🇺🇸 English version
While the recent NFT bubble has convinced blockchain detractors of its purely speculative aspect, it would be simplistic to judge the entire forest by one tree and overlook the wealth of potential applications of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
The idea has been around since the beginning of Ethereum: in contrast to fungible tokens, where each unit is identical and equivalent in value, the aim was to create differentiated and unique tokens. It took nearly eight years to find a first application for NFTs. By associating an NFT with a piece of digital art, it became possible to buy art directly on the blockchain, bypassing an intermediary responsible for managing copyright. NFTs thus allowed digital artists to self-publish, with platforms that present the works on their sites charging moderate commission fees. Additionally, NFTs solve a recurring problem for creators with overseas sales or on the secondary market: without NFTs, if the value of the work appreciates with each sale, the artist only earns from the first sale. Since NFTs are governed by programmable contracts, it can be specified that the artist receives a royalty with each subsequent resale in perpetuity. For buyers, the NFT simultaneously acts as a title of ownership and a certificate of authenticity: it indeed represents the commercial transaction itself. Subsequent resales are no longer complicated by the rare but occasional disavowal of the work by its author, which would annihilate its value, nor by the possibility of counterfeiting by the seller, or the loss of crucial information proving the work's provenance, and serving to establish its price.
The interest of NFTs for the art world is clearly apparent, and the amounts at stake explain the intense speculation around artistic NFTs. The total market capitalization of NFTs is $18.5 billion, with 581 platforms listed on coinmarketcap.com, a reference site. But reducing NFTs to this role would show a profound misunderstanding of the diversity of uses they can have. How does an NFT work at the computer level?
An NFT itself is just a representation of a real or virtual object. To be traded and to exercise the rights attached to it, it must be governed by a contract, which is where the conditions for exercising the NFT are formalized. The NFT essentially represents the receipt of a transaction, the variety of possibilities for which is not only financial but also everyday life. As a receipt, an NFT can be a ticket, a subscription to a service, a usage license, etc.
As a token, it also fulfills the functions of authentication tokens, session tokens, and all instruments through which a user identifies themselves to a service. It could represent an official document or an administrative certificate. Again, any object to which rights are attached can be represented by an NFT. The specific function of the latter becomes clear upon reading the contract code in which it is traded.
Beyond the short-term speculation on NFTs, which is a usual phase of enthusiasm for a new technology that has found a flagship use, this type of token is poised, due to its versatility, to play a role at all levels of web 3.0 and to operate its sites and dApps (decentralized applications).