Hi guys,

Introduction

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We are into the final week of the steemit engagement challenge. This time around I will be participating in the contest proposed by the steemit crypto academy. A contest topic which looks to teach us about NFTs.

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I will say it was unfortunate that I got to hear about NFTs after they started booming. Even at that time, I was sceptical about putting my time and effort into learning something about what NFTs were. It took me a lot of time. of beating around the bush and not wanting to study this topic. Well after some months I decided that I would venture into it a little bit so that I could have a little information or knowledge on NFTs.

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Using your own words to define non-fungible tokens:

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My NFT collection on Houbi-Global

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When most people hear the word NFT the thing that comes immediately into their mind is art. I don't blame that as art was used in promoting NFTs. Sometimes when I hear this I don't blame the people who think this way. The first NFT that was originally minted was done in the year 2014 by a man known as Kevin McCoy and his colleague Anil Dash. These two were digital artists at that time. McCoy and his colleague made an NFT out of his wife and sold it for an amount of 4 dollars. This piece of digital art was called Quantum.

Note- Minting In the NFT space means making your art an NFT. When a user finally changes his or her art Into digital art it is registered on the blockchain. This is when we say the user has minted his NFT

There are two types of minting. A user can mint an NFT for free and he can also pay for minting an NFT.

It should be noted that without minting your NFT it will not be qualified to be called an NFT, it will not be recorded on the blockchain for everyone to see.

The term NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. The Nin-Fungible stands for something unique. Let me explain

We have fungible tokens and we have non-fungible tokens. An example of a fungible token is a cryptocurrency(BTC). Now on the blockchain, we have what we call BTC, BTC I have in my wallet is the same as the BTC another user has in his wallet. This is when the issue of double spending pops up. There are situations where a user can still have the same currency he was supposed to spend in his account after it has been confirmed on the blockchain that he has spent it. This mostly happens with P2P trades.

An example of non-fungible tokens is digital art. Now, on a blockchain, each nft is unique on its own. If a company or see creates about 999 NFTs they are all different on the blockchain, with the physical eye a user might look and say they are the same but on the blockchain double spending can never occur with NFTs.

NFTs can be made out of anything in the real world. NFTs can be a painting, music, a house, a car, a picture, or anything you can think about. As long as it can be in the real world, it can be in the digital world too.

An example of NFTs is the very popular crypto kitties

Crypto kitties are digital cats which were launched in the year 2017. These cats were minted on the Ethereum blockchain. One unique thing about these crypto kitties is that they are many but each of them is unique. On the Ethereum blockchain, these kitties sell for the crypto ether.

Differences between fungible and Non fungible tokens.

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There are similarities between these two terms. One of them is that they are both on the blockchain.

Now the following are the differences between fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens.

• Fungible tokens are ERC-20 standard tokens whilst non-fungible tokens are ERC-721 standard tokens.

• Fungible tokens can be replaced with each other whilst non-fungible tokens are all unique on its own

• Fungible tokens are used as a means of paging for a service whilst non-fungible tokens represent a piece of art.

• Fungible tokens cannot be differentiated because they have no unique ids and are all the same on the blockchain whilst non-fungible tokens can be differentiated because they all have their unique ids on the blockchain.

• Fungible tokens can be sun divided into parts example we can have 1btc, half a BTC or even less than half of a BTC token whilst non-fungible tokens cannot be subdivided.

Are NFTs interchangeable?

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I have stated above that NFTs have their unique ids I'm the blockchain. Having a unique ID makes it impossible for NFTs to be interchangeable. This is as a result each NFT has its unique code and this code is recorded on the blockchain.

An example

Let's take BTC for instance.BTC is a fungible token. This means 1 BTC is 1 BTC everywhere and thus this makes it possible for users to exchange them for each other because it will be the same value everywhere. But with NFTs, this is never the case. Because an NFT is unique in its character. All NFTs represent something different and their values are not the same. This feature of NFTs makes them highly impossible to be interchanged with each other.

Difference between an NFT and other currencies.

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The following are the differences between NFTs and other currencies.

• NFTs are non-fungible tokens whilst other currencies are fungible.

• Other currencies have the same value eg 1steem is the same as 1steem or 1sbd is the same as 1sbd whilst NFTs have a value of storage hence they are all unique.

