NFTs for Dummies

[Silverback Kent (Amazonian SBs) has taken on the task of making NFTs understandable by the average Ape. If I’m reading the right The Jungle could be its own NFT. SB SM]

So, let me attempt to break it down. NFTs are not blockchains. NFTs are tokens that are stored on blockchains, though. There are multiple blockchains with NFTs, including Ethereum, Cardano, and Solana. Each of these blockchains has different dynamics, and NFT marketplaces springing up to buy, sell, and create NFTs in permissionless ways. I won’t sit here and advocate any of these blockchains for the long term. The point of yesterday’s Ramble was to talk about the concept of NFTs themselves and what doors the technological innovation is opening.

Specifically, the NFTs are opening the doors to a metaverse digital reality. A metaverse can best be understood by watching the movie Ready Player One, but if you’ve played or, watched a child play, Minecraft, you’ll have a vague idea of what a metaverse is. It’s a digital world where individuals within it shape the contents of the digital world itself. Think of it as humans playing God and building something from nothing in a digital environment. The problem with all the metaverse reality/games thus far is that they’re exclusive ecosystems where everything exists only in that metaverse. With NFTs, individuals in the metaverse can own digitally scarce, unique items that can be moved in and out of different metaverses, marketplaces, and wallets at will. It’s a collapse of the walled garden, which will allow a consensus digital metaverse to emerge.

For example, you’ve pieced together a set of NFTs including a 6’8” Chewbacca NFT, wearing Lulu Lemon clothing NFTs, driving a ‘65 Chevy NFT, with a duckbilled platypus NFT named Bill riding shotgun that you want to package up and sell to a person who is in a separate Vietnamese-oriented metaverse? No problem. The transaction was just instantly settled in Bitcoin on the Lightning Payment Network. Nothing required permission from any government or third party. …yeah, it’s going to be wild.

So what did I mean by my statement yesterday that you need to start the process of separating your sovereign identity from the nation-state you live in? I meant that primarily on a psychological level. Most of us identify as individuals of a nation-state instead of individuals of a culture. For example, I’m a US citizen, but that’s very different than being an American. The first is the nation-state that governs me because I was born in its governing geography, while the second is the culture I grew up within. If your sense of identity is tied into the nation-state that governs you, you’re going to have a hard time in the years ahead as nation-states grasp for the power that is inevitably being eroded by the reorganization of humanity through the decentralized internet. I’m not saying governments are going away, but the nation-state we currently experience will look far different in the next 10 years as people opt into decentralized systems for the freedoms and opportunities they offer. If you can’t unmoor your sense of identity from the nation-state governing you, it’s going to be a tougher transition.

Despite my attempts to further break down yesterday’s comments, I suspect I may have made it all more confusing. Either way, drop me a line to let me know what you think…