It is an undeniable fact that NFTs or Non-fungible tokens are one of the most popular creative content production and investment tools today. Its secure infrastructure, the freedom it offers to artists and the ease of copyright protection have made NFTs much more popular. In this article, we will focus on the history of NFTs.
First NFT
According to sources, the first known NFT was created by Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash in May 2014. This NFT, a video clip called Quantum, was created by McCoy’s wife, Jeniffer, thus beginning a new era. Of course, when an NFT is created, the trade also needs to be performed. The video was later recorded on the Namecoin blockchain by McCoy and then sold to Dash during a live presentation at a conference in New York. This went down in history as the first NFT buy-sell transaction.
McCoy and Dash realized the potential of this technology behind this conference and gave their first name to NFTs as “money-making graphics”, although they are not called NFTs. With the technology it provides, Namecoin has linked a work of art, a non-tradable asset, to a tradable blockchain via metadata. It created an alternative blockchain to the technology of cryptocurrencies with multiple tradable units and no metadata.
First NFT Project
In October 2015, the first NFT project, Etheria, was announced at Ethereum’s first developer conference, three months after the launch of the Ethereum blockchain. However, the vast majority of the 457 Etheria created were not sold until the buying spree on March 13, 2021. In this sale, NFTs initially priced at US$0.43 were sold for US$1.4 million.
The term NFT has come into wide use with the standard ERC-721, which was first proposed through Ethereum GitHub in 2017, after the first NFT projects started. The publication of popular projects such as Curio Cards, CryptoPunks, Pepe exchange cards, which were released at that time, had a great impact on the spread of this term. In particular, projects involving characters and internet memes in popular culture have also attracted the attention of those who are not interested in NFT.
How did the term NFT come about?
The term NFT has come into wide use with the standard ERC-721, which was first proposed through Ethereum GitHub in 2017, after the first NFT projects started. The publication of popular projects such as Curio Cards, CryptoPunks, Pepe exchange cards, which were released at that time, had a great impact on the spread of this term. In particular, projects involving characters and internet memes in popular culture have also attracted the attention of those who are not interested in NFT.
Increasing interest in NFTs
The success of NFT projects, which initially came with online games, increased people’s interest in this subject. With the increase in similar projects, the NFT market tripled in 2020 and reached 250 million dollars. At the beginning of 2021, it continued its growth with more than 200 million dollars of shopping in the market. With the growth of the market, companies that put NFT in their center started to apply for registration. In January 2022, 450 trademark applications were filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. There are also influential companies and well-known brands such as NYSE, Star Trek, Panera, Walmart, Elvis Presley, Sports Illustrated, Ticketmaster and Yahoo that have been trademarked on NFT.
At the same time, NFTs produced by artists began to stand out with the sales of a few NFTs in the field of art, whose prices approached the works of art from the old period.
Questions answered by the blog:
- What is NFT?
- What is the first NFT?
- Who invented NFT?
- What is the first NFT sale?
- How did NFTs become popular?
- How did NFTs come about?
- What is the history of NFTs?