Who was the first person to make an NFT?
NFTs are changing the digital economy in a big way, making blockchain more popular than ever before in a new era of Web 3.
In 2014, an artist named Kevin McCoy and his business partner, Anil Dash, made the world’s first non-fungible token (NFT). The NFT was called “Quantum,” made on Namecoin, a blockchain-based platform. It was a piece of digital art that looked like a spinning cube and was meant to show how blockchain technology could be used to make unique and verifiable digital assets.
But over the next few years, several other NFTs were released on blockchains before Ethereum. Spells of Genesis, which came out in 2015, is the first blockchain-based game ever. In 2016, Rare Pepes came out and helped start the first market for crypto art.
Regrettably, these projects gained little popularity. They remained largely unknown to all but those who were well-versed in cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.
Everyday consumers didn’t start paying attention to NFTs until 2017. Around this time, the first NFT collections were put on the Ethereum blockchain. Previous blockchains made trading and transferring ownership difficult. With the Ethereum network and its smart contracts, it was possible to create tokens, program them, store them, and trade them on the blockchain. These new features made it easier to join and gave more people access.
One of the first Ethereum projects was a collection called CryptoPunks, made by Larva Labs and became a symbol of early NFT history. Because of this, many of its parts have sold for millions of dollars each.
The rise of NFTs popularity:
Two things helped drive up prices and get people interested faster. The first was the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many people to become more digitally native and connect with each other on platforms like Twitter and Clubhouse, where the NFT community has built a strong presence.
The second was Beeple. The long-time artist became an NFT pioneer when he became the first creator to sell an NFT at a major auction house. When his “Everyday: The First 5000 Days” sold at Christie’s for an eye-popping $69 million on March 11, NFTs could no longer be ignored.
The sale made news worldwide, and soon after, more sales happened. Stay Free by Edward Snowden sold for $5 million in April. In June, $11 million was paid for CryptoPunk #7523. “Right-click and Save As Guy” by XCopy sold for $7 million in December.
The 2021 boom was mostly driven by digital art and collectables, but many other uses of NFT technology that came out around the same time also drew attention to the space. There are NFT-based virtual worlds, such as Decentraland and CryptoVoxels, and NFT-based blockchain games, like Axie Infinity and Zed Run.
As the number of people using it has grown, so have the sales and prices. This led to an explosion of interest from companies and brands looking to launch their own NFT projects and capitalise on market growth. Popular foods and drinks have been turned into NFTs by companies like Coca-Cola and Taco Bell. Other brands, like Hot Wheels and Adidas, have started selling NFTs that are linked to their physical products. There are reports that NFT collections from brands like Gucci are selling for much more than the price of their most popular product.
NFTs now and in the future
NFTs are still in their early stages. Since the technology has a lot of different uses, no one knows where NFTs will go from here.
NFTs could play a role in the future metaverse, mainly by acting as digital copies of your own physical things. This could also happen with your digital avatar. If NFTs are used to represent items in a video game on a single blockchain, items and skins can be moved between all games that use that blockchain.
But some doubters say that NFTs really don’t have a future. Instead, they say they are just a passing trend that may become a small part of a larger market, like collectable card games and other old things people like to keep. What predictions about the future are accurate? It’s honestly hard to say. Since NFTs are still so new, the only way to be sure is to wait and see. Where NFTs stand now is likely to look vastly different quickly.
