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According to Wikipedia's entry on NFT the minting process "creates a copy of the file recorded on the digital ledger as an NFT". Is that literally true of Ethereum based NFT for example? For some reason I was under the impression that what is actually stored inside the blockchain is the cryptographic hash of the underlying digital asset, and possibly a reference to the file's location, not the actual file itself. I guess it's easy enough to store the whole file when it is a jpg, or a 30 second video clip, but if you wanted to represent say "The Godfather" as an NFT, that would really bloat the blockchain if the entire film in 4K (about 11Gb?) had to be saved in the block.
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Storing an NFT on-chain means that the entire NFT—the image and all its metadata—exist on a blockchain . Conversely, off-chain stored NFTs means that some or most of the NFT is stored outside of the blockchain. On-chain storage can be preferable because it means that users can verify all facets of the NFT.
Key Takeaways: — NFTs live on the blockchain – but not all of your NFT is there. — Your token is a separate component from the artwork or video itself (the metadata) and this metadata probably lives on a server – not on the blockchain.
NFTs aren't stored in your wallet. Rather, your wallet provides access to your stored digital assets. Your wallet has its own private key which controls the address of your wallet on the blockchain. Essentially, both your NFT and your wallet address are stored on the blockchain.
After an NFT is purchased it can be stored in a software (or digital) wallet like MetaMask, on InterPlanetary File Systems, on hardware wallets, and fully on chain.
So the blockchain your NFT calls home could be just as important to its value as whether it was created by Rob Gronkowski or the CryptoPunks team. “You can’t really have that kind of value accrual unless the blockchain underlying it is secure,” according to Sam Kazemian, cofounder and President of Everipedia.
Although cryptocurrency and NFTs rely on the same type of blockchain technology, they’re created and used for different purposes. NFTs are essentially crypto assets that contain a unique certificate of authenticity which makes them rare and high-value digital assets. How does an NFT work?
Whilst some very primitive NFTs that are essentially pixel art are hosted legitimately on the blockchain, nearly every other kind of NFT isn’t. He explained in layman’s terms that you are simply buying the “treasure map to the treasure” not the treasure itself.
Just for clarity, there is no requirement about what sort of data might be saved in the NFT to link the token to the digital asset? ie. it could contain any of hash value, uri, or maybe even nothing? No requirement - at least on the Ethereum network under the ERC-721 standard which is considered to be the original NFT standard.
It is in fact hash of the image file, URL of an off-chain resource, or sometimes just a simple ID with no other data.
Take this random NFT token for example. The contract address is 0xd0e7bc3f1efc5f098534bce73589835b8273b9a0 and the token ID is 339.
If you call the function tokenURI(uint256 tokenId), it retrieves data from a mapping mapping (uint256 => string) private _tokenURIs.
The string value for the ID 339 is https://metadata.thetwentysix.io/cryptocats/339. And yes, it is a (off-chain) JSON file that contains link to the actual image https://cryptocats.thetwentysix.io/contents/images/cats/339.png
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