A story by Brian Naughton

Iwasn’t a particularly early adopter of NFTs. Initially I saw them as a slightly goofy (albeit technologically adept) ‘cypherpunk’ phenomenon. Such first impressions can take us hostage if we don’t put the time in.

And so it was for me with NFTs… until in 2021; when, with some free time on my hands, and having watched a Real Vision episode on NFTs that convincingly challenged my preconceptions, I began to survey the landscape more diligently.

I discovered that there’s a LOT going on — and that with NFTs it’s easy to mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself…

Lots of people, for example, will point to the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) as an exemplar in the space. And this illustrates one of my primary observations: that people tend to conflate the earliest NFT success stories and use cases (Bored Apes, Crypto Punks and other ‘blue chip’ PFP projects) with the underlying technology itself — mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the actual moon.

Yes it’s true: Bored Apes are most definitely NFTs. But NFTs are NOT most definitely Bored Apes — or any other 10k [insert adjective] + [insert animal] PFP collection. The two are almost seen as synonymous in popular culture at this point — that NFTs = PFPs. In technological terms, this is far from the reality.

Instead, NFTs are cryptographically secured ‘place-holders’ or ‘containers’; used to authenticate ownership of an associated digital asset or object. And that object can be whatever we (its creators) want it to be. It just so happens that human beings have a bit of a thing for cartoon depictions of animals behaving like humans — who knew?…

Perhaps most importantly, NFTs (as signifiers that point to other objects) can be dynamic — i.e. they can be hooked up to smart contracts and all kinds of other sophisticated software applications and interfaces.

That was my ‘Eureka moment’; which I subsequently characterized in an essay I wrote on the topic as E=NFT — where ‘E’ stands for everything…

It was this revelation (partly inspired by Nicholas Negroponte’s wonderful book ‘Being Digital’) that lead me into discussions with a number of other people who had arrived at exactly the same conclusion — that NFTs could be and likely would be (almost literally) anything…

One of the first people I spoke to at length on the topic was Víctor Muñoz, founder of Bright NFT. Víctor was raised in Santiago, Chile and is currently in the final stages of completing a PhD in Elementary Particle Physics at the University of Valencia in Spain. Like many physicists, Víctor has always taken a keen interest in technology. But in his case, he’s even more interested in its potential to transform society — which is what lead him into the world of crypto and web3 in the first place.

His journey down the NFT rabbit hole was quite similar to mine. When the hype for NFTs arrived in 2021, he ignored it for a while. But when he realized that most people didn’t understand what NFTs could be used for, Víctor started to think laterally about potentially meaningful longer-range applications of the technology. He arrived at the conclusion that maybe Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be combined with NFTs to create something way beyond the limited utility of the current crop of pixelated JPEGs.

By the end of 2021, what had started as the germ of an idea had become a small but committed startup team. A Brazilian friend and graphic designer Leonardo Pedrazzoli (with a background in graphic and digital design, digital marketing and coding) came on board to help Víctor flesh out the concept. And then Danny Gonzalez, an experienced full stack blockchain developer (well respected for his involvement in the largest community of smart contract standards at OpenZepellin) joined to provide the blockchain and Solidity development expertise. Together, the three created a ‘Yeti Ape’ called Bongo — the project’s first prototype NFT, capable of responding to voice commands.

Reminiscing about that moment, Víctor later told me: “It’s fascinating the power an idea can have… honestly I never had any expectations of founding a start-up from it, I was simply trying to solve a problem”.

And thus I found myself engaged in a series of lengthy conversations with Víctor about the potential use cases for AI-enabled voice assistant NFTs. Our discussions included exploring the possibility of using the tech to on board people into the world of web3 — providing them with an intelligent avatar to help them safely ‘level-up’ and become active participants and creators in the new web3 economy, without getting burned or scammed.

Whilst highly ambitious, this use case (safely onboarding people into the world of crypto and web3) seemed to be a coherent ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP) for a first generation intelligent NFT (iNFT) to me — and it transpired that other people Víctor was talking to at the time agreed.

Since then, and in spite of a rocky year in the world of crypto, the project has begun to blossom. The web3 learning aspect has been fleshed out further, along with details of a proposed platform and native token ($BNFT) that will support a ‘Learn to Earn’ (L2E) engagement model and ecosystem.

And I was so impressed with Víctor and the concept of harnessing NFTs to deliver a new form of user-owned AI (as opposed to the more opaque kinds of AI used against us under the banner of ‘surveillance capitalism’) that I decided to join the team.

The real clincher for me was the ethos behind the project. This isn’t about making a fast buck or laying claim to a share of the burgeoning NFT market. Nor is it about ‘astro-turfing’ a crypto bro community on Discord and Twitter — to attract people who are ultimately only in it for the hype or the quick flip. Slow and steady wins the race. This is about doing something much deeper, over a longer timeframe: providing genuine utility based on the individual ownership of (decentralised) AI resources.

