5 Reasons to Create NFT Art (If You Haven’t Already)

Still getting to grips with NFTs? Here's five facts to help you understand the evolution and where the market is headed

Back in early 2021, the NFT (non-fungible token) universe took the creative world by storm with million-dollar sales of digital works to anonymous collectors. Independent artists, often creatives trying to stay afloat, were astonished by the surge of a new market that allows you to encrypt or tokenize art. Some bet big, like buying a lottery ticket or placing chips in a casino.

As months have passed, the NFT market has been growing, consolidating, and becoming increasingly fashionable among artists and celebrities who in turn give the market more weight.

Although it still seems cloaked in delirium, eccentricity, and also moral quandary, a range of variables indicate that —although volatile—this format may be headed for increased prosperity and popularity. Here are the five keys to understanding these signs of success.

1. Google signed up to support the NFT market

This news had a massive impact on the world of cryptocurrencies, and therefore also on cryptoart, in recent months.

Back in September 2021, Forbes shared the news that Google Cloud signed a deal with Dapper Labs, who develop blockchain for digital gaming and digital. They're behind the blockchain Flow, one of the largest NFT platforms, which allows you to create, exchange, buy and sell NFTs without having to go through an intermediary.

The deal aims to promote Flow’s scalability, or in other words, to make it more productive and profitable. Flow currently processes about a million transactions per week. Google will use its cloud service to help increase processing volume. According to Forbes, the deal has been set up to last for several years, which also increases expectations.

Google has always been associated with innovation and the future, and this move lends credibility to the volatile crypto universe, while also suggesting that growth will be sustained. It's arguably a pretty big blow to NFT's non-believers.

2. The discovery of NFTs' sentimental value

While the purely financial motivation behind NFTs kept romantic onlookers on the sidelines, experiments by major pop culture personalities have brought the phenomenon closer to new audiences.

NFTs began to reveal their sentimental worth when pop icons enabled their multitudinous fans to buy something unique and personal, with certified authenticity. It’s now easier to understand why someone would tokenize a letter or a stamp. Neither paper nor lines of code have a particularly high intrinsic value, however, if what they represent makes someone’s heart beat faster, then there’s a new avenue to explore.

Some of the items pop collectors are now pining after are starting to include things that stir massive emotions for many people:

- The video of Britney and Madonna kissing at the 2003 MTV Awards.

- A series of computerized animations of Leo Messi created around the time of his surprise move from FC Barcelona to PSG.

- A selection of historic CNN live news broadcasts, including the announcement of the winner of the US presidential elections.

- The original file for TIME magazine’s best-selling cover of all time: Space Exploration, January 19, 1959.

- The original source code for the World Wide Web, created by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee.

People are now beginning to speculate about personal art files with massive value. For example, the first mobile phone recording of the precise moment when a pop star came up with a tune that went on to become a hit. Or the design sketches for developing platforms that became major, like MySpace or Facebook.

3. bitcoin to Crown: the emergence of new cryptocurrencies

bitcoin’s sudden collapse when Elon Musk announced Tesla would no longer accept it back in May 2021 showed many people that currency stability could not depend on something as volatile as a single company’s decisions, or the ideas of an eccentric personality.

Although bitcoin recovered from this nearly fateful blow, other currencies and platforms have since emerged looking to conquer more conservative audiences, who found the constant adrenaline rush of the bitcoin market entirely unappealing.

This has led to the creation of currencies with new consensus protocols, like Crown, a platform with its own exchange value that aims to create a self-sustaining ecosystem and decentralized governance. These platforms create constant user rewards, which counter the peaks habitual to other currencies.

These small but stable rewards are generated by creating blocks, validating transactions, and helping to maintain network security.

They also translate into more conventional and tangible offerings. For example, Crown offers users free premium Netflix and Spotify memberships, refunds a percentage of all purchases made using the currency, and sends users a card that resembles a normal debit card (accepted by an increasing number of stores), as well as other benefits like VIP airport access across the globe.

4. Measures aimed at making cryptocurrencies more sustainable

History will show whether declared intentions to make cryptocurrencies more sustainable are real or just greenwashing to ease the conscience of people who wish to carry on investing in them. But blockchain users are starting to take sides on the voracious energy consumption involved in generating cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Some simply deny that the amount of energy consumed is as high as reported, while others have already announced specific measures to reduce it.

In fact, Google justified its alliance with Flow by expressing its desire to help the company become more sustainable as it grows. Although some experts claim this is impossible, many others are waiting to find out if Google is capable of surprising the world once again.

5. Continued epic growth

As months pass, the role of NFT art in the arrival of a supposed new era is becoming increasingly significant. Now known as crypto-natives, many of the first users define themselves as libertarians and see the NFT universe as the origin of private digital property.

The potentially epic nature of the issue lies in the fact that many people in the sector are convinced that when governments inevitably lose their unique power to coin money and protect property, people will place more trust in the implacable mathematics of blockchain networks over nation-states.

Whether they’re visionaries or over-optimistic about economic digitization remains to be seen.

A quick review: What is an NFT?

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are a piece of encrypted code given to a digital work, identifying it as unique, and therefore giving it value on the art market.

This tokenization involves registering the information that unequivocally identifies the work, including the name of the author, year of creation, category, estimated value, and other information needed to faithfully identify the work and its authenticity. An NFT is what the collector acquires when they buy a piece of work.

An NFT is highly secure and cannot be copied, which, for example, allows people to identify the original copy of a digital artwork. Most NFT certificates are created using Ethereum, a blockchain, and sold using a cryptocurrency called Ether. This has profoundly transformed the art universe.

Want to find out more about new languages? Learn the basics of programming and discover how to develop, draw and animate images and text with code. Creative Coder Bruno Imbrizi provides an introduction to new creative opportunities in his course: Creative Coding: Making Visuals with JavaScript.

English version by @studiogaunt.

You may also like:

- How Can Artists Tokenize Their Work and Enter the New Crypto Art Market?
- 10 Tips for Selling Your Digital Artwork on NFT Marketplaces
- 10 Female Crypto Artists to Keep an Eye On
- What Are NFTs, and How Are They Transforming Digital Art?