Bitcoin as we know it is a new form of money that is controlled by no one and is developed as an open collaborative project. Its is arguably the most decentralized, robust and censorship-resistant blockchain.
Bitcoin’s scripting language came with the ability to store small amounts of metadata (additional information) on the blockchain. This allowed for an era of experimentations on the bitcoin blockchain and as a result the development of bitcoin-like blockchains such as Ethereum and along with it - a plethora of coins.
During this period, the first NFT (called colored coins) was designed on the bitcoin blockchain by Mr. Meni Rosenfeld - a cryptographer and mathematician who then, was the President of the Israeli Bitcoin Association.
This article will share some of the important moments in NFT development leading up to the most recent news.
Colored Coins whitepaper released. By using the Bitcoin Blockchain’s simple characteristics, one could develop features and eventually applications with dozens of different use-cases.
In theory, Colored Coins could be used to represent:
When it came out in 2012, Colored Coins were all everyone talked about in the Bitcoin community.
Colored Coins’ flaws are apparent, however, it led to further experimentation in the design of NFTs. The race to put real-world assets onto distributed ledgers had begun.
A few months later in 2013, a more in-depth paper was published titled, “Colored Coins — "BitcoinX" by Yoni Assia, Vitalik Buterin, Lior Hakim, and Meni Rosenfeld
The paper explored the idea that Bitcoin as we know it now as two separate layers, being, the underlying transactional network based on its cryptographic technology, and an overlay network of issuance of distinct instruments encapsulated in a design.