актуальність насамперед
actuality first
актуальность прежде всего
The Open
Social Tribune
Відкрита
Громадська
Трибуна
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актуальність насамперед |
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actuality first |
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актуальность прежде всего |
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The Open Social Tribune |
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Відкрита Громадська Трибуна |
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The transformative technology of NFT as the great leap of the digital economy The meteoric rise of non-fungible tokens between 2020 and 2022 represented one of the most polarizing technological phenomena of the early 2020s. What began as a niche experiment in digital scarcity exploded into a multi-billion dollar market, only to experience a dramatic contraction that left many questioning whether NFTs were merely a speculative bubble or the foundation of something more enduring. Today, as the initial hype fades and the technology matures, a more nuanced picture emerges of NFTs as infrastructure for the digital economy rather than simply collectible assets. Our today’s conversation - with Aleks Bykhun, a talented and experienced IT specialist, graduated from MIPT with a degree in physics (2012-2018), and having been contributed to development of various IT companies. Bykhun’s first startup was an open-source project. Then he created and ran in 2021-2024 more complex startup, Buildship. Initially, it was a platform for launching NFT collections, including metascapes.sloika.xyz. After that Bykhun created his own generative art platform, artgene.xyz. In 2024, he created a commercial AI bot - a conflict solution coach, @dora_ai_ai_bot. In 2025, he created a platform for developing and programming directly from smartphone, yolocode.ai.
[ Aleks Bykhun ] What is the promise of digital scarcity? At their core, NFTs solve a fundamental problem that has plagued the digital realm since its inception: the infinite reproducibility of digital goods. A photograph can be copied endlessly without degradation. A song can be shared millions of times with perfect fidelity. This abundance, while democratizing access to culture and information, eliminated any notion of digital scarcity or verifiable ownership. You might own a digital file, but so could everyone else with identical copies. NFTs introduced cryptographic proof of ownership and provenance to digital items. Built primarily on blockchain networks like Ethereum, these tokens create unique digital certificates that cannot be duplicated or forged. The implications extend far beyond the profile pictures and digital art that dominated headlines. The technology established programmable ownership, where assets could carry embedded rules about royalties, transferability and utility. This innovation arrived at a pivotal moment. The global pandemic accelerated digital transformation across industries, forcing everything from work to entertainment into virtual spaces. Simultaneously, creators faced mounting challenges monetizing their work in an attention economy dominated by platforms that extracted most of the value. NFTs promised to restructure these dynamics, offering creators direct relationships with audiences and new revenue streams independent of traditional gatekeepers. What became the ground of NFT rush, and what will be its aftermath? The NFT market’s explosive growth from 2020 to 2022 was unprecedented. Sales volumes surged from under $100 million in 2020 to over $25 billion in 2021, according to market data from that period. Projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club became cultural phenomena, with individual tokens selling for millions of dollars. Celebrities, brands and institutions rushed to participate, from luxury fashion houses launching digital collections to museums tokenizing their archives. This gold rush mentality inevitably attracted speculation, scams, and excess. The market became flooded with low-quality projects designed solely to capitalize on hype rather than provide genuine value. Environmental concerns emerged around the energy consumption of proof-of-work blockchains. Stories of wash trading, pump-and-dump schemes, and celebrity endorsements of questionable projects damaged the space’s credibility. When cryptocurrency markets crashed in 2022 and broader economic conditions deteriorated, NFT trading volumes plummeted by over 90 percent from their peak. The collapse was painful but perhaps necessary. Like the dot-com bust that preceded the modern internet economy, the NFT market’s correction separated genuine innovation from speculation. Projects built solely on hype vanished, while those solving real problems or creating sustainable value began emerging from the wreckage. The survivors learned hard lessons about community building, utility, and the difference between collectibles and functional digital assets. What shapes real-world applications? Beyond the noise of speculation, practical applications for NFT technology have been quietly developing across multiple sectors. These implementations suggest how the technology might integrate into the digital economy’s infrastructure rather than remaining a curiosity for collectors. In the creative industries, musicians have begun using NFTs to forge direct relationships with fans. Rather than simply selling music files, artists can offer tokens that provide access to exclusive content, concert tickets, meet-and-greets, or revenue sharing from streaming royalties. This model lets artists capture more value from their most dedicated supporters while building sustainable careers outside traditional label structures. The band “Kings of Leon” pioneered this approach with their 2021 album release, and numerous independent