What is an NFT?
Casually speaking, NFTs are digital artworks that can be bought and sold online. More precisely, Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are unique identifiers recorded on a blockchain. They help establish ownership of an associated asset.
Read MoreWhile NFTs can be used to track ownership of physical artworks, they're especially useful to makers of digital artworks, which can easily be replicated. Consequently, the artworks minted as NFTs are mostly familiar digital files such as JPGs, GIFs, and MP4s.
For the most part, you can display art NFTs anywhere you can display a digital photo or video— on smartphones, in digital frames, on TV screens, projectors, and so on. You can also use them online as a social media profile picture or an avatar in virtual spaces such as Zoom, Decentraland, and Cryptovoxels.
What is happening in the NFT market?
The market for NFTs exploded in 2021 driven by some astonishing auction results at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips. Trading in NFTs of all kinds—including collectibles, gaming items, and plots in the metaverse—rose 21,000% to US $17 billion.
By the end of that year, they constituted 16% of the global art market, with artists, galleries, and new platforms rushing to participate.
Among the most lucrative NFT projects in 2021 were Lava Labs' Cryptopunks, Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days, 10,000 profile pics (PFPs) by The Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Pak's Merge.
Who are the major players in the NFT space?
Established contemporary artists who were quick to experiment with NFTs include Urs Fischer, Damien Hirst, Simon Denny, Cai Guo-qiang, and Takashi Murakami.
Among the first major galleries to embrace the technology were PACE Gallery, König Galerie, Lehmann Maupin, Asia Art Archive, and Gajah Gallery.
