How should the law look at the NFT going out of the circle?

NFT is "out of the circle"! From the blockchain world to the art world, the collection world, to the game world and social media, the popularity inside and outside the circle seems to surpass Bitcoin. Is NFT a flash in the pan, or is another big scene of blockchain application landing? This article analyzes NFT technical agreements, NFT products, and NFT industry-related issues from a legal perspective, hoping to help understand the emergence, development and future trends of NFT. NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a non-identical token. It is a Token with a specific ID issued based on NFT technical protocols such as ERC721 and ERC1155. The ID can be attached with certain metadata. Since these metadata can point to a specific digital product, the digital product does not have to be anchored to a specific offline physical product, so NFT can be used to represent a specific digital asset. The opposite is the homogeneous token FT (Fungible Token), which is generally believed to not be associated with a specific digital product. NFT can provide proof of ownership of digital products. NFT specifies digital products and specifies the owner's address, and can program and design product attributes to achieve interoperability between different programs. Based on this, NFT can become a unique digital product with a clear owner, rich information, exclusive and tradable. It can be said that NFT has become a right confirmation tool for digital products. NFT trading platform LooksRare online pending order reward: According to news on April 20, according to LooksRare’s tweet, the NFT trading platform LooksRare has now launched pending order rewards. NFT creators and traders can earn LOOKS tokens by listing NFTs on LooksRare. Traders will receive points for their eligible pending orders every 10 minutes, and these points will be converted into LOOKS every day. [2022/4/20 14:36:56] NFT can realize value flow across ecology. NFT can realize cross-ecological value and the transaction needs of different participants. Whether NFT-related information is sufficient and whether the blockchain technology it relies on is reliable and stable are important factors that determine its value. NFT heterogeneity is relative and subjective. From a purely technical point of view, every FT data including Bitcoin is not completely consistent, but this inconsistency has no effect on transaction demand. The different properties of NFT are irreplaceable in value and indivisible in use value, so certain assets can be specified. OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finze believes that NFT is an essential element of an open digital economy. NFTs are digital goods (including digital art, game items, domain names, etc.) with completely new characteristics. They are unique, provably scarce, liquid, user-owned, and can be used across multiple applications. Simple but powerful, This new native event is ushering in a revived digital world. Berlin technology company FUEL's NFT platform completed 1.5 million euros in financing: On March 29th, Berlin technology company FUEL announced that its NFT platform had completed a Pre-Seed round of financing of 1.5 million euros, with FintechCollective, Seedcamp, NotionCapital, and Pioneers participating. It is reported that the platform aims to become the "Shopify of NFT", allowing creators to build their own custom brand NFT stores without any technology, and seamlessly integrate various tools to start, manage and develop NFT collections. (ffnews) [2022/3/29 14:24:10] NFT products refer to products or assets that are specialized based on NFT. By comparing NFT products with related concepts including traditional digital assets, Bitcoin and asset securitization, and property rights, we believe that NFT products, as a digital product, should be protected by property rights. (1) NFT and digital assets Regarding the specific connotations of digital assets, although they have been discussed repeatedly since the development of blockchain technology applications, there is still no consistent and accurate statement. Some people believe that "digital assets are in the form of electronic data. Existing programmable and controllable assets, there is also a view that "when digital resources are released to the network through the blockchain, the rights will be confirmed, and the digital resources will become trusted digital assets on the blockchain, which can be used for circulation and trade". Yao Qian, the first director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, believes that "digital assets in the true sense should be original, contain full information, and be displayed and circulated in digital form." The total sales of NFT on the WAX chain exceeded 400 million USD: Jinse Finance reported that the total sales of NFTs on the WAX chain have exceeded $400 million. At the time of writing this article, it was $409,252,731, and the number of sales transactions on the chain was 15,813,784. Currently, the top three NFT projects on the WAX chain are: 1. Farmers World: $194,947,614 in sales, 3,530,571 sales; 2. Alien Worlds: $38,345,298 in sales, 5,236,215 sales; 3. Farming Tales : Sales amounted to USD 36,261,534 with 159,315 transactions. [2022/3/11 13:50:39] NFT has all the attributes of digital assets. Digital assets are assets that can be designed and programmed in digital