Hey there, it’s a pleasure to have you here.

For the past few years, before all the hype, we have been studying blockchain and NFTs, building tech and projects, and helping companies understand how these new technologies will impact them.

Before we get started:

1. This is a free, complete book. You can read it for free on this page. But you can also buy it on Amazon using this link.

2. This piece is an NFT. If you like it, you can collect it. There are only 100 NFTs available and you can collect it here on Mirror in a few clicks. How cool is that?

Quotes

“Every marketer is trying to future-proof their customer strategies by better understanding the technology and use cases around next-generation NFTs. The Non-Fungible Book by Tiago and Kaynã gives you practical knowledge and insight to know where to start and what questions to ask. Few efforts are as accessible and applicable. It’s a must-read if you aim to get ahead of the game on NFTs.” - Brent Annells, Chief Marketing Officer, Smart Token Labs

“Great and insightful thoughts about NFTs that every professional should read! Powerful examples that will give you a clear view of NFTs magnitude, usability and how blockchain technology is playing a crucial role in our road to Web3.” - Marco Carvalho, Blockchain Lead - Celfocus

"Non-Fungible Book: Introduction to NFTs is an essential reading. If you're getting into the web3 space, or if you're a brand researching how to adopt web3 strategies, this book will give you a comprehension of possibilities with a fluid and non-technical language. I found the book extremely helpful for brands and creators who can learn about current and future possibilities to navigate this brave new world". Ney Neto, web3 builder and UplandMe leader in Latin America.

“Tiago is back and did the absolute thing web3 needs: explain everything in clear and simple terms. It doesn't matter if it's the first time ever you're reading about NFTs, Wallets, Hash, and whatever else! Just start from this book and you'll find the perfect place to start in your exploration of web3!” - Filippo Chiricozzi, Web3, Crypto & Metaverse | Innovation, at Banca Sella

"Tiago and Kaynã managed to synthesize the basic knowledge necessary for professionals from any industry to start their journeys in the world of NFTs and, consequently, in the Web3 ecosystem itself.” - Thiago de Marco, Head of Marketing @ Niftify

"The best guide you will ever read to simplify your blockchain journey. The journey to realizing that soon everything you own virtually will be with you and not on a third-party server begins in this book.” - Gui Barbosa, gaming entrepreneur, former Global Business Development, Gaming at ByteDance

About the authors

Tiago Amaral is the founder of Inevitable, a speaker, author, and advisor in the Web3 and AI fields. He has worked with companies like Reddit, MoonPay, Pinata, Vayner3, and Metaverse Insider. He talks daily about Web3 and AI to more than 50,000+ followers on LinkedIn and gives talks and workshops for companies looking to understand the impacts of these technologies on their businesses.

Kaynã Rodrigues is a builder/developer by trade, having worked with a diverse plethora of areas such as Robotics, AI, VR, and Web3, his main skill is learning things fast and using them to solve problems or sharing them in a digestible way.

Book Overview

1. 1st Chapter: WTF are NFTs

   1. 1.1 Overall Concepts

   2. 1.2 Community

   3. 1.3 Utility

   4. 1.4 Storytelling

   5. 1.5 A Brave New World

2. 22 Concepts You Need to Learn

   1. 2.1 Hash

   2. 2.2 Blockchain

   3. 2.3 Cryptocurrencies

   4. 2.4 Networks

   5. 2.5 Address

   6. 2.6 Gas Fees

   7. 2.7 Scaling Solutions

   8. 2.8 Smart Contracts

   9. 2.9 Token

   10. 2.10 Wallet

   11. 2.11 Attributes/Properties/Metadata

   12. 2.12 Minting/Mint

   13. 2.13 NFT Collections

   14. 2.14 Primary Market

   15. 2.15 Secondary Market

   16. 2.16 Airdrop

   17. 2.17 Royalties

   18. 2.18 Listing

   19. 2.19 Floor Price

   20. 2.20 Traded Volume

   21. 2.21 Items and Owners

   22. 2.22 Burn

3. The NFTs Ecosystem

   1. 3.1 Wallets

   2. 3.2 Minting Platforms

   3. 3.3 Marketplaces and Aggregators

   4. 3.4 NFTs CRM Platforms

   5. 3.5 Integration Tools

   6. 3.6 Infrastructure

   7. 3.7 Data Analytics

   8. 3.8 Games

   9. 3.9 Virtual Worlds

   10. 3.10 Showcases

   11. 3.11 Domains

   12. 3.12 Ticketing

4. NFTs: Current and Future Applications

   1. 4.1 ERC721 and ERC20

   2. 4.2 NFTs-Native Brands

   3. 4.3 Games

   4. 4.4 Fundraising

   5. 4.5 Online Writing and Publishing

   6. 4.6 Music

   7. 4.7 Real Estate

   8. 4.8 Healthcare

   9. 4.9 Education

   10. 4.10 Dynamic NFTs (dNFTs)

   11. 4.11 Everything can be an asset. For good and for bad.

5. The Future of NFTs

   1. 5.1 The Ultimate Digital Transformation

   2. 5.2 Bubbles and Builders

   3. 5.3 You’re Not Too Late

1st Chapter: WTF are NFTs?

NFTs stand for Non-Fungible Tokens. Okay, that doesn’t make it that clear. Fungible items are those that can be interchanged and all have the same value. A $5 bill has the same value as other $5 bills. However, imagine you have a $5 bill with Elon Musk's autograph.

The value of that bill, then, may no longer be just $5. To an Elon Musk fan - crazy people - it might be worth $1,000, $10,000, $100,000. For my mom, it will still be worth $5 since she doesn't even know who Elon Musk is and doesn't give a shit. For a big fan of Elon Musk? That bill could be a big deal.

We can say, then, that each NFT is a unique item - at least in theory.

In the digital world, NFTs can be pretty much anything: a piece of art, a song, a meme, a gif, a video, a book, a game item, a certificate, and so on.

Okay, but why are NFTs so important now?

Digital assets are not something new. An art? A photo? A song? A meme? They have been here for decades as digital files. We exchange photos all day long via WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram.

In his book, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, author Kevin Kelly says:

“The internet is the world’s largest copy machine. At its most fundamental level this machine copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. Some bits of data may be copied dozens of times in an ordinary day as they cycle through memory, cache, server, routers, and back. Tech companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. If something can be copied —a song, a movie, a book—and it touches the internet, it will be copied.”

The internet's abundance has its good points. It confers virality and access. However, what to do when we want to give exclusivity to an item? NFTs, then, are the perfect technology for turning digital items - highly copyable - into unique items. The difficulty to attribute ownership on the internet, then, has a solution.

Okay, but the internet has been around for nearly 30 years. Why, then, is this NFT boom happening now?

Two words for you: The Blockchain.

A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks. They are linked together using cryptography. The blockchain is like an immutable record book. Everything can be auditable anytime, by anyone, anywhere. This revolution started with the first big blockchain: Bitcoin, launched in 2009.

