NFTs boom in the Crypto market: Nigerian artists display their talents through NFTs

By: Damian Okonkwo

What is NFT？

NFT which is an acronym for Non-Fungible Token has become a popular asset in the Crypto industry today. NFTs are a digital asset built on Blockchain technology which allows artists to display forbidding their original arts, music, in-game facilities, and short videos for online bidding. NFT gives the artist the ownership signature over these items and makes it difficult to steal or plagiarize them. With NFTs, artists can sell their arts in digital forms and get paid for them through Cryptocurrency.

History of NFT

NFT has a recent history dating back to 2014 when the first NFT was created by the artist Kevin McCoy who minted the first-known NFT ed 'Quantum' on the Namecoin blockchain. 'Quantum' is a digital image of a pixelated octagon that hypnotically changes color and pulsates in a manner reminiscent of an octopus. Following the success of this art, other artists emulated it to create more NFT in 2015. Buy the year 2017, it was discovered that almost $174 million has been spent on NFTs alone in the crypto industry. Given the quick profits coming from NFT, 21st-century artists have given more recourse to it as the best way of selling their arts online to protect them against theft. The year 2022 has seen the greatest number of NFTs minted so far since the invention of this digital art.

Spread of NFT in Nigeria

NFT art has become very popular among Nigerian crypto traders and artists today. These sets of people try to convey their ideas, music, arts, in-game, short videos, and all art collections as NFTs. Nigerians today contribute a whole lot to the number of NFT printed daily at Rariable and OpenSea exchange.

In recent times, a viral NFT creation by a Nigerian corper had gone round the internet. This Nigerian photographer had taken a photograph of an old drummer man he met on the street and sold it as NFT. The drummer man identified as Baba Onlilu went viral after his photographs were displayed as NFT by the young corper who immediately turned them into cash. The photos were sold at OpenSea for 0.6Eth at the price of $2,098.32 (N2,042,440.72). This corper was so kind that he gave 50% of the returns to the old drummer man after the sales.

Similarly, there is a lot of other NFT art available for purchase at Rariable and OpenSea designed by Nigerian artists and crypto enthusiasts.