Many believe that the media used to represent NFTs – such as images, videos and audio – is stored directly on the blockchain. For the most part, this is not true.
IPFS stands for Interplanetary File System – a decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing system.
NFTs typically point to files that are stored on IPFS services, such as Pinata or Infura. This means that the media used to represent an NFT is not stored directly on the blockchain itself, but is rather on a separate decentralised file network.
IPFS services offer an array of tools that NFT creators can utilise. For example, some services allow NFT creators to add, remove or change the media on the IPFS URL that an NFT points to.
There is no way to guarantee that the data of an NFT will be forever immutable, though as a rule of thumb, it is best to buy from projects that use a popular, trusted IFPS service.
There are a limited number of NFT projects where the art is minted directly on chain. Examples include Autoglyphs by Larva Labs, and TwelveFold by Yuga Labs.