Celebrating the Contributions of William Entriken on NFT Day — Lead author of the ERC-721 Non-Fungible Token Standard

3 min readSep 20, 2022

Today, September 20 has been dubbed international NFT Day. This day would not have been possible without the contributions of William Entriken. In 2018, the Philadelphia-based solutions architect and software engineer was the lead author of the ERC-721 Non-Fungible Token Standard.

ERC-721 was the first standard for representing non-fungible digital assets on the Ethereum blockchain. It is the foundation of what constitutes an NFT and how NFTs can be sold or exchanged.

Since then, the ERC-721 has been used for the creation, transfer, and sale of millions of NFTs. NFTs experienced massive growth and adoption during 2021, with over $40B in total sales globally.

William Entriken stated the mission was to “verify seller claims and authenticity for most things you buy.” His goal in writing the standard was to explain a system of norms for NFTs that can convey their use in different ways. He is now focused on the governmental use of NFTs and how NFTs can change healthcare practices. Entriken believes the future of NFTs will also include mass adoption across various sectors where authenticity is of great importance.

William mentions how markets go from zero to millions

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William explains how markets go from zero to a million — with NFTs “we’re talking billions here”

“I saw the opportunity for usage much further outside of collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain and I got involved shortly after because I saw that progress had stalled on passing the standard.”

Today, he works with several different clients performing code reviews, advisory services, and technical research of smart contracts and websites. Some of his clients include the FBI and Apple. He remains a champion for the protection of intellectual property and alleviating fraud on the blockchain.

William Entriken speaking at NFT.NYC

“For the future, I am interested as a consumer to see product traceability and verification. Fraud is allergic to blockchain, and we can make progress toward verifying authenticity of goods on a large scale.”

Entriken has become a global thought leader in the NFT space and has participated in numerous interviews, panels, podcasts, and talks. He has been a speaker at NFT.NYC every year since its inception (2019–2022) where he demonstrated to the audience how to create a smart contract. At NFT.NYC 2022 in June, William served as the MC for the Developer Track.