People are going crazy to own NFTs [1]-- digital Non Fungible Tokens -- stored on the blockchain, which represents digital assets stored on-chain.
They record things like proof of ownership or collateral against a trade, collectable, or a loan. The NFT market has exploded in 2021, with over $2B spent on NFTs[2] during the first quarter of this year.
Now the Kusama relay chain network[3] has introduced complexity into NFT's by introducing what it calls 'art legos' on its RMRK (pronounced remark) NFT system[4].
Data on the relay chain is simple in structure -- so the RMRK network does not use complex smart contracts. Instead, it writes notes representing each NFT onto blocks on the chain using a concept called "art legos".
Similar to the coloured bricks, these art legos act as building blocks for NFTs to connect to each other, nest, and add to the complexity of the initial primitive NFT. These new art legos are programmable and potentially more valuable to the owner.
RMRK will also have a smart-contract-only version of its deployment, which will be suitable for non-modifiable blockchains like EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) -- based chains that can only work using smart contracts and not complexities such as runtime upgrades.
The concept of "money legos" is already familiar across the Ethereum network. There, different alt-finance primitive items connect to make larger, more complex structures in the "Decentralized Finance" or DeFi movement.
The Kusama relay chain connects other blockchains, including Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC). This relay -- similar to the central chain used by the Polkadot network[5] -- adds features of each connected chain to its feature set.
This means that companies could develop