The interesting thing is blockchain-based art could eliminate the need for these corporations. Given that the origin and history of ownership can be verified publicly on-chain, only someone holding the private keys can actually transfer the art. Moreover, like many of these projects, a real-world and digital solution will have to coexist for some time.
Related: Art and Blockchain: Revolution in Art Collecting
A new landscape for intellectual property
What NFTs have most successfully accomplished is proving the range of things that can be tokenized. A picture, a sound, a fraction of a video, or even a game piece can all be turned into a tokenized asset, opening the doors for intellectual property to be revolutionized in the burgeoning digital age.
Existing models around art creation, ownership and resale rarely benefit the artist. Imagine you create and sell a painting for $900, only to have the buyer resell it 15 years later for $85,000, with none of that profit going to you — the creator.
This is exactly what happened to painter and graphic artist Robert Rauschenberg. He was from the United States where no federal resale royalty rights exist, but even in the few states and countries where they do, the sale still has to meet certain criteria for you to be eligible. Imagine, instead, you tokenize your art and attach a smart contract that enforces a certain percentage of every sale be sent to the original address. This allows for infinitely paying royalties with no restrictions on your country of residence, size of the sale, or how old you are when it’s sold. This setup could be a game-changer for artists who often only see returns on the original sale.
More than just profit
The crypto space is known for speculators, people looking to get rich quick versus being invested in contributing to building a lasting ecosystem. That can’t be said of many projects in the NFT space, which are specifically built with a long-term vision in mind. OpenLaw has helped to create an end-to-end real estate transaction using NFTs to represent ownership of property, something that could get rid of the expensive, and lengthy, title verification process in places like the U.S.
0xcert’s Evidenspace product allows for the issuance (and verification) of NFT-based academic credentials — a hopeful solution for forged credentials. This is a big deal since research has shown more than half the people who claim to have Ph.D.s are likely lying. And GenoBank’s current goal is to allow people to fully own their DNA (you often lose these rights when you send your data to companies like 23andMe that can, and do, sell your data to drugmakers), meaning you could sell or donate it as you wished for product development and scientific research.
NFTs are the future of ownership
As NFTs have been gaining popularity in the crypto and broader tech industries, they have started to attract investors and spawned projects in other spaces like retail, sports and even politics. In the past year alone, Nike filed a patent for tokenizing shoes on Ethereum; Formula 1 held an auction for Formula 1 car-branded NFTs; and Brooklyn Nets NBA player Spencer Diwiddie attempted to tokenize his contract to allow fans to participate in his success, though the NBA prevented him from doing so. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has continued the discussion around whether blockchain technology could be used for secure, virtual voting in the U.S., a move that could lead to NFTs making their way into the political sphere.
With the world becoming more and more digital, NFTs present a very viable solution for tokenizing ownership and property. These tokens allow for real-world assets to be properly digitized and stored while simultaneously keeping them secure, ultimately revolutionizing the compensation, storage, legality and the security of property.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Trinity Montoya is a protocol engineer at Bison Trails — a leading blockchain infrastructure provider. A software engineer for seven years, she’s worked exclusively at early-stage startups in New York City and Boston. A New York City native, she’s currently in Colorado with her monster dog, Zapp.
