When I first started interesting myself into crypto, Solana Summer just ended. Everyone was still crazy with NFTs and I was kind of perplex.
What were NFTs to me
I was this guy saying “This much for a jpeg ? What’s the point when you can just do a screenshot ?”. I was obviously wrong 🤡.
Unlike most of people, I didn’t start by buying some jpegs from Solanart, or doing free mints like Lunaria. My first mint was actually extremely late considering what I’ve been doing, it was the Solsteads Citizen.
It took me a while to understand NFTs. A good friend of mine explained the basics and sent me a Youtube video from a Reece Hunter showing how to set up a Candy Machine to launch a collection within 5 minutes with Hashlips and Metaplex.
It was like November or December 2021. Everything was still fine, SOL was something like $170, and in order to understand how it works, I started my research by trying to generate NFTs with Hashlips and Metaplex.
Yes, you, in the back, I’m listening
Yes, you, in the back, I’m listening
Technically speaking, an NFT is just a token, but as the name suggests, it is non-fungible. (NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token).
It means that an NFT is a unique token. When 10 SOL equals 10 SOL just as $10 = $10 or same with euros (you get the idea), 10 NFTs are just 10 NFTs. They’re all different (at least on the blockchain), it’s not fungible. It’s not money.
Everybody can create a token on the blockchain. An NFT is a token, which can’t be split (no decimals) nor minted more than 1 time (so that it is unique). Every token has an account, and every account can “store” things on-chain.
Even a program (smart contract on Solana), has an account which stores the logic to be executed. A token has an account which can also store data.
You can actually store whatever you want in an NFT. At the moment it’s mostly metadata “linking” a jpeg, but this is just the standard that Metaplex has defined. You could have your own NFT standard if you have a specific use case.
Ok, but what is an NFT like, what does it do ?
Actually, nothing. By itself, an NFT has 0 value.
Bye, have a good night ✌️
I’m kidding, but, it’s true. What gives an NFT value could be their utility. Like how does this NFT serve a purpose etc etc. Wrong again.
Actually, it’s a melting pot of many things.
People are talking about “metas” in the space (mostly on Twitter). Like utility meta, whitelist meta etc. But in the end, since the Candy Machine (the software by Metaplex letting people mint random NFTs from a web UI) came out, it’s sort of the same recipe each time.