form, including the digitization of traditional assets and brand-new programmable digital assets, and these two characteristics are intertwined. Generally speaking, there are two types, one is the digitalization of traditional physical assets and equity assets. With the development of blockchain technology and changes in transaction models, the transaction models of physical assets or equity assets such as property rights, equity, creditor's rights, other property rights, and copyrights may gradually become the object of digital goods transactions and become digital assets. Taking real estate as an example, it was first delivered in kind, then delivered by deed, then registered and transferred, and in the digital age it was digitally transferred. The second is programmable digital assets. With the in-depth development and integration of industrialization and financial innovation, the production of uniform industrial products produced in the era of industrialization in the past can no longer meet the demand. People hope to obtain more personalized services that suit them. This product can be digitally designed, called Programmable digital assets. NFT market LooksRare launched a bug bounty program with a reward of up to $1 million: On January 26, NFT market LooksRare launched a bug bounty program on the Web3 bug bounty platform Immunefi, focusing on its smart contracts, websites and applications , designed to prevent the loss of users' NFTs and funds. The program will pay out bounties based on the level of vulnerability, up to $1 million. [2022/1/26 9:14:25] NFT is an effective method to realize the right confirmation of digital products. Since the development of the Internet, we have become accustomed to trading and consuming various digital assets through the Internet, including some irreplaceable digital assets such as domain names, event tickets, in-game items, and even speeches and clicks on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook. Like, retweet, etc. In the future, the transaction targets, transaction methods and even transaction subjects will become more and more digital. However, the traditional Internet era before the emergence of the blockchain never really owned the ownership of these digital products, and the independence, interoperability, and openness and transparency of the blockchain through information confirmation have the potential to confirm the rights of digital products. possibility. NFT just provides a specific way of operation. (2) NFT and Bitcoin, asset securitization If we distinguish NFT and Bitcoin from a legal point of view, then NFT can be considered as a specific thing, while Bitcoin as FT is a kind of thing. Bitcoin is generally considered to be a homogeneous asset. Although the data information of each Bitcoin is not exactly the same from a purely technical point of view, there is no need to distinguish it from the perspective of use. For example, for banknotes with a denomination of 100 yuan, the serial number of each banknote is still different, but we do not make a distinction when using it, so we consider these banknotes with a denomination of 100 yuan to be of the same quality. Grace, co-founder of CyberVein: In the face of DeFi, decentralized storage, NFT and other technologies, CVT has embarked on cross-border integration of technologies: On October 20, CyberVein, as an overseas blockchain project certified by the Korean government, co-hosted and attended the "World Blockchain Summit - Marvels Seoul (Marvels Seoul 2020) Summit. The summit is the only high-end event held regularly in South Korea. A total of 600 global blockchain industry leaders and 1,000 industry elite institutions were invited to discuss. At the meeting, Grace, the co-founder of CyberVein, gave a special speech on "The Fourth Industrial Revolution-New Normal", and said: "Facing the most popular technologies such as DeFi, decentralized storage, and NFT, CVT has embarked on a technological breakthrough. Industry integration, providing a variety of customized services around smart cities and big data. At present, industry application scenarios, blockchain application development and blockchain physical product research and development have been completed.” The summit was held on YouTube and Jinse Finance The global simultaneous live broadcast, the number of online viewers exceeds 5W. After the meeting, 5 well-known Korean government companies and CVT have reached cooperation intentions, and 20 well-known media in the circle have made special reports on CyberVein. At present, the market value of CVT has reached the top 60 in the world. [2020/10/20] Asset securitization is to issue securities to investors based on the future income of a specific asset, and the original owner of the asset transfers the future income right of the specific asset to the holder of the securitized asset. In connection with NFT and FT, we can think that each specific asset is an NFT, and securities issued based on that specific asset are similar to FT. (3) NFT and property rights protection Generally speaking, digital assets including NFT are a kind of property rights, which have at least the following characteristics. First, the content-zce of their rights can be designed, and digital assets can greatly expand the use efficiency of objects. The second is that its transaction records cannot be tampered with, which makes the security of digital assets obtain the non-tamperable