What is NFT?

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) stand out as a type of crypto assets built on blockchain technology that enables unique identification of digital assets. NFTs represent a new facet of digital ownership by facilitating the buying and selling of unique tokenized assets, particularly in art, music, gaming, and other types of digital content.

The most distinctive feature of NFTs is that each token is unique. This uniqueness means that digital assets are inimitable and unalterable. Various digital assets, such as works of art, musical pieces, digital collectibles, and even virtual real estate, can be converted into unique tokens and recorded on the blockchain through NFTs.

The popularity of NFTs has brought about a significant transformation in the art world in terms of determining the value of digital works and enabling artists to earn fair income from their works. By selling their works as NFTs, artists can increase the traceability of their digital assets and gain greater control over their copyrights.

Additionally, NFTs have also made a huge impact in the gaming industry. Players can tokenize digital items within the game and sell them and trade them with other players. This provides players with the opportunity to gain ownership of their digital assets while strengthening in-game economies.
However, the popularity of NFTs has also led to various criticisms.

The fact that all NFTs contain unique information and are easily accessible reveals the advantages of owning a product digitally compared to a physical product with collectible value. It prevents the production and reproduction of counterfeit products and ensures that all information about the originality of the digital asset is obtained, including its previous owner and manufacturer.

Unlike crypto assets, NFTs are not interchangeable. The fact that each is unique ensures that each has distinct characteristics and prevents two entities from being equivalent. You can think of NFTs as a ticket to a football match. Since each ticket will contain a different stadium and date, teams to be watched, seat location and personal information of the person who bought the ticket, and will provide the owner with a unique stadium view, all tickets are actually unique and therefore it is not possible to exchange the tickets equally.

NFTs also enable artists to produce. By delivering its works to all over the world, it has enabled the production of digital works to become widespread and made it possible to bring buyers and producers together more easily by avoiding intermediary institutions. In addition, if the purchased work changes hands, the artist's rights are protected with copyright details, ensuring that the producer has a share in subsequent changes. For example, actor William Shatner processed digital cards consisting of his own photographs and sold these digital photographs. If these cards change hands, it gets a share as the manufacturer.

Some of the other features of NFTs are; All of them have a specific area - the content purchased for one game cannot be used in a different game - the products cannot be duplicated or fragmented, there is no such thing as deletion or modification since they are processed on the blockchain and with smart contracts, and the originality of each product is transparently proven. is that it is controllable.

NFT collections, which are offered for sale in the digital environment and attract great attention, include all commodities produced in the virtual environment and on which ownership rights can be obtained. However, digital art has a huge share in all of this. Many important artists, both in the world and in Turkey, are converting their works into NFTs and offering them for sale.

Considering that important artists in Turkey such as Cem Yılmaz, Selçuk Erdem, Refik Anadol and Tarık Tolunay have converted their works into NFT, it is possible to say that NFT may become even more popular in the coming years. The fact that digital works of art can be owned and sold with NFT technology means that artists can evaluate their future works in different ways.

Although the NFT market is growing rapidly, future developments and regulations may affect the dynamics in this space. NFTs should continue to be closely watched to see how they will evolve in the arts, entertainment, and digital property spaces.