Stories from 2050: a look at the world built on NFT

“You will have nothing and you will be happy.“More than 30 years ago, in 2016, this thought was at the center of a statement released by the leaders of the World Economic Forum. It looked dystopian, like something from a book by Aldous Huxley or George Orwell. Probably among the most insidious ideas I’ve ever heard.

Today in 2050, selling my racing drone, that idea came back to my mind. I think I remembered the merits of true private property. It was a beautiful two-seater, capable of going from 0-100km / h in two seconds, which wasn’t too bad for an electric vehicle, especially considering it had been built in the previous decade.

It took about an hour to find a buyer on a surprisingly niche market built on Efinity, a blockchain network my company built during the early days of the non-fungible tokens (NFT). Even after all these years, the network is still operational, given the countless integrated updates and its future-proof design. The transaction was done simply through a smart contract. I checked my crypto balance to make sure of the payment, as I watched my drone make its way to its new owner on the other side of the world. While battery life on a single charge wasn’t great on that vintage model, there are enough charging stations along the way.

Through our transaction, the buyer is now in possession of a non-fungible token that gives him legal, tangible and immutable ownership of the drone. Without that NFT in its wallet, the racing drone would be just useless junk. All without intermediaries or unnecessary paperwork. Just a simple and efficient transaction between two drone racing enthusiasts living on different continents.

These days, NFTs are everywhere and they represent everything.

From small everyday appliances like my coffee maker and orbital nanosat, to smart apartments. There are at least a dozen near-Earth space rocks traded as fractional NFTs, fueling the growth of the asteroid mining industry. And I only mentioned the tokenization of objects in the real world, don’t get me started on the stuff that only exists in digital format.

Combining the virtual and the real, the Metaverse is a strange but incredible maze of creativity and economic activity that has not only helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but has also played a vital role in funding some of the largest projects. engineering of humanity.

Today, the sale of the drone made me reflect on how different the concept of ownership is currently. The advent of true ownership of both physical and digital assets has opened up incredible possibilities, as individuals and as a civilization. We have therefore done what humans do best when given the right opportunities and resources: we have thrived.

It’s a funny thing, blockchain and NFT have even become the key to trade between planets, as Mars is now home to thousands of adventurous colonists, from structural engineers to robotics experts. Mars has its own ecosystem of decentralized networks, separated from terrestrial blockchains by an annoying delay due to the speed of light. Although the two network clusters are highly asynchronous, their communication protocols allow Martians and Terrans to easily trade with each other.

I purchased an NFT that gave me partial but significant ownership of a water production plant on Mars, and I have many friends who have instructed their AI assistants to automatically invest in well-performing companies on the Red Planet. A game made by a Martian developer went viral on Earth a few weeks ago and is about to become the next Lost Relics.

For most kids today, these concepts are by no means transcendental: for them it is just plain normality.

I like to think about how blockchains will evolve in the next century, with complex interactions between planets and space habitats separated by a vast void, but linked economically, socially, culturally and perhaps even politically through intricate radio waves that send blockchain data back and forth.

And to think that it all started over thirty years ago … We have come a long way since then. Now, I think it’s time for me to buy a new NFT. I’ve been keeping an eye on a particular custom racing drone for weeks and its holographic interface is phenomenal!

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every trade carries risk and readers should conduct their own research before making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect or represent those of Cointelegraph.