Star-powered NFTs must move beyond selling optimism

So for those new to this space, an NFT or a Non-fungible token is the new kid on the celebrity block in India. These are digital certificates of authenticity that can be attached to digital art or, well, pretty much anything else that comes in digital form: audio files, video clips, animated stickers, domain names and so much more.

They confirm an item's ownership by recording the details on the blockchain platform, which is public and stored on computers across the internet, making them permanent, immutable and impossible to destroy or lose, thereby generating the thing we all look for in this digital age-trust.

The celebrities with their huge fan base and major influence in our lives have started to rake in the big bucks just like the promoters and founders of their associated platforms and coins. The par ty has just begun... or so it seems.

However, as is the case with any new disruptive technology, there are pros and cons to NFTs. It would be better to shine the torch on another aspect of NFTs which one needs to understand before jumping on to the NFT bandwag on. There is a good chance that in a matter of time, the popularity of these artists may get exploited. "Celebrity theft" is a growing issue with NFTs.

Over the past few months, many sto ries have emerged of celebrities discovering their items in online marketplaces, where they're sold as NFTs without their consent.

The problem here is the system on which NFTs operate was established several years ago, and has not been adapted to the way internet users can sell and trade decentralised assets in the art world.

For example, the creators of NFTs (which, in this case, are digital artists), have negligible control over how and where their work is sold.. I personally feel NFTS don't solve all of the problems that they claim to solve. It's basically just selling optimism.

The value proposition of NFTs is that the proof of work ensures an original piece has a unique token attached to it, which means that the person who owns it knows that they have the 'original'.

But the problem is anyone can create a replica or a copy and just throw it up on a different marketplace, with a different token attached to it and sell it. Now, where is the original? So who can and cannot "mint" an NFT? The answer here is straightforward: the artist should have final say in the minting of their work (ie, how many "original" items or copies are sold) and where their work is sold.

However, an absence of regulation in the online space on NFTs makes that ideal difficult to execute.

Post-COVID, given the shelf life and the associated financial strains that many celebrities have faced it's no won der that the prospect of selling work on line is tantalising.