As you can imagine, NFTs live on the blockchain. They are a way of giving ownership of a particular item to a particular person. All this is based on the blockchain, auditable by anyone independently from having the permission of any centralized organization, and therefore free from censorship.

There's a lot to be said about the blockchain, but that's not the point right now. The important thing is that you can understand that the blockchain is the technology that makes NFTs possible. It attributes ownership, is immutable and decentralized.

"Okay Mr. Blockchain, I need some examples"

As we said, NFTs can be virtually anything, from a JPEG to a document that assigns ownership of a property to a person. Tokenized invoices? Check. Legal documents? Check. Tickets to an event? Oh yeah. Throughout the next classes, we'll bring you several different examples and uses for NFTs, but today we'd like to quickly introduce you to one of the most iconic collections of NFTs in the world: the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs - images of apes with a lot of different body attributes.

Each ape cost approximately $180 when they were released in May 2021, by Yuga Labs, a company created by 4 anonymous founders.

They have become luxury items that many people use to flex online, just as we do in the real world with clothing, cars or other items. But not only that: the Bored Apes have become one of the most influential communities in the NFT world and the Bored Ape Yacht Club has become the most iconic NFT collections today.

“Okay, I’m confused,” you may say “Why would anyone pay for an online image of an ape? This is crazy. It doesn't make any sense”.

Yeah, I get it. We have already thought that way ourselves. Let’s dive in.

Remember the first apps available for the iPhone? Yeah, they were not that impressive in terms of utility.

Blow out the iPhone and the candle goes out? That might sound silly. It is normal to underestimate new technologies as soon as they appear.

How about the first Amazon website?

At first glance, the first smartphone apps and the first websites might sound like jokes. After all, they were so simple, right?

Chris Dixon, tech specialist and partner at Andreessen Horowitz, in an article published in 2010 stated that:

“The next big thing will start out looking like a toy. One of the amazing things about the internet economy is how different the list of top internet properties today looks from the list ten years ago.  The reason big new things sneak by incumbents is that the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a “toy.” (...) Disruptive technologies are dismissed as toys because when they are first launched they “undershoot” user needs.”

This is fundamental to understanding new technological paradigms. We are facing a revolution right before our eyes. Just like the beginning of the internet. Just like the beginning of mobile. And guess what, mobile and the internet also started out looking like toys.

Novelty precedes utility

Another idea to have in mind that can help us understand NFTs is the one shared by Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance, in his book The Messy Middle: Novelty precedes utility.

As you’re building new products and experiences for customers, consider how they will be novel—even gamelike—before they prove useful. Oftentimes, people engage with new products and experiences out of mere fascination and novelty and discover a product’s utility only over time.

NFTs may look like toys or nonsense at first, but this can - and will - change. So, so, so fast. Repeat with me: Novelty precedes utility. Just like with the first iPhones or the beginning of the internet.

Don’t get it wrong. NFTs are not a pyramid scheme or a get-rich-quick scheme - although speculative and trading elements are present in some cases.

These are often elements that end up being the public perception of NFTs because they are the ones that get the most attention.

But the real power of NFTs is tied to 3 other elements: Community, Utility, and Storytelling and this will become more and more clear throughout the next few years. We call this The CSU Framework.

Let’s dive into each one of these elements.

Community

One of the most important aspects to keep in mind when understanding NFTs is the communities aspect. The future of the internet is more about "small" nestled communities, in which people with mutual interests share experiences, than large and generic ones.

This, in fact, already happens. Have you ever noticed how there are Instagram pages or YouTube channels for just about any topic? And communities gather around these content producers. NFTs are a step beyond this trend, helping to leverage it.

NFTs are not just a new form of creation, but also a relationship between creators and their audience.

“Creation, creation, creation — the next 10 years is going to be as much about creation as it is about consumption and about the community around it, so it’s not creating alone. If the last 10 years has been about consumption — we’re shopping more, we’re browsing more, we’re binge watching more — there is creation behind every one of those.” - Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

To make this even clearer, we've brought you an example of an NFT collection that work very well with the community aspect.

The Crypto Cannabis Club is a collection of 10,000 NFToker avatars, like these above, that capture the imagination of people connected to the world of cannabis. When you buy an NFT avatar from Crypto Cannabis Club, you join a community of cannabis enthusiasts from all over the globe who discuss everything related to this world.

When using an avatar from this collection as your profile picture on a social network, you are communicating that you are part of that community and that world. The same happens when we wear a Los Angeles Lakers shirt, for example. That accessory communicates something about us. The same is true for NFTs.

Utility

Another important aspect has to do with utility. This is an area still under development. I would say that we haven't seen anything yet about what NFTs might actually be useful for. Let's look back at the utility of NFTs in 2021-2023 just as we see iPhone apps in 2008.

Even so, we already have great uses for NFTs, many still in the experimentation phase. One of the coolest cases comes from the VeeFriends collection, by famous digital influencer Gary Vaynerchuk.

Owning a VeeFriend - one of these illustrations above, there are 10,265 available - grants you access to exclusive events with other VeeFriends holders, exclusive conferences and exclusive events with GaryVee himself.

This is just a simple example of utilities already in place in the NFT world. We should have a lot more exploration of possibilities over the next few years.

Much of the utility has to do with one of the most fundamental aspects of NFTs, Smart Contracts. More about them in our next class.

Storytelling

The biggest brands in the world are great storytellers. Think about brands like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple. No storytelling supports a bad product, it's true. But a really good product without great storytelling is a product no one talks about and no one uses. The same applies to the world of NFTs.

A collection like the World of Women has only managed to get where it is due to the powerful storytelling created around it. However, unlike the world of more "traditional" brands, in the world of NFTs this type of storytelling can be much more distributed across the community.

In the case of World of Women (WoW), for example, owning an NFT from that collection IP licensing to explore its image as you like.

For example, WoW owner Victoria Watters decided to launch a tea brand using her World of Women NFT: “Now that World of Women has confirmed the right to use our NFTs commercially… I can finally announce the world’s first NFT(ea) brand. My first flavor will be mint”.

Remember: This is a list of elements still under construction.

Of course, there are a lot of other elements here aside Community, Utility, and Storytelling, like flexing, trading, or art appreciation. Art is extremely subjective. Trading and flexing are valued by-products of the 3 most important elements: Community, Utility, and Storytelling.

These elements cannot be analyzed in isolation.

And naturally, these elements will also depend on the industry and use case. An NFT representing a driver’s license will have a lot of utility, but nothing related to community and storytelling, and that’s completely fine.

“This is all pretty cool... But what if I just right-click and save an NFT?”

Nothing stops you from right-clicking and saving a Bored Ape. You can do this whenever you want. Likewise, you can print a picture of Monalisa and hang it in your living room.

But you can't just print the storytelling around the original Monalisa. And you sure as hell can't print the billion dollars the original Monalisa is worth.

