This paper was completed in the Fall 2025 semester as part of the "Knowledge Organization" course at Pratt Institute, overseen by professors Jen Cwiok and Iris Lee.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are based on the Blockchain, a peer-to-peer network technology, and they offer unique avenues of preservation for digital artists. In this paper, I examined how the blockchain provides provenance for digital-first pieces, and how NFTs have contributed to the emergence of community ownership in the form of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) model. I will also provide an overview of the pitfalls of blockchain technology, including its environmental impacts, lack of standardization, and questions regarding long-term storage of data.
Peer-To-Peer Technology: Digital Ownership and Access with Non-Fungible Tokens
Sabrina D. Chaney
School of Information, Pratt Institute
INFO 653: Knowledge Organization
Professor Iris Lee & Professor Jennifer Cwiok
December 8, 2025
Abstract
Peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies reconfigure the circulation, access, and governance of cultural content outside platform gatekeepers. Rather than focusing on institutional preservation, I will explore how protocol design, community norms, and financial structures shape who finds, keeps, and controls media. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are based on the Blockchain, a peer-to-peer network technology, and they offer unique avenues of preservation for digital artists. In this paper, I will examine how the blockchain provides provenance for digital-first pieces, and how NFTs have contributed to the emergence of community ownership. My research will analyze: (1) how discovery and metadata are handled; (2) mechanisms for resilience and long-term availability; (3) governance and moderation dynamics; and (4) economic incentives and their cultural effects. I will do this by reviewing existing research and technical documentation and analyzing community practices to see how files are shared and how information remains available over time.
Key Words
Peer-to-peer (p2p), Non-fungible tokens (NFT), Blockchain, decentralization, InterPlanetary File System, tokenization, metadata, provenance, digital-first art
Introduction
Before we explore NFTs specifically, it's necessary to review how blockchains work. On a meta level, let's take this current assignment, a group project, as a metaphor for peer-to-peer blockchain technology. The group itself functions as a single unit to create a final presentation. In a blockchain, the group would be known as a distributed system, which is "a computing paradigm whereby two or more nodes work with each other in a coordinated fashion to achieve a common outcome" (Bashir, 2023). By the terms of that paradigm, each person, or peer, participating in the group would represent an individual node, working on their own essay topics to eventually combine them together in a single thesis. In a distributed system, nodes pass messages to each other via communication channels; thus, the group serves as an example of a blockchain, "a message-passing distributed system" (Bashir, 2023).
Arbitrary behavior exhibited by a node can lead to data inconsistency, and broken or slow links can lead to a partition in the network (Bashir, 2023). Ideally, even if these issues present themselves, "the distributed system should be able to tolerate this and continue to work to achieve the desired result" (Bashir, 2023). Consensus algorithms are used to ensure that all nodes have the same copy of data, also known as state machine replication; thus, distributing data across peers in a system guarantees the resiliency of the chain and the security of the contents held within each block (Bashir, 2023).
In blockchains, the concept of eventual consistency is achieved by attaining multiple confirmations of data over time; for example, the process of Bitcoin mining "facilitates the achievement of consensus by using the Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm" (Bashir, 2023). But what exactly does that mean? In the context of the group project, the PoW algorithm can be conceptualized by group members (nodes) consistently agreeing on the content of their project (distributed consensus), appending new slides to their final presentation. Those agreed-upon slides are similar to new blocks getting appended to the blockchain in time-sequential order. Now that we have a general conceptualization of the peer-to-peer relationships present in blockchains, we can better understand the technology that underpins NFTs.
NFT Basics
Let's break down the "NFT" term, which is an acronym for "Non-Fungible Token". The journal article entitled "Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)—Survey of Current Applications, Evolution, and Future Directions" detailed the definition of non-fungible:
“Non-fungible is an economic term describing things like songs, educational certificates, art, etc. These things cannot be exchanged with other items because of their unique properties. On the other hand, fungible items can be traded because their values define them rather than their unique properties” (Razi et al., 2023).
