Crypto Academy Week 10 - Homework Post for [@levycore ] on NFTs.

Question
Describe one popular project that uses NFT

I heard for the first time about NFTs which stand for Non-Fungible tokens in the media space on March 11, 2021, when there was an auction by Christe's on a collage composed of 5,000 digital pieces for a staggering 69 million US dollars. This digital art was created by an artist called Mike Winkelman, who made an NFT of it and offered it for sale.

I was really surprised and confused as to why someone will buy such an art for that kind of price, before that very day I never heard of non-fungible tokens. But this week's class by professor @levycore has actually enlighten me on NFTs and I am very happy to be part this class.

Before I touch on the project that uses NFT for my homework, I will to talk a little about NFT from the understanding I had from the class.

What is NFTs?

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NFTs are tokens that are used to prove ownership of any digital item or asset such as text, image , sound etc. In the same senario with cryptocurrency, we can say that people own crypto coins. Unlike crypto coins which have the same value or can worth the same, NFT is unique and can not be interchange with another NFT, also they are specifically secured by Ethereum blockchain which helps to avoid multiple ownership. NFTs are very strong tokens that can generate nonfungible assets on the blockchain, these are digital assets which are own people. NFTs contain information coded on them which are only accessible to the owner to prove authentication of ownership. These informations can be accessible using two keys called private and public crypto keys.

How do NFTs work?

NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain with extra coded information embeded in them, that coded pieces of information in the form of digital assets derive it value from the market place. The price of NFTs are mostly speculative, that is, they are worth the amount the buyer what to pay for it. NFTs are protected by a technique called cryptography, it is use to protect the privacy of the information embeded in it. This message is transform to be understood by only the intended recipient using the two keys, that is the public and private keys. The ethereum blockchain supports the ERG-721 token standard that allows NFT creators to get values to their digital assets and store them as tokens.

Uses of NFTs

NFTs helps to encourage creating since it provide a powerful tool for content creators. It also brings light to the unfair treatment of digital artists by providing ownership to their artifact, this is because any piece of information can br coded in to NFT which is a highly efficient way to manage and protecting digital asset. when an asset is transform to NFT on the market, it can be stored in to the owner's digital wallet proving ownership of the asset. This is b

A brief history on NFTs

NFTs became so popular in 2017 as a result of the game called cryptokittis where players buy and breed virtual cats in a limited edition. It then spread and was used my other game developers to allow to game players to win in game collectibles such as shield, swords etc.

On a specialized blockchain markets places, tokens from game asset can be transfer between different games or to another player through NFT. Sueprisingly, NFT has been around since 2012, colored coins is the earliest non-fungible token and it was expanded in 2014 through counterparty. In 2015, the first in-game asset was issued by counterparty on block chain and it turn out to be successful. In 2016, the mobile game spell of Genesis had another gain through the trading card game force of will by issued cards on counterparty.

Apart from gaming, NFTs are also used to sell wide range of virtual collectible such as NBA virtual trading cards, digital image, text, video clips even virtual real estate in Decentraland, a virtual world.

My Project
In my project for this particular homework, I will be looking at Decentraland

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Decentraland is a virtual reality blockchain platform based on Ethereum, it was founded by Esteban Ordano and Ari Meilich and currently has a total of 12,000 users. In March, 2017, it was first mentioned and was explained in a white paper published. In Decentraland, users can develop, sell land and buy , there is a non-fungible ERC-721 token which represents the ownership of the virtual land in Decentraland. Each parcel of land in Decentraland is unique and the owner get to decide what kind of content they will like be publish on their portion of land. Users can buy land or other goods and services with MANA, a fungible ERC-20 token. Users can also transact and monetize their content and application they build.

This virtual platform allow users to interact and connect with each other, play games and creat content.

Some features on Decentralend

The city of Genesis: Genesis city is the capital city in Decentraland and it was created by Esteban Ordano and Ari Meilich. Virtual real estates can be purchased here also users can own land too.

The company that owns Genesis City has it initial coin offering in August last 2020 ,Its ICO raised an amount 26 million US dollars in just about 30 seconds.

Avatar: This is the graphical representation of users in decentraland, it is the customized character that will represent the user in the virtual world. Owning an avatar is simply like registering an account on decentraland and is represented by an NFT and recorded on the blockchain platform.

Avatars in Decentraland
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DAO: This stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, this organization owns the most important contracts and assets in Decentraland. It also owns a substantial amount of MANA which makes it to be autonomous. In short, we can say that DAO act as the governing body in Decentraland , users through DAO controls the policies and determine how Decentraland should behaves. Example what kind and types of wearable items are permitted.

MANA: This is the digital asset token by which good and services are paid for in Decentraland, MANA is built on Ethereum in according to ERC20 standard for tokens. It be transacted for fiat currency other digital currencies.

MANA is stored in a crypto wallet such as Lumi, Atomic wallet, trust wallet etc
Exchanges that lists MANA are coinbase, Huobi, Binance, OKEx etc.
The total supply of MANA token is at 2.5 billion MANA.

MANA current value statistics

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In conclusion, I will to state some benefit of decentraland. It is virtual community where users connect and interact and also play games and other activities, also it is an easy way of investment. The one thing about Decemtraland is that since it is block chain, total regulation of its activities is difficult therefore making it riskier it invest in.

Thank you so much professor @levycore for this wonderful lecture, looking forward to meeting you again. My regards to professor @alphax.

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