In the same way, here is what you can right-click and save regarding a Bored Ape:

• The image of the Ape

Here is what you cannot right-click and save:

• The ownership record on the blockchain that proves that you actually own that Bored Ape

• The Bored Ape community

• The Bored Ape utility

• The hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that are paid to buy the Bored Apes

A Brave New World

Every new technological revolution brings a lot of confusion. But also many opportunities. When trying to understand NFTs, it's normal to get carried away by the news about the speculative side, about the environmental side, about how clueless it can be to buy an image file. This will all pass, believe me.

Today, the infrastructure for NFTs is the worst that will exist in history. But blockchain, crypto - and NFTs - are inevitable. Innovators from all over the world are working to develop infrastructure and underlying technology to bring more and more people into this world.

This ecosystem is growing like virtually no other in human history. The adoption of crypto, for example, has been moving faster than the adoption of the internet itself.

Speaking of the internet, in one of his famous 1999 letters to shareholders, Jeff Bezos spoke about the state of that new technology at that time:

In closing, consider this most important point: the current online shopping experience is the worst it will ever be. It’s good enough today to attract 17 million customers, but it will get so much better. Increased bandwidth will result in faster page views and richer content. Further improvements will lead to “always-on access” (which I expect will be a strong boost to online shopping at home, as opposed to the office) and we’ll see significant growth in non-PC devices and wireless access. Moreover, it’s great to be participating in what is a multi-trillion dollar global market, in which we are so very, very tiny. We are doubly-blessed. We have a market-size unconstrained opportunity in an area where the underlying foundational technology we employ improves every day. That is not normal.

We can paraphrase this exact quote, but bringing it to the world of NFTs. The current NFTs experience is the worst it will ever be. The UX and UI are not the best. There are less than 1,000,000 users on OpenSea. Lots and lots of improvements that will be built by innovators are yet to come.

2nd Chapter: 22 Concepts You Need to Learn

**In our previous chapter, WTF are NFTs?, you learned the basics of this new world. Today we've brought you a list of important concepts that you must know to be able to understand and eventually build things in the NFT world. **

We'll start by first understanding broader aspects such as Blockchain and crypto, and then we'll get into more specific aspects of NFTs, such as drops, royalties, and secondary market.

Let’s go!

1) Hash

Hash is the result of running a hashing function on some message. What this hashing function does is generate a sequence of letters and numbers that is based on the message you used as the input.

The key point here is that any single letter you change on the input message will result in a different hash.

So let’s say you want to know if two different editions of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix have the exact same content. Instead of reading each book and comparing each letter and character you can just hash the content of each book and see if the hashes are the same!

To see this live, you can use a platform like: https://xorbin.com/tools/sha256-hash-calculator.

For example, if you type “My name is Tiago”, the generated hash will be: 0b987101096e388853bc3ec07720f29c7fefead1995e80bfce24c954a399ff38

If we change just one letter, and this time we type “My name is Taigo”, the generated hash will be completely different:

D9e717918640570988847a9de54e0d956832fe6f662380b3d7a3925ac731ed73

According to Xorbin:**
**

“The SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm) is one of a number of cryptographic hash functions. A cryptographic hash is like a signature for a data set. If you would like to compare two sets of raw data (source of the file, text or similar) it is always better to hash it and compare SHA256 values. It is like the fingerprints of the data. Even if only one symbol is changed the algorithm will produce different hash value. SHA256 algorithm generates an almost-unique, fixed size 256-bit (32-byte) hash. Hash is so called a one way function. This makes it suitable for checking integrity of your data, challenge hash authentication, anti-tamper, digital signatures, blockchain.

With the newest hardware (CPU and GPU) improvements it is become possible to decrypt SHA256 algorithm back. So it is no longer recommended to use it for password protection or other similar use cases. Some years ago you would protect your passwords from hackers by storing SHA256 encrypted password in the your data base. This is no longer a case.

SHA256 algorithm can be still used for making sure you acquired the same data as the original one. For example if you download something you can easily check if data has not changed due to network errors or malware injection. You can compare hashes of your file and original one which is usually provided in the website you are getting data or the file from.

SHA-256 is one of the successor hash functions to SHA-1,and is one of the strongest hash functions available.

Using this online tool you can easily generate SHA256 hashes.

2) Blockchain

One of the most important concepts to learn. The blockchain is the backbone of the entire NFTs industry.

Think of the blockchain as a giant record of transactions. Groups of these transactions are grouped in a block.

That’s exactly why the blockchain is a revolutionary technology. It is simply a technology far superior to all of its predecessors in terms of transaction logging, security and many other aspects. It's like comparing the internet to previous forms of communication.

Features of the most important blockchains in the world:

• They are decentralized

• They don't depend on centralized entities to work, like an Amazon server, or a government. The infrastructure behind computation using blockchains is provided by independent nodes. The process of mining ETH is exactly that. If you make your machine available for these computations you will receive part of the fees being paid to run them.

• They are fully public and auditable

• You can see all transactions in Ethereum's history, for example, - more about it below - at https://etherscan.io. It's all there: the transaction number, the addresses involved, the transaction amount, the method that was invoked on the contract, and much more.

• They are practically incorruptible

• What if a malicious smart-ass wants to change a transaction he just made? Remember how we said that the blockchain is a big chain of blocks connected to each other? If someone wanted to register a fraudulent transaction, they would end up with a different block hash in comparison with the rest of the network, then that chain of fraudulent blocks would have to be enforced with more computation power than the rest of the network, a task virtually impossible.

In the transaction example above:

• Transaction Hash: The unique string representing that transaction

• Transaction Action: The action taken in that transaction, in this case, sending 0.25 ETH.

• From: The address of the person who sent the transaction.

• To: The address of the person who received the transaction.

Blockchain technology isn’t just a more efficient way to settle securities — it will fundamentally change market structures — and maybe even the architecture of the internet itself.
— Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity Investments

3) Cryptocurrencies

The first big decentralized cryptocurrency was Bitcoin and I think it’s fair to say that Bitcoin still is the most important crypto out there. Since 2009 (when the first Bitcoin was created) thousands of cryptocurrencies have been developed.

This is a totally new form of money, medium of exchange, and store of value.

It is easy to argue that the crypto world is just an environment for speculation or worse, that there is no real use for them.

It is not crazy to say that most people who think this way come from rich countries, with strong currencies, little corruption and economic stability.

But crypto coins have become a revolution in countries like Nigeria, Venezuela and Argentina, where authoritarian or reckless governments confiscate their citizens' assets and depreciate their own currencies, decreasing people's purchasing power.

They are a way of separating the impact of arbitrary policy decisions on the currency, which always harms the general population and not those who make those decisions.

And this is only possible because most cryptos run on blockchains, which gives them much more security against arbitrary centralized decisions or censorship attempts.

![Zimbabwe hyperinflation was so big that the government created "Ten Trillion Dollars" bills that actually were worth nothing.

](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/Va8yIHxZ8OYzrcK16Dlf2.webp?height=400&width=800)

Will Bitcoin become a medium of exchange? What will be the most important cryptos in the world? Nobody knows. But the doors to this new world have already been opened.

