What is an eBook NFT?

Before we dive in deep, here’s the main takeaway in our context: NFTs are just a piece of technology that facilitate the reselling of eBooks.

Of course, there’s a bit more to NFTs than just that. But at the end of the day, NFTs are tools that allow us to do amazing things!

Now, let’s get nerdy.

An eBook NFT is a unique, digital piece book. Because it is unique, it cannot be substituted or replaced by something else. (NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token).

Understanding what an eBook NFT is might take some getting used to. Let’s start with an example:

NFTs take a real-world concept and bring it to the Internet

Let’s look at a real-world example of something so unique it cannot be substituted or replaced: the one and only Mona Lisa. There is only ONE Mona Lisa. Trying to replace her with a near-identical painting would not change the fact that there is still only ONE painted by Leonardo da Vinci and valued at $850 million. Taking pictures of the Mona Lisa, printing them, and creating posters of her doesn’t change the uniqueness and value of the real Mona Lisa either.

The opposite of a unique object like the Mona Lisa is something that can be easily substituted or replaced by something else, like money. It doesn’t matter whether I pay with the $20 bill in my left pocket or the $20 bill in my right pocket: the value of either is the same. They can easily be substituted for one another.

NFTs (and blockchain) bring the concept behind the Mona Lisa example to the digital world. With NFTs, you can prove the uniqueness of something in the digital world. While copies of the digital object may exist, there is only one real version.

You might be asking - ok, that sounds great, but how do NFTs work?

NFTs make it possible to prove the uniqueness of something digital. Think of an NFT as the digital object itself and a barcode permanently tied to that digital object - let’s say an article published on Soltype. This permanent ‘barcode’ says who wrote the article, the date the article was created, and who owns the article. This information cannot be changed. So even if somebody were to copy and upload the article elsewhere, the article on Soltype would retain its status as the original. This could be proved by its permanent ‘barcode’ (aka NFT), which lists its creation date.

What makes these ‘barcodes’ (aka NFTs) permanent and traceable?

The fact that they, and the digital object they represent, are stored on a blockchain. A blockchain is a way of storing data. When data is stored on a blockchain, it becomes permanent and can never be changed. Text published with Soltype is stored in this way. And when it is published and stored on the blockchain, it becomes an eBook NFT with a permanent barcode that affirms its uniqueness, value, and information.