NFTs: They Aren’t Just for Art
If you’ve been keeping up with the crypto space, you may well have heard the term NFT. NFT stands for non fungible token and these have become all the rage in the space at the moment. Non fungible tokens can be made in order to maintain ownership or represent an asset digitally on a blockchain. Many people have been introduced to NFTs through art and some have even been introduced through music but not everyone knows that NFTs can be used for more than just entertainment purposes. They can represent information, data, or serve as a virtual ticket. Let’s take a look at how versatile NFTs can be as they utilize blockchain technology to do everything from showcase art to helping govern a community-driven network like Cobalt Lend.
When we think of the current art industry, we think of digitized forms. Graphic design has exploded in the last few decades as artists find a way to take what used to be tangible and turn it into forms that are more accessible by using the internet. For a long time, artists have been struggling to maintain ownership of their own work. It’s hard to monitor whether or not people are just screenshotting your work for their own purposes. It comes as no surprise that artists are excited by NFTs because NFTs now offer a way for the artist to lay claim to their work and for that to be traceable and profitable thanks to blockchain technology.
NFTs began as a way to showcase art, but the utility for NFTs doesn’t stop there. It became apparent to others that NFTs can be used to represent nearly anything on the blockchain. With that in mind, many projects have moved forward using NFTs to bolster their projects in lots of ways. One of those utilities is using NFTs for voting rights. Cobalt Lend is a cryptocurrency project that allows people to lend and borrow on the blockchain. They also operate on a community-run basis which means the community gets to vote on things like which projects should get those loans. Cobalt has figured out a way to use NFTs as a way to represent voting on the blockchain. When the community wants to participate in voting, an NFT will be issued in order to make sure that votes are coming from the correct person and will make sure that votes can’t be double counted.
Even the real estate industry has started to adopt NFTs. In some cases, these real estate options are in the metaverse meaning they aren’t physical. However, those virtual properties are being turned into physical properties now. This has been a useful way for property owners and architects to monitor and collect data on what people actually want. What starts as a simulation online can then be used as a template for real world design. The NFTs can then be used to represent ownership of property that exists online and the real properties themselves.
From art and music to voting and real estate, the possibilities are nearly endless. Ownership is the name of the game and NFTs have created a way to prove that ownership and to protect it with the security that blockchain offers. This is just the beginning. New innovations with NFTs are popping up all the time. It’s certainly an exciting time to be a creator whether that’s art or creating ways to claim ownership of other things. In the future, I fully believe there will be ways to utilize NFTs to vote on other things like government issues or for elections. When this happens, I look for others to become more involved with governance in their real lives. It’ll be a revolution that pulls people into the world of politics and offers them more of a say in what happens. Imagine being able to vote on policies from your couch. The world has needed this type of technology for a long time and NFTs are the path by which we can achieve the things we want.