The cryptocurrencies are a brilliantly written response with math and code against the irresponsible misadventures of governments against their populations.

Cryptos are inevitable.

4) Networks

As we mentioned, there are thousands of different crypto coins. Each of them can run on different networks. Bitcoin runs on its own network, which is different from Ethereum, Solana, Flow, and so on.

Each network is a different blockchain and they are created for different purposes.

The Ethereum network’s purpose is to support technologies like NFTs, that's where they were implemented initially and that’s why most of them are priced on ETH. Later other networks were developed to support NFTs too, but faster and cheaper, like Polygon or Flow.

There is a lot to be discussed about each network’s pros and cons, but I believe that this class is not the ideal space for us to go that deep into this subject. The important thing is to understand that different networks, blockchains and cryptos serve different purposes, although many people often treat "cryptocurrencies" as a single substrate.

5) Address

To start using these new technologies, you don't need to gather dozens of documents, as in the traditional financial system. Networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum are focused on privacy. We are not necessarily known by our name or social security number, but by an alphanumeric string called Address.

In the example below, taken from Etherscan, we see a transaction record in the Ethereum blockchain. Address 0x6ed5ca2edf29a67d9a866954ad3d8bfc1d217c36 has sent 0.025 ETH to address 0x841e545cdc62d077aaf63ceb6bc02324a9dbf884. This is auditable by everyone, anytime, anywhere, but the identity of who is behind the addresses is not revealed by the network.

Here's an NFT-focused example, this one from the OpenSea marketplace:

The user 0x0d0a9fc9f33a7995bc2b810e477ee72a2272ac53 sold one Bored Ape to the user 0x92e9a341e18858b8ce1e2ed9bc96299638f12a81 for 73 ETH. This is registered on the Ethereum blockchain and will be there forever.

Today, there are initiatives to make this ecosystem more user-friendly. One of the most interesting is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which links an alphanumeric address to a name ending with .eth. Think of internet domains, like mcdonalds.com, but with the ending .eth and to transact within the Ethereum network.

In this example below, the user has the address 0xe4aee16a31b6cef1048b7b5605c96a376616b7a1, but also linked this address to its .eth domain: calvynjustus.eth. That way, when someone is sending a value over the Ethereum network to Calvyn, they don't need to type or copy the entire alpha-numeric sequence, just the calvynjustus.eth domain.

Fun fact: Budweiser bought the beer.eth domain and even put it on their Twitter.

6) Gas Fees

Gas Fees are transaction fees that network users pay when they run any sort of transaction.

This fee goes to Blockchain miners, people who provide the computational power so that the network continues to run smoothly and securely.

On the most popular blockchain in the NFT world, Ethereum, the value of gas fees is an issue. By 2021, their average value went from $5 to $70 dollars, in many cases reaching $150 to $500. This is the scalability issue that pushed towards the previously mentioned development of alternative networks.

Furthermore, the high values ​​of gas fees have also led to the rapid development and adoption of Layers 2, which we will talk about below.

7) Scaling Solutions

Scaling Solutions refer to networks or technologies that operate on top of an underlying blockchain in order to improve its scalability and efficiency.

Thus, by taking much of the data processing off the main blockchain, the network becomes less congested and more scalable. We have different types of Scaling Solutions, like Layer 2s, ZK Rollups, and State Channels.

This way, the blockchain becomes less congested, faster, and cheaper.

This type of technology has helped thousands of people to enter this world, as 99% of people are not willing - or simply cannot - to pay $50 in gas fees alone. On Polygon's network, for example, gas fees are usually fractions of a cent.

8) Smart Contracts

This is another backbone concept to understand NFTs. Remember when we said that different networks and blockchain can have different purposes? The first big blockchain was Bitcoin, proposed in 2008 and launched in 2009. But Bitcoin was created with specific purposes: to be a medium of exchange and a store of value.

Then, in 2014, a Russian-Canadian programmer called Vitalik Buterin, among other developers, proposed a new blockchain called Ethereum. The main difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is their main purposes. Bitcoin is like digital gold. Ethereum is like iron, something that people can use to build new things.

Smart Contracts are programs stored on a blockchain that runs a auditable logic, that anyone can interact with and is unmodifiable (kind of, we’ll talk about it later). If certain conditions are met, that smart contract will carry out certain actions automatically, independent of any external agent.

The fact that Ethereum is an open smart contracts platform has enabled thousands of innovators around the world to start using this technology to build decentralized applications without needing to set up their own blockchains.

Every NFT collection is based on a smart contract. In the case of Bored Apes, for example, their Smart Contract minting function says (I am paraphrasing here):

• Check if the sale is active

• Check if the number of requested apes is within the allowed amount

• Check if there is enough supply for the requested amount

• Check if the user sent enough ETH

• Mint each sold ape

The possibilities with Smart Contracts are practically endless and we are just starting to conceive of what they are really capable of. Expect a lot of evolution in this area over the next few years.

9) Token

Tokens are tradeable units of representation of different things that live on the blockchain. All cryptocurrencies are ultimately made up of tokens. In the case of Bitcoin and Ethereum, fungible tokens, 1 Bitcoin value as much as any other Bitcoin. 1 Ether value as much as any other Ether.

In the case of NFTs, they are Non-Fungible Tokens, so the tokens will not necessarily have the same value. Certain types of Bored Apes, for example, are worth much more than others depending on their attributes, even though they are all from the same NFT collection. We'll talk more about attributes and collections below!

Remember when we talked about utility and community in the last class? We've given the example of some collections that create closed communities and events for people who own their NFTs. The token is an essential part of this. If you don't remember, here's an image to refresh your memory:

Accessing certain communities or creating utility for NFTs is directly to the token. A Smart Contract or other applications can, for example, be programmed so that only people who hold a certain token can access a page, event, video, community and so on.

In the example above, the Contract Address field refers to the Smart Contract that governs the Bored Apes, already deployed in the Blockchain. Below, the Token ID of a specific Ape - 5102 - that is a token of that Smart Contract. We could create, for example, a page or an event where only people who have a Token from that collection could access.

That is exactly why people can right-click and save the image itself. But they can’t right-click and save the utility, community, and so on, because they are governed by the Smart Contract and the Tokens that are part of that contract.

“Okay, but how will a certain website, event or application know which people can or cannot access that environment? How will they know who has a token and who doesn't?”

I'm glad you asked! So let's talk about another fundamental element for this new world we are building, the wallets.

10) Wallet

Cryptocurrency wallets are a way to store and manage your addresses in the Blockchain.

Think of your bank account, but here, you don't need to gather dozens of documents to open an account. You can have a ready-to-use Wallet and trade values ​​with anyone else in the world who has a wallet in less than 1 minute.

Yep, it sounds like magic.

There are different types of wallets and each of them has different levels of usability and security, but we can talk more about these differences in other moments. Today, there are hundreds of different wallets, among the most famous: MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, WalletConnect, Formatic, Bitski, Dapper, and others.

But getting back:

“Okay, but how will a certain website, event, or application know which people can or cannot access that environment? How will they know who has a token and who doesn't?”

