NFT Labs: The Rise of NFTs

The Rise of NFTs

In 2009, after the establishment of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple and other token types were launched, but people hope that blockchain technology can continue to innovate and create more powerful tokens.

The first NFT-like token, Bitcoin 2.X (also known as colored coins), was born in 2012. Since then, NFTs have continued to develop, dating back to the Rare Pepe Directory project launched by Counterparty.io in 2016 and the CryptoPunks pixel portrait project launched by John Watkinson and Matt Hall in 2017. The real thriving of the NFT began at the end of 2017. The CryptoKitties launched in Ethereum in early 2018 caused people to pay attention to NFT activities. A groundbreaking game innovation is that users can create new NFTs: simply breed two kittens together. Their descendants will have different rarity, which determines the market price of new NFT cats. After this, many projects began to try the breeding mechanism of NFT, the most interesting of which is Aavegotchi, which combines the Defi service Aave mechanism and Tamagotchi toy elements.

However, when the market crashed in 2018, interest in NFTs also dwindled or even stalled. At the end of 2020, there was a resurgence in NFTs. In terms of market capitalization, the NFT industry increased by 17% in 2019 and 50% by the end of 2020. In less than two years, NFTs have created more than $200 million in total value from nothing.

The NFT data analysis website NonFungible.com shows that since September 2020, the number of NFT sales has increased significantly and has maintained a high level of growth. With NFT sales approaching $1 million in the first week of September 2020, with blockchain-based fantasy football card game Sorare selling over $211,000, the momentum shows no signs of slowing down. In the first week of December 2020, NFT transactions totaled nearly $2 million. According to CoinGecko data, the market capitalization of NFTs has surpassed its 2020 forecast, reaching more than $550 million.

Facebook, Microsoft, NVIDIA, BATJ and other companies and governments of many countries began publicly announcing the layout of the metaverse, the popularity of NFTs and the metaverse has ultimately reached a climax. In the long run, the metaverse will be the result of the continuous integration of many independent tools, platforms and worlds supported by shared infrastructure, standards and protocols. As an important element, NFT is not only an extension of real assets, but also a start of native virtual world and a token that represents identity, assets, rights, and various attributes.

From the birth of colored coins in 2012 to the end of 2021, NFTs are prevalent worldwide; after ten years of development, NFTs no longer need to rely on the encryption market to survive, NFTs can be attached to various fields and applied in different scenarios. As the understanding of the potential and value that NFTs can provide becomes more widespread, more big brands, major investors and VCs are taking notice and participating. Although the future of NFT faces challenges, as a new young field, there is still room for overall growth. We are looking forward to more new NFT projects to open our imagination. We also hope this industry with bright development prospects gets more and more recognition!