artists have followed with increasingly sophisticated models. The gaming industry represents perhaps the most natural fit for NFT technology. Players already spend billions annually on in-game items, from character skins to virtual real estate. NFTs could make these purchases genuinely owned by players rather than locked within proprietary platforms. Imagine buying a sword in one game and being able to sell it, trade it, or potentially use it in other compatible games. Early blockchain gaming experiments like Axie Infinity demonstrated both the potential and pitfalls of this model, with play-to-earn mechanics creating new economic opportunities in developing countries before collapsing under their own unsustainable tokenomics. The fashion and luxury goods sectors have embraced NFTs as both marketing tools and authentication mechanisms. Digital fashion allows brands to extend into virtual worlds where physical constraints don’t apply. A luxury house can sell a digital handbag for an avatar at a fraction of the cost of physical production while still commanding premium prices. More practically, NFTs can serve as digital certificates of authenticity for physical goods, combating the counterfeit market that costs the industry hundreds of billions annually. World players like Nike have acquired NFT companies and filed patents for systems that link physical sneakers to digital tokens, creating new hybrid models of ownership. The ticketing industry has identified NFTs as potential solutions to persistent problems with scalping, counterfeiting and lack of creator compensation in secondary markets. An NFT ticket is verifiably authentic, can be programmed to prevent resale above certain prices, and can direct a percentage of any resale back to the event organizer or performer. Several venues and promoters have run successful pilot programs, though widespread adoption faces technical and regulatory hurdles. What do you think about infrastructure layer? Perhaps the most significant development in the NFT space has been the maturation of underlying infrastructure. The technology has evolved considerably from the early days of expensive transactions and environmental concerns. Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake consensus in September 2022 reduced the network’s energy consumption by approximately 99 percent, addressing one of the most significant criticisms of NFT technology. Layer-2 scaling solutions like Polygon and Arbitrum have dramatically reduced transaction costs, making it economically viable to mint and trade lower-value items. Alternative blockchains like Solana and Flow have attracted developers with different technical tradeoffs optimized for digital assets. Wallet technology has improved substantially, with more user-friendly interfaces that abstract away some of the complexity that deterred mainstream adoption. Social login options and embedded wallets are making it possible to interact with NFTs without understanding the underlying blockchain mechanics. Custody solutions for institutions have matured, enabling traditional companies to hold and manage digital assets with appropriate security and compliance frameworks. Standards and interoperability protocols are emerging that could enable the composability that makes NFTs truly powerful. The ERC-721 and ERC-1155 token standards on Ethereum created baseline compatibility, but newer initiatives aim for cross-chain functionality and richer metadata standards. These developments move closer to a future where digital assets can move seamlessly between platforms, games, and applications. What about the identity and credentialing revolution in specific sector? One of the most promising long-term applications for NFT technology lies in digital identity and credentialing. The same cryptographic properties that enable provable ownership of art can verify educational credentials, professional certifications, membership in organizations or achievement of milestones. Universities have begun experimenting with blockchain-based diplomas that students truly own and can share without relying on the issuing institution. Professional organizations are exploring NFT-based certifications that create permanent, tamper-proof records of qualifications. These credentials can be programmed to expire, require periodic renewal, or be revoked if necessary, while giving individuals control over their own educational and professional history. The concept extends to reputation systems and achievement tracking. Imagine a professional portfolio where every completed project, client testimonial, or skill verification exists as a verifiable token in your digital wallet. This creates a portable reputation that moves with you across platforms and employers rather than being locked within LinkedIn or other proprietary systems. Early implementations in decentralized autonomous organizations and online communities demonstrate how token-gated access based on achievements or contributions could restructure digital participation. What challenges are remaining? Despite progress, significant obstacles stand between NFTs’ current state and mainstream integration into the digital economy. The user experience remains challenging for non-technical users. Managing private keys, navigating different blockchains, understanding gas fees and avoiding scams requires knowledge most consumers don’t possess and shouldn’t need to acquire. Until interacting with NFTs becomes as simple as using an app store or online marketplace, adoption will remain limited. The regulatory landscape remains uncertain. Different jurisdictions are taking varied approaches to classifying and regulating digital assets. Questions about securities law, taxation, consumer protection, and anti-money laundering compliance remain unresolved in many regions. This uncertainty makes legitimate businesses