A Brief History of NFT (Non-Fungible Token)

Qualified Intellectual Deed, or non-fungible token (NFT for short) as it is popularly called, is a unit of data stored in a digital ledger called a blockchain, which confirms that a digital asset is unique and therefore not interchangeable.

With the pandemic process, digitalization has affected everyone and every sector. In this process, crypto assets became more popular day by day. We also started to encounter unusual concepts and one of them is NFT (Non-Fungible Token). To briefly explain the term token; It is the digital transfer of everything tangible or intangible. For example, you have invested in a ruby token. This token can represent its real-life physical form. For another example, you can tokenize the items in your collection as a unique asset with the ERC-721 standard, store them digitally, send them to someone else, or sell these items.

Some Early NFT Examples

Many people associate NFTs with Ethereum. However, the emergence of NFTs predates Ethereum technology. The first NFT experiments appeared with “Colored Coins” on the Bitcoin network. These Colored Coins represent a multitude of assets. It has multiple uses, including many assets such as real estate, coupons, issuing shares of any company, and subscriptions.

However, Colored Coins had some disadvantages. For example, 3 people assume that 100 Colored Coins represent 100 company shares. However, if even one of the participants did not accept this situation, the whole system would collapse.

It also featured comments from famous figures in the crypto market such as Yoni Assia, Vitalik Buterin, Lior Hakim, and Semen Rosenfeld we are familiar.

It was then built on the “Rare Pepes” blockchain with illustrations of Pepe the Frog on the Bitcoin counterparty system.

A series of Nadir Pepes, one of the important rings of meme culture, was sold on eBay and live auctioned in New York.

The first Ethereum-based NFT work is CryptoPunks with its unique feature, the 10,000 collection series. It is a project inspired by the pioneers of Bitcoin in the 1990s. CryptoPunks, the first collection series, can be used with wallets such as MetaMask. It also has an on-chain marketplace that lowers the barrier of entry to interact with NFTs.

CryptoPunks is one of the top brands thanks to its limited NFTs and very early adopter community. On the other hand, it is one of the plus features that the works are created on the Ethereum network and can work with marketplaces and wallets.