NFTs Changing The World

The world has been taken over by NFTs, people all over the globe getting a severe case of FOMO for jpegs of monkeys, mutants, zombies and cartoon characters called The Doodles.

NFT media can be anything digital, including art, unlocked content, gifs, games, memes, music, text and videos all in code. The smart contracts that power the NFTs contain trustworthy metadata descriptions, documentation and source of origin insights. There is a lot more they can do but at the moment we are just exploring art. I can not wait until we use NFTs as keys, record keeping and more wild ideas.

One standout feature of NFTs is the ability to build in royalties within every secondary sale. This allows the creator, builder or whoever is deserving of the royalty fee. I really think this is a key in engagement for mainstream creators to get behind NFTs, that and the code behind NFTs allow for creators to get more of the reward and not require middle men putting their hands in for a slice.

But why am I so sure and how did I make a decision to follow this new thing while everyone else is saying its evil?

But I think instead of hating NFTs and down with crypto we can have some fun with it. Speaking of fun, I highly rate the MFers community. A group of creative, jokester, enthusiasts who drop the memes, the wisecracks and stick figure badassery.

When NFTs really came into the spotlight NBA Topshot was one of the first sporting NFT projects and one of the most successful to date. This project has generated big numbers and has a steady secondary sales market. The users feel like they own the NFTs they purchase, the user does not own the IP but they own the NFT media. Im doing something very similar with AFL Mint .

NBA Top Shot moments start at $2.00 USD upwards. The marketplace has many gems for sale and they recently released the iconic Earvin Magic Johnson collection a limited series that retails for minimum $295, this along with challenges give NBA Topshot something new for collectors to engage with.

I own one of these Blake Griffin Dunk Moments on NBA Topshot. It's not the best of Blake Griffin but it is a significant moment in his career, although far from his time at Lob city. Speaking of Topshots here is Dapper Labs CEO Roham speaking about how NFTs help sports leagues, teams and athletes view interview here .

NFTs in sport has also birthed NBA alternative leagues like Ice Cubes NFT DAO Big 3. In Big 3 you can buy a team NFT and own your own professional 3 on 3 basketball team. It's a different take on basketball leagues but fits right in with the NFT space.

NFTs will have a direct and meaningful impact on our digital lives and on the evolution of global digital culture. Why NFTs are so key to decentralized ownership is how they give back control. Web 3 is all about open source, collaboration and tokenised economies. Builders can work with creators to create fungible and non-fungible tokens to help assign ownership and make money in the process.

We keep rewarding the builders, they keep building and money is not why they build, they build for the innovation. This is how you forge creativity.

"Aside from being potentially a lot of fun, the ability to use NFTs across multiple games could bring about a dramatic reduction in the need to rely on exclusive platforms — whether the platform in question is a mobile app store, a game, a publisher, etc." Yat Sui Founder Animoca Brands

Watch Video here

Tokens fungible or non-fungible give users property rights: the ability to own a piece of the internet. Blockchains help shift away from centralization and spread the power across multiple computers that everyone can access but only one person owns.

NFTs give users the ability to own objects, which can be art, photos, code, music, text, game objects, credentials, governance rights, access passes, and whatever else people dream up next. We have not even scratched the surface with how we use NFTs, we will see HUGE advancement in various industries when we figure out how to really use NFTs mark my words.

"NFTs are secured by the same technology that enabled Bitcoin to be owned by hundreds of millions of people around the world". Chris Dixon A16

Where do NFTs live? The NFT and smart contract will live on the blockchain, with the media file hosted on a third party like IPFS, Pinata, Arweave or AWS for example. But the NFT exists on top of a blockchain like Ethereum.

Ethereum is a decentralized assortment of global computer network that is owned and operated by its users. For now the Ethereum chain is expensive to use with every transaction costing a moderate to high gas or transaction fee. I hope they figure out the merge soon, as Ethereum has its upsides.

Other options like Polygon and Flow blockchains allow users to buy, sell, stake and swap NFTs for a very low transaction fee. These newer blockchains allow users to do different things, like Flow allows contract creators to continue to update the smart contract allowing for a lot of functionality for creators to expand their original concepts.