Think of wallets as a Facebook login, but on steroids. They store the key to your address which allows you to identify yourself at that address.
So, if I have a page that should be accessible only by people that own a Bored Ape, my page will:
Ask the user to connect their wallet.
Check if that wallet address has a token on the Bored Ape smart contract.
If so, it will allow that user to access the content.
If not, the content will remain blocked.

Here, creativity is endless, as are the possibilities with Smart Contracts.

You may:

• Allow access only to people who have at least 5 tokens;

• Allow access only to people who have at least 3 tokens with the X attribute;

• Allow access only to people who have had the token uninterruptedly for Y months.

• Much, much, much more things.

That's why we mentioned earlier that NFTs are a way to leverage and create new forms of relationships between audience, creators, companies, brands, and communities in general.

All of this working on the blockchain, with these technology building blocks that talk to each other: smart contracts, tokens, and wallets.

We needed to explain these broader concepts of the crypto/blockchain world and then get into the more specific world of NFTs. A great way to start is then to define what such collections are.

11) Attributes/Properties/Metadata

This term refers to the attributes of a particular NFT. They can be basically anything, just like the NFTs themselves.

Let's take a World of Women item as an example:

If we analyze the table of attributes and properties of this Woman, this is what we will see:

These are the attributes and characteristics of this token from this collection, in addition to the rarity of each one. In the case of this Woman, her Hairstyle is Purple Rainbow, and only 2% of the items in this collection have this characteristic. Not bad!

12) Minting/Mint

Is the process of generating a new token in a collection and associating a unique metadata to it. You can purchase a token that has been already minted or mint one yourself depending on the collection and marketplace. Generally when you don’t know which token you are going to get and the purchase generates a random one, you are probably minting a token. This can be done through an specific website or directly through a marketplace or aggregator, like OpenSea.

13) NFT Collections

It can be quite tricky to define an NFT Collection because it is not a collection of items itself. The collection is just a smart contract that is able to mint tokens that have unique characteristics and transfer the ownership of these tokens between addresses.

Although they are all NFTs, Doodles is a completely different collection from Bored Ape Yacht Club because their logic that associates metadata to each token is different.**
**

14) Primary Market

The primary market is when a buyer purchases an NFT (mints) directly from its original creator. This can be done through a dedicated website for that collection or directly through a marketplace, if the creator integrated their smart contract there.

15) Secondary Market

The secondary market happens when users buy and exchange NFTs among themselves, regardless of the original creator. For example, I can mint an NFT from GxngYxng, one of my favorite creators, and then, a few months later, put it up for sale. If someone buys this NFT from me, that transaction will have taken place on the secondary market.

In the example below, none of those involved are the original creator of that NFT, but they are trading with each other.

16) Airdrop

An airdrop is a distribution of NFTs, usually for free, to specific owners of a given collection. For example, all the owners of Bored Apes received a collection of dog companions for their Apes for free.

Airdrops can also be used outside the context of NFTs. Remember when we talked about ENS (Ethereum Name Service)? They are those domains ending in .eth, like basketball.eth.

In 2021 there was an airdrop of $ENS tokens for users of the service. They varied depending on the number of domains you had and how long you had them.

17) Royalties

A backbone of the NFT industry. The original creators of a collection can set royalties to their collections. This way, every time any item from that collection is sold on the secondary market, a % of sales will go to the original creator. Yeah, like, forever.

This is set in the smart contract and in the blockchain, so we can say that these royalties are practically eternal, as long as the collection remains active and the blockchain is running. Imagine how this technology will revolutionize the world of games, content creators, musicians, writers, and more.

Here is a step-by-step:

1. The creator creates an NFT

2. The creator sells to John for $ 10

3. John is now the owner of the NFT and the Creator received $ 10

4. John then sells the NFT to Mary for $100. When he/she was creating the NFT, the creator chose a 10% royalty.

5. Mary is now the owner of that NFT. John gets $90 from that sale and the Creator gets $10. A marketplace fee may apply, depending on where the transaction is happening.

If Mary ever sells that NFT to a third user, the original creator will still receive their 10% royalty.

18) Listing

It refers to the act of putting an NFT up for sale. I may have bought an NFT from a creator I really like, and in a few years, I may list it for sale on the secondary market. People can either pay the price I asked for or place a bid.

19) Floor Price

Refers to the lowest value among all items listed for sale in a given collection. In the example below, the cheapest Ghxst listed costs 4.5 Ethers. If any owner lists a Ghxst for 3.8 ETH, the floor price will then be 3.8.

20) Traded Volume

It refers to the total volume traded in the collection since the moment of its launch. In the example below, the total volume traded was 14,700 ETH.

Important: the creators of the Rumble Kong League do not have received 14,700 ETH since the collection was released. Remember when we talked about royalties? Exactly! Let's say I bought a Kong when they were released, at a price of 0.03 ETH.

Then, some months ago I sold it to another user for 1 ETH. The creators of the Rumble Kong League may have stated in the smart contract that they would receive a 10% royalty every time a Kong is traded. So 10% of 1 ETH (ie 0.1 ETH) will go to the Rumble Kong League and 0.9 ETH to me. For the calculation of the Traded Volume, however, it is not considered only the value that the Rumble Kong League won, but the entire volume traded in the collection.

So, if we put together all the transactions already carried out in the Rumble Kong League collection to date, we see that it traded 14,700 ETH.

21) Items and Owners

These statistics refer to the number of items available in that collection and the number of unique addresses that have items in that collection. The World of Women collection, for example, has 10,000 items and approximately 4,700 addresses/users owning these items.

22) Burn

To burn an NFT essentially means to destroy it. Yep. That’s it. For example, if a collection intended to sell 10,000 NFTs but only sold 5,000, the creators can burn the remaining supply.

3rd Chapter: The NFTs Ecosystem

In our previous chapter, 22 Concepts You Need to Learn, we presented a lot of important concepts necessary to understand the NFT world. Today, we will talk about the NFT Ecosystem.

If in our last chapter, we talked much more about the terms and concepts related to the NFT world, today we will talk much more about the companies and tools that are driving this ecosystem further. Before we start, 3 important points:

1. Of course, this is not a complete list. It will always be under construction.

2. This ecosystem changes very fast, new and new platforms appear every day. Some of these platforms, tools, and technologies may be more or less relevant in the coming years.

3. There are no clear winners yet. While we can give examples of gigantic platforms here, they all have yet to prove themselves over time.

Let’s go!

Wallets

In our last chapter, we defined Wallets as “Cryptocurrency wallets are a way to store and transact elements in the Blockchain”. We have dozens and dozens of wallets that are divided into custodial and non-custodial, hot and cold, and so on.

Each type of Wallet has its pros and cons and more or less specific features. Some of the main wallets on the market are Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, Ledger, and Trezor.

