Hello, and welcome to another post.

In this post, I will be going over a pretty overlooked topic on this site: Non fungible tokens.

I will explain what they are, what they are used for, as well as give you other features of them and information about them.

Ready? Let's go!

This post has been made possible by Changelly.

So what is a non fungible token?

A non fungible token is simply defined as a special type of cryptographic token which represents something unique.

(By the way, a cryptographic token is one in which a cryptographic mathematical problem is expected to be solved before the token can be released into circulation)

The creation of blockchain technology brought about the creation of digital money(such as bitcoin). But cryptocurrency and money is only one of the numerous uses of blockchain technology.

One of those other uses is Non Fungible tokens.

"Alright, hang on. What the heck does fungible mean?" you say at this point. 

Well, if you've ever used money before(which I'm sure you have at some point), you are already familiar with the idea of fungibility.

Fungibility of a currency is defined as the ability of that currency to retain its value over time.

So that means that the $5 in your pocket, as well as the $5 in my pocket are equal in value and magnitude, regardless of what date they were printed, if one has been in existence longer than the other or if one has been used by Satan himself in a transaction in the past. They are both equivalent in value, and will be accepted by stores that allow the spending of dollars.

Fungibility is therefore a very important feature of currencies. Imagine if you had to investigate the worth of each $5 bill because of the fact that they weren't all equal in value, and that some could actually be worth $4 now because of how long they have been in existence. That would be a real chore.

So now that we know what fungibility is, just add a "non" to it and we get "non-fungible".

And non means not. So this means "not fungible" or unable to retain the same value overtime.

So why would you want to use something that doesn't have the same value it had yesterday today?

Well, believe it or not, non fungible tokens were created to NOT hold the same value overtime.

"Wait, what?" you say.

The thing is, NFTs work as kind of a database for information(or better put, entries of information).

Possibly the most famous and memorable non-fungible token project was crypto kitties.

remember these guys?

Whenever you bought a crypto kitty, you were essentially owning a non fungible token built on the ethereum blockchain. This is because no two kitties were exactly alike, and this information needed to be stored and transmitted from owner to owner, just like a regular cryptocurrency is sent and received.

NFTs can therefore be used where differentiability and identity are required, such as in tickets sold on the blockchain, giving out certificates for schools built on the blockchain, online gaming, and of course, Ethereum blockchain collectibles (like our darling crypto kitties)

So that's exactly what an NFT is! In the future, I will be doing an article diving in depth on the technology involved in creating these tokens. It's called ERC-721 specification, and I will go into the specifics of how it works in a later article. Make sure you're following me if you aren't already to be the first to know.

As always, thanks for reading and check out Changelly, who made this post possible.