need to pay the transaction fee on the blockchain.

The characteristic of the blockchain is that all content is public, that is to say, everyone can listen to this song anytime, anywhere, so people who buy it like this are not fools? That's not necessarily true, we can look at this matter from many angles:

From an artistic point of view, it is a work of art with images and sounds. People who like it will naturally want to collect it, and then create the value of NFT.

From the perspective of fans, it is a kind of support. The advantage of this kind of support is that even if we need to do cross-border transactions, almost all the money we pay can go into each other's pockets, and some creators will do some activities to make purchases. Fans of these NFTs have additional benefits, which in turn increases the frequency of interaction between creators and their fans, and fundamentally adds some additional value to these NFTs.

From the perspective of investors and creators, we will find that in the past, if you want to buy and sell high-priced artworks, you must go to the auction venue to check the authenticity of the artworks. Not only the viewing time is limited, but also if you want to discover potential new creators. It is extremely difficult, because the threshold is too high for newcomers to join. However, if you buy NFT, you can check the data on the chain to know whether it is genuine or not. You don’t have to go to various places in the world to participate in auctions. You can participate in the auction by turning on the computer. It is actually quite touching that you only need to make your own NFT to be able to show your work to the world.

Since NFT is so good, are there any corresponding disadvantages? I think there are quite a few:

If it is a physical painting, we can feel the temperature of the author's brushstrokes. The NFT is separated by a layer of screen, which is relatively difficult to feel, and the artwork is of course not limited to 2D. The 3D three-dimensional artwork may be able to be displayed in the NFT. However, the visual experience must be very different from the physical artwork.

If this work is special, such as wood carving or large-scale installation art, the smell of wood cannot exist on NFT at all, and there is no way for us to further interact with the NFT version of large-scale installation art.

That is to say, in terms of sensory experience, NFT can be said to be a complete failure compared with anything physical, but perhaps NFT can play its own way. NFT is a digital asset. Since the asset is digital, it may change its appearance over time. It must be cool to make yourself a work of art that looks a lot like "living"! Anyway, with the development of NFT for a long time, we will definitely see more interesting things in the future, so let's wait and see!

Original link ITechNote technology essay