NFT tokens:
another hype or the future of the intellectual property market?

Investing in digital art is one of the hot and talked about trends in the field of intellectual property. Not only eminent artists or popular singers, but also those who were not known at all yesterday, began to make money in the virtual world. Both paintings and photos, collages, gif-animations, music are successfully sold and set price records. Not least due to the active use of NFT tokens - digital certificates confirming the right to own an asset. This became one of the topics of the forum IPQuorum-2021: Tech for Content . Forbes presented three viewpoints on the trend - from blockchain technology specialist, crypto enthusiast and artist creating digital objects.

"The situation can be compared to an iceberg, most of which is hidden under water."
Pavel Prigolovko, director of strategy at TON Labs .

NFT (Non Fungible Token - non-fungible token) is currently pure hype. However, everything new begins with a hype, and it takes time for the “foam” to subside, and the hype goes into a healthy channel. The more people enter this market, make mistakes, learn faster, and become more careful in their trades, the better. And the high level of the current hype in this area is largely due to the fact that the owners of cryptocurrencies wished to invest millions here, which appeared abruptly and out of nowhere. They can be understood: offline purchases are associated with risks and high costs. Buying a digital asset is a different matter: one click of a button on your smartphone - and you are the happy owner of a virtual object of art. NFT sales are also promoted by collectors, auction house owners and artists. Such pros work forso that the value of digital assets grows from year to year. Otherwise, what is the use of investment?

It is clear that for collectors both yesterday and today the very fact of owning an object of art is important, and in this sense a digital asset is better than an offline one: there is no need to maintain special climatic conditions, pay protection, carry out restorations, etc. in the most pure form. But now the situation can be compared to an iceberg, most of which is hidden under water. So far, it turns out that the owner of a digital masterpiece has a link to an object that is stored somewhere on the network, but theoretically his property can be downloaded and published - after all, NFTs are in the public domain.

Over time, digital collecting will acquire the necessary legal framework, and platforms will appear where contracts “hard-wired” into the blockchain will be offered. Any digitalization can simplify the processes of proof of ownership of intellectual property. But new digital tools have not yet changed the foundations of the system in which they are involved. After all, NFTs are not needed to prove the authorship or ownership of a particular digital asset: any action on the network can be identified for a long time. How will the ownership of a drawing change if someone "hangs" a digital signature on its scan? Answer: no way. And the system will not change until the decentralized platforms are fully operational.

On the NFT market, I personally look forward to one event that I consider extremely important in the merger of two worlds - online and on-chain. This is the emergence of gaming NFTs. There is an obvious market demand for the creation of games, where you can come with your characters, weapons, etc. While the developers are pause, the number of gamers who have pumped artifacts in their hands is growing from year to year. And they want more and more to try out their arsenal on a new site, to use it in a competition with another gamer and his artifacts. I’m sure the future of NFT is in games that accept tokenized artifacts. This will become one of the most competent examples of the use of decentralized technology: a game artifact in this case will no longer be tied to one game and will become unique. At the same time, a whole market will emerge for the exchange and pumping of such NFT artifacts, characters, weapons, etc.Today we are only at the beginning of a process calculated for decades to come.

“The main thing is to think over which project to invest in”.
Mikhail Kabanov, founder of the creative agency GoodPR, crypto enthusiast.

When I tell people who are far from this topic, the essence of NFT and investments in them, the conversation usually ends with the question: "It turns out, we are buying nothing?" In a way, they are right. Today, the value of many NFT assets looks ambiguous. But remember that 10 years ago, bitcoin looked the same in the eyes of the general public. And in 2009, only $ 5 (about 160 rubles) was paid for 5050 bitcoins, and today for one bitcoin they give $ 55,000, or 4.19 million rubles.

In general, marketplaces try to verify users by comparing their profile on the site with accounts on social networks - this allows us to fight counterfeits. At least to some extent. If we talk about works of digital art, then a more or less complete guarantee of authenticity can probably only be given by a reputable auction house. In any case, investing in NFT is akin to gambling and involves a fair amount of faith, just like with cryptocurrencies.

Becoming an investor in digital art is relatively straightforward. For example, by registering on Binance, where you can buy tokens using a ruble credit card. The main thing is to think over which project to invest in. To evaluate the project, it is important to analyze the biographies of developers, partners and working solutions where this technology is used. Projects with solid and well-known contributors, as a rule, grow well right after the start. Let me emphasize that all of this is not investment advice, as is customary to add after detailed statements.

"This is a big lottery, and the chances of winning are not so small."
Maria Romanova, artist, art director of the design studio.
maria__art__romanova

Digital works today are no longer surprising, but this does not mean that such art objects are worthless. Once the Parisian public was outraged by the canvases exhibited in 1874 in the former studio of the photographer Nadar on Boulevard des Capucines, and the journalist Louis Leroy even called the new trend in painting "impressionism", that is, "impressionism." They were all wrong, considering the experiment unsuccessful - the descendants estimated the work of the Impressionists in the millions.

NFT is considered to be digital art, meaning it requires a digital tool to create it. It seems as if the electronic environment obliges it. But, in my opinion, a digitized offline work can also become an object of digital art. For example, a painting by a famous artist, located in a certain repository, receives a digital certificate in the form of an NFT, which participates in the sale and purchase process, while the canvas itself does not move. But thanks to NFT, everyone knows about the deal, and the new owner of the painting will also be known.

For artists, NFT is about expanding their audience and at the same time a way to monetize their skills. It is easier to sell digitally than in the offline world, at least due to the lack of difficulties with logistics. The most popular marketplaces operate on the Ethereum network, so you will need to pay a commission equivalent to $ 100 (about 7400 rubles) and more to create your own NFTs. That is why new networks are interesting, for example, Free TON , where the cost of similar actions is only a few cents. By registering on the site, paying a commission for deploying a smart contract, you can safely display the work, assign it the desired price. The latter is limited exclusively by the author’s imagination. But no one will give guarantees that you will find a buyer at such a price. It all depends on the social capital of the seller: Banksy can put a million dollar price tag, and a novice artist should be more modest. The price, by the way, is set in the token of the network on which this marketplace operates.

On the other hand, the ease of creating an NFT directly leads to the fact that there are too many little-known and not always talented authors on the market. In general, this is not scary - real talents will still break through, but buyers will have to become more attentive and more active in order not to miss out on talent at the very beginning of his career. Gape a little - and the value of the NFT asset rose sharply, the train left. Who would have thought five years ago that Beeple’s work would be valued at Christie’s in the tens of millions of dollars? The lottery of the digital world is most consistent with what most of us mean by the concepts of "luck" and "lucky chance". But we must remember that the chance is not given twice, and you need to hurry.

Of course, you can’t buy a digitized Van Gogh or Banksy for $ 5 (about 370 rubles), but you can buy, for example, some painting, published in a circulation of 100 copies. Or a little-known work by a little-known author. Who knows, maybe tomorrow it will become popular? Or some meme - there are a lot of them on sale now. But you have to be realistic: nowhere - not offline, not online - you will not be able to buy anything worthwhile for very little money. Only if you’re very lucky.