hesitant to build on NFT technology, even when it offers genuine advantages. Intellectual property issues complicate the relationship between NFTs and the underlying content they represent. Owning an NFT of an image doesn’t necessarily grant copyright or reproduction rights, yet this distinction confuses many buyers. Unauthorized minting of others’ creative work has been rampant, and platforms struggle to balance openness with protecting creators’ rights. Clear legal frameworks and better technological solutions for rights management are essential. The persistence question looms over the entire ecosystem. An NFT might grant ownership of a digital asset, but what happens if the server hosting the actual image or file goes offline? If the marketplace facilitating transactions shuts down? If the blockchain itself is no longer maintained? While solutions like IPFS provide decentralized storage, ensuring true permanence of digital assets remains an unsolved challenge that clouds their long-term value proposition. How do you see NFT’s path forward? The future of NFTs in the digital economy likely diverges sharply from the profile picture speculation that characterized their initial boom. The technology's enduring impact will come from seamless integration into existing systems rather than revolutionary displacement of traditional models. We can expect gradual adoption where NFT infrastructure operates invisibly beneath user-facing applications. You might not know you’re buying an NFT ticket to a concert - you’ll just buy a ticket that happens to leverage blockchain verification. Luxury goods might come with digital certificates that buyers don’t think of as NFTs but simply as proof of authenticity. Games will incorporate player-owned items without requiring players to understand the underlying technology. The corporate adoption cycle suggests we’re entering the “trough of disillusionment” phase where hype deflates but serious builders continue developing. Major brands and platforms that rushed to launch NFT projects during the boom are now reassessing and refining their approaches. Those that persist are focusing on utility rather than speculation, on enhancing existing customer relationships rather than creating new speculative markets. Interoperability and standards will determine whether NFTs become foundational infrastructure or remain isolated curiosities. If digital assets can move seamlessly across platforms, blockchains and applications, they enable entirely new business models and user experiences. If each implementation remains a walled garden, the technology’s potential remains constrained. Industry consortiums and open-source development communities are working toward common standards, but progress is incremental. The creator economy represents one of the most compelling long-term opportunities. As platforms continue extracting unsustainable percentages of creator revenue, tools that enable direct audience relationships and programmable royalties become more attractive. The next generation of creator platforms might be built on NFT rails from the ground up, with tokens representing not just ownership of content but membership in communities, access to experiences and participation in success. What conclusions can we make looking forward of NFT? NFTs emerged with utopian promises of revolutionizing ownership, empowering creators and democratizing access to digital value. The reality has been messier, marked by speculation, scams, and environmental concerns alongside genuine innovation. Yet dismissing the technology entirely because of its turbulent adolescence would be premature. The fundamental innovation NFTs represent - cryptographically verifiable digital ownership and provenance - addresses real problems in the digital economy. As the technology matures, infrastructure improves, and use cases move beyond speculation to utility, NFTs may become an unremarkable part of how we interact with digital goods and services. Like many transformative technologies before them, their greatest success may come when we stop noticing them at all. The question isn’t whether NFTs will replace traditional systems overnight but whether they’ll prove useful enough that various industries gradually adopt them for specific applications where they provide genuine advantages. Early evidence suggests this selective integration is already underway, happening quietly beneath the surface while the world has moved on from the hype cycle that first brought NFTs to mainstream attention. The digital economy continues evolving toward greater virtualization, more creator independence, and increased value placed on digital goods and experiences. In this context, tools for managing digital ownership, provenance, and programmable rights seem not just useful but inevitable. Whether NFTs specifically or some evolved descendant technology fulfills this role remains to be seen, but the problems they address aren’t disappearing. The next chapter of this story will be written not in million-dollar auctions but in the steady, practical work of building sustainable digital infrastructure. Host: Rafael Lagard January 23, 2026 © Times of Ukraine
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Трансформационная технология NFT как огромный скачок в цифровой экономике |
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Online platform - Онлайн платформа The Times of Ukraine "Таймс оф Юкрэйн" "Часи України" "Времена Украины" |
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When using materials of Times of Ukraine/Times of U in full or in part, the reference or the hyperlink to the Times of Ukraine/Times of U is obligatory. Not for commercial use. При повному або частковому використаннi матерiалiв Times of Ukraine посилання/активне посилання на проект обов'язкове |
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