In fact, even if translated directly, I don't think you can quite understand what worthless tokens are. I'll give you a simple example, and you'll understand immediately.
If I have 100 RMB in my hand and you have 100 RMB in your hand, and I want to exchange it with you, you will think, no problem, then exchange it. Because 200 yuan belongs to the same value. Then, if the 100 in your hand has Jay Chou's signature, when I want to change the 100 in my hand, you won't change it with me, because the value of 100 in your hand may be worth 65,438+million.
This is the meaning of tokens with different values. It looks the same thing, but its value is different. Jay Chou's signature is unique.
Why has NFT received special attention from the whole science and technology circle and trend circle in recent years?
Because Christie's held an unprecedented digital art auction on March 1 1 last year, in the past, digital art was not allowed to enter the auction house for auction. A very important reason is that digital files can be easily copied, and there is no way to verify their source and authenticity.
Everyone should have seen this work on the screen by now. This work was written by an American artist named Pipper. It took him fourteen years to upload a digital artistic creation on his social network every day, so this work was auctioned at Christie's on March 1 1. The title of the work is "5000 Days", and the final auction price is $69 million.
So, before we speak today, let's give you a gift worth 69 million dollars!
I provided high-definition pictures. Please move your finger to download this picture or save it quickly.
Do you think the pictures stored in the mobile phone are exactly the same as those in the auction? The answer is that it looks exactly the same, but if we sell this picture to others today, will anyone buy it? I didn't want to buy it, just like I was going to change a hundred dollars signed by Jay Chou in your hand just now. You don't want to exchange with me because the value is different and there is no unique signature.
This is why digital art can enter the auction house with NFT technology from now on, because we can know the source and we can make it a unique creation.
The technology behind NFT has several cores. The first is of course the technology of blockchain. The technology of blockchain is not the focus of today's discussion, but it must also be briefly mentioned.
Throughout the NFT distribution, there will be a publisher role. This publisher must launch his products through some platforms above the blockchain. For example, the artistic creation just mentioned is the casting process that Christie's must cooperate with the blockchain. Therefore, it must have a platform for issuing smart contracts. This ingenious contract records that this artwork is unique in the entire blockchain. How do we verify that it is unique?
I think this is the most confusing point for everyone. Please take a closer look, clap your hands and take a closer look.
Because the blockchain has a function called ledger, it is not recorded in a centralized company host like traditional works or computers. It is not made up of one computer, but recorded by millions of computers in the whole blockchain, so this record will be thrown to different computers for recording. We call these records nodes. .
These people's creations will be recorded on different nodes. In each node, it will be written: "Today, a pair of creations produced this contract through this platform, and then left a piece in it." These blocks are called blocks, and every next transaction will be connected in series through the next block, so after each block is connected, we call it blockchain, which is the origin of blockchain.
We can imagine what would happen if someone tried to tamper with or steal this work today. Only so many computer records can be modified at the same time, but this style is actually not feasible, because there are millions of such nodes in the world recording this account book, and it is precisely because of this feature that the uniqueness of this distribution mechanism can be guaranteed.
This is not the most critical point of smart contracts. The next most important function given to NFT by smart contract is that it can be automatically executed and can continue to distribute value and benefits during the creation process.
Today, if a buyer wants to buy the NFT made by this publishing house from me, if we say that the buyer bids 1 10,000, we will pay a 2.5% handling fee for each transaction. For example, it is 25,000 yuan, but in this step, I have to pay 654.38+10,000 yuan in royalties to the publishing house, plus 875,000 yuan for the works that the buyer bought from me. These three amounts constitute the total amount distribution of the buyer's 6,543,800 transactions. In this step, I will pay the publishing house a royalty of 654.38 million yuan.
In fact, for NFT, the impact of smart contracts is definitely not just works of art. Imagine that if you are a real estate agent today, you are responsible for building houses. When the first house I built was sold to seller A, it was a traditional transaction. However, if seller A returns 10% of the transaction amount to you when selling the house to seller B, the logic of building a house will be different at this time, because you will consider how to build a house.
Not just physically, of course. As I said just now, the logic of building a house is different from the logic of trading. I don't just calculate the income when I buy a house for the first time MINUS my cost, but I hope my way can be traded continuously and even added value. Because every value-added transaction will return a certain royalty income to my account, I hope my house can be used for a long time and can be value-added for a long time. We need to think about it.
So is insurance. Now insurance must rely on the insurance policies of these insurance companies, and then we will decide whether to insure you.
Kim, it's not necessary in the future. In the future, these insurance brokers only need to create an intelligent contract, which can be constructed according to the buyer's own conditions. When something happens to you, the smart contract will be automatically allocated to your account, and even it can extend the value of your smart policy to your next generation.