• NFTs are used in used as collectables in art, music, football and other industries whilst currencies are generally used in paying for goods and services. These same currencies are used in biting NFTs.

• NFTs are minted before they can be called NFTs whilst cryptocurrencies are mined by what we call miners.

Is there a marketplace for NFT?

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There are numerous marketplaces for NFTs, some of which have been stated below

• Opensea
• Axie Market place
• Rarible
• NBA Top shot marketplace
• Larva Labs
• Nifty Gate way
• Binance NFT marketplace
• Houbi NFT marketplace

How to invest in NFT market place.

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Just like cryptocurrency, it took a long time for NFTs to get the hype that they deserved. It wasn't until the late 2020s that NFTs started d booming and started selling at mind-blowing prices. Some investors saw the future of the project and were able to acquire NFTs that cost 100 thousand dollars for as low as 200 dollars.

Just like crypto, when it first came out in 2014 only a few people cared about it. It was up until 2015 that it gained a bit of popularity. In 2020 a lot of people started investing in them. They did what they do with crypto; that is to buy low and sell high.

Now with NFTs, there are several ways to invest in them. Some of these ways are creating your NFT collection or buying an NFT low and selling it high. NFT is not like crypto where a user who sells his coins has no association with the coin anymore. In the NFT space, a user who creates and mints his NFT will continue to earn a little something whenever his NFT is sold(this is another way of investing in NFTs)

It should be known that in some marketplaces a user can mint an NFT without paying gas fees. This can be done on the polygon network in open sea where they take care of the gas fees intended for minting an NFT.

But I believe the simplest way of investing in an NFT is by buying low and selling high.

How to create a new NFT

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To create an NFT you need to use one of the NFt marketplaces that I have mentioned above. I use the open sea market place and I will be showing you how to create an NFt there.

sopen sea

For a user who is using the opensea for the first time you will have to connect your wallet to the platform.

You are free to use any of the wallets which are listed on the website.

swallets

For me I am going to be using my metamask wallet to help me in the creation of my nft.

I have been using opensea and all I have to do is reconnect my wallet as you can see in the screenshot.I have already set up my account there. So I will use this account making my nft.

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As I stated, you can actually create and mint an nft free of charge without paying for gas fess on opensea using the polygon network. So over here I will be using the polygon network to create my nft.

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To create my nft click on the create tab at the right top corner of the open sea site.

When the page opens, I will be asked to connect my wallet which I have done

Click on the blank space as shown and then upload your art work, it can be music, a video or even a picture.

I will be using a picture hence I am going to upload it.

As I said before I will be using the polygon network to mint my nft so I will have to switch from my eth wallet and go to the polygon wallet.

After switching I followed a few steps and named my art. I also gave a little description about the art before clicking on the create tab

I filled a captcha and then I waited for a few minutes for the transactions to be confirmed and my nft was created.

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Is it possible for an NFT to be stolen?

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Yes it is possible. Rather surprisingly Non-fungible tokens boast of how each of the arts have special ids hence they are all unique but there have been numerous cases of NFTs being stolen. Once a hacker is able to take control over your metamask wallet he is able to log into your nft marketplace and the rest is history.

We have heard of several cases and an example is below.

The very popular NFT company BAYC which is known for the creation of bored apes recently suffered a hack. In this hack it was reported that bored apes worth millions were stolen.

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What the hackers did was to gain access into the official instagram account of the company and promised airdrop whiles dropping a link to enter into the airdrop. Users who clicked on this link where asked to fill a form, little did users know that what they were doing was transferring their assets to the accounts of the hackers.

Why use a distributed file system like IPFS in this area?

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Basically IPFS stands for an InterPlanetary File System). This is a decentralised storage location where sites that have NFTs basically keep their NFTs. We can refer to this as the warehouse for NFTs. Obviously there are other storage locations for NFTs and all this boils down to the site that you trust to create your NFT with or buy your NFT.

IPFS give customers a sense of feeling that their NFTs are stored permanently into the systems and they trust that their NFTs will stay for a very long time.

