On a technical level, NFTs are assets that can be exchanged on a blockchain, a digital ledger of transactions. ‘The NFT market is huge and open to everyone, the audience is wider and there is a potential collector for every media, every style, and all participants are enthusiastic to discover new artists,’ says Aleksandra Jovanić, an artist who mints NFTs on the open-source blockchain Tezos.
It’s worth noting that NFTs can be used for a number of things, from creating a digital provenance to visually representing an asset. The latter is how most of the art world currently understands the term NFT – as synonymous with ‘digital work of art’ – but it’s important to note that ‘NFT’ simply refers to the underlying technology that allows a digital asset to be traded. NFTs are not inherently digital art, but they offer artists an entirely new medium. Put simply: NFTs should not always be thought of as works of art, whereas works of art can be NFTs.
As Jovanić implies, NFTs are relatively accessible for technological reasons: Rather than going through a gallery or auction house, collectors can mint NFTs directly from artists. As creators of NFTs, artists are also entitled to royalties any time the asset is put up for resale, thanks to the way they are coded. This is in stark contrast to what happens in the traditional art market, where artists are most often left out of the resale process entirely. Collectors benefit from blockchain technology too, because NFTs are impossible to fake. There’s no way to copy an NFT, and collectors can be sure of their ownership and the work’s authorship.