NFT & Gaming

NFTs allow your digital asset to become the centre of your digital experience: the content itself becomes the platform through which you consume other content. Sharing more nuggets of wisdom from our leading man @yatsui

• Content developers could benefit by leveraging larger active communities. Fans of Star Trek and fans Star Wars could both enjoy each other’s content, meaning that both franchises and their content developers benefit through increased retention, utility, and gameplay.
• Players would benefit greatly. In-game items would no longer be confined to single games, and could even increase in value over time (e.g., someone buys your levelled up Star Trek ship).
• Virtual items could finally attain lasting and even growing value, meaning that the time you spend gaming could generate something that has real-world worth and profit potential, and would persist independently of any single game.

Imagine if you could own a digital item that has multiple uses across different platforms. In very simplistic terms, you could take a Star Trek ship into a game about the Star Wars universe and have some very unique scenarios with legendary ships in a dogfight (or any other game world).?

The value of your digital item (the starship, which is an NFT) would increase with your investment in it (its utility). You might equip your starship by purchasing better weapons, shields, or cargo capacity to increase value and usefulness. If the value and characteristics of your ship could be recognised in other game worlds, there would be some important implications.

Games are still figuring out the roadmaps, tokenomics and how to push the known limits of what they can do with blockchains and NFTs inter-wined in gaming. I love where this space is heading, and please please someone make a blockchain first gaming console Ill be customer numero uno.

What NFTs Are Lacking

There is a serious lack of security and spam prevention for things that are unique, 1 offs. Im so surprised more security services have not yet been developed. With all the scams and hacks NFTs need to be secure and trustworthy for mass adoption to take place. We are not there yet.

I had previously published my thoughts on OpenSea not being the best user experience and how underwhelmed I was having been scammed before, now I see they are taking every step to build a better platform. Great job guys its nice seeing the platform evolve.

Shoutout to @charlesdray and the team at Halborn for their security work. Truly appreciate just how effective that team is at what they do.

Another thing NFTs are missing is a reason to exist. If its a PFP project that has no roadmap, no utility, no value to add other than being nice to look at then it should pivot to be more of an art project. But seriously the number of projects that have nothing other than a profile pic collection is disheartening. Here we are at the revolution of technology in a new space and we are churning out pictures of rocks for 50 ETH, goblin turds and slightly different coloured from the original Bored Apes.

I would much prefer to see a more built out project that has a PFP collection as either the entry point or the value add to the project. The project should also have a utility thrust, A access key and a reason to exist. Thats my minimum entry point for new projects. You should be doing something, for someone and doing it better than something else.

Building Momentum that rivals Influencer Reach

The Goblintown project had the NFT community turning over every rock to find out who was behind such a well delivered project. Once the identities had been confirmed the hype died down......a little, the Goblins are still running amok. But the hype this generated would have pushed any partnership or sponsored brand to the moon.

Speaking of hype train, The Doodles project is on its way to the sun the stars and moon above us. I see hit after hit coming to the new revamped Doodles project. If you have one of these NFTs you would be wise to hold it close to your chest.

First see the new hires, these guys are not playing they are going big. I am generally excited for all team members involved based on the last 2 weeks activity. I am not affiliated with this project in any way. I know that their mantra of under promising and over delivering will continue with the new talent added to their roster.

Second live minting experience is one of a kind. Extremely well played See live minting experience here

Third this PFP collection has done so well with marketing and brand collabs that they bring the hype train with them to anything they touch. If you want to see what an NFT influencer looks like it's the Doodles camp. Everyone posted their new profile pic as a Doodle on social media and in blogs in turn creating more hype points for the project, and again pushing that floor price up.

Fourth Doodles is a real community. Fans, collectors and founding teams are very active in the project and its evolution at every step. The leaders listen and the fans are asked to speak. I love this for helping shape a product. No one does it better right now.

Keep an eye on Doodles as they evolve and push the boundaries for what a typical NFT project should look like.

Web 3.0 makes it possible for all participants to create and own a portion of the digital worlds that form the open MetaVerse. This means not only benefiting from your creations and property, but also sharing in the network effect of the greater whole, which allows the value of your assets to appreciate when the entire ecosystem grows.

There are many ways for users to acquire fungible and non-fungible tokens. You can buy them, but there are also ways to earn them.

