TITLE

MAPPING NFT REVOLUTION: A qualitative study of the effect of the NFT market and its relation to human behaviour. 

NAME: OPE-IFA MICHEAL IDOWU 
INDEX NUMBER: BSSE/DD/157620
INSTITUTION: METHODIST UNIVERSITY COLLEGE GHANA
PROGRAM: BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (ECONOMICS)
SUPERVISED BY: MRS ENIOLA SOUPET AND MRS KEMI MUSA 


This project work will be due for submission on the 23rd of June 2022



ABSTRACT  


This is the study of human behaviour concerning NFTs, NFTs have been a booming industry getting into the spotlight In the year 2020, Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been used as a way of rewarding content creators. Artists publish their works on the blockchain as NFTs, which they can then sell. The buyer of an NFT then holds ownership of a unique digital asset, which can be resold in much the same way that real-world art collectors might trade paintings. this research will help us gather data to show how humans are reacting physiologically, sociologically, and economically to NFTs which will, in turn, show how if humans are accepting or declining the new trend and whatever result we get will determine if whether or not we should onboard more people to the NFTs space and the Web 3.0 at large 
We will be using 3 different research methods which are :

1. Quantitative data collection 
2. Qualitative data collection 
3. Experimental data collection  For us to accurately get the right phycological, sociological, and economical human behaviour towards NFTs 
 


RESEARCH BACKGROUND 


A non-fungible token (NFT) is a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger, that can be sold and traded.
Types of NFT data units may be associated with digital files such as photos, video, and audio, because each token is uniquely identifiable, NFT differs from blockchain cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
NFT ledger claim to provide a public certification of authenticity or proof of ownership, but the legal fight conveyed by an NFT can be uncertain as NFTs do not restrict the sharing or copying of the underlying digital files do not necessarily convey the copyright files, and do not prevent the creation of NFT with identical associated files. NFT has been used as a speculating asset and it has drawn increasing criticism and claimed the structure of the NFT marker to be a Ponzi scheme.
The first known ‘’NFT’’, Quantum was created by Kevin Macon and Anil Dash in May 2014 consisting of a video clip made by the mascot's wife Jennifer. Macon register the video on the name coin blockchain and sold it to dash for $4, during a live presentation for the seven for seven conferences at the new museum in New York City. In 2015 the first NFT project ETHERIA was lunch and demonstrated at DEVCON in London, Ethereum's first developer conference, 3 months after the lunch on The Ethereum blockchain most of the Etherias 475 purchasable and tradeable hexagonal tiles when unsold for more than 5 years until march 13 2021, when renewed interest in NFT sparked a buying frenzy. Within 24 hours all tiles of the current version and the previous version each hardcoded to 1ETH ($0.43 at the time of lunch) were sold for a total of $1.4 million.
The term NFT only gained currency with the ERC-721 standard, first proposed in 2017 via the Ethereum GitHub, following the launch of various NFT projects that year. The standard coincided with the launch of several NFT projects, including Curio Cards, CryptoPunks (a project to trade unique cartoon characters, released by the American studio Larva Labs on the Ethereum blockchain)
The 2017 online game CryptoKitties was monetized by selling tradable cat NFTs, and its success brought some public attention to NFTs.
The NFT market experienced rapid growth during 2020, with its value tripling to $250 million. And has one of the most popular applications in the fintech field (many NFT exist: for example one of the NFTs statistic websites shows the top 100 ranking NFT collection by sales volumes HTTP://cryptocam.io accessed, on 9 November 2021) among those the top 5 all-time sales are Axie infinity, crypto punk, Art block, NBA-TopShot and bored ape yacht club and as of 8 November 2021, their all-time sales are over 200,000 ETH or approximately 940 million USD similar to the cryptocurrency market, each type of NFT in the market has its unique features and purposes however in the comparison to the popular market atmosphere, there is still very little academic research on NFT. 
The paper by Lennart Ante ‘’non-fungible token (NFT) market of the Ethereum blockchain temporal development, cointegration and interaction, explores the interaction of the 14 largest NFT projects Using data from ETH blockchain between June 2017 and May 2021 through the VECM. The cointegrated VAR model the result shows that there is a short term casual link between the NFT sub-market there for the success of the new project can increase the activities of the old projects while old projects have both positive and negative impacts on the younger project. Also, the paper by Micheal Dowling ‘’is non-fungible tokens price driven by cryptocurrencies?’’ Examines the spill-over affect between bitcoin, ethereum, and the 3 most popular NFT project which are Decentraland, Axie infinity and crypto punks by constructing a metrix of generalised impulse responses and using the wavelet coherent technique, there analysis indicate that there is a little spill over between individual NFT market unlike the crypto currencies and stock but low volatility transmission between NFTs and crypto currencies especially Decentraland and ethereum also the paper by Tse-chin Lin and Derong kong, ‘’alternative investment in fintech Era: the risk and return on NFTs, conduct a comparative analysis of NFT and other investment tools by constructing an NFT index with hedonic regression model and a data base consisting of 13,712 transactions recorded from June 2017 to may 2021 the result indicate that the NFT index has position co-movement with the crypto currencies exchange rate (I.e ETH/USD) and stock indices and a negation, correlation of return with common hedging vermeils (such as vix index, gold and bond) during their sampling period, the geometric average of monthly return on NFTs was 16.99%, with standard deviation of 58.17 and a comparable Sharpe ratio to the NASDAQ index, in addition their analysis found that the pricing of NFT depends on the scaresness of individual tokens and the aesthetic. In a similar vein, the paper by David Y. Aharon and Ender Demir “NFTs and Asset Class Spillovers: Lessons from the Period Around the COVID-19 Pandemic”, also analyzes the relationships between NFT and other financial assets during the period from January 2018 to June 2021 [7]. Using the time-varying parameter vector autoregressions (TVP-VAR) approach, the static analysis indicates that NFTs have only weak interactions with Ethereum, gold, bonds, equities, oil, and the USD index; however, the dynamic analysis shows that NFTs bear some similarity to gold and the USD index in terms of risk absorption during the COVID-19 crisis. 
The payoff has been huge for any artist, musician, influencers and the like, with investors spending top dollar to own NFTs for example Jack Dorsey's first tweet sold for $29 million, a video of Hebron James dunk was sold for $200,000 and a decade-old of ‘’nyan cut ‘’ GIF went fo $600,000 crypto kitties is a digital trading game on the cryptocurrency platform Ethereum was one of of the original NFT allowing people to purchase and sell virtual cat that was both unique and stored on a blockchain ‘’some of that interest is from is from people who are enjoy supporting independent creator buy buying their art ‘’Artsy CEO mike sterb told CNN ‘’ others are intrigued by the idea of taking a digital asset that anyone can copy and claim ownership of it and the recent headline price record for NFT seems to have been largely driven by newly minted crypto millionaires and billionaires looking to diversify their bitcoin holdings and more interest in the crypto ecosystem.
 In the first three months of 2021, more than $200 million were spent on NFTs and In the early months of 2021, interest in NFTs increased after several high-profile sales and art auctions. Digital art is a common cause for NFT High-profile auctions of NFTs linked to digital art have received considerable public attention, with the word "Merge" by artist Pak being the most expensive NFT with a price of $91.8 million and Everydays: the First 5000 Days, by artist Mike Winkelmann (known professionally as Beeple), the second most expensive auction at US$69.3 million in 2021.





