The company’s closed pilot program is aimed at letting companies increase customer engagement and manage NFTs from within Salesforce’s wide-ranging CRM platform. Credit: Hera Stock / Getty Salesforce is rolling out a closed pilot program for a new service called NFT Cloud, allowing users to mint and manage NFTs for brand engagement and marketing purposes, even as the wider crypto market continues to spiral. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are best understood as a method of fingerprinting a particular piece of art, code or almost anything else stored digitally, using the same fundamental blockchain technology as cryptocurrency to create a unique copy of that item. The idea is, since that item is uniquely identifiable, it becomes “non-fungible” and can hold a particular value in the marketplace, in the same way that a famous work of art has value that a reproduction does not. Salesforce emphasized in its announcement that the NFT Cloud platform doesn’t support proof-of-work blockchains — the creation of many cryptocurrencies are based on the use of huge amounts of computing power, with commensurately large energy costs and carbon footprints, and Salesforce is likely looking to avoid the criticism that many have leveled at the cryptocurrency sector. The company says that it will instead use proof-of-stake blockchain technology, which nearly eliminates energy consumption from blockchain use, and that the NFT Cloud will automatically calculate carbon emissions for blockchain options, thus allowing users to track their carbon footprint directly from the platform. Salesforce also announced plans to address another common bugaboo of the crypto world — security. By using smart contract templates to ensure honest transactions and branded purchasing technology to protect against fraud, the company hopes to obviate the rash of hacking and fraud that has plagued NFTs and cryptocurrency over the past several years. The crypto market has seen a lot of enterprise interest of late, but businesses looking to jump into the technology face a number of hurdles. The complexities of asset ownership in the digital realm are likely to be unfamiiar to most organizations, creating new security risks that companies will have to navigate. Centralized platforms for the exchange of digital goods are likely to suffer from the same vulnerabilities as other ecommerce sites, and because of the nature of the blockchain, transactions aren’t easily reversible if a fraud is perpetrated. Moreover, scams to gain access to NFT and crypto wallets are commonplace, and some users might not be aware of the need to conduct in-depth testing on blockchain products earmarked for enterprise use. Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin, a leading cryptocurrency, has decline by more than 50% in the past seven months. Salesforce didn’t announce a date for the pilot program going public, or any details of wider availability. Related content news analysis The brilliant Android breakthrough you didn’t hear about at Google I/O This Android innovation has nothing to do with Android 15, Gemini, or anything connected to AI. But it may be the most exciting and potential-packed news coming out of Google all week. By JR Raphael May 16, 2024 10 mins Chromebooks Laptops Google news Visa leverages AI to help retailers access more customer data Payment tokenization removed customers’ personal information from the payment data flow; now Visa is asking them to put it back in. By Prasanth Aby Thomas May 16, 2024 3 mins Payment Systems Data Privacy Generative AI feature Windows 11 Insider Previews: What’s in the latest build? Get the latest info on new preview builds of Windows 11 as they roll out to Windows Insiders. Now updated for Build 26217 for the Canary Channel, released on May 15, 2024. By Preston Gralla May 15, 2024 256 mins Small and Medium Business Microsoft Windows 11 news Senators propose $32B on AI spending without firm regulatory oversight After months of meetings with industry experts and AI critics, a group of four US senators published what they say is a comprehensive roadmap for maintaining US leadership in AI development. By Lucas Mearian May 15, 2024 4 mins Regulation Government Generative AI Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe