Why Art Blocks Uses JavaScript in Its Smart Contract

Second, the blockchain also keeps a record of all the transactions connected to the NFT and the property it represents. In art sales, for example, that could represent the provenance of something going back to the creator.

Blockchain technologies have somehow managed to land in the worst of both worlds—decentralized but not really, immutable but not really.If someone steals your ape JPEG, if you’re lucky, OpenSea might delist it and make it much harder for them to turn a profit on it. But you still won’t get your JPEG back, or have the opportunity to cash out on it y... See more

Instead of storing the data on-chain, NFTs instead contain a URL that points to the data. What surprised me about the standards was that there’s no hash commitment for the data located at the URL. Looking at many of the NFTs on popular marketplaces being sold for tens, hundreds, or millions of dollars, that URL often just points to some VPS running... See more

This is what so many people overlook. NFTs are more than JPEG images. They are digital assets that represent art, experiences, community access, collectibles, or in-game items - all residing on the blockchain.

Cryptoart smart contracts offer no legal protection, and any talk of contracts baked into the NFT “requiring resales to cut in the artist” or “compensate gallery workers” depend entirely on the goodwill of the purchaser.

A blockchain solves these problems. If you issue your assets as a token on a blockchain to begin with, then you inherit an enormous shared infrastructure for managing and maintaining markets.

NFTs exist on top of blockchains like Ethereum. Ethereum is a decentralized global computer that is owned and operated by its users.

On the other hand, blockchains make it easy to assign property rights at a granular level (ownership of single lines of code) and automatically compensate the owners of said rights whenever their "assets" are being used.