The NFT History
Exactly NFTs where did come from?
NFT history :you’ve surely heard of the hype surrounding non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In many ways, 2021 was the Year of NFTs. It was an unprecedented ascent that gave creators the ability to monetize their work easily and provided collectors with an efficient way to purchase and store value. While NFTs seem like they arrived out of nowhere, they do, in fact, the concept of NFT started in 2012 and has undergone many changes to date.
Who created the first NFT?
where did this technological phenomenon come from? The history of NFTs and the man who first created one, Kevin McCoy, began on May 3rd, 2014. He minted his non-fungible token “Quantum,” way before the crypto art market exploded.
Quantum is a pixelated image of an octagon filled with denoting circles, arcs or other shapes which share the same center, with larger shapes surrounding smaller ones and hypnotically pulsing in fluorescent hues. As of today, the one of a kind “Quantum” art piece (2014-2021) is on sale for seven million dollars.
The History of Non-Fungible Tokens
The CryptoArt category was initiated by the cultural phenomenon such as CryptoPunks, Rare Pepe, and CryptoKitties. These pieces of ‘art’ gained notoriety due to the viral network effects and desire to pay large sums of money to acquire these pieces.
NFT history timeline
| YEAR | PROJECT NAME |
|---|---|
| 2011 | Dan Kaminsk |
| 2012 | Colored coins |
| 2013 | – |
| 2014 | February 20th 2014 – Rob Myers April 7th 2014 – THING May 3rd 2014 – Qauntum September 2014 – NILIcoin |
| 2015 | ??? 2015 – left.gallery October 2015 – first NFT house October 2015 – Etheria April 2015 – Harm van den Dorpel March 11th 2015 – ‘Spells of Genesis |
| 2016 | April 2016 – Spells of Gensis August 2016 – ‘Force of Will’ cards October 2016 – first Rare Pepes September 2016 – first gif UFOPEPE minted |
| 2017 – 2022 | The Bing Bang OF NFTs starting |
Early history: 2012-2016
2012 : Colored Coins
On Dec. 2012, Meni Rosenfeld that introduced the concept of “Colored Coins,” on the Bitcoin blockchain. Colored Coins describe a class of methods for representing and managing real-world on the Bitcoin blockchain .They are basically regular Bitcoins, but with a mark on them, that determines their use. Colored Coins were the first of NFTs.
For example, you have four different bank accounts, one for savings, one for bills, one for gambling, and one for college savings. Then the money becomes separate and unique.
The project collapsed due to bitcoin restrictions but paved the way for the emergence of NFTs.
2014 : Quantum
On May 2014, Kevin McCoy, a digital artist, minted the first-known NFT “Quantum.” Quantum is a pixelated octagon filled with different shapes that pulse in a quite hypnotic way. On November 28. 2021, the one-of-a-kind Quantum art piece sold for over $1.4 million in a Sotheby auction.
2014-2016 : meme stock
A few years later, in 2014, Counterparty, a peer-to-peer financial platform/open-source online protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain, was created. It included several projects with its own assets, including meme stock.
In 2015, the Spells of Genesis game creators became the first to issue in game assets on a blockchain via Counterparty. By October 2016, memes issued as collectibles were issued with the recognizable green frog “Rare Pepes” on Counterparty.
General history of NFTs: 2017 – 2021
2017 : CryptoPunks
In Oct of 2017 CryptoPunks launched the world’s first marketplace for rare digital art on the Ethereum blockchain. Creators of the project intrioduced10,000 different cartoon characters for anyone with an Ethereum wallet . The CryptoPunks NFTs were on a hybrid of the ERC20 and ERC721 Ethereum tokens since the ERC721 had not yet been developed.
2017-2018 : CryptoKitty
In 2017 the NFTs are raising $12.5 million in investment. CryptoKitty are born. CryptoKitty says “CryptoKitties is a game centered around breedable , collectible, and oh-so-adorable creatures we call CryptoKitties! Each cat is one-of-a-kind and 100% owned by you. it cannot be replicated, taken away, or destroyed.”
At the height of CryptoKitty buying/breeding/trading, the cartoon collectibles had reached almost 5,000 ETH in volume. Founder Cat #18 sold for 253 ETH ($110,000 at the time of sale). This sale was later beat by the 600 ETH sale of “Dragon” for $170,000 in September 2018.
NFTs price will be keeps rising. In a single week, the last “Hashmasks” collectibles generated over $9 million in sales for the collection. A single Hashmasks digital artwork sold for $130,000 on January 31st 2021 for an appreciation of 100,000% in 3 days.
On February 9th 2021, Axie set a new record for nine rare plots of digital land on the blockchain game “Axie Infinity” sold for 888.25 ETH ($1,500,000).
Where To Next ?
While the history of NFT is intriguing, the NFT Future has endless opportunities as the new space transitions from raw and experimental to exceedingly more useful and mainstream. Through tokenization, programmability, collaboration, royalties, and more direct connections between artists and collectors, NFTs may soon be a technology vital to everyday life. Concepts like DAOs, token-based Metaverses, community owned financial protocols, and NFT art were small scale experiments just a few years ago. Now they represent multi-billion dollar communities that combine protocol-driven design, economics, and governance as global collectives on the internet. It may be challenging to predict the future, but for digital art collecting, it’s safe to say we have yet to imagine the extent of what will emerge in decades to come.