Picture for profile projects will continue to launch, but without any serious utility and reason to exist they will rise and fall. To really make an impact NFT projects must have a reason to exist other than making a creator of a project rich. This is business 101 to build long term businesses not churn and burn

If an NFT Project has a purpose its fanbase will organically grow. The use of airdrops is not new its just rebranded for Web 3. Projects would airdrop freebies, discounts, NFTs and other exclusive NFT holder rewards to people who have engaged with the project. The rewards card of Web 3.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club did this when they launched ApeCoin, BAYC NFT holders were airdropped a % of ApeCoin for having the BAYC NFT and this instantly gave them hundreds of thousands of extra value just for holding that NFT. The reward and incentive to remain engaged is there. The BAYC project is on the move acquiring new businesses, creating its own token and building an open MetaVerse game. They have successfully incentivized adoption in their community.

Tokens align network participants to work together toward a common goal — the growth of the network and the appreciation of the token.

Centralized networks have a core problem with one person or body corporate owning and governing the network how they see fit without taking considerations from the actual users.

Imagine Netflix listening to its users who might say that the choice of viewing is pretty much same same and it doesn't have the same mixed offering as Amazon prime. Netflix could listen and build a real community driven platform and retain users or it can ignore its users and continue to churn user base.

To make great NFT projects you just have to listen to your users.

NFTs come in several formats

1. Artwork
2. Picture for Profile
3. Access Keys
4. Utility
5. Burner Tokens
6. Content Text, Audio & Video

NFTs for Creators

blockchain-based ownership shifts the power back to creators and users — you can shop around and force the marketplace to earn its fees. (Note that lowering the intermediary fees can have a multiplier effect on creator disposable income. For example, if you make $100K in revenue and have $80K in costs, cutting out a 50% take rate increases your revenue to $200K, multiplying your disposable income 6x, from $20K to $120K.)

The second way NFTs change creator economics is by enabling granular price tiering. In ad-based models, revenue is generated more or less uniformly regardless of the fan’s enthusiasm level. As with Substack, NFTs allow the creator to “cream skim” the most passionate users by offering them special items which cost more. But NFTs go farther than non-crypto products in that they are easily sliced and diced into a descending series of pricing tiers.

Music artists can self fund or crowd fund their own albums. One of the frustrations artists have is not having 100% creative control among others. NFTs will give artists the power to decide how they go to market, when they release albums and what type of albums they can make. It changes the way music can be created.

The third and most important way NFTs change creator economics is in the way that the NFT allows ownership to the person who buys the NFT and extras that come with holding special NFTs. This is how brands and companies using NFTs will get a higher organic adoption rate than the traditional Web 2 company using paid ads, user data and spending big on user acquisition costs where users are not being rewarded, incentivised or engaged with as they are in the Web 3 space.

Ecommerce & NFTS = Phygtial

Ecommerce is also embracing the application of NFTs by allowing merchants to token gate their products, new releases and promotions. Shopify already has a handful of apps ready to use today read more here . If Shopify pushes NFTs in commerce it's safe to say millions of store owners will slowly start rolling NFTs into their product strategies and in turn more people will become familiar with NFTs and Web 3. This is music to my ears.

Combining augmented reality, virtual reality to reach a kind of extended reality for retail is where we are moving shopping online. It's a new interesting shift to a more phygital goods category being formed. Buying digital twins and having MetaVerse accessible goods is the reality at our doorstep.

How NFTs Can Help Disrupt

Let's talk record labels and music streaming

Where Spotify gives artists crumbs for millions of plays the new Web 3 way is to reward the artist and reward the fans.

Snoop Dog purchased Death Row Records after moving away from the label. His first action as CEO was to move the label to be 100% NFT record label. This was met with some angst by fans but the general consensus is this is pure genius and he is leading the charge for independence for artists by cutting the fat and increasing their earning potential.

Let's talk Ticketing and Events.

Scalpers and resale of tickets take from the ticketing industry. Scalping is not a nice user experience for anyone and there is always the risk of the tickets being a scam. Anyone selling tickets after the traditional purchase of the ticket is taking money from the event the ticket is for in Web 3.0 NFTs that represent tickets allow any secondary and so on sales to provide the source a royalty fee. Mark Cuban has been a vocal advocate for NFT ticketing with his NBA team the Dallas Mavericks.

I can see ticketing moving to NFTs in a matter of time, the writing is on the wall.

Lets talk Real Estate

The Sandbox, Otherside, Arcade, Hereos of Mavia and so on all allow players to purchase land deeds in games and MetaVerses. These lands can be farmed for resources, hold rare artifacts and have their own sub economies within the game.

In the real world NFT ownership of lands is entirely possible. There are already realty deals being made with NFTs and cryptocurrency. This is another way that code is automating deals between sellers and buyers.

