*5.3. NFT*

The NFT market has been very popular in the past two or three years. The concept of NFT originated from Ethereum. NFT is a form of cryptocurrency [88]. NFT can also be regarded as the ownership certification for identifying virtual assets. They can be largely subdivided into several small parts. NFT is a subdivision that cannot be carried out. Such tokens can be bound with virtual or digital assets to form their unique identifiers. After forming NFTs, they can be freely traded in the market, which greatly promotes the development of virtual currencies and stimulates the prosperity of the DAPP market. By using NFT on smart contracts, creators can easily prove ownership including 'picture', 'video', and 'artwork', so that intellectual property rights can be properly protected. NFT no matter the transaction many times, its original creators have drawn royalties, which has also spurred the development of digital artworks in disguise. The real-time data as of the time when the author wrote the paper shows that the current total transaction value of NFT are close to 16.4 billion US dollars as shown in Figure 2 (Data from: nonfungible.com (accessed on 30 December 2021), and its growing market and large returns have attracted people's attention.

**Figure 2.** Total NFT transaction volume.

In the past 24 h, the transaction volume of NFT was US\$49,858,590.46 [89], and the transaction volume of cryptocurrency was US\$102,099,049,616 [90]. The transaction volume of NFT accounted for about 0.05% of the transaction volume of cryptocurrency. It can be seen that NFT is still developing at the initial stage of 2020, but there is a significant increase compared to the same period in 2020, and its growth can also be seen from other indicators. In April 2020, the number of initial transactions was 25,729, the number of secondary transactions was 8589, and the current number of initial transactions is 14,852,246 times, and the number of secondary transactions was 13,359,460 times. In addition, the active level of investment can also be seen from the number of active wallets. As shown in Figure 3 (Data from: nonfungible.com (30 December 2021), the number of wallets investing in NFT-related products in the past three months has increased from about 97,000 to about 200,000 now, which also reflects given the latest investment trends in cryptocurrencies, NFT-related products will continue to attract a large influx of cryptocurrencies.

**Figure 3.** The number of active wallets related to investing in NFTs.

In addition, the concept of the 'metaverse' rises in 2021, and 2021 is also known as the first year of the 'metaverse'. With the renaming of Facebook and the listing of the Roblox game company, the concept of the Metaverse instantly aroused thousands of waves, leading to the influx of other Internet giants, which also led to the accelerated development of the industry and the entry of capital, and it would quickly integrate human resources. This further stimulated the market to have a high valuation for the Metaverse, and finally formed a market outlet industry. This way, investment and speculation in the market will come one after another. Now the total value of the Metaverse-related industries has reached about 714 million USD. In the future, running the metaverse will need to include a large number of NFTs, cryptocurrencies and NFT-related products will be used in the future virtual world. It can be used, leased and bought and sold in the metaverse, which requires a large amount of cryptocurrencies to promote the market's investment interest in cryptocurrencies.

In a word, NFT will enhance the development of the entire encrypted market [91], such as: existing encrypted games; one can continue to buy and sell NFT products in the game; protect digital collectibles, protect digital assets and intellectual property rights; finally, prosper the entire metaverse. From the current point of view, NFT-related products are similar to the process of re-enclosure. Redistributing resources and wealth will attract a large number of people to participate, which also requires the use of cryptocurrencies, and it will be one of the investment directions of cryptocurrencies in the future.
