Non-fungible tokens are a representation of a unique digital asset on a blockchain that is not mutually interchangeable. It is also indivisible—it cannot be broken down into smaller units.
[The NFT Stack. Source: NFT Landscape tweet by Mason Nystrom](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8cFch3VgAIPr9l?format=jpg&name=large)
The NFT Stack. Source: NFT Landscape tweet by Mason Nystrom
NFTs are powerful because, when combined with other financial building blocks on Ethereum (or other blockchains), they allow anyone to issue, own, and trade them. This makes interacting with NFTs significantly more efficient than in traditional platforms. The same reason why cryptocurrency used in payments is more efficient than traditional payments, that it is borderless and significantly easier to transfer, applies to NFTs.
The NFT ecosystem aims to provide a standardization for unique products that need clear ownership and traceability to be on.
By representing non-fungible tokens on public blockchains, developers can build common, reusable, inheritable standards relevant to all non-fungible tokens. This provides a clear, consistent, reliable, and permissioned API for reading and writing data.
These are analogous to other building blocks of the digital world, like the JPEG or PNG file format for images, HTTP for requests between computers, and HTML / CSS for displaying content on the web.