Using IPHS is somehow a technical aspect of owning NFTs that is why I said that they are hosted by the sites that you have your NFTs with. IPHS are meant to be a secured decentralised storage system. Mostly an investor in the NFT space is advised to make his investigations before deciding to put his funds into an NFT project; they are mostly advised to buy or either invest with companies that have their NFTs on this type of distributed file system. Because they feel it is safe. A user can check and see if his NFT is on an IPHS system or any other file system.

So basically an IPHS gives customers a sense that they can trust the companies handling their NFTs. This also means that they can trust that they wouldn't wake up one day and here that their NFT companies have decided to close down.

How are NFTs used in art, video games and collectible card games?

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NFTs started with arts. After its boom, a lot of industries started to adapt to it. Sports, entertainment and even the video game industry all started liking the ideas because they realised a lot of their fans were into NFTs.

I think the people to have benefited the most from NFTs are artists. When NFTs came out it was designed as if they came out for the sake of art. It was until sometime that a lot of people realised that NFTs can be made out of anything, whether it is audio, video or anything else.

A lot of artists have had their work changed because they no longer have to wait for clients to visit their centres or wait for ok expos before their work can be seen by people. An artist's work once recorded into the blockchain cannot be duplicated by another artist because its ownership will be known by anyone on the blockchain. It has changed the game for artists.

Artists previously had to wait for people to come and show interest in their work but now they can digitize them and put them up for sale. With this, they are always in business.

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The conversation around the gaming industry has changed because of the introduction of NFTs.

The gaming industry previously involved people playing games just for the fun of it, with ghe introduction of NFTs in gaming, which means that users will be incentivised for completing the tasks in the game and these users can exchange these cards for cryptocurrency.

With this, it means that all users are now the same in the game sector. It's used to be that players who wanted to complete tasks or certain tasks required that players had to pay to unlock those roles or a certain character but with the introduction of nft in gaming all characters will have to work very hard to achieve nft cards which will help them in achieving the ultimate goal of completing a task.

An example of a game that uses NFT is Arc8.

Screenshot from App Store

This is an exports game, it is a mobile sports game. In this game they have host of NFTs where users and players can play to earn.

Players are supposed to earn a token called GMEE (GAMEE). This token is what a user needs to purchase an NFT in the Arc8 game. Before a user can earn the GMEE token he will have to compete in a race or play one of the games or compete In a tournament to win the token. The GMEE token cannot be only used on the Arc8 site but can also be transferred out by users who choose to.

After earning the token and buying an NFT a user can decide to continue using his NFT to participate in other tournaments where ghe status or rank of your NFT influences the result of the game. A user can also list his NFT for sale on the open sea platform.

How are NFTs revolutionizing property titles?

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Piracy has always been a problem in the real world. Now with the introduction of NFTs, it is getting easier amd easier for original owners of products.

We normally see photocopies of almost everything, even these days to see something and know if it is immediately the correct one or fake one is very difficult.

Now NFT solves this issue by only seeing one person as the original owner of a product no matter the duplicates. Now because each product on the nft market has a unique id it will be nearly impossible to impersonate the real owner of a product.

How are NFTs regulated.

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Currently, there are no regulations regarding NFTs. I am sure in the near future regulations will be placed concerning NFTs too as a lot of the industries are beginning to venture into it fully.

what are the solutions to the limits of NFTs.

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• Issue with high gas fees.

The problem with the creation or minting of NFTs always rises when it gets to the time of minting. When minting a user needs to pay gas fees which at mostly veey high. So if this could he looked at or at a possible reduced cost in minting fees.

• If p2p markets could be created.

Before user can begin to buy and sell nfts he needs a wallet like metamask etc. After selling his or her nft he then needs to transfer this assets a centralised exchange before he can sell his funds. If there was an online p2p market that was on the market place where mft collectors could directly sell their nft for fiat it will be good.

• Regulations being implemented.

Sometimes I think the pride of some of the nfts are overrated. Maybe this is the case because there are not regulations. If regulations were to be put in place it could control the over pricing of some nfts.

Conclusion

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NFTs have changed the game around the blockchain world. A lot of people have made millions with NFTs and now that more and more industries are beginning to adopt it I can see a future that is totally better than this one right now.

From a personal perspective I love NFTs and I currently hold a few on different platform.

Thanks for reading.