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OpenSea is the world’s largest NFT marketplace in terms of trade volume
Bengaluru, January 17, 2023: India’s non-fungible token (NFT) market saw a compounded annual growth rate of 61.6 percent in the year 2022, a report by TechInsight360, a business intelligence and consultancy firm, suggests. NFT arts has seen a rapid rise in the utilisation of the platform. Several digital artists have made use of the technology to monetise their piece of work due to multiple unique features of NFT such as establishing the authenticity of their product among others.
Shubhangi Raheja, an independent NFT artist, said NFTs have provided her with the ability to connect her art work to the global audience in a faster and more efficient manner.
“Being an NFT artist, your work is easier to globalise. It has also made me financially independent. I started as a digital artist around a decade ago, but I was one of the few artists who joined the NFT market right when it started in India. My NFT art collection was displayed in San Fransisco last year and this year in April, it will be displayed in New York,” Shubhangi said.
NFTs basically stands for non-fungible tokens. These are digital assets that are unique and cannot be duplicated as they are based on blockchain technology. It is used to represent, more often than not, ownership of anything that can be digitally represented such as a piece of art work or unique tickets etc. NFT arts, since they are based on blockchain technology, provide
a transparent and secure way of verifying the authenticity and ownership of an art.
Currently the NFT market in India is almost $3.5 billion and is expected to grow eight fold to over $25 billion dollars by 2030. Market analysts pointed out that the NFT market is still at its nascent stage and has yet to acquire traction as compared to the global market.
Aniket Jadhav, marketing manager at Zionodes and an NFT and crypto market analyst says, unique features of NFTs have led to investors and collectors invest in NFT arts.
“If you look at it, NFT market was at its peak during the bull run of 2020-21 when millions were traded everyday, but now it has come down to normal. It is quite an early stage and mostly experimental artists are coming on the platform. I think may be five to ten years down the line, we would rarely see an artist who does not own any kind of NFTs,” he said.
Globally, OpenSea is the largest NFT marketplace in terms of total trading amount. In India, WazirX accounts for more than 40 percent of total NFT sales. Apart from individual NFT artists, large companies are also joining the NFT race to influence Generation Z users. Recently Pepsico India announced the release of a set of 20 NFTs to further its brand marketing.
People who are involved in the collection of NFT arts say, it is not just the monetary value that drives them to buy NFT arts. Adri Mukund, an NFT artist and collector, said collecting NFT arts gives a sense of ownership to the collector.
“When buying an NFT art, we have to do a lot of checks for establishing its authenticity and uniqueness. Now-a-days, there are many people who would come on the platform just to make quick money. They would pick up anything and present it as an art. So while buying anything we need to check for the authenticity of the account as well as transactions,” he said.
Market experts believe, NFT market will most certainly continue to draw both conventional and digital artists. Conventional artists are experimenting with new ways to tokenise their traditional works.
“However, it is important to note that the process of making NFTs is frequently more difficult and technically demanding than the process of creating traditional arts. As a result conventional artists may take some more time to get acquainted with the methods and technology underlying NFTs,” said Jadhav.
Market analysts believe, digital artists will have an edge as they are already familiar with the digital way of reaching audience.
However, the technology underpinning NFTs is fast evolving, making it easier for conventional artists to sell their NFTs.
