NFT- The Ultimate Future of Digital Currency

 NFT- The Ultimate Future of Digital Currency

What is NFT?

Before delving deep into the necessities of NFT development services, one must be wondering: what is an NFT?  Well, to explain in a very lucid language one can say that an NFT refers to tokens that are basically non-fungible meaning they can’t be substituted or interchanged and only one person owns the original. NFTs are digital assets and can be used in various ways or in fields to certify ownership over any particular property be it music, art, sport, tweets, memes, games, etc. It might sound completely unbelievable but the founder of Twitter sold one tweet for a whopping $3 million!! The functioning of NFT is almost like a cryptographic token but unlike Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrencies, it resists mutual interchangeability. The transaction records of NFTs are permanent and go through multiple verifications and prohibit deletion or variations; NFT doesn’t give copyright but digital boasting right. Also, NFTs neither offer any cash flow in the market nor are real assets. For instance, an artist with NFT for his/her creation can achieve ownership rights for the creation and can easily access the international market and claim benefits. It also has a feature where you get paid a percentage every time the NFT is sold or transferred from one hand to another.

How to use NFTs?

It requires one to sign up at the very beginning followed by the installation of a digital wallet to store NFTs. A user has the full liberty to choose payment tokens as the fee for his/her works. The next step requires listing items for sale and thereafter choosing a bid either for a fixed price or an auction. 

Features of NFT Marketplace Development:

  • Transparency is a prominent feature in the NFT platform. The bug-free payment process offers a very smooth transaction.
  • Smart Contracts are implemented here with digital signatures to prevent fraud activities.
  • Decentralization enables data to be copied and distributed to various blockchain networks.
  • Low traffic congestion.
  • The in-built security secured by private keys protects from transaction loss.

Features required for NFT marketplace:

  • Shop front: NFT shop front should contain important details about any item like bids, owners, price history and preview.
  • Filters: Like any other shopping sites, filters are very much required here as well to help buyers select items through listing status, category or payment method.
  • Wallet: NFT marketplace should have a wallet system to store and exchange tokens easily.

Now let’s have a look at some popular NFT blockchain platforms;

  • Ethereum: One of the most popular platforms of NFT. This blockchain was the first to create an NFT as ERC-721 standard. The best feature of Ethereum is that the transaction history is publicly verifiable so it definitely gets very easy to settle ownership history. Also, tokens remain available for sale around the clock.
  • Flow: It is one of the rapid and decentralized blockchains meant for the new age of applications, games and digital assets.
  • Tezos:  It is one open-source blockchain platform which supports the development of market places using LIGO smart contract languages.
  • Rarible: Rarible was the world’s first designed community owned NFT marketplace. Holders of RARI also enjoy governance rights with the ability to vote.

NFTs have surely impressed mankind but what about the Earth? Is the Earth happy?

The rise of NFTs has brought a division in the art community where one kind is happy with the massive financial gains and the other condemns it to be the earth-killer. According to the estimation of Digiconomist, the carbon footprint caused by a single transaction of Ethereum is approximately 33.4 kg CO2 and equivalent to 74,000 VISA transactions, but artist Memo Akten claims the footprint to be consisting of 48 kg CO2. Now the question obviously arises if it is justifiable to sell any art in exchange for the massive emission of carbon footprint.

What is the way out for “whataboutism” fallacy?

Many are not yet ready to accept the environmental hazards associated with it alone, instead, they prefer arguing on different other carbon-emitting activities from day to day life. It is wiser if we try to reduce individual carbon footprint because our greatest power as a consumer resides in our purchasing choices and introduction to “sustainable items” is the fine result of such wise thought. Therefore, large-scale sustainability by bringing forth decarbonization within big industries, as well as individual sustainability, stands as the need of the hour.

Switch to lower-carbon NFTs?

The high energy intensity of blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin is controlled by the energy-hungry Proof-of-Work (PoW) and the alternative to this would be Proof-of-Stake (PoS) which doesn’t rely on much computing power and consumes less electricity. Tezos, Symbol, or Polygon use the system of PoS and that’s why if we look at the annual energy consumption by Tezos for example, we find it to be 0.00006 Twh, whereas Ethereum consumes 33.57 Twh. It is believed that by 2021 Ethereum will launch its PoS Ethereum network, popularly called Ethereum 2.0. “That would essentially mean that Ethereum’s electricity consumption will literally over a day or overnight drop to almost zero,” says Michel Rauchs, a research affiliate at Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance.

Many are still skeptical about this decision made by Ethereum; Ethereum needs to convince people initially. “If not everyone agrees to that change, you’re going to be in a situation where the network just falls apart, it can literally break into multiple chains if not everyone runs the same software. That’s the downside of trying to upgrade public blockchains.” says economist Alex de Vries.

Another potential solution can be a building of “layer” on top of existing blockchains to push transactions “off-chain” saving much energy consumption and the Bitcoin Lightning Network, 2018 is one fine example of a “second layer”.

Regardless of the type of blockchains, electricity consumption cannot be solely blamed for the carbon footprint. With the increasing numbers of cryptocurrency miners and stakers, the usage of computer hardware is also rising to lead to extractive impact. There is an ongoing search happening to make cleaner cryptocurrencies by migrating to less polluting platforms.

1

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.