NFTs have existed conceptually since the early 2010s but only became a thing once the Ethereum blockchain was unleashed in 2015. Ethereum was designed with trouble-free Layer2 integration in mind. This made all the difference. Afterward, it was all RarePepes and CryptoKitties for far too long, until the penny dropped. Alarmingly recently, it was realized that decentralized ‘side-chains’ and ‘para-networks’ could cope with any process you could think of, without wrecking the network. Ethereum could be the secure foundation layer, with layer2 ERC-721 and ERC-998 tokens interfacing with the real world, over the top.