Metaversal

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Historical NFTs 📅

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Historical NFTs 📅

An intro to historical NFTs!

William M. Peaster
Sep 20, 2022
26
Share this post

Historical NFTs 📅

metaversal.banklesshq.com

Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & digital collectibles


Dear Bankless Nation,

Last week we explored one of the NFT ecosystem’s newer categories, writing NFTs. 

Of course, all the innovation we have today has been made possible by our space’s trailblazers — the first NFT projects who pioneered categories into existence, like CryptoPunks did for profile picture (PFP) collections. 

That said, “historical NFTs” is a sort of meta-category that covers the NFT ecosystem’s earliest projects.

Since early 2021 there’s been a huge surge in rediscovery, research, and trading efforts around these digital things as more people have started to view them as on-chain artifacts. 

For today’s Metaversal, let’s do a quick rundown on historical NFTs and highlight two new marketplaces that explicitly cater to them!

-WMP


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🎨 Are you an artist?

Then Bankless would love to see your portfolio! The team is currently working on its first NFT project, and we’re on the hunt to hire a digital artist to collaborate with us. If you’re interested, please reach out through our submission form. Thanks kindly!

Twitter avatar for @BanklessHQ
bankless.eth @BanklessHQ
DIGITAL ARTISTS 🎨 We want you to come work for us on a super top-secret NFT project 🤫 Interested? Show us your portfolio: tally.so/r/mY5qq5
tally.soBankless Artist Submission FormMade with Tally, the simplest way to create forms.
8:55 PM ∙ Aug 18, 2022
53Likes17Retweets

An intro to historical NFTs


Historical NFTs in the pre-Ethereum era

Ethereum is the first-mover smart contract platform that has served as the home of the contemporary NFT boom. 

Yet what we can consider “Proto-NFTs,” or the ancestors of the non-fungible tokens we have today, existed on Bitcoin, Namecoin, Counterparty, and beyond prior to the launch of Ethereum in July 2015. 

Twitter avatar for @HarryBTC
HarryBTC.eth @HarryBTC
Early NFTs Timeline (V.2) DM for amendments. #NFTs #Ethereum #Bitcoin #Namecoin #Flow
Early NFT Timeline
9:38 PM ∙ Aug 2, 2021
399Likes115Retweets

I won’t dive in too far here, but some notable projects from this pre-Ethereum proto-NFT era include:

  • Bit Domains — A domain name system launched on Namecoin in April 2011. 

  • Punycode Domains — A domain name + on-chain art experiment started in May 2011. 

  • Colored Coins — Yoni Assia introduced the concept of “colored coins” atop Bitcoin, an NFT-like system, in March 2012. 

  • Monegraph — Launched in May 2014, Monegraph was the first NFT platform on Namecoin.

  • NILICoins — Nili Lerner issued conceptual art tokens as Bitcoin-powered colored coins in September 2014. 

  • MYSOUL — Artist Rhea Myers conceptually tokenized her soul on the Counterparty and Dogecoin blockchains in November 2014. 

  • FDCARD — Introduced in March 2015, these were digital trading cards on Counterparty and the commencement of Spells of Genesis project.

  • Rare Pepes — User-issued trading cards centered around Pepe the Frog that first started appeared on Counterparty in September 2016.

Historical NFTs in the Ethereum era

Twitter avatar for @LeonidasNFT
Leonidas.eth | Bcard ID 296 @LeonidasNFT
The Definitive Timeline of Early NFTs on Ethereum V2 Thread 🧵
Image
2:16 PM ∙ Dec 13, 2021
5,469Likes1,942Retweets

Perhaps in a century, all NFTs minted before 2025 will be considered historic. This is to say that the very concept of historical NFT will always be in flux to a certain extent! 

Yet as things stand, there are a handful of projects that many NFT archaeologists agree are very important early NFT efforts in the Ethereum era. These projects include:

  • Terra Nullius — Released in August 2015, this was the first proto-NFT (i.e. preceding the ERC721 standard) project on Ethereum; it let users create non-transferable on-chain messages. 

  • Etheria v1.1 — A virtual world project with Ethereum’s first transferable proto-NFTs that launched in October 2015; Etheria v1.2 was also released in October 2015.

  • Million Ether Homepage v1 — First introduced in December 2016, this project let users mint 10x10 pixel blocks as proto-NFTs. 

  • Ethereum Name Service — Ethereum’s leading domain name system launched in March 2017. 

  • Curio Cards — A collectible art project that first appeared on Ethereum in May 2017. 

  • CryptoPunks — The v1 and v2 CryptoPunks collections both launched in June 2017, paving the way for the 10k PFP collections we have today. 

  • MoonCatRescue — Launched in August 2017, the MoonCats project was the first generative art project on Ethereum. 

  • Digital Zones — A conceptual art project released by artist Mitchell F. Chan on Ethereum in August 2017. 

Twitter avatar for @mitchellfchan
Mitchell F Chan @mitchellfchan
5 YEARS AGO TODAY I released Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, or IKB. IKB connects conceptual art & blockchain. It posits crypto as harbinger of a fully dematerialized world, & conceptualism as a tool for understanding it. in the 5 years since release...🧵1
5:17 PM ∙ Aug 30, 2022
108Likes22Retweets
  • DADA Creeps and Weirdos — Started in October 2017, this was the first project to code artist royalties directly into NFTs. 

  • CryptoKitties — The collectible digital cats project that inspired the modern ERC721 NFT standard. 

Twitter avatar for @LeonidasNFT
Leonidas.eth | Bcard ID 296 @LeonidasNFT
22/ CryptoKitties November 23, 2017 @CryptoKitties @roham -Collect and breed digital cats -First ERC-721 (not fully compliant though) Supply: 50,000 (Gen0) Floor: 0.09Ξ (Gen0) Contract: etherscan.io/address/0x0601… Market: cryptokitties.co/search Discord: dap.pr/ckdiscord
Image
2:16 PM ∙ Dec 13, 2021
45Likes7Retweets

New historical NFT marketplaces arrive

Twitter avatar for @ChainLeftist
Chainleft @ChainLeftist
I haven't used myself yet and didn't audit the contracts but this is great progress. @opensea we begged you to do a #HistoricalNFT section, and you ignored it. Now your lunch is gone :) - hnft.market (pre-ERC721 assets) - nfthistory.market (pre-2021 assets)
Twitter avatar for @jakegallen_
jake.bit @jakegallen_
Two Historical NFT Marketplaces (beta) have popped up in the last 48 hours. Think the community is soundly aware of what's next 🔥 @oldnftcom (left) @LeonidasNFT NFT History (right) https://t.co/b2uFVGNZRq
7:49 PM ∙ Sep 20, 2022
5Likes2Retweets

In recent days, two marketplaces have stepped forward to cater to historical NFT traders: HNFT and NFT History. The arrival of these projects speaks to the rising interest we’ve seen around the category of historical NFTs lately and to the fact that incumbent NFT marketplaces haven’t doubled down on this area yet. 

Image via NFT History

Going forward, it will be interesting to see how these niche marketplaces fare and if their listings can grow as further NFT archaeology leads to the potential rediscovery of more early NFT projects!


Action steps

  • 🙇 Check out these great historical NFT resources:

    • The History of Crypto Art by Martin Ostachowski

    • Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 of the Early Evolution of Art on the Blockchain

  • 🧐 Check out the HNFT and NFT History marketplaces

  • 🎨 If you’re an artist or know an artist interested in working with Bankless, please reach out through our portfolio submission form!


Author Bio

William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal—a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also recently been contributing content to Bankless, JPG, and beyond!


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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.


Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.

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Historical NFTs 📅

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