An NFT ("Non-fungible token") can be any asset in digital format, including but not limited to pictures, photos, animated GIFs, songs, movies, e-books, or a digital document associated with another digital or physical asset (e.g. license to use, terms of use, personal note, user manual, etc.). Anyone can mint an NFT and sell it on digital markets (such as NFT marketplaces), at any price and in any currency. The greatest value of a digital asset such as a non-fungible token is believed to lie in its authenticity, irreplaceability, traceability and uniqueness. Although each author's work is authentic in its own way, most works are publicly available in formats, sizes or resolutions different from the original and, above all, of questionable quality. It damages the value of the author's work and spoils the image of irreplaceability.

An NFT can refer to a digital box of curiosities (e.g. an unpublished series of photographs, premium pieces of music, etc.), but not necessarily. There certainly must be proof of the authenticity and inalterability of an NFT. An NFT is usually said to represent data stored on a blockchain, which is a decentralized database that is publicly shared and synchronized amongst nodes of a computer network and operates without the need for central authority. A blockchain ensures that the data stored in it is virtually immutable and properly verified. In this context, NFT minting also defines how one's work becomes part of a blockchain. In fact, it would be best if all the necessary verification information, including the material used to promote the NFT, is embedded directly into the file and distributed along with the digital medium representing the NFT. We believe that authentication should be done independently of external sources and therefore all data must be contained and available at all times within the NFT itself. Regardless of how secure it is, the blockchain is an externally controlled network and is not controlled by the original owner of the NFT. In the event of any problem with the blockchain, the integrity of NFTs would be irreparably compromised, which we must not allow to happen.

It is possible to trace an NFT on its way from creator to customer by validating the transaction on the blockchain, or by directly extracting the information embedded into the NFT itself. It should be noted that ownership of an NFT does not inherently confer copyright or intellectual property rights on the digital asset that the NFT is claimed to represent. An appropriate license to use, copy, distribute or display the items being sold or traded must therefore be associated with each NFT entering the market. When it comes to creating/minting an NFT, it is required that the final product be identical to the author's work as it came out of the workshop, with the addition of embedded information necessary for its veridical identification. A non-fungible token is not just a virtual certificate of ownership of a digital object, but a real digital art and an expression of the will and intentions of creative artists, who invest their knowledge, talent and money, to finally have their works valued accordingly.

Here are some of the most prominent hurdles to overcome in order to mint real, unique and self-verifying non-fungible tokens. We will analyze the costs of creating and minting an NFT and explain how NFTs relate to blockchain technology.

Most NFT marketplaces will require you to first purchase a specific cryptocurrency before obtaining permission to sell your NTF, including but not limited to pre-paying blockchain verification fees to offset the computing energy required to process and validate transactions. All in all, the initial investment can reach several thousand dollars, which is a large sum of money for most people. It's not uncommon for costs to outweigh profits, which discourages many talented artists from even considering starting an NFT business.

If we don't dig too deep, the process of minting an NFT may not seem that complicated at first glance. However, if we scratch the surface, we realize that this whole workflow, from creating NFTs and ensuring their authenticity, to calculating total costs and dealing with volatile and uncertain cryptocurrencies, to the rather obscure process of validating blockchain transactions, can hardly contribute to the popularity of NFT business. Instead of being locked within a single database, as is the case with centralized systems, files and information are diversified throughout the blockchain and made available to as many computers connected to a common peer-to-peer network as needed. The network must be open, accessible to more people and transparent, and its content must be at hand for validation at all times with the help of reliable mathematical calculations.

Due to the lack of a suitable software solution, the path of least resistance is chosen and the use of inadequate substitutes is insisted upon. As a result, the effectiveness of the blockchain technology algorithms used has been drastically reduced due to the fact that they are unnecessarily burdened with numerous, still unsolved issues. The digital and physical worlds must complement each other, not oppose each other, so the offered solutions must be in accordance with this principle.

