Salesforce announced Wednesday that it has launched a closed pilot program for a new service called NFT Cloud, which allows users to mint and manage NFTs for brand engagement and marketing purposes, even as the wider crypto market continues to spiral.
NFT, or non-fungible token, is well understood as a method of fingerprinting a specific industry, code or almost anything else stored digitally, using the same basic blockchain technology as cryptocurrency to create a unique copy of that item. The idea is that since that item is individually identifiable, it becomes “non-fungible” and can hold a certain value in the market, similarly there is the value of a famous work of art that does not reproduce one.
Salesforce emphasized in its announcement that the NFT Cloud Platform does not support proof-of-work blockchain – many cryptocurrencies are created based on huge amounts of computing power consumption, with consistently high power consumption and carbon footprint, and Salesforce. Perhaps many in the cryptocurrency sector want to avoid that criticism.
The company says it will instead use proof-of-stack blockchain technology, which eliminates almost energy costs from using blockchain, and NFT Cloud will automatically calculate carbon emissions for blockchain options, allowing users to directly track their carbon footprint. Platform
Salesforce has announced plans to tackle another common bugaboo in crypto world – security. Using smart contract templates to ensure honest transactions and branded purchase technology to protect against fraud, the company hopes to avoid the rash of hacking and fraud that plagued NFTs and cryptocurrencies over the past few years.
The crypto market has seen a lot of enterprise interest lately, but businesses seeking to jump into technology face a number of hurdles.
The complexities of asset ownership in the digital field may be unfamiliar to most companies, creating new security risks that companies need to navigate. Centralized platforms for exchanging digital goods can suffer from the same vulnerabilities as other ecommerce sites, and due to the nature of the blockchain, transactions cannot be easily returned if there is a fraud. Furthermore, access power scams are commonplace in NFT and crypto wallets, and some users may not be aware of the need for in-depth testing of blockchain products intended for enterprise use. Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin, a leading cryptocurrency, has fallen by more than 50% in the last seven months.
The Salesforce Pilot Program has not announced a date or details of its availability to the public.
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