Minting Platforms

These tools allow users to create and launch their NFTs, with or without any code. Some of the biggest players here include Manifold, thirdweb, Crossmint, and Mirror. Some of them have a broader appeal, such as Manifold and thirdweb, while others are more specific, such as Crossmint, which offers a solution for purchasing NFTs with a credit card, and Mirror, which is focused on writing.

Marketplaces and Aggregators

These platforms provide a centralized space for users buy and sell NFTs. The biggest player is OpenSea, and some other players try to get their market share as well, like Rarible and Foundation. Some of these marketplaces are broader (OpenSea), while others have more specific focuses, such as high-value art and guest artists (Foundation). Other marketplaces start out focused on a specific blockchain, such as Magic Eden, which started out focused only on Solana blockchain NFTs and, over time, added new blockchains to the platform. Here, we can also include music NFTs marketplaces, such as Audius.

NFTs CRM Platforms

These tools were built specifically to provide companies and creators with tools to better manage and serve their owners. They can focus on providing utility (like Tropee and Moonsight), or much more on Customer Relationship and Loyalty (like Flaunt and Highloop).

Integration Tools

These tools are focused on integrating Web2 platforms with Web3 technologies. Here, you can find examples on Premint (for companies looking to build prelaunch lists for their NFT drops) and CollabLand (for companies looking to build token-gated experiences in platforms such as Discord and Telegram).

Infrastructure

These companies provide technological infrastructure for almost all other players on this list. Here you can find Web3 giants like Alchemy (The AWS of Web3), Pinata and Nameless. We can also include entire blockchains here, like Polygon, Solana, Immutable, and Flow.

Data Analytics

These platforms provide tools for analyzing data from collections of NFTs, such as transacted volume, higher sales, floor price, or labeling wallets according to their NFTs and behavior. Some of the most used on the market are Dune, Nansen, and CryptoSlam.

Games

This is a very new category that is still far from consolidation, but that can have a massive impact. In the beginning, blockchain games were not fun games, but crypto experiences with some gaming aspects. This will change and in the future, a lot of games will integrate NFTs into their gameplay, but in a fun and non-intrusive way. Some of the best examples here are Sorare and Castle Crush.

Virtual Worlds

These platforms are focused on building virtual worlds that can be owned by their users or where users can build NFT-related experiences. A lot of these platforms are still in a very experimental phase and a lot of them will not survive in the long term. Some of the most famous here are Spatial, Decentraland and The Sandbox.

Showcases

These tools are focused on providing users with elements to showcase their NFTs, either in real life or virtually. Some of the most famous players here are Oncyber and Lago.

Domains

These platforms offer a way for users and brands to name a big range of elements, from wallets to websites, bringing more customization to the NFT world. Here, some of the most prominent players are Ethereum Name Service, Unstoppable Domains, and Handshake.

Ticketing

One of the most prominent use cases for NFTs, the ticketing industry can hugely benefit from records stored on the blockchain. Thinking on this, several companies are addressing this solution, providing companies with a technological solution to implement NFTs into their events in a smooth way. Here, some of the most important players are YellowHeart and TicketMint.

Of course, we covered here a few categories inside the NFTs Ecosystem. We could also talk about other categories such as social, finance and DeFi, DeSci (Decentralized Science), and more. This is an involving ecosystem and we should see more and more categories and players appearing in the next few years.

NFTs will not change just collectibles. It will change entire industries. Think of everything that needs to be unique, have a unique owner, and must have a record. Yeah, we can think of a lot of industries here, like real estate, healthcare, and education. We'll talk more about the current and potential future applications of NFTs in the next chapters.

4th Chapter: NFTs: Current and Future Applications

You may have noticed that many of the examples we brought up in the last few classes were from character-related NFT collections, like the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cool Cats.

Today, the so-called PFP (Profile Picture) Collections are on the rise. These NFTs were created to be used as profile pictures by their owners on different social media platforms.

Below, NBA star Shaquille O'Neal with a Creature World NFT as his profile picture on Twitter.

This type of collection has been so successful because it is a perfect bridge between the so-called Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.

We won't go into detail here of what these terminologies are, but the point is: Using an NFT as a profile picture on a social network is a way to show your friends and your audience:

• That you are part of that particular community;

• That you’re inside the world of crypto and NFTs.

Also, having certain NFTs as your PFP can open many doors for you with crypto and NFT enthusiasts.

But NFTs focused on being used as profile pictures are just the tip of the iceberg.

They are like the first games or mobile applications.

But before we get straight into current and future uses for NFTs, Kaynã needs to explain a few important concepts:

ERC721 and ERC20

To understand the possible applications that NFTs can have we need to clarify two types of tokens first. ERC721 and ERC20.

Ooooh spooky letters and numbers, I already hate it, Tiago.

That nomenclature just describes two different normatives of smart contracts.

If I tell you that a car is a pickup you expect it to have an open trunk and probably 4x4 traction and if I tell you that another car is a SUV you expect a spacious car with a big closed trunk.

Take that same idea and apply that to smart contracts and those two standards.

When I tell you that a smart contract is an ERC721 you can expect it to be able to mint tokens and those tokens to have unique characteristics. If I tell you that a smart contract is an ERC20 you can expect it to be able to approve transfers between users and manage spending allowances.

To make it dead simple: ERC721 are non-fungible unique tokens (NFTs) and ERC20 are fungible non-unique tokens.

• ERC-721 tokens are non-fungible, that is, they have different properties and values ​​from each other. Remember the Bored Apes? Well, although they are all from the same collection, each of them can have a different value.

• ERC-20 tokens, on the other hand, are fungible, meaning they all have the same value and the same properties.

There are actually more standards, but we’ll focus on those two to make it simpler.

The applications of those tokens revolve around the verifiable ownership and tradability of them.

What can we do with ERC721?

• Restrict access to a resource.

• Generate assets/content based on the attributes of your token.

• Use ownership to receive new tokens (airdrop).

What can we do with ERC20?

• Proprietary currencies.

• Blockchain-verified scoring system.

• Rewards based on token amount.

Although our book is focused on NFTs (ERC-721 tokens), we think it is important to make this distinction because we imagine that, in the next decade, most of the uses we will make of Smart Contracts have to do with the different usability of ERC-721 tokens and ERC-20 tokens.

Now, it's time to get into some of the current and future uses for NFTs. Some of them are already happening and maturing, others are just experimentation or prototypes. Remember that these are the early days of NFTs.

NFTs-Native Brands

Each new technological paradigm brings with it an opportunity for the birth of brands that are native to this new paradigm.

In the 90s, the internet, for example, brought brands native to this new world, such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce. Mobile brought native-mobile companies like Uber, Airbnb, Instagram and Tinder.

Obviously, we are talking about big platforms here, but we can expand on these examples. Think about the number of clothing brands that have been created thanks to the explosion of e-commerce? Or the number of authors who started publishing their books using Kindle Direct Publishing and became fulltime authors without having to sign a deal with a publishing company? Digital Marketing, for example, has created a whole new ecosystem of agencies focused on serving brands that want to create online campaigns.

We have an entire ecosystem of new tools and platforms that are being created to serve customers of this new tech paradigm.