OBJECTIVE 


This project is aimed at studying three types of human behaviour which are the phycological, sociological, and economical behaviour concerning the NFT to if they are negative or positive 
To educate and show the people how the NFT and web three operate at large 
To onboard people to the NFT space and also to answer my research question such as 
 1. Are NFT scams?
 2. Will NFT be here for a long time?
 3. What is the connection between NFT and CRYPTO?



RESEARCH METHOD 


We will be using five different types of research methods which are:

1. Quantitative
2. Qualitative 
3. experimental    QUANTITATIVE METHOD - this method will help us collect the exact number of phycological, sociological, and economical reactions respectfully  QUALITATIVE METHOD - this method will help us collect ideas, experiences, and meaning of the phycological, sociological, and economical reaction respectfully  EXPERIMENTAL METHOD - we will use this method to systematically intervene in a process that measures the outcome, we will archive this by putting out an NFT project on open-sea titled MY SCHOOL PROJECT WORK, and the item being sold is called ME AND MY THOUGHT to collect the data of how people will physiologically, sociologically and economically to this particular NFT project.  


SIGNIFICANCE 


This research will provide insight into the world of NFT and its ability 
Through this research, the African communities especially will learn how to create, collect, buy, sell, and flip NFT and also will understand how the human mind is reacting to NFT and Web 3.0 at large and also the success of this project will help onboard people to the NFT space. 
Moreover, the analysis that is presented in the survey will convey valuable information for future research that will explore the various benefits/ideas of NFT and Web 3.0 at large also it will give future research insight on the phycological, sociological, and economical human behaviour towards NFT and the Web 3.0 at large.




REFERENCE 

• Ante, L. Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Markets on the Ethereum Blockchain: Temporal Development, Cointegration and Interrelations. Available online: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3904683 (accessed on 13 August 2021).
• Basu S., Basu K., Austin T.H. (2022) Crowdfunding Non-fungible Tokens on the Blockchain. In: Chang SY., Bathen L., Di Troia F., Austin T.H., Nelson A.J. (eds) Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference. SVCC 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1536. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96057-5_8
• Bao H, Roubaud D. Recent Development in Fintech: Non-Fungible Token. FinTech. 2022; 1(1):44-46. https://doi.org/10.3390/fintech1010003 Dowling, M. Is non-fungible token pricing driven by cryptocurrencies. Finance. Res. Lett. 2021, 102097Dowling, M. Fertile LAND
• Jasmine Goodwill. What is an NFT? non-fungible token explained. CNN business.
• Dowling, M. Fertile LAND: Pricing non-fungible tokens. Finance. Res. Lett. 2021, 102096. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
• Kong, D.R.; Lin, T.C. Alternative Investments in the Fintech Era: The Risk and Return of Non-Fungible Token (NFT). Available online: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3914085 (accessed on 30 August 2021).
• Thaddeus-Johns, Josie (March 11, 2021). "What Are NFTs, Anyway? One Just Sold for $69 Million". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 26, 2021. 
• Pricing non-fungible tokens. Financ. Res. Lett. 2021, 102096. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]