The same is true for insurance practitioners. Your job now is to maintain this series of guarantees, but the future protection of the next generation can be handed over to your children, because smart contracts can automatically help you make such transactions, which will generate a continuous income.
Of course, I can think of more, such as lawyers and medical care. Every day, many people bring your smart electronic devices and may collect your sleep data.
But have you ever thought that your sleep data can actually be sold, and some research institutions need to collect a lot of people's information to connect these data to do sleep research. But your data itself is NFT, so you can sell it to a research institution that really needs your sleep data, and then you can receive a certain amount of money every time you use it for research, so this smart contract can be used in many different fields, not just artistic creation.
NFT has changed a form of the whole transaction value chain.
Anyone who has seen this video congratulates you on earning $200,000, because this 24-second video, the NFT James Dunk on the NBA No.1 Blockchain, has reached a transaction price of more than $200,000 in 2 1.
But I personally suggest that when people don't know much about the true ideology of NFT, there are many risks or technical considerations that you don't know.
The first is that a wallet with virtual currency is a wallet. The wallet of virtual currency is a bit like everyone's bank account, but the biggest difference is that because the blockchain is decentralized, it has no bank or central supervision unit to manage these virtual currencies. But through everyone's different computers, we call them nodes, or people who provide computing power in mining, we call them miners, who are saving the computing data of these virtual currencies.
Our virtual wallets are divided into three main types. The first one is called centralized wallet, which is more like a traditional institution, that is, virtual currency that can be traded in an exchange or company, and then it will provide you with a trading account.
The second is the cold wallet, which is a hardware device that is not connected to the internet at any time. It may be a USB flash drive with the passwords of your public key and private key recorded on it. When you need to access it, you can plug it into your computer or device to access your wallet.
Thirdly, it is an app or a web browser program, which may be on your mobile phone or computer. When you need it more, you can access your money with the password of your private key.
Of course, these security and convenience are different. In short, we need a place to put virtual currency.
The second part is to buy these cryptocurrencies. There are several ways, such as centralized exchange, new york Stock Exchange or foreign exchange exchange exchange. One place can be directly exchanged. For example, I am using an etheric coin, which is about 50,000 RMB. You can exchange 60,000 Taiwan dollars for a one-dollar etheric coin. You can exchange it at this exchange rate. The second is that you can also order one like buying and selling foreign exchange or stocks.
Of course, P2P method can also be used. If you feel particularly troublesome, if the people around you have ether coins, I can buy them from you. Of course, you can transfer RMB directly to me, and then I'll put the ethereum into your cryptocurrency wallet through my cryptocurrency wallet, that's all.
The third part is that we need to choose a platform to issue NFT. For example, we just said that you can build a public chain on the blockchain, like NBA Top Shot, built on the blockchain of traffic, or we can choose the mainstream Ethereum as the distribution platform, and then pay the casting fee through the cryptocurrency wallet to issue my NFT on it.
Of course, if we want the NFT to be sold, the most important thing is actually marketing. I don't know if you have heard that many celebrities have recently started to issue their own NFT. For example, the founder of twitter has turned his first twitter into an NFT and sold it on the blockchain. It has sold more than two million dollars, so this is a unique imprint accumulated for a long time. This is its time stamp and proof of its unique value.
Regarding the future development of NFT, if you go to Google, many people will say that this is simply a bubble or a scam, huh? In fact, there is nothing wrong with NFT because its value-added is too fast. There are too many people who want to profit from speculation and hype, just like the dot-tom crisis of the internet bubble in 2000, so there will be another bubble in the future.
However, this technology will still exist after the bubble and will be used by more people in different industries.
It is not only for commercial purposes, but also the diploma we will get from school in the future will be an NFT, because there are many fake diplomas and work permits now, so how to verify it can't be verified by manual methods and issuing units, but by time stamps on the blockchain?
In fact, MIT did this two or three years ago, but it will become more popular in the future, and the government will have more blockchain and NFT use.
For example, many trees can only be cut down by the government. If each tree is labeled with a unique label, the market can judge who is illegal when buying. Then it can be used as a variety of possibilities for commercial or legal purposes. Although there is a risk of bubble in the future, this technology will continue to be used now.
Maybe it makes sense to put it in the open world of the metauniverse.
Ready Player One's movies make a beautiful prediction about the future world. In the oasis world, everyone has a free role. Here, classic characters of video games with different dimensions gather together, and rich digital content and articles can also flow freely. In this flashy virtual world, losers in the real world can also become superheroes.
"Behind every dream, there is an energetic and adventurous person. They only expect surprises. "
What Hal Finney said may be the best annotation of NFT fanaticism at present.
In the next issue, I will tell you the story about the Hyperuniverse and NFT, so stay tuned.
The title map comes from Unsplash and is based on CC0 protocol.
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