Survey on blockchain-based non-fungible tokens: History, technologies, standards, and open challenges

Abstract

This paper presents a survey of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), including its history, technologies, standards, and challenges in their development. An NFT is a unique digital entity that is created and maintained using blockchain technology. Each NFT is identified using a unique smart contract and a token ID, so the whole history of the NFT can be globally identified by its address and token ID. The blockchain information indelibly identifies the current owner of any asset, previous owners, and original creator. NFTs are used to manage ownership of digital and physical assets and cryptocurrencies. The prices of popular NFTs have become very high, and the market for them has overheated in recent years. NFT technology and its ecosystem have evolved since Quantum, the first NFT, was stored in the Namecoin blockchain. Ethereum has become the main platform for NFT projects because it provides support for smart contracts. Currently, almost all NFT projects are launched on the Ethereum blockchain. NFT has two major standards called ERC-721 and ERC-1155, which have had important functions in the development of NFT. Starting with these two standards, other standards for NFT continue to emerge; they expand the functionality of NFT such as by adding utility. However, NFT is a very early technology, and it has not been long after the NFT concept was created and used. So there are several challenges for further improving NFT technology, in terms of usability, interoperability, and evolution. This paper presents a survey of NFT, including its history, technologies, standards, and challenges of NFT.