What is an NFT?
An NFT is a way of creating a unique digital object that can be owned and recorded on a blockchain.
The easiest way to think about it is to imagine an artwork hanging in a gallery. Anyone can look at it, take a photograph of it or make a copy, but there is still an original artwork with a known history of ownership.
NFTs brought a version of that idea into the digital world.
A digital artwork can be copied and shared very easily. The image itself isn't necessarily what makes an NFT unique. Instead, the NFT contains information recorded on a blockchain that identifies a particular digital item and records its history.
That can include who created it, when it was created, who has owned it and where it has been bought or sold.
For artists, this opened up some interesting possibilities. A digital artist could create an artwork, sell it directly to a collector and have a record of that transaction without needing the artwork to exist as a physical object.
NFTs aren't limited to art. They have been used for music, games, collectibles, memberships, tickets and many other things.
The technology itself is relatively simple to describe, but what happened around NFTs became much bigger than the technology.
Artists, collectors, developers, communities and businesses began experimenting with what it might mean to own something digitally.
That is really where the story of NFTs begins.