An author who has written a book, recorded a song or painted a picture and wants to present his work in some way is advised to make a short promo video in which he would directly address the audience. This video could be accompanied by a series of photos, digitized newspaper clippings, animations, text messages, and the like. Supporting material (promo video + other files) should be incorporated into the digital product in a way that does not violate the integrity of the file and the original structure. Likewise, we should be able to easily extract and use it independently of the file itself. Technically, this is difficult to do, but not impossible. For example, it is common practice to record textual data within a blockchain, which includes external references and a link to the corresponding website. Over time, the link may become "broken" as the resource moves to a new address or becomes permanently unavailable, meaning the website is no longer available. If this were to happen, the information stored in the blockchain would lose its relevance, while the blockchain itself would jeopardize its own credibility. On the other hand, the "invisible watermark" embedded in the NFT remains permanently available to those who purchased the NFT and lasts as long as the NFT itself exists, regardless of external changes that may occur in the meantime. That is why this is exactly the solution we'll be striving for.

Algorithms designed to verify NFTs cause enormous energy consumption. It is not the fault of the computers on the network that perform the verification, nor is it the fault of the NFTs that require authentication. The "culprit" lies in the way the algorithms work. Typically, we need to compute/validate a hash value that starts with leading zeros (this refers to a cryptographic hash representing an encrypted fixed-length value that identifies a given amount of data). The computing program is running inside a loop, which executes a block of statements repeatedly until the specified goal is achieved. This process can take a long time to complete (and take up a lot of computing resources) and is responsible for downtime, bugs, "program-not-responding" errors, which lead to computer overheating and, consequently, to increased power consumption. The solution is to execute the command block inside and break the loop as quickly as possible. This means that we refrain from doing tasks that we know in advance to be too complex. Supposedly, to increase the security of the blockchain, as it is commonly interpreted. It is incomprehensible that engineers persistently try to force a solution within one and the same working environment, although it is crystal clear that this concept must be replaced.

The reason for this problem lies in the fact that all the attention is focused on building the blocks in the chains, and not on how the NFTs themselves are created and minted. Otherwise, NFTs wouldn't be built the way most services do today. The production technology seems to be based on the collection of components from totally different, unrelated sources, which, brought together in one place, appear as if they were made with scissors and duct tape. The conceptual solution is simple. A multi-purpose invisible digital watermark will be built into the NFT. It will serve as a repository for the creator's promo material (audio, video, images, texts, etc.), as well as the NFT's globally unique identifier and copyright protection tool. It will also serve as proof of the authenticity of the work and the integrity of the contents which it is composed of. For example, we have a series of photographs that an artist wants to package and sell as an NFT. We can do the following. First, we'll insert a watermark into each photo individually, then zip the watermarked files and finally, embed a new watermark into that zip file. We will define how NFTs will be sold and the format in which they will be sold:

• There is an official NFT store, or sales will be made through an official channel established by the author of the NFT himself;
• The NFT will be sold exclusively in ZIP format and in no other way; we can change the .zip extension to, say, a .nft extension for marketing purposes, but basically, it remains a .zip file.

When someone purchases an NFT and unpacks the zip file, its contents (photos, in this case) will regularly become available to the customer. What follows is the essence of how digital watermarks affect the protection of the authenticity and integrity of NFTs:

• If someone tries to resell the NFT (in the original format, without unpacking), it is easy to confirm that the sale is illegal, because it is not done through the official NFT store, nor through the official channel provided by the NFT creator;
• If someone unzips the original (watermarked) zip file and sells the individual files contained in it, the sale will be considered illegal, as an NFT cannot be sold in pieces, but only as a whole;
• If someone unzips the original (watermarked) zip file and reassembles the files into a new zip file, the sale will be considered illegal, as the new zip file will not have a valid digital watermark.

Any attempt to forge an NFT will be rooted out. All it takes is the click of a button to determine whether a digital object is an original and authentic work - or a forgery.