It's important to note that tokenization "is a process of converting the ownership rights of a real-world asset into a cryptographic/digital token on a blockchain" (Bashir, 2023). This distinction - that an NFT represents ownership rights of an asset, not necessarily the asset itself - means that NFTs are representations of a real-world asset, and they present several advantages over traditional "hard copies". They cannot be easily stolen or duplicated, because NFTs are assigned a unique hash value that acts as an identifier on the blockchain that cannot be swapped (Razi et al., 2023). Additionally, they benefit from the security and resiliency advantages of being stored across a distributed network, which shall be discussed in a later section.
An NFT's metadata is stored on the blockchain, containing elements such as the asset's name, description, image, and the token's unique hash identifier (Razi et al., 2023). While the potential applications for NFT's vary from supply chain management to digital certificates, to digital software licensing, to many more theorized avenues, NFTs in the context of digital art and preservation typically rely on NFT marketplace platforms, also built on the blockchain, for their discovery, purchase, and trading (Razi et al., 2023). When a user trades ownership of their NFT with another user, the peer-to-peer marketplace continuously records and verifies transaction information, building new metadata appended to the NFT's blockchain (Razi et al., 2023). However, while some standards exist that "govern how these tokens can be managed and traded" (Bashir, 2023), the standards exist at an API-level embedded into the NFT, but the marketplaces themselves may have variations in standardization. This means that "specifications can vary regarding file formats, metadata, royalties, and smart contract functionality. As a result, NFTs created on one platform may not be compatible or easily transferable to another platform" (Razi et al., 2023).
Perhaps the greatest weakness of NFTs is that their value "is based on the demand for and perceived rarity of the digital material they represent, as opposed to the underlying fundamentals or physical attributes of conventional assets like equities or commodities" (Razi et al., 2023). This means that the value of an NFT is subject to fluctuation and volatility, which can present an economic challenge to those who seek to trade their NFTs through a marketplace platform.
Long-term Availability with the InterPlanetary File System
To address the issue of long-term availability of NFTs stored on the blockchain, peer-to-peer technology was utilized to develop the InterPlanetary File System, a p2p network and protocol that facilitates file sharing (Nair et al., 2024). Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 internet has heretofore been supported by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) in which an "external server receives a request from a client, such as a web browser. Next, a response message is returned by the server" (Nair et al., 2024). This approach reveals several weaknesses for the ownership of one's content. If someone uploads their content to a content-sharing platform which subsequently goes out of business, they are at risk of losing their data entirely when the platform is removed from the Web. Likewise, technological weaknesses such as server or network failure can jeopardize one's data, due to centralized storage.
By contrast, IPFS uses cryptographic hash tables so that "every piece of content is assigned a unique hash. Its address on the IPFS network is this hash" (Nair et al., 2024). How do cryptographic hash tables work? A binary string (hash) is assigned to a given input, and this acts like a digital fingerprint that guarantees the content's uniqueness. Instead of identifying content via its URL and sending a query to a server with HTTP, a query sent through IPFS "searches the network for nodes hosting the material when the user requests it. The content is then directly retrieved by the client by establishing a connection with these nodes" (Nair et al., 2024). By distributing content across a peer-to-peer network, IPFS reduces the risk of a single point of failure, guaranteeing long-term availability, and it reduces the cost of maintaining centralized servers because files are stored across a network of nodes that could be located anywhere around the world.
Governance on the NFT Marketplace
As previously mentioned, NFTs that represent digital art are often minted and sold on platforms that constitute the "NFT Marketplace". According to Fatemeh Delkosh (2025):
“The primary market facilitates the creation and initial sale of NFTs: creators mint NFTs by permanently recording their digital assets on the blockchain and then selling them to prospective buyers. The secondary market enables these initial buyers to resell NFTs to new buyers. Across both markets, NFT platforms offer a range of infrastructure services, including secure and transparent transaction environments, minting capabilities, marketing and curation support, and pricing recommendations. In exchange for these services, platforms primarily generate revenue by charging transaction fees on both primary and secondary market transactions.”
Resale royalties offer an avenue for NFT creators to make money from subsequent trades of their work, while maintaining authorship rights through the blockchain. These royalties are determined either through centralized or decentralized governance. In a centralized system, the NFT platform sets the resale royalty rate, while a decentralized system allows creators to set their own rates (Delkosh, 2025). Centralized governance tends to favor the interests of the NFT platform; occasionally, resale royalty rates are set so high that buyers are discouraged from trading, causing creators to earn less compared to earning zero royalties while the platforms retain a heftier profit (Delkosh, 2025). Meanwhile, a decentralized system "may encourage the creation of higher-quality content and stronger engagement with the platform" (Delkosh, 2025). It makes sense that a decentralized, peer-to-peer technology would benefit artists when governance is likewise spread through decentralized means.
