A short musing
An art NFT is a varnished painting or a mummified pharaoh. It is death and taxes, the autonomous nervous system or gravity. Quite simply, an art NFT is a piece of digital art that is saved in a way that it can never be changed. Its form is predictable, reliable, and pretty much guaranteed.
As a more descriptive metaphor, one might think of an art NFT as a jar of preserved apples. Imagine picking a bunch of ripe apples off an August tree branch. If left on a kitchen countertop, they would spoil in a short while—perhaps in a few weeks. However, if the fruit is cooked to rid it of bacteria, and then stored in vacuum-sealed mason jars without access to oxygen, it could be preserved for years. This is similar to how an NFT preserves a piece of digital art: it seals the art in an air-tight jar. Once a piece of art is saved onto a blockchain network as an unchangeable token or NFT, it has the potential to be infinitely protected. The benefit is that the digital image can never be altered using photo-editing software, ensuring the artist’s original work is permanently locked in state. In essence, an art NFT is the perfect apple: one that never rots.
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