• Feudalism: all land belonged to the King who lets it out to tenants.
   
• Magna Carta: rights of all free citizens to own and inherit property and to be protected from excessive taxes.
   
• More generally: considered to be a core property of a functioning society
   
• Not without controversy:
  • La propriété, c'est le vol! Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1840) 
  • Communism=property rights not needed (each to their ability and need)

• If you buy a house, what are you buying?
   
• You ask your bank to change two ledger entries, transferring a claim on your bank's asset to somebody else.
   
• You sign a transaction with paper and pencil under the watchful eyes of a notary.
   
• You take is to the country clerk or property registry and present it there.
• What do you own?

\(\to\) an entry in the property register

• ERC-20: fungible token
   
• ERC-721: non-fungible
   
• ERC-1155: mix of both
   
• can programs lots of properties into tokens... 

• Markets need clear property rights:
  • Before you buy a  good, must know who has the right to sell it
  • Once bought, transfer ownership from the seller to the buyer must be clear.
• NFTs solve this problem:
  • give parties something they can agree represents ownership
  • make it possible to build markets around new types of transactions
  • \(\to\) buying and selling of products that could never be sold before
  • \(\to\) enable traditional transactions to happen in innovative ways that are more efficient and valuable.

Metaverse application

• ownership in the digital world
• payment for digital experiences

What you don't have
 

• other rights (such as copyright)
   
• a "better" or more "authentic" copy of the artwork than non-NFT owners

Metaverse enthusiasts like

• ownership in the digital world
• payment for digital experiences

• Model of active ecosystem-building:​
  • start with an NFT series
  • roadmap with NFT= access to  expanding array of products, activities, and experiences.
  • Revenue back to brand to support new projects
  • \(\to\) value of the NFTs \(\nearrow\)

Opportunity

• link/purchase of NFTs without crypto
• \(\to\) already exists in China with Alipay + Conflux
• But: Ethereum too congested
  \(\to\) opportunity for new chains such as Solana