Cultural Effects and Ethnography
Despite the purported advantages of the blockchain in decentralizing and democratizing digital-first artworks, in practice we find the same patterns in place that gatekeep physical art, with new challenges. Within my own research, I have barely scratched the surface of NFTs, and it's clear that only those steeped in cryptography, scripting languages, and digital currencies stand to benefit the most from creating and acquiring non-fungible tokens. Take, for example, the oft-reported piece titled "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" by the artist Beeple, which was sold at Christie's for $69.3 million, purchased with Ethereum (Kurutz, 2024). The anonymous bidder was found to be Vignesh Sundaresan, an early adopter of the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum, who founded several cryptocurrency startups and viewed NFT artworks as vehicles for investment (Berwick & Howcroft, 2021). Four short years later, Now Media reported in September 2025 that Christie's was shuttering its digital art department "during a difficult stretch for both digital art and the broader art market. In the past two years, platforms such as MakersPlace, KnownOrigin, and Async Art have shut down" (Medved, 2025).
This throws the supposed permanency of distributed systems into question. According to Luis D. Rivero Moreno (2024), "On-chain works would thus remain linked to repositories that must be cared for, guarded, and updated. But even so, they could still suffer from the problems of obsolescence and instability of the digital medium. The blockchains themselves can de facto be ‘abandoned’ by their users, leaving the information immutable and incorruptible but equally inaccessible". While an NFT carries the promise of housing all of the metadata related to a born-digital work which was previously impossible without the blockchain, their relevancy "was linked to soaring cryptocurrency values. Yet while crypto prices have rebounded and hit record highs after a two-year slump, NFTs have not recovered and have endured a decline in value and cultural relevancy" (Kurutz, 2024).
Conclusion
In spite of the strengths of peer-to-peer technology, NFTs are still susceptible to weaknesses that can be attributed largely to the volatility of cryptocurrency. The blockchain itself may be immune to failure, but the marketplaces that host and trade NFTs are subject to closure if they can no longer profit financially from the scarcity hype fomented by so-called "crypto kings". Inadvertently, the adoption of NFTs may have resulted in what Luis D. Rivero Moreno (2024) calls the "privatization of culture", converting artworks to property to be capitalized upon, rather than using NFTs as a vehicle for continued preservation and public ownership. In the future, proper standardization protocols, adoption by cultural institutions, and continued maintenance by those fluent in blockchain technology may fuel a renewed interest in NFTs as more than get-rich-quick investment opportunities.
References
Bashir, I. (2023). Mastering Blockchain: Inner workings of blockchain, from cryptography and decentralized identities, to DeFi, NFTs and Web3 (Fourth). Packt Publishing. https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-blockchain-fourth/9781803241067/
Berwick, A., & Howcroft, E. (2021, November 17). From Crypto to Christie’s: How a metaverse king made his fortune. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/finance-crypto-sundaresan/
Delkhosh, F. (2025). Economics of Token Based Platforms: Governance and Design. https://hdl.handle.net/1880/122905
Kurutz, S. (2024, December 5). The NFT Is Dead. Long Live the NFT? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/style/nft-boom-crash-prices.html
Medved, M. (2025, September 8). Scoop: Christie’s Shutters Digital Art Department | Now Media. Now Media. https://nowmedia.co/posts/christies-shutters-digital-art-department
Nair, A., Idate, S., Kumbhare, K., Khadse, M., & Raj, M. (2024). Web3.0 and NFTs: Exploring the Future of Digital Asset Ownership. International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICACCS60874.2024.10717229
Razi, Q., Devrani, A., Abhyankar, H., Chalapathi, G. S. S., Hassija, V., & Guizani, M. (2023). Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)—Survey of Current Applications, Evolution, and Future Directions. IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, 5, 2765–2791. https://doi.org/10.1109/OJCOMS.2023.3343926
Rivero Moreno, L. D. (2024). Art on the chain? On the possibilities of new media art preservation on the Web3. Digital Creativity, 35(3), 221–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2024.2348035