NFTs are truly amazing.
We’ve already seen them disrupt the art and collectibles space, but they can be used for almost anything in the world.
In this post we’re going to explore 20 industries disrupted by NFTs to bring to light the depths of what this technology can do.
An NFT is a ‘Non-Fungible Token' that exists on blockchain that you can carry across the web in a ‘digital wallet’. Sound confusing? I’ll demonstrate.
Opensea shows the contents of what’s in my digital wallet, in this case you can see my ‘Decentraland Wearables’.
Decentraland is a virtual platform where you can own digital land, clothing, art, etc. as NFTs.
Now if I go to Decentraland, I can ‘wear’ these since it connects to my digital wallet and knows what’s in it!
The fox icon on the top right is a ‘Metamask wallet’ that I can keep logged into and explore other websites that also allow interactivity with my NFTs. Pretty cool huh?
Again, this is one of many use cases. Let’s explore 20 of them.
Needless to say, this is a big industry. NFTs can be attached to digital art which suddenly gives the ability to ‘own’ and trade it.
Ownership here applies to the NFT that represents the art piece. The art piece itself could be a single edition or multiple editions which the artist decides to ‘mint’.
The Art industry alone has done over $150M in sales volume with individual artists selling art as NFTs between 6-7 figures!
Even Christie’s is holding an auction for the first ‘NFT only’ piece by Beeple, which at the time of writing this has a $3.25M bid with 9 days left to close!
Projects like Decentraland, The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space and Axie Infinity allow you to own virtual land as NFTs!
Ownership of the land gives you build access, so as thousands of people own land and people build whatever they want from conference centers to art galleries, the world can truly take its own form and you can later sell your land if the area around you appreciates in value!
Lands have already hit $1M+ sales in some instances.
Imagine your skins, guns, armor, pets, characters are all NFTs you can upgrade and sell. Maybe you have a really rare item, so as the user base grows, people want your collector item.
Usually when you put money in games it’s considered ‘sunk money,’ yet people spend billions in the gaming industry. Why wouldn't they spend it when they are actually getting an NFT from all their time spent that they can upgrade and sell on a marketplace?
Trading Card Games specifically seem to be a natural fit as the nature of card games is to versus people and trade.
Pokemon, Hearthstone, YuGiOh and MTG are quite popular in this regard with millions of collectors and players worldwide. We’ve all seen how much certain rare cards like Charizard go for in real life.
Games like Splinterlands and Gods Unchained are paving the way!
The collectible industry is HUGE. We’ve seen cryptopunks go for $1M+ and people go crazy for cryptokitties.
The concept of ownership and the desire to have something iconic seems to be alive and well for even the digital world.
NBA Top shot has seen over $100M in sales volume with notable entrepreneurs and players getting involved.
These aren’t just collectible NFTs, they can also be incorporated in multiple games. In fact, a whole ecosystem of sports games can be built around these NFTs!
.eth and .crypto domain names are going for a lot of money. People are using them to replace their payment addresses, pay straight using a Twitter handle and eventually even hosting websites on them.
Again, anything ownable can be an NFT so why not domain names?
Due to the decentralized or ‘open’ nature of NFTs, anyone can build a marketplace to start buying and selling NFTs.
Opensea has transacted millions of NFTs from almost every NFT project out there!
Decentralized Finance.
Some projects like Bondly allow you to use your NFT to get 0 fees when trading crypto on their platform. Pretty cool right?
NFTs can and will be used across decentralized financial applications built on blockchain.
A physical component that also comes with an NFT? Both being different assets. Metafactory for example sells custom hoodies in real life that come with an NFT you can take into Cryptovoxels!
The Headspace also do this and you can see some of their NFTs in Decentraland.
The recent Fewocious and RTFKT studios drop on Nifty Gateway sold around $3M worth of Shoes and NFTs with NFT holders being eligible to claim a pair of Fewocious art shoes!
And of course there's Crypto Kaiju, the real OGs in the space making Vinyl toys from NFTs.
Whole virtual buildings and games can be NFTs! Metazone is a very cool project that allows Decentraland land owners to buy games, buildings, upgrades and deploy on their land.
Imagine the rental market if you want to host a meetup on your land but don’t want to fork out $4k for dev costs?
Why not rent one for $200 over the weekend? The potential for this model is HUGE as the virtual space grows on blockchain.
Yep. Whole Insurance policies or financial services contracts can be owned as NFTs.
In fact, you can become a digital insurance broker packaging insurance and selling them as NFTs as Gabby figured out with Yearn Finance.
In a virtual world, why can’t we have virtual cars, planes, boats as NFTs?
Some have sold hundreds of ETH worth of digital cars, and as blockchain virtual worlds mature so will the need for fancy ways to transport and explore.
CryptoMotors, F1 Delta Time and Battle Racers have explored this space.
Bullionix project allows you to create an NFT that’s backed by DGX. One DGX token is backed by 1 gram of gold so effectively the NFT itself is backed or pegged to it’s minted DGX/gold value.
How cool is that?
Imagine tournaments where you win gold medals as NFTs backed by golds. This is what happened during the moonshot tournament in Decentraland, which bought 20+ teams to battle it out in a virtual game of football!
Again, as virtual worlds become more mature, NFTs can be badges that are given out as ‘proof of attendance’. They can be collected or even used to verify who was here for certain events a year or two after to incentivize them!
This tech is being used in projects like Decentraland and real life.
‘The proof of attendance protocol - POAP’.
Tickets as NFTs are a KILLER use case. Imagine being sent a ticket to your wallet you could use to get into certain virtual exclusive events.
Or even physical ones.
3LAU dropped art on makersplace as NFTs you could use in Decentraland to access his club playing unreleased music! It was pretty cool.
A huge industry that will absolutely be disrupted. There are so many middle men that stand in the way of artists and their fanbase/distribution.
Justin Blau’s recent Music drop sold $11.7M worth selling NFTs straight to his collectors/fans is an example of the way musicians can harness NFT tech.
Names in virtual projects/games. Usually these aren’t trade-able. In fact, most projects like Runescape frown upon the trading of names/accounts.
This perception was due to the inability to safely conduct these transactions. But now with NFTs, if you have a rare name then you can totally sell it! Some names in Decentraland have gone for thousands of dollars.
Whether it be $COIN or $WHALE, social tokens are being used to incentivize communities and use them within games.
$WHALE token for example is backed by all the NFT assets in the ‘whale vault’ valued at 10s of millions! A great way to get NFT exposure without buying NFTs.
There’s no doubt NFTs will continue to disrupt multiple industries in one way or the other.
I often share snippets of info on my Twitter so feel free to follow me there! And check out my website for even more info.
