A brief timeline

2009- Bitcoin

Bitcoin arrives and introduces the idea of a digital currency that doesn't need a bank or central authority. It lays much of the groundwork for what would later become known as Web3.

2014- Quantum
Kevin McCoy creates Quantum, widely regarded as the first NFT artwork, on the Namecoin blockchain. The idea of owning a unique digital artwork is already there, long before the world starts paying attention.

2015- Ethereum
Ethereum launches and changes the possibilities of blockchain. Suddenly, blockchain isn't just about money. Smart contracts make it possible to build applications, digital assets and entire ecosystems on top of it.

2017-  CryptoPunks
Larva Labs releases 10,000 CryptoPunks. They become some of the earliest digital collectibles to gain serious cultural significance.

2017- CryptoKitties
Digital cats arrive. CryptoKitties shows that people will actually collect, breed and trade digital objects on the blockchain. It also famously puts pressure on Ethereum as people rush to buy cats.

2018–2019-  The building years
The initial excitement fades, but the technology keeps developing. NFT platforms, digital art communities, decentralised finance and new experiments in ownership continue to grow quietly in the background.

2020- DeFi Summer
Decentralised finance takes off. Blockchain begins to look less like a new kind of currency and more like a new kind of financial infrastructure.

2021- The NFT boom
NFTs suddenly become impossible to ignore. Artists, collectors, celebrities, brands and speculators pile into the space. Beeple's Everydays: The First 5000 Days sells at Christie's for $69.3 million, making digital art very difficult for the traditional art world to ignore.

2021- The PFP era
Bored Ape Yacht Club turns profile pictures into identities, communities and status symbols. The PFP becomes one of the defining visual forms of the NFT boom.

2022-  The crash
The frenzy begins to unwind. Prices fall, projects disappear and much of the speculation evaporates. The technology, however, remains.

2022-  The Merge
Ethereum moves from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, dramatically reducing its energy use and marking one of the biggest technical changes in its history.

2023-2024- What comes next
The conversation begins to move beyond NFTs. AI, digital identity, decentralised applications, tokenisation and new forms of digital ownership start pushing Web3 in different directions.

Today
The word NFT doesn't carry quite the same excitement it once did. But the experiments of those years left behind something more interesting than the hype: a growing history of digital art, ownership, collecting and culture on the internet.

And that history is still being written.

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