Are omnichain NFTs the way to decentralization?

Recently, a new era began in the NFT  - Omnichain NFTs which may bring the dawn of decentralized NFT IP, interoperable NFTs, and many more ideas we haven't even conceived of yet.

What Is An omnichain NFT?

Omnichain NFTs can exist on two or more blockchains at once. This is possible because smart contracts are deployed to multiple blockchains on supported chains. If you are an NFT creator and decide to drop an NFT collection, it will be minted directly on the creator's smart contract and deployed on the chain the collector bought it from. Various protocols work with different blockchains. The collector would have to buy or birth one from a specific chain (for example, Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimistic, BNC, Arbitrum, or Fantom). Once owned, the NFTs can be transferred or traversed to any supported chains.

With several competitors in the space, Omnichain technology expands the abilities of NFT traders, collectors, and artists. It creates a new ecosystem for NFTs, opens up the market to those who prefer non-Ethereum smart contract blockchains, calms gas wars upon mint, and can even add a new layer to the creative structure of the NFT collection.

There are NFTs minted on many different chains consistently, but Ethereum remains the most active NFT ecosystem by far. However, with the gas price being quite elevated and fluctuating, it creates a situation where the minting price of the NFT can be a big part of the total cost. With cheap NFT's it can even exceed the price of the actual mint.  Now, anyone can birth an Omnichain NFT from a chain like Polygon, where gas prices are next to nothing.

The Possibilities

The possibilities of Ominchain NFTs are numerous. If NFT traders so please, they can transverse their Polygon NFT to Ethereum and take advantage of the market. Collectors also have arbitrage ability. If one of the NFTs was being sold on Etherium for .06 ETH and another on polygon for 50 MATIC on Polygon, you could hypothetically buy the NFT on Polygon and flip it on Etherium for profit. These types of opportunities may not last long and won't be the future of Omnichain NFTs, but at the moment it is within the realm of possibilities. A clever creator could take advantage of this. The rarest NFTs could be sold on Ethereum, while the "common NFTs" have extra utility-focused around a chain ecosystem. Or perhaps the rarest trait appears on a not-so-popular chain that has a utility that only that chain can open up. Maybe it is Metaverse specific or there is a native NFT app that has a use case that does not exist on another chain.

Solving the Ownership Problem

NFTs represent the idea of digital ownership. The NFT directly correlates with digital art. The digital art may be an image file, photograph, music, a movie, metaverse fashion, or even metaverse land and ownership. One of the problems with this concept is that you cannot take the NFT to other chains. This is equivalent to not being able to take your painting into another home because it was physically impossible. This begs the question, do you truly own it if you can't bring it with you?

While there are a few ways to transfer crypto from one chain to another they all are originally minted directly onto a chain. Omnichain solutions mint directly onto the smart contract or an external network and then choose the chain afterward. This allows for more robust interoperability. While the chain support currently is somewhat limited, this is the start of being able to decentralize NFTs and make them more universal and decentralized. The ability to bring an item, physical or digital, with you anywhere you like, is the only way you actually own anything.

Let's support Omnichain projects so we can retain ownership of web3 and Internet 2.0.