According to Wikipedia, the first known non fungible token (NFT) was created in 2014 and the first NFT project was launched in late 2015. It took a few more years and more projects for the concept to trickle into the consciousness of the general public, and then a few more for the massive investments into NFTs to follow.
2020 and 2021 saw hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on NFTs. The boom was obvious but baffling to many, as buying an NFT of a piece of digital art – a song, a photo, a video, an in-game collectible item, etc. – does not mean that you get copyright, intellectual property, or other legal rights to the digital asset the NFT represents.
What is, then, the allure of NFTs?
We’ve asked Satnam Narang, staff research engineer at Tenable, to shed some light on the matter for the uninitiated and to offer some security advice for those who have already invested in them.
What do buyers use NFTs for?
“Most often associated with digital art, NFTs are considered to be the modern equivalent of an art collection. Only a certain number of NFTs are produced for a project and they have a variety of traits, which can contribute to the value of an NFT from a rarity standpoint,” Narang explains.
“Most of the popular NFT projects are what are called PFPs (profile pictures) projects like CryptoPunks or Bored Apes. Buyers acquire these and use them as their profile pictures on social media, because social media has become our digital art gallery….
