And there were all of these native digital artists who were only producing work on the blockchain. I think I paid £3 or £5 each, then forgot about it.Īfter a while, there started to be more movement, so I popped my head back in.
My friend said, “Here are these cute 8-bit characters that you can collect on the blockchain. Kevin Rose: It was 2017, and it was a project called CryptoPunks. GQ: First off, why did you get into NFTs? To learn more, we tapped Kevin Rose, a tech entrepreneur, podcast host, and the co-founder of Proof Collective, a private community of NFT collectors where membership passes have traded for around 100 ETH apiece, and Moonbirds, instantly one of the best-selling PFP collections of 2022. Certain items are simply more scarce, which imparts value. Think of an NFT like any collectible: deadstock Jordans, Pokémon cards, taxidermy. Members typically pool their crypto and make decisions on what to do with their funds, together.ĬC0: A type of licence that waives copyright and puts an NFT’s art in the public domain. Basically, a club but with no central leadership. Mint: The act of transforming a digital asset – a JPEG of a penguin wearing a hat, a trance song, etc –into an NFT.ĭAO: Decentralised Autonomous Organisation. Because Web3’s self-sovereignty ethos means there’s no safety net if you make a mistake, collectors are on their own when it comes to avoiding scams and finding the most promising projects. (See CryptoPunks, Bored Ape.)ĭYOR: Do Your Own Research. PFP: Picture for Profile, used to refer to a collection of NFT-linked images designed to work as Twitter avatars. Paper hands: The opposite of diamond hands: someone who bails out and sells early. If you can withstand early losses in hopes of a big payday, you’ve got diamond hands. An insult reserved for inept investors, rip-off projects, and NFT haters generally.ĭiamond hands: The ability to hold onto NFTs for the long haul.
– Jessica Klein Some basic terms and acronyms you should knowĪs if the tech underlying NFTs weren’t impenetrable enough, fans and collectors seem to speak a language all their own. Simply put: it’s the set of rules that allows true digital ownership, and is responsible for the exchange of billions of dollars – and millions of ether (ETH), Ethereum’s currency – for colourful JPEGs. Most importantly, one of the creators of CryptoKitties also cemented a token standard called ERC-721. Buyers’ enthusiasm for CryptoKitties generated enough activity to slow down transactions on the Ethereum blockchain in December 2017, demonstrating that blockchains could be used for fun, not just finance. Rare Pepes appealed to a very niche audience – digital-art and blockchain nerds – but they set a precedent for blockchain-based collectibles like the now wildly popular CryptoPunks, which in turn inspired CryptoKitties, another Ethereum-based collectible set with a gamified twist: owners could “breed” their kitties to spawn even rarer new ones with specialised traits (like fur colour). Others think NFTs will accelerate societal collapse through theft and greed – and melt the polar ice caps thanks to the insane energy demands required to store all the data required to keep the blockchain running. Some people who are bullish on NFTs think that this sort of radical transparency can save art, liberate the internet, and restore democracy. What NFTs are, fundamentally, is that record of ownership – the thing that’s owned is almost secondary. And, uh, people spent around £15 billion buying and selling these things last year. And, in some cases, they’re shockingly valuable: it’s not unheard of for certain NFTs to run to six figures. (So even if someone can copy and paste your cartoon of an ape, the real one – the only real one – is clearly and incontrovertibly yours.) Of course, NFTs aren’t just small artworks – they can serve as contracts or tickets to events or memberships in clubs. That record lives on the Ethereum blockchain – an ongoing, impossible-to-fake public ledger that shows everyone who’s ever owned the thing in question. In essence, an NFT, or non-fungible token, is just a record that someone owns something.
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