Transparent, non-custodial, yours

One is interchangeable, the other is not — and that changes everything

Fungibility changes pricing, liquidity and custody. What an NFT actually stores on-chain, and why valuation is a different problem.

Fungible Interchangeable units, one price, pooled liquidity
Non-fungible Identified items, no substitution, buyer-by-buyer sales
Usually off-chain The image and metadata behind an NFT

FBT Swap

What you should know

A fungible token is a quantity: any unit is identical to any other, and ten of them are worth ten times one. A non-fungible token is an identified item, and no two are substitutable.

That single property difference drives almost every practical distinction between them.

Pricing and liquidity

A fungible token has one price and continuous liquidity in a pool. An NFT has a last sale, a floor price and an asking price, which are three different numbers that frequently disagree.

There is no pool you can sell into at a known price. Selling requires a buyer for that specific item, which can take a long time or never happen.

What is actually stored on-chain

Usually a token ID, an owner, and a URI pointing to metadata. The image and attributes often live off-chain, on centralised storage or a content-addressed network that still requires someone to keep hosting it.

If the metadata host disappears, the token persists and the content does not. Fully on-chain NFTs exist and are the exception.

Royalties followed a similar path. They were widely described as enforced by the token, when in practice most were honoured voluntarily by marketplaces, and when venues stopped honouring them the revenue simply stopped. What a standard guarantees and what the market does are separate questions.

Standards and wallet behaviour

Fungible tokens follow a simple transfer and approval model. NFT standards add per-item approvals and an approve-for-all permission that grants control over your entire collection in one signature.

Approve-for-all is the mechanism behind most NFT drains, and it is requested routinely by marketplaces. Review it the way you would review an unlimited token approval.

Valuation is a different discipline

Fungible tokens can be valued against supply, flows and comparable assets. NFT value rests on provenance, rarity within a collection, and demand for that collection — closer to collectibles than to securities.

FBT Swap handles fungible token swaps across its supported networks. It does not trade or value NFTs, and it takes no position on what any item is worth.

At a glance

At a glance

Fungible

Interchangeable units, one price, pooled liquidity

Non-fungible

Identified items, no substitution, buyer-by-buyer sales

Usually off-chain

The image and metadata behind an NFT

Key risk

Approve-for-all grants control over an entire collection

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Clear answers before you decide.

Does an NFT store the image?

Usually not. It stores a pointer to metadata that is typically hosted elsewhere. If that hosting lapses, the token remains and the content it referenced may not be retrievable.

Why is the floor price not what I can sell for?

The floor is the lowest asking price, not a bid. Selling immediately means accepting whatever the highest actual offer is, which is usually well below the floor.

What is approve-for-all?

A single approval granting a contract permission to transfer every item in a collection you own. It is standard for marketplaces and is the most common path for NFT theft, so it warrants deliberate review.

Risk notice

Crypto assets are volatile and on-chain transactions cannot be reversed. You can lose money, including all of it. Nothing here is financial advice.