User-generated content drove the second wave of the Web; will 'User-owned' content drive the third one? NFTs are betting on this. Nearly $5B in VC funding were invested in NFT startups in 2022, up 50x since 2020. 2023 saw a strong correction with 1/10 of the activity. NFT sales grew 100x from $20M in 2020 to a peak of $24B in 2022, before coming back to $4B in 2023 with some re-increase in activity towards the end of 2023. Ethereum leads in NFT sales, followed by Solana and Bitcoin. These tokens can represent just about anything on the internet, but they’ve become increasingly popular in the art and music world. NTFs in fact allow buyers to purchase ownership of a digital good, usually an image, animation, or video, in the form of a unique digital token living on a blockchain. NFTs allow buyers to support artists, but it also gives buyers a couple of things in return. NFTs are also a speculative asset, and many marketplaces have popped up that offer the ability to resell them — theoretically for a lot more, so long as the hype around NFTs continues. Even more than this, NFTs have become a way for people to show their belonging to new communities in the world of web 3.0.