Non-Fungible Token (NFT): Analyzing marketplaces and non-user perspectives

Abstract

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have emerged as a disrupting revolutionizing technology, particularly for the digital art and collectibles industries. Understandably, they have received a huge attention from the digital as well as traditional artists. Powered by smart-contracts deployed in different blockchains, NFTs have provided more control and power to the content creators than ever before and gave birth to the core concept of verifiable digital ownership. These NFTs are traded in different online marketplaces. In order to ensure a wide-scale adoption of NFTs, it is important to identify potential hurdles that might hamper their wide scale adoption. Towards this aim, we present the findings of two studies in this paper. Firstly, we present an evaluation framework for different NFT marketplaces, which clearly illustrates the difference between their offered features. Secondly, we carry out a semi-structured interview to identify common drawbacks that are holding people back from NFT adoption. Our results reveal that the whole technology backing NFTs need to be revised for wider adoption. We sum up our findings from different point of views where the barriers exist but viable improvements are suggested for better and far-reaching promotion of NFTs.