In addition to tools and new technologies, entrepreneurs are already starting to create studios and agencies focused on serving creators and brands that want to enter this world.

Games

Many experts around the world believe that games will play a key role in NFTs achieving mass adoption.

Every year, millions of people spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying in-game items, skins, and other accessories.

A rare Fortnite skin, for example, can cost $150 dollars. Players use this type of accessory in virtual environments to communicate their personalities, generate differentiation and belonging, and so on.

Games like World of Warcraft and Counter Strike, for example, have a kind of clandestine market where users sell items to each other.

Imagine the potential to combine in-game cosmetic items with NFTs?

Some of the biggest game companies in the world, like Ubisoft and Square Enix, have already started experimenting or discussing how to insert NFTs into games. This was accompanied by criticism from most players, which can be considered normal, since there is still a lot of misinformation about NFTs out there.

Fundraising

This could be one of the most fascinating applications for NFTs and one that, in our humble opinion, could gain a lot of traction in the coming years.

A particular creator may use NFTs to raise funds for their projects.

It already happens, actually. A collection like Cool Cats, for example, has in its roadmap the launch of games and new collections. This was only possible because thousands of people bet on the project and decided to finance it.

Think here of a kind of Patreon, but with NFTs. A creator can launch an NFT collection as a way to raise funds for a project, which will have a specific roadmap and can be closely followed by the people who bet on it. If the project succeeds, those who bet on it at the beginning can sell their NFT for a profit, for example, or they can just hold their NFTs to become more and more engaged with the community, get rewards, be more and more part of that world and so on.

It's like being able to bet on a writer at the beginning of her career and have "part" of his success when she becomes a bestseller.

Imagine being able to bet on Harry Potter when the books were not a global phenomenon. Imagine if you had 100 NFTs from a given Harry Potter collection: you could receive a special Hogwarts badge that would be recognized by the entire fan community. Or you could have calls with J.K. Rowling. Or even have the right to vote on what would happen in the next tales and stories. Or be rewarded for the time you've spent in the community. Or for the fanfics you wrote.

Here, the creators' creativity will drive the market. Here are two examples:

• Ethereum Documentary Raises $1.9 Million Via NFTs on Mirror

• South Korean presidential candidate to use NFTs to raise funds for campaign

Online Writing and Publishing

We told you that NFTs can be virtually anything, right? “Yeah, even an article or blogpost?” you may ask. And yeah, articles or blogposts can be NFTs.

That’s exactly the idea behind Mirror (https://mirror.xyz/), an online writing and publishing platform natively integrated with NFTs, where you’re reading this book right now.

Every time a post is published on Mirror, it can be transformed into an NFT and added to the Ethereum blockchain, creating an immutable record of who published that post, when it was published, and so on.

COLLECT NFTTTTTTTTT CTA

While writing great articles, authors can fundraise for their projects and sell articles as NFTs, all directly through the platform and in a fully integrated way.

Music

Just like games, music will be greatly impacted by NFTs. It is not yet known how, but we can say with a certain degree of certainty that NFTs will change the way artists build relationships with their audiences. Today, many rely on signing to record labels or receiving pennies every time their music is streamed.

Today, there are already marketplaces for NFTs totally focused on music, in addition to several other platforms that seek to tokenize these files.

**
**Musician Daniel Allan, for example, created a crowdfunding campaign using Mirror to raise funds for his project called Overstimulated. He raised something close to 50 ether.

Of course, this is just the beginning. Many utilities and other business models will still emerge and revolutionize the music industry.

Real Estate

Remember that NFTs are a superior technology for creating uniqueness and ownership of an asset, right? Then think about the possibilities for the real estate market where, at least in theory, each house, apartment, or commercial unit should be treated as unique.

Some protocols, like Propy, for example, were created specifically to bridge the gap between NFTs, blockchain, and the real estate market.

Another important point: The internet has been a great middlemen destroyer for industries such as media, education, and entertainment. Blockchain can play this same role, but for other industries like finance and real estate. In a few years, who knows, buying and selling a property could become as simple as posting a photo, as everything will be on the Blockchain and the number of middlemen could drastically decrease.

Healthcare

One of the industries with the greatest opportunities for disruption, Healthcare is still far from the hype that other industries have with NFTs, but we could have billions of dollars being created in the next decade.

NFTs are unique records, right?

Imagine everything that should be unique within the Healthcare industry, such as Lifetime Medical Record and Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. Aimedis, for example, created a marketplace where patients share their health data as NFTs.

In a world where we share our data without often receiving a fair exchange, NFTs can unlock new business models.

Education

Like Healthcare, Education is one of the industries with the greatest opportunities for disruption.

At first glance, we can think of NFTs starting on education through certificates.

Certificates as NFTs sound like an obvious path.

We can also think about:

• NFTs as Transcripts and Records;

• Learning Experiences;

• Awards.

But this may just be the tip of the iceberg.

We can imagine NFTs as rewards for students, with a proof-of-knowledge protocol, creating a learn-to-earn concept, where depending on the students’ performance, they could receive tokens.

Dynamic NFTs

A lot of these revolutions and use cases will be possible with the use of Dynamic NFTs. Sometimes called dNFT, these tokens are created with a smart contract logic that can change their properties and data based on external events.

Some people mistakenly believe that the data present in NFTs is necessarily immutable. This is not necessarily true.

This can indeed happen if it makes sense for that particular use case. In blockchains, the transactions and data are permanent. However, this makes many people mistakenly think that smart contracts or NFT data are always immutable.

Dynamics NFTs can be particularly powerful for industries such as real estate, healthcare, and automotive. If we tokenize a house, for example, transforming its rights into an NFT, that token itself will be forever on the blockchain, but some of its traits can change over time, like its color, age, maintenance history, and so on. All this information will be stored on the blockchain and will change and evolve over time. This image, from Chainlink, demonstrates this example:

This same logic can be applied to other industries, like healthcare, with a dNFT representing your medical records, and automotive, with a dNFT representing the car and its history of sales, maintenance, and so on.

dNFTs are just getting started, with companies like Visible and Dimo already building within this field. dNFTs will surely be one of the major drivers for mass adoption in more traditional industries, bringing trillions of dollars in assets into the blockchain.

“Bringing real world assets to the blockchain unlocks unprecedented utility.” - Vinod Khosla

Everything can be an asset. For good and for bad.

We brought some examples of potential use cases for NFTs. Of course, the general scope is bigger than this. This industry is just beginning. It's like trying to predict the main applications of the internet... In 1994.

Today, NFTs are very much related to digital collectibles. But this should change soon. We should see more and more vertical uses of NFTs in the next few years.

As new use cases emerge, new technologies and platforms will emerge. And also new businesses and new types of professionals. The mass adoption of NFTs will create hundreds of millions of jobs in the next few years.

Remember: NFTs are a way to turn just about anything into an asset. That is great. And it can be really bad. The technology itself is neutral, the use we make of it makes the difference, just like the internet itself.

