NFTs, Explained

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Nov 25, 2021

Join Jesse Walden, co-founder of MediaChain Labs and current expert at Variant Fund, alongside Linda Xie, an early product manager at Coinbase now at Scalar Capital. They break down NFTs, from their definitions to their revolutionary impact on ownership and digital assets. The duo tackles common misconceptions like the environmental concerns and the ‘just a JPG’ critique. They also discuss the innovative uses of NFTs in art, community engagement, and the potential of decentralized organizations to transform how creators monetize their work.

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INSIGHT

NFTs: Beyond Digital Art

NFTs are unique digital assets tracked on a blockchain, representing ownership.
They can represent digital or physical assets, expanding beyond just digital art.

INSIGHT

Owning Digital Files

NFTs make digital files ownable, similar to owning physical media.
Creating an NFT is like uploading to a blockchain, tracking provenance and attribution.

INSIGHT

Crypto's Role in NFTs

Crypto enables NFT ownership tracking without intermediaries, unlike physical world systems.
This allows open, global trading and fractional ownership.

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Given all the activity and interest recently around crypto and web3, as well as in upcoming holidays and art events, we’re re-running our episode all about NFTs (from March 2021) -- where we covered everything you need or want to know about NFTs. You can also find a curated list of resources to learn all about NFTs at future.com/nftcanon. That list, and this episode, has something for everyone -- from artists and creators and other builders to big companies and institutions or just anyone seeking to understand or even explain to others NFTs.

Here, we’ve cut through the noise around NFTs to share the signal, covering everything from:

what NFTs are and the underlying crypto big picture, before we dig into specifically what forms they take;
common myths and misconceptions -- from confusing overlaps with other concepts to addressing commentary like it’s “just a JPG” or that it’s just hype
to the question of energy use, also covering briefly how NFTs work
providing a quick overview of the players/ ecosystem
and throughout, covering various applications too.

Joining host Sonal Chokshi are Jesse Walden, now of Variant Fund, and formerly co-founder of Mediachain Labs, which was acquired by Spotify; and Linda Xie, now of Scalar Capital, and formerly an early product manager at Coinbase. As a reminder, NONE of the following should be taken as investment advice, for more important information please see a16z.com/disclosures.

[If you’re also interested in DAOs (which we touch on briefly in this episode), we just recently published a list of readings -- in the vein of our famous crypto canon resource, then NFT canon, and now DAO canon -- all about DAOs. It’s for anyone seeking to understand, build, and otherwise get involved with these “decentralized autonomous organizations” -- which represent the future of community, coordination, work, and much more… so we’ve curated resources on this list for people at different levels of interest, from dipping one’s toes in to going deep. You can find that at future.com/daocanon.]

This episode was originally released in March 2021: https://future.a16z.com/podcasts/nfts-explainer/