Trainee journalist Ivan
With the explosion of the concept of "metaverse", the infrastructure technology in the metaverse- NFT (Non-fungible token), that is, "non-homogeneous token", has also exploded.
In simple terms, NFTs refer to a class of unique digital assets whose ownership is transferred on the blockchain and have the characteristics of "irreplaceable, unique, and traceable".
Formally, this feature makes NFTs and blockchains act like a "bridge" – connecting and projecting assets in the real world into the metaverse, retaining their economic value and confirming ownership of digital assets. This is because through blockchain technology, each NFT has a unique string of numbers, and every time it changes hands, it will be automatically written to the blockchain, and once written, it cannot be modified. The transparency of the transaction process and the immutable characteristics have avoided the occurrence of counterfeiting to a certain extent.
Metaverses and NFTs, which are interdependent, create a more realistic virtual experience for users.
In early December, the NFT work fetched another sky-high price – "The Merge" by artist Pak sold for $91.8 million (about 590 million yuan) at the auction of NFT trading platform Nifty Gateway.
（《The Merge》来源：Nifty Gateway)
This work is experimental in nature. This work is not traded in Ether as other NFT artworks do, but requires the purchase of tokens called "mass", which can be combined into dynamic NFT artworks, so each collection will be different, depending on the buyer's "mass" tokens combined, the more you buy, the more you merge, the larger the work.
Each buyer can purchase currency an unlimited number of times during the auction period, with a starting price of $575 (about 3680 yuan) per currency, with an increase of $25 every 6 hours. The auction was purchased by more than 28,000 buyers for a total of approximately US$91.8 million (approximately RMB590 million), marking the first time that digital artwork has been sold at a progressive auction.
The "new myth" of non-replicable properties into art collections
The NFT-based crypto art market has been the hottest topic lately.
Due to the anti-counterfeiting advantages of the NFT itself, it is widely loved by artists, coupled with the transparency of the transaction process, the convenience of pure network transactions and low transaction costs, which also accelerates the development of the collectibles field. Therefore, although in theory all goods can be cast into NFTs, at present, NFT products are still mainly based on digital creation content and physical artwork.
But after purchasing NFT artworks, the works belong entirely to the buyer, and no one else can own them? The answer is no. NFT technology does not prevent digital works from being copied and circulated by others, it can only ensure that the purchaser is a recognized owner of the work in the market, so these digital works will still be copied and circulated in the market after being purchased.
Before The Merge, the top NFT art price was Everydays: The First 5000 Days, created by Beeple.
（《Everydays: The First 5000 Days》来源：The Verge)
On March 12, 2021, christie's, one of the world's leading art auction houses, the virtual digital work was auctioned for $69 million (about 440 million yuan). This not only allowed Beeple to set a record for the third highest price of a living artist's sold works, but also set a new record for the highest price of digital art auctions and online special auctions.
The coin circle rejoiced, and the NFT completely broke the circle.
It seems that in the NFT market, the transaction amount of any painting can reach millions of yuan, or even sky-high prices. While many have questioned its value, there are still more and more investors who are investing in it, hoping to get a piece of the action in this emerging market.
2021 is considered the "first year of the NFT", and the trading volume has exploded. According to data analyst DappRadar, from the third quarter of last year to the third quarter of this year, the quarterly sales of NFTs on various platforms have soared from $28 million to $10.7 billion (about 68.5 billion yuan), an increase of more than 380 times, a record high.
According to Reuters, the five most popular areas of NFT include sports, meta-universes, games, public goods, collectibles and artworks. As of the end of October, the top two NFT sales in the past month were collectibles and works of art, especially collectibles, which reached a figure of about $330,000. Art sales were also around $76,000, more than double the number three public goods.
As cryptocurrencies are blockchain technology products, NFT purchases also need to be made on an exclusive platform. There are two types of transactions, auction and fixed-price sales.
At present, there are more than 10 NFT trading platforms in the world, the largest of which is OpenSea, which has auctioned works by Japanese modern artist Takashi Murakami and American digital artist Beeple. In the third quarter of this year, of the $10.7 billion in NFT sales, more than $6.4 billion was traded on OpenSea, accounting for about 60% of market sales.
(Screenshot of Opensea trading platform)
It's very different at home and abroad
NFTs have broken the circle overseas. On international NFT trading platforms such as OpenSea, users can upload their own works, cast them into NFT works, without review, only need to pay part of the casting fee, and can be resold on the platform.
On various NFT trading platforms in China, ordinary users generally cannot upload works directly, and the platform party will communicate with the IP party or artist in advance about what kind of products are on the shelves, and they need to be reviewed.
This distinction stems from differences in application technology. OpenSea and other platforms are based on public chains, and China's NFT trading platforms, such as Alibaba and Tencent's products, are mainly based on the alliance chain of enterprises, and the alliance chain and the alliance chain are not connected to each other.
At the same time, in view of the state's ban on coin speculation, the domestic NFT market has also changed.
On October 23, the words "NFT" disappeared from the inner page of the Alipay Mini Program "Ant Fan Grain" and Tencent's NFT distribution platform "Magic Core", and was replaced by "Digital Collection".
Ant Chain said, "We resolutely oppose all forms of digital collection speculation, resolutely resist any form of illegal acts in the name of digital collections, which is actually virtual currency-related activities; resolutely resist any form of malicious speculation on the price of digital collection commodities, and use technical means to ensure that commodity prices reflect the reasonable needs of the market; resolutely resist any form of digital collection for equity transactions, standardized contract transactions and other illegal acts, and oppose the financial productization of digital collections." ”
(Source: Ant Chain Sina Weibo screenshot)
It is reported that the Alipay Mini Program "Ant Chain Fan Grain" was once one of the hottest NFT distribution platforms in China, and has issued more than dozens of copyrighted NFT works since its launch. In its previous official science popularization, AntChain emphasized that "NFTs and virtual currencies and other homogeneous tokens are essentially different, supported by the actual value of digital goods, and do not have any monetary attributes such as payment functions."
In addition, in the Meta-Universe Art Exhibition launched by Taobao APP on October 18, the event showed that 8 brands provided 8 digital collectibles, but the word "NFT" was no longer in its official introduction.
Tencent Magic Core was also regarded as the first "NFT" trading platform in China, and its previous batches of works clearly showed the "NFT" generated based on various cultural IP and combined with Tencent Zhixin Chain. But now its introduction has been changed to "The first digital collection trading APP in China".
The domestic NFT market is not yet standardized, many NFT platforms are almost in accordance with their own imagination to grow freely, and can not give full play to the value of the NFT itself, so supervision does not mean to hinder development, but the necessary foundation for more orderly development in the future.
EDIT: Captain