Everyone's Talking about NFTs. Non-Fungible Tokens in the Art World

We’re talking about a growing trend that’s reached many sectors, from the world of art to the world of football, one that’s full of potential and lends itself to a multitude of different applications and experiemnts. For many, the world of NFTs is still unknown and those who are less tech and digital minded find it hard to understand what non-fungible-tokens are all about.

NFTs Create New Opportunities for Digital Works  

NFT is an acronym for “non-fungible-token”. The term token refers to a unit of data and non-fungible means that this unit is non-interchangeable because it is unique. NFTs are units of date that certify the authenticity and ownership of digital assets (images, paintings, videos, stickers, etc.).

There’s currently huge excitement surrounding NFT collecting across the world. In fact, many consider NFTs true collector's items. And this is why we ofter hear about NFTs in relation to the world of digital art, a sector in which these units of date have found their rightful place. Anyone who buys an artwork to an NFT is buying the right of ownership, but does not own it in a material sense.

Big Advantages for Artists and Buyers

In the world of art NFTs offer artists a series of advantages. Firstly, the chance to sell artworks that would otherwise receive short-lived attention on the traditional market. In addition, thanks to the blockchain - a register that keeps track of digital transactions, where tokens are saved - NFTs overcome the problem of original works of art being duplicsated. The blockchain can prove when the owner of a certain token is also the owner of the work of art connected to it.

NFTs offer another advantage in the flexibility of expression that they give the artist. An NFT can be any kind of art: an image, a photograph, a painting, a sticker, an animation or a video. This means that artists can express themselves, their feelings, their emotions and their creative flair through a versatile medium that adapts to a variety of products. And there are also advantages for buyers of NFTs. The main one is that the buyer, as holder of the ownership rights, can exploit a series of rights of use, such as publishing the work online.

Some Examples of NFT Artworks

In recent years the digital art market has seen an exponential increase in NFTs, pushing leading artists on the traditional market to rush to ride the wave of the new trend in non-fungible-tokens. The most striking example is Logan Paul, a YouTuber who created his first limited edition NFT and sold all the copies within just 30 minutes of going online, earning him a whopping $ 1 million.

If we look to Italy, Andrea Sangalli, an artist who is highly regarded in the US and Japan, has managed to grasp and exploit the potential of NFTs. His art is defined as "pop-irony" because of the sarcasm he uses to describe reality in metaphorical terms. In Sangalli's works, fish feature heavily as a symbol of man's illusory freedom. Fish also take center stage in his NFTs, for example his work "Beetle", a creation made up of bright, lively and captivating colors, which art lovers will have the chance to win at auction.