Abstract:
As of 2022, non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, the smart contract powered tokens that represent
ownership in a specific digital asset, have become a popular investment vehicle. In 2021, NFT
trading reached USD 17.6 billion and entered mainstream media with several celebrities and major
companies launching tokens within the space. The rapid rise in popularity of NFTs has brought with
it a number of risks and concerns, two of which will be discussed and addressed in this technical
paper. Data storage of the underlying digital asset connected to an NFT is held off-chain in most cases
and is therefore out of the NFT holders’ control. This issue will be discussed and addressed using
a theoretical workflow developed and presented for a system that converges NFTs and verifiable
credentials with the aim of storing underlying NFT digital assets in a decentralized manner. The
second issue focuses on the rise of NFT infringements and fraud within the overall NFT space.
This will be discussed and addressed through the development of a practical application, named
“Connect2NFT”. The main functionality of this practical application will enable users to connect their
Twitter social media accounts to the NFTs they own, thus ensuring that potential buyers or viewers of
the NFT can comprehensively conclude who is the authentic owner of a specific NFT. An individual
performance analysis of the proposed solution will be conducted in addition to being compared and
evaluated against similar applications. Thorough development, implementation, and testing has
been performed in order to establish a practical solution that can be tested and applied to current
NFT use cases. The theoretical NFT storage solution is a minor but equally important contribution
in comparison.
