NFTs make the internet ownable — Mirror

In media, NFTs—or Non-Fungible Tokens—make it possible for creators to retain ownership of their content, without limiting the propagation of their files across the internet. As a result, NFTs have the potential to invert the ownership model of media—offering creators, their audiences, and developers who build for them, a viable alternative to plat... See more

Tokens and smart contracts have been called "money legos" as they allow programmers to compose and remix DeFi applications. Similarly, NFTs are "media legos" for developers and creators to permissionlessly remix and build new experiences around.

People collect NFTs for a number of reasons. It could be the thrill of discovering a promising new artist or artwork, the allure of a piece’s potential cultural value, the social status of owning something unique and canonical, or the prospect of turning a profit by reselling the work down the line.

Creators make more money by selling directly to their fans and by collecting royalties every time their NFTs are resold. This is an entirely new revenue stream that is only possible because of true digital ownership that can encode royalty logic in the media itself.

Every day billions of images, videos, songs, and more media are shared on social media. When those files are posted, a copy of the media is taken from the creator’s device and pasted to the server of the platform distributing it—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and the like.

This is all happening despite the fact that it’s still fairly clunky and expensive to engage with NFTs on Ethereum. Minting a single NFT costs roughly $100 in ETH, and buying and trading incurs high transaction fees.

NFTs make it possible to own digital media assets in the same way that you can own a digital financial asset.

And remember, these are not just collectors’ items, they are programmable assets that any developer can remix. As developers build new contexts for NFTs to live, there will be compounding demand from creators to have their work included in this emerging metaverse and for collectors to flex their ownership rights.

The more a file is shared and seen online, the more cultural value it accrues. Consider the mass production of posters and t-shirts of Warhol imagery. With increase in notoriety, the concept of owning the canonical work becomes more thrilling, and more a marker of social status.