A story by Brian Naughton

Iwasn’t a particularly early adopter of NFTs. Initially I saw them as a slightly goofy (albeit technologically adept) ‘cypherpunk’ phenomenon. Such first impressions can take us hostage if we don’t put the time in.

And so it was for me with NFTs… until in 2021; when, with some free time on my hands, and having watched a Real Vision episode on NFTs that convincingly challenged my preconceptions, I began to survey the landscape more diligently.

I discovered that there’s a LOT going on — and that with NFTs it’s easy to mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself…

Lots of people, for example, will point to the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) as an exemplar in the space. And this illustrates one of my primary observations: that people tend to conflate the earliest NFT success stories and use cases (Bored Apes, Crypto Punks and other ‘blue chip’ PFP projects) with the underlying technology itself — mistaking the finger pointing at the moon for the actual moon.

Yes it’s true: Bored Apes are most definitely NFTs. But NFTs are NOT most definitely Bored Apes — or any other 10k [insert adjective] + [insert animal] PFP collection. The two are almost seen as synonymous in popular culture at this point — that NFTs = PFPs. In technological terms, this is far from the reality.

Instead, NFTs are cryptographically secured ‘place-holders’ or ‘containers’; used to authenticate ownership of an associated digital asset or object. And that object can be whatever we (its creators) want it to be. It just so happens that human beings have a bit of a thing for cartoon depictions of animals behaving like humans — who knew?…

Perhaps most importantly, NFTs (as signifiers that point to other objects) can be dynamic — i.e. they can be hooked up to smart contracts and all kinds of other sophisticated software applications and interfaces.

That was my ‘Eureka moment’; which I subsequently characterized in an essay I wrote on the topic as E=NFT — where ‘E’ stands for everything…

It was this revelation (partly inspired by Nicholas Negroponte’s wonderful book ‘Being Digital’) that lead me into discussions with a number of other people who had arrived at exactly the same conclusion — that NFTs could be and likely would be (almost literally) anything…

One of the first people I spoke to at length on the topic was Víctor Muñoz, founder of Bright NFT. Víctor was raised in Santiago, Chile and is currently in the final stages of completing a PhD in Elementary Particle Physics at the University of Valencia in Spain. Like many physicists, Víctor has always taken a keen interest in technology. But in his case, he’s even more interested in its potential to transform society — which is what lead him into the world of crypto and web3 in the first place.

His journey down the NFT rabbit hole was quite similar to mine. When the hype for NFTs arrived in 2021, he ignored it for a while. But when he realized that most people didn’t understand what NFTs could be used for, Víctor started to think laterally about potentially meaningful longer-range applications of the technology. He arrived at the conclusion that maybe Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be combined with NFTs to create something way beyond the limited utility of the current crop of pixelated JPEGs.

By the end of 2021, what had started as the germ of an idea had become a small but committed startup team. A Brazilian friend and graphic designer Leonardo Pedrazzoli (with a background in graphic and digital design, digital marketing and coding) came on board to help Víctor flesh out the concept. And then Danny Gonzalez, an experienced full stack blockchain developer (well respected for his involvement in the largest community of smart contract standards at OpenZepellin) joined to provide the blockchain and Solidity development expertise. Together, the three created a ‘Yeti Ape’ called Bongo — the project’s first prototype NFT, capable of responding to voice commands.

Reminiscing about that moment, Víctor later told me: “It’s fascinating the power an idea can have… honestly I never had any expectations of founding a start-up from it, I was simply trying to solve a problem”.

And thus I found myself engaged in a series of lengthy conversations with Víctor about the potential use cases for AI-enabled voice assistant NFTs. Our discussions included exploring the possibility of using the tech to on board people into the world of web3 — providing them with an intelligent avatar to help them safely ‘level-up’ and become active participants and creators in the new web3 economy, without getting burned or scammed.

Whilst highly ambitious, this use case (safely onboarding people into the world of crypto and web3) seemed to be a coherent ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP) for a first generation intelligent NFT (iNFT) to me — and it transpired that other people Víctor was talking to at the time agreed.

Since then, and in spite of a rocky year in the world of crypto, the project has begun to blossom. The web3 learning aspect has been fleshed out further, along with details of a proposed platform and native token ($BNFT) that will support a ‘Learn to Earn’ (L2E) engagement model and ecosystem.

And I was so impressed with Víctor and the concept of harnessing NFTs to deliver a new form of user-owned AI (as opposed to the more opaque kinds of AI used against us under the banner of ‘surveillance capitalism’) that I decided to join the team.

The real clincher for me was the ethos behind the project. This isn’t about making a fast buck or laying claim to a share of the burgeoning NFT market. Nor is it about ‘astro-turfing’ a crypto bro community on Discord and Twitter — to attract people who are ultimately only in it for the hype or the quick flip. Slow and steady wins the race. This is about doing something much deeper, over a longer timeframe: providing genuine utility based on the individual ownership of (decentralised) AI resources.