[New Wave] NFT, Beyond Speculation to a Foundation for Creative Content Development

As the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors rapidly change the expansion of platforms and intellectual property (IP), the organic relationship within the content industry is also evolving, with particular emphasis recently on the keyword "metaverse," highlighting the popularization of culture through the blending of virtual and real worlds. The keyword NFT (Non-fungible Token) has also gained fame by combining with culture and the arts. According to CryptoArt, a virtual art market data analysis platform, as of March, over 100,000 NFT-based artworks have been traded worldwide, with transaction amounts reaching approximately 222 billion KRW. There was even an instance where the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, had his job application auctioned as an NFT virtual asset.

As mentioned, this relates to revenue generation within metaverse platforms. It is an approach to apply blockchain, especially ownership and authenticity verification through NFTs, and the trading system based on them, to the metaverse. NFTs are a type of digital asset issued on Ethereum, representing unique, non-fungible specific cryptographic digital assets. The core idea is to store ownership of digital files on the blockchain to make forgery impossible, ensuring permanent preservation, and to allow ownership to be verified in a decentralized manner. Although blockchain-based services still contain many issues, they also have many positive effects, making them very attractive. If NFTs can be combined with characters, products, and various cultural contents within the metaverse, the investment value could grow tremendously. Proving this interest, in July, NFT artists active in Korea participated in the "MetaSeoul" conference, which was successfully held online.

On the other hand, there is clearly the issue that NFTs are not free from the speculative logic seen with Bitcoin. There is significant skepticism about whether NFTs can truly guarantee "ownership" of digital assets to anyone or if it is a scam. Recently, a company announced plans to create NFTs of works by Lee Jung-seop, Kim Whanki, and Park Soo-keun and put them on the auction market, which sparked copyright infringement controversies, leading the Korea Copyright Commission to closely monitor the situation. Issues such as anonymity and transaction opacity, as well as problems similar to genuine and counterfeit goods in the clothing industry, may also arise with NFTs. Currently, the NFT market lacks a clear function to verify which NFTs are issued by the original creators, making it difficult for general investors to distinguish genuine from fake, necessitating preventive efforts. Problems such as accessibility and solutions for fractional ownership of content to allow public investment, transaction fees, and network load issues also need to be addressed going forward.

The important point is how to dispel negative perceptions and seek concrete strategies to enable content dissemination as a foundation. Fields requiring specialized cultural content technology, personnel, and significant capital demand collaboration among the private sector, industry, and central government, with a long-term perspective to develop new strategies and nurture experts. Diverse convergent research handling both virtual and real spaces is also necessary. When various considerations about new services and content like NFTs are combined with policy support, it is hoped that more positive effects can be generated beyond the controversies of speculation.

Byungmin Lee, Professor, Department of Cultural Contents, Konkuk University