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NFTs, Today and to the Future

The move from physical to digital was rapid in these few years. If you’re not part of the virtual world yet, then you’re definitely missing out. The virtual world has been the space for industries and markets of all types and gone were the days when cold hard cash and traditional memorabilia were everyone’s main assets. Digital assets have been dominating like crazy these past years and you have to keep up.

Sure you’ve heard of Bitcoin and other bigger cryptocurrencies in the crypto world. Well there is one digital asset that has been quietly gaining popularity for its effect not only to specific tech specific industries but for covering the gaming industry, the art industry, and even the real estate industry. These are NFTs which have caught significant attention after several artists sold digital artworks for millions of dollars (we’re talking about the sale of Everydays: The First 5000 Days’ at $69 million, being the third-biggest payday for a living artist in history).

NFTs which stands for Non-Fungible Tokens are blockchain-enabled smart contracts otherwise known as tokens. It follows the same decentralized digital ledger technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like bitcoin but is fairly different because of its non-fungibility. Fungibility means the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type of fungible tokens, like Bitcoin cannot be identified from each other. Fungible assets simplify the exchange and trade processes, as fungibility implies equal value between the assets. Therefore, NFTs are the opposite. They are basically a unique kind of token that are not interchangeable and definitely different from one another. The unique attributes of the token makes it impossible for them to be replaced or even exchanged. This doesn’t mean that the subject of the NFT cannot be reproduced or replaced. Rather, it means that the NFT itself cannot be replicated. In some ways this is like a certificate of authenticity for a certain item, say digital art, or a virtual estate, a digital asset now ascribed with value. And although everyone can technically access it due to the immutable and open source nature of blockchain, everyone knows who the owner is because of the NFT code attached to it.

According to this Forbes article, the trade has become the new method for digitally buying and selling art and other media. These crypto assets represent the latest blockchain-based boom: Three years ago, the entire NFT market was worth no more than $42 million. By the end of 2020, it had grown 705% to $338 million in value, according to the latest estimate from Nonfungible.com, which monitors the NFT marketplace. NFTs have become the trend to gain ownership for the internet and its elements. Trading assets have proven to be what made almost all industry run fluid for years now. 

NFTs are generally used in different markets involving art of most forms (videos, music, digital art), collectibles like CryptoKitties, gaming, virtual assets (selling virtual plots of land), and identity. And in trading virtual assets, same as the traditional ones, exists the rising worries of regulators, hackers, and other safety concerns. Cryptocurrencies have long dominated the virtual currency space, but not quite for long. 

There is a relatively new movement where crypto entrepreneurs can recreate traditional financial instruments in a decentralized architecture, outside of companies’ and governments’ control.DeFi or Decentralized Finance is an umbrella term referring to a host of new tools and services in the blockchain space, which aim to recreate traditional financial instruments in a decentralized manner. DeFi comprises tools that allow users to lend/borrow, exchange and swap crypto assets securely, without having to trust other parties that would normally be involved.

Like all assets and investments, every entrepreneur has safety and privacy concerns. The virtual word, the internet as a whole, is full of loopholes and a blackhole of security concern. And by NFTs, we are talking about real currency and investment here. Thus, the need for insurance for the trade and bids NFT buyer and sellers get into. There are several DeFi insurance offered by tech companies to ensure the safety of the NFT trade industry, and all markets using DeFi. Many smart contracts in existence today, especially DeFi-based contracts, are valuing storing contracts that could be vulnerable to manipulation

While insurance is not commonly mentioned throughout the DeFi community, it is one sector that has a massive potential to provide investor protection and confidence. One of the biggest instances of a hacked value storing contract was the DAO hack in 2016. Countless instances of crypto investors mishandling their private keys and numerous exchange hacks, ultimately resulting in the loss of billions in investor capital. There are several Defi insurance in the market today like Etherisc, CDx, and Nexus Mutual

While NFTs are selling for millions of dollars everyday, tech hunters are surely finding ways to get through the loopholes and crack the code. Security with investments, especially those floating in the virtual space shall be insured. Looking at the trend, as NFTs, DeFi, and cryptocurrencies perpetuate to dominate most markets, so shall security and insurance be a necessity.

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The New Food Chain: How Blockchain Will Transform the Food Industry

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is about how blockchain is helping the food industry to better serve consumers around the globe. True Interaction built SYNAPTIK, our Data Management, Analytics, and Data Science Simulation DMP, specifically to make it easy for leaders to collect and manage data, for instance from blockchain databases, to get to insights faster. For more information or a demo, please visit us at https://synaptik.co/ or email us at hello@www.true.design.

For now, Bitcoin is getting all the headlines. Yet the versatility of the blockchain will likely be the disruption to remember.

Initially constructed as a technology underlying Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, the blockchain is a decentralized ledger that records transactions. What makes the blockchain a disruptive innovation is that the transactions are almost impossible to edit or manipulate after the fact because they are encrypted and provide alerts when any part of the chain is altered. The potential applications of the blockchain are still being discovered given the many ways that different industries conduct transactions.

The food industry is one area in which the blockchain already enjoys an immediate impact. Below are three ways in which the blockchain will improve operations across this critical industry:

Supply Chain: The blockchain is currently enhancing supply chain management across the food industry. Food industry giants such as Walmart, Kroger and Tyson Foods have begun automating their supply chains by tracking key information including the temperature, quality and shipping dates of certain perishable and non-perishable goods. Blockchain providers such as IBM are already looking to partner with similar enterprises so that these metrics are stored on an un-editable ledger to ensure fidelity of the supply chain from producer to consumer. This ledger will also be able to serve as a transparent database, allowing food industry companies to leverage analytics to better understand their supply chain bottlenecks, efficiencies and areas for transformation.

Food Safety: The blockchain used to monitor supply chain transactions also has the potential to dramatically improve food safety, a serious issue in much of the developing world. A late 2015 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that every year 1 in 10 people fall ill from eating contaminated foods. The effects of food safety challenges are particularly acute in the young, with over 125,000 children estimated to die annually from unsafe foods. Blockchain stands to reduce these unfortunate and preventble incidents in three ways: 1.) by providing consumers with transparency that the foods they are eating match the ingredients on the label; 2.) by capturing any event in which the food may be tampered with at any point in the supply chain, and 3.) by enabling retailers to pull potentially hazardous foodstuffs from shelves given any incident.

Payments: Blockchain stands to transform payments in the food industry. Food producers, many of whom sell their items at commodity rates, would be able to demonstrate proof of sale instantly using blockchain technology. Similarly, food distributors would be able to make payments to producers with greater ease and trust. Blockchain technology also has the potential to cut out middlemen and lower transaction fees, another promising development for small- or medium-sized food producers.

References

1.) https://theconversation.com/how-blockchain-technology-could-transform-the-food-industry-89348
2.) http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/foodborne-disease-estimates/en/
3.) http://fortune.com/2017/08/22/walmart-blockchain-ibm-food-nestle-unilever-tyson-dole/
4.) https://www.anxintl.com/blog/2017/11/27/the-next-industry-to-be-revolutionised-by-blockchain-the-food-industry

by Justin Barbaro