Who Created NFTs: Where Did NFTs Start And What Was The First NFT?
Given how important NFTs have become in recent years, their spectacular ascent requires no additional explanation. Do you know who invented the original NFT, though?
NFTs were initially presented as Colored Coins in 2012, with the intention of being issued on Bitcoin rather than Ethereum at the time.
Later on, the evolution took hold, and NFTs matured into a more mature concept. So, with so many new NFT initiatives emerging every week, let's take a look back at how NFT has grown through time. Here are some of the initial NFT initiatives that created the crypto landscape we live in today.
Where Did NFTs Start?
NFTs have been around since 2012 when Meni Rosenfield published a paper describing the technology as "Colored Coins."
These were planned to be released on the Bitcoin blockchain at first. Colored coins were then marketed as a category of ways for representing and managing real-world assets on Bitcoin.
This first experiment, however, slipped into the background of NFTs as smart contracts and more complex NFT ideas emerged.
What Was The First NFT?
Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash, two digital artists, created the first known NFT on May 3, 2014. Quantum, the NFT, was a little video clip of McCoy's wife Jennifer. McCoy later created this film on the Namecoin network and sold it for $4 to Dash.
In 2015, technology finally caught up with the rest of the globe. Etheria, the first NFT project, was started here. Three months after Ethereum's inception, it was shown at DEVCON London.
After the introduction of the Ethereum blockchain, the ERC-721 standard was created by the blockchain protocols, allowing for the issuance of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
Many new NFT projects were launched in 2017. Cryptokitties were the most famous of them, as it was many NFT investors' first exposure to this new crypto asset.
Later on, the rapidly evolving NFT technology was integrated into a variety of metaverses and gaming sectors. These new NFT games provided a critical use case for the NFTs to continue to grow.
Decentraland was the first startup to get into the gaming/NFT space. Gamers might manufacture these game NFTs and trade and swap them for monetary worth.
The Evolution Of NFTs
We've condensed this brief history into a neat timeline of major events in the history of NFTs for the purpose of clarity; each of these events will be explored in greater detail when we go further into the history of NFTs later in this article.
Overview of the NFT
2012-2016 - The Early History Of NFTs
Kevin McCoy creates the first NFT
Coloured Coins
Memes start being minted as NFTs
Spells of Genesis
Counterparty
2017-2020 - NFTs Go Mainstream
NFT gaming and Metaverse
Token standards introduced
NFTs Shift to Ethereum
Cryptokitties
Cryptopunks