July 30th, 2011

Dan Kaminsky embeds the first ASCII image on the Bitcoin blockchain in honor of the cryptographer Len Sassaman. (ASCII BERNANKE)

ASCII BERNANKE

March 27th, 2012

Yoni Assia introduces the concept of using cryptocurrency to represent other assets with Colored Coins. It is the predecessor of non-fungible tokens

Colored Coins

October 24th,2013

Kevin Mccoy (@mccoyspace) introduces the idea of embedding a contractual ownership token into a blockchain transaction in order to address the issue of a lack of an official method to authenticate ownership/transfer ownership for digital artworks.

Kevin Mccoy

February 20th,2014

Rob Myers minted his soul in 100 tokens on the Dogecoin blockchain, presenting one of the first examples of embedding art on a blockchain. However, MYSOUL tokens are not non-fungible due to there being more than one.

My Soul

2014

Counterparty was founded in 2014 by Robert Dermody, Adam Krellenstein, and Evan Wagner. It is a peer-to-peer financial platform and a distributed, open-source Internet protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain. It is also one of the first platforms on which NFTs could be minted.

Counterparty

October 7th, 2014

Joe Hamilton minted the first art NFT on Counterparty.

Regular Division

2014

Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash created Monegraph, or Monetized Graphics with the intention of creating scarcity for digital artworks. Artists can sign in and submit a digital image that they've created. Monegraph then gives them a blockchain key and value that they can store on a Namecoin wallet, which serves as a unique claim of ownership to their art.

Monegraph

October 21nd, 2015

Etheria is the first NFT art project, involving a digital landscape and house. It is embedded into the Etherium blockchain.

Etheria

April, 2015

Harm van den Dorpel claims to be the first artist to sell an NFT to an institution for Bitcoin. His artwork is called, "Pixel Sorters".

Harm van den Dorpel

October, 2016

The first Rare Pepes were minted on Counterparty, marking the first time that a meme was minted as an NFT.

Rare Pepe

October 16th, 2016

Rare Skrilla (@SkrillaVentura) mints the first audio NFT under the name DJ Pepe as part of the Pepe meme movement.

DJ Pepe

June, 2017

CryptoPunks is one of the first NFTs on the Ethereum Blockchain. The original creators released 10,000 cryptopunks for free to anybody that claimed one. A secondary market for these NFTs has developed, some of which sell for millions of dollars.

CryptoPunks

August 9th, 2017

MoonCats are the first NFT cats to be released, followed by CryptoKitties.

MoonCats

December 28th, 2017

OpenSea is one of the first decentralized exchange and marketplace for digital collectibles. This includes art, trading cards, and domain names.

OpenSea

January 13th, 2018

The Rare Digital Art Festival is the first event exclusively for NFT art, sparking discussions on its implications for art. It signifies an important milestone for NFTs, as they gain influence in the traditional art world.

Rare Digital Art Festival

July 17th, 2018

Matt Condon (@mattgcondon) and Jonathan Mann(@songadaymann) start the first NFT podcast, Digitally Rare.

Digitally Rare

April 22th, 2018

Artist JOY (@JohnOrionYoung) mints the first 3D art NFT. He is also known for being the first crypto artist to create his own crypto contract as well as making music/video accompaniments to his NFT art.

JOY

September, 2018

Maecenas.io tokenizes an Andy Warhol painting, marking the first time an artwork from the traditional art market is made into an NFT and sold.

Maecenas.io

August, 2019

clovers.network is the first to sell cryptographic icons as NFTs.

Clovers

August, 2019

The Rendar Gallery is the first street art NFT gallery.

Rendar Gallery

February 15th, 2020

Somnium Space is the first VR world NFT, allowing users to view their digital assets as if they were there physically.

Somnium Space

February 2020

MAGNFT is the first NFT magazine, featuring popular and unique NFT content.

MAGNFT

December 18th, 2019

Skeenee.eth (@skeenee_art) is the first to buy real art, burn it, film the act, and mint the video as an NFT.

Skeenee

2020

Valuables by Cent is the first to sell tweets as NFTs, forming a marketplace exclusively for Twitter tweets. Notable tweets include Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's first tweet ever, which sold for more than 2.9 million.

Valuables by Cent

March 11th, 2020

Connie Digital mints the first hiphop song as an NFT, "HOLDING", on MakersPlace.

Connie Digital

November, 2020

BeyondNFT is the first to introduce interactive NFTs and NFT games.

beyondnft.io

January 15-17th, 2021

Future Art is Australia's first crypto art event, a three day multisensory walk-through experience.

Future Art

January 28th, 2021

HashMasks are the first dynamically nameable art NFTs. Several artists were involved in the project, and buyers were unaware of which Haskmask they were going to get.

HashMasks

March 5th, 2021

Kings of Leon released the first NFT album, "When You See Yourself", which was their eighth studio album.

When You See Yourself

March 11th, 2021

The Defiant released the first NFT film about NFTs on Youtube, a 1:22:20 long video teaching everything there is to know about NFTs. The channel also minted a collector's edition of the film as an NFT.

The Greatest NFT Film Ever Made