characteristics of decentralized storage. The third is that the rights can be confirmed and executed automatically. The rights are confirmed through digital encryption technology and automatically executed through decentralized applications. NFT enables digital assets to obtain rights similar to property rights. Unlike FT, NFT can easily issue tokens with specific numbers, and at the same time add descriptive metadata to tokens. Developers can programmatically enforce that only certain quantities of specific rare items can be created, while keeping the supply of more common items unlimited. Developers can also enforce specific properties not to change over time by encoding them on-chain. The specificity and scarcity of NFTs are especially important for art, which depends heavily on the provable scarcity of the original work. Based on the above characteristics, NFT enables digital assets to obtain rights similar to property rights. In essence, NFT is still the use and consumption of things, and its connotation of "things" has undergone a qualitative change due to its digital existence. Due to the adoption of the characteristics of the digital form of existence, the property rights that are difficult to be specified under the conditions of non-digital assets and thus cannot be traded to obtain value are specified, which greatly enriches the connotation of assets and greatly improves the convenience of transactions. For NFT, its target is to directly point to a certain digital product, no matter whether the product is online or offline, it can be designed and specified in an artificial programming language and can be easily executed. For the legal protection of NFT, only the protection of real rights is the most suitable for its rights. From the perspective of the existing legal system of property rights, in addition to real rights, creditor's rights, intellectual property rights, inheritance rights, equity and other investment rights, and even legal protection methods for data and virtual property cannot be targeted and effective for digital assets. protection, because other property rights except real rights are basically based on special provisions made based on the specific circumstances of the possession, use, and benefits of real rights; while NFT is in a sense a non-traditional form that is non-traditional Things with natural attributes, but a socialized form of things, this socialization is reflected in the design and programming, intelligent transaction execution, etc. The NFT industry refers to related industries that provide services such as issuance, transaction, and use of NFT digital products. The development process of the digital economy is also a process of digital assetization, asset digitization, and governance digitization. NFT is a useful exploration of asset digitization. In the future, the combination of NFT and other industries is not only possible, but may become a trend. Now we have seen the combination of NFT with artworks, game props, content-zce production, domain names and other fields, and the future industrial fields should be further expanded. Since NFT can be specified, NFT can be issued in the form of digital products based on online or offline specific items for consumption and transactions. Attributes. Especially from a technical point of view, NFT is also a kind of Token, and based on NFT, similar asset securitization operations can also be used to issue FT, so this is very similar to previous ICOs, and there will be many compliance issues. At present, some illegal token financing projects have been packaged into NFT in the market, which investors need to pay attention to carefully. At present, the biggest hidden danger affecting the healthy development of NFT is that NFT is used as a tool for illegal fundraising. There are many other factors that affect the application of NFT industry. One is technical standards. The technical standards of NFT are not rich enough, the attributes that can be realized include access control, transmission and combination with applications are relatively simple, and there are relatively few wallets that support applications, which may limit the application of NFT. The second is storage issues. From a technical point of view, the storage problem of NFT metadata has not been completely and effectively solved. Currently limited by the storage capacity of the blockchain itself, only a small amount exists on the blockchain. Others are generally stored in the NFT issuer's own server. Of course, it is also exploring the storage in a decentralized form, such as with the help of the interstellar file system IPFS. storage. The third is the issue of diversification of rights and interests. At present, the main issue of NFT is to realize the owner certification of digital works, but how to realize the prepared technical protection of other rights and interests including intellectual property rights may need further exploration. The fourth is the degree of industrial digitization. The degree of informatization and digitization in many industries is not enough, so the issuance of NFT may cause application congestion. The fifth is to prevent related illegal activities. Some black sheep will use NFT to carry out illegal financing, fraud and other activities, which requires a higher degree of recognition and will also affect the normal development of the NFT industry.

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