Dieter Shirley and Others Propose the ERC-721 Standard

William Entriken, Dieter Shirley, Jacob Evans and Nastassia Sachs authored the ERC-721 protocol, proposed in January 2018 as Ethereum’s first NFT token standard, laying the foundation for the variety of ways NFTs remain used to this day. ERC-721 defines a set of guidelines for creating NFTs to represent unique digital assets. The protocol stipulates that, unlike fungible tokens, NFTs cannot be exchanged on a one-to-one basis due to their distinct properties. The standard facilitated the creation, transfer and management of unique digital items, enabling their increased use in creative fields such as fine art and gaming.