Our mission is precisely to remove all the noise that talks about speculation and people who became millionaires overnight.

The roads to this new world are being built right now, by people like you and us.

5th Chapter: The Future of NFTs

The Ultimate Digital Transformation

To really understand NFTs, you need to understand the digital world.

Although today we treat the digital world almost as separate from the real world, this distinction will become less and less obvious.

Take a look at this headline below. It was based on a study published in 2017. The authors stated that:

“Despite the many advantages of digital products, research shows that in many cases, people are willing to pay significantly more for physical products. In this piece, the authors describe a recent study which found that customers often just don’t feel as if they actually own digital goods, leading them to ascribe less value to digital products than to physical ones.”

Read that sentence again. “(...) customers often just don’t feel as if they actually own digital goods”.

Well… What if we had a technology that would give us that sense of actually owning digital goods? That’s exactly what NFTs are doing right now.

Young people already value digital items like skins or items on games like Roblox or Fortnite. Just ask your son or daughter. They are being raised in a world where they are avatars and their virtual-world clothes can mean as much as their real-world clothes.

Not only young people, but many people would die if they lost their Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn accounts. They are like extensions of ourselves. They are ourselves in the virtual world. And NFTs put much more value on that. NFTs enhance our sense of ownership and the possibilities of what we can do with these digital items.

And the virtual world and the real world will become just one thing.

Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, stated that:

"We forget, in our generation, that things don’t have to be physical. They can be digital, and they have meaning to people. And as long as that meaning can be essentially substantiated in a blockchain, I think you’re going to see an explosion of things being created, traded, collected in NFTs."

In the coming years, we should see a change in how users and brands think about NFTs. Today they are seen as stand-alone categories or products. Likewise, e-commerce and digital marketing were once separated categories from commerce and marketing. NFTs will increasingly be incorporated into existing structures, products, and networks rather than just getting perceived as different categories. This will be another driver for mass adoption.

Bubbles and Builders

Are we living in a bubble of NFTs right now? That is very likely. NFTs today are like the Internet in 1998.

Another important point is:

99% of collections and projects are likely to die. And that's normal. We had a big internet crash, but the internet as a revolutionary technology lived on and revolutionized our lives. Likewise, 99% of the first games released for mobile did not survive. But they were necessary to create the market.

That's why it's important not to put all your money into a project or make trading. Always do a lot of research before investing in any new collection. Don't get carried away by emotion or by what an influencer has said.

But anyway, the fact is: This industry is attracting some of the most creative and technologically savvy builders in the world. This is an inevitable market. And we're here to help build it.

You’re Not Too Late

This is an excerpt from the book The Inevitable, published in 2016 and written by Kevin Kelly, one of our favorite authors - you may have noticed that our company name was a tribute to the book.

Kelly talks about the beginning of the internet. And how often we want to go back to that time when everything was being built.

Good news: You're not too late.

"Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an ambitious entrepreneur back in 1985 at the dawn of the internet? At that time almost any dot-com name you desired was available. All you had to do was simply ask for the one you wanted. One-word domains, common names—they were all available. It didn’t even cost anything to claim. This grand opportunity was true for years. In 1994 a Wired writer noticed that mcdonalds.com was still unclaimed, so with my encouragement he registered it. He then tried unsuccessfully to give it to McDonald’s, but the company’s cluelessness about the internet was so hilarious (“dot what?”) that this tale became a famous story we published in Wired.

The internet was a wide-open frontier then. It was easy to be the first in any category you chose. Consumers had few expectations and the barriers were extremely low. Start a search engine! Be the first to open an online store! Serve up amateur videos! Of course, that was then. Looking back now, it seems as if waves of settlers have since bulldozed and developed every possible venue, leaving only the most difficult and gnarly specks for today’s newcomers. Thirty years later the internet feels saturated with apps, platforms, devices, and more than enough content to demand our attention for the next million years. Even if you could manage to squeeze in another tiny innovation, who would notice it among our miraculous abundance?

But, but . . . here is the thing. In terms of the internet, nothing has happened yet! The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning. It is only becoming. If we could climb into a time machine, journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2050 were not invented until after 2016. People in the future will look at their holodecks and wearable virtual reality contact lenses and downloadable avatars and AI interfaces and say, “Oh, you didn’t really have the internet”—or whatever they’ll call it—“back then.”

And they’d be right. Because from our perspective now, the greatest online things of the first half of this century are all before us. All these miraculous inventions are waiting for that crazy, no-one-told-me-it-was impossible visionary to start grabbing the low-hanging fruit—the equivalent of the dot-com names of 1984.

Because here is the other thing the graybeards in 2050 will tell you: Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an innovator in 2016? It was a wide-open frontier! You could pick almost any category and add some AI to it, put it on the cloud. Few devices had more than one or two sensors in them, unlike the hundreds now. Expectations and barriers were low. It was easy to be the first. And then they would sigh. “Oh, if only we realized how possible everything was back then!”

So, the truth: Right now, today, in 2016 is the best time to start up. There has never been a better day in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside than now. Right now, this minute. This is the moment that folks in the future will look back at and say, “Oh, to have been alive and well back then!” The last 30 years has created a marvelous starting point, a solid platform to build truly great things. But what’s coming will be different, beyond, and other. The things we will make will be constantly, relentlessly becoming something else. And the coolest stuff of all has not been invented yet.

Today truly is a wide-open frontier. We are all becoming. It is the best time ever in human history to begin. You are not late."

Over the last few decades, we have seen the migration of several companies, business models, processes, and so on, from analog to digital, in a movement that experts call Digital Transformation.

What's to come will be much bigger.

Rather than a digital transformation, we will see the emergence of careers, processes, assets, companies, organizations, tools, concepts, and infrastructures that are Digital Native. This has already happened over the past few years and will only increase over the next few years.

Slowly, slowly, slowly. Then suddenly.

Digital Native Organizations and Careers will bring a powerful paradigm shift. NFTs will be driven by this, as they are a digital native technology for conferring Digital Property Rights. Few people understand why this is so important.

NFTs, solely as collectibles for trading and profit, will lose steam.

NFTs, as a technology to provide Digital Property Rights, will only gain more traction and relevance.

Get ready.

Proof-of-Review

If you found the information and insights here valuable, consider buying the book on Amazon. Here is a proposal:

1. Leave a 5-star review on Amazon telling why it was valuable to you (obviously, only if it was valuable to you)

2. Send me a screenshot proving that you published the review to tiago@inevitable.education

3. I will send you a special NFT as a reward. This NFT is not intended for trading, resale or financial gain. Look at it as a reward for your effort and entry into this new world. Believe me: This NFT is beautiful and worth it.

Let’s talk

If you made it this far, first of all, thank you!

We invite you to leave a review for the book on Amazon. You can also discover our other books there.

Also, follow us: @tiago4maral and Kaynã Oliveira.

If you want to hire me for talks, workshops, or advisory, contact me here: https://tiagoamaral.xyz.

If you want to talk with Kaynã, go to: https://kaynarodrigues.com/