The land sales can be rented out in games and the same applies to renting your IRL home. If you want to rent it out all you need is a smart contract that holds the correct deal terms. Anything is possible now that NFTs can help make the trading of land more transparent.

This goes hand and hand with gaming, I believe that the games industry is being held back by antiquated practices of “rental ownership” and that gamers prefer to have proper ownership and control over virtual goods — which translates to higher value for those goods. Owning a part of the land or planet that you game on is a big reason to come back and play that game.

If only governments could adopt NFTs they would have a way to see every transaction made on the blockchain no hiding or evading taxes.

Let's talk Health Fitness and Medical.

Move to earn allows players to earn tokens by completing exercises, movement tasks and activities related to the game. The most popular example is a running game called STEPN, This game requires players to download an app, buy a show NFT and participate in the game. Your sneaker will depreciate over time and you can power it up, the way you play is up to you, but its a move to earn revolution with 10+ copycats in tow.

Another notable one is Dustland Runner by OliveX. Where zombies can chase you and you must escape them by running faster. You might not be crypto millionaire rich after a week of gameplay but you are rewarded fairly for your engagements.

Learn to earn is a great way to encourage students to continue learning and taking learning seriously. As you learn and become more competent you progress in the learning cycle you will be rewarded with NFTs certifying your accomplishments.

This last one is a out of the box one but will sound so logical

Governments should run as DAOs.

First what is a DAO?

DAO is a decentralised autonomous organisation. The NFTs and crypto used to fund and run the government would be 100% fully transparent for every citizen to see on the blockchain. Any hint of corruption could be micro analysed for wrong doing.

NFTs in a DAO allow for holders to have voting rights, weighted or balanced. The DAO keeps companies, projects and teams on track with full transparency and accountability. NFT allocations can be reserved for teams or giving away in promotion or to reward hard workers. This way of working will change how we work. The work disruptor is the DAO.

The mistrust in government and politicians would be wiped away with every doller being tracked how it was spent, from who and passed to who. All this transparency is a good thing.

After reading these comments you might ask why the heck are we not using DAOs to run countries?

Thats a question I would rather someone else better prepared to take on the big fat cats can do. But if you think about it there are reasons why something thats makes so much sense, is not being applied to governments.

NFT Projects Im Watching

Here are some projects Im watching for various reasons:

1. Doodles Made some huge shifts this week, hiring a new CEO, partnering with Shopify and hiring Pharrell Williams as lead brand manager. Im seeing a lot of movement for Doodles in the coming months. Watch these guys closely for how they drive engagement.
2. Zerion DNA 1.0 is a NFT collection that dynamically changes as you use your wallet, buy NFTs and trade. The NFT will grow and change appearance the more you use your wallet. The onboarding at the moment feels clunky but Im sure it will be worth the wait.
3. Goblintown.wtf took the NFT world by storm, no one saw it coming and no one knew who or what was behind this top seller. They have endured endless copycats and for now seem to be spinning up new concepts to accompany the Goblin movement.
4. MFers ecosystem continues to grow adding Apes, HAPE's, Mutants, Doodles, Ninjas, Goblins and more. Mfers have access to games, comics, tokens and MetaVerses with more coming. Wild bunch of really creative people and looking at growing in 2023
5. Arcade is making multi chain, multi PFP gaming a reality. Land sales, gaming and NFTs the hottest trends of early 2022.
6. HAPE is making moves and looks effortlessly cool doing so. I like the recent collaborations they have in place and the marketing around HAPE. That and these being the nicest looking PFPs in my opinion. Matt Sapien and co have delivered two extremely creative projects here. HAPE is the fashion NFT for apes.
7. Rebels Art is a really interesting digital identity NFT project see it here . Whats interesting is you customise it as you develop and explore with a Rebel or a Night card NFT. Love the artwork and this looks like its going to be something special.
8. Heroes of Mavia I expect big things for this game. They took Axie Infinity and Clash of Clans and made the perfect mix. Very excited to see how they launch this game.
9. Matrix World on Flow, an interoperable MetaVerse. This looks really promising and early stages are its good for where its at in development lifecycle. Buy land and items and trade. Visit the Matrix World here.
10. Rumble Kong is a play to earn sports league in the MetaVerse. Visit Rumble Kong here. You are 1 of 10,000 kong avatars who can play the game and giving 100% IP ownership to NFT holders. This is a huge project way under anyones radar. Is it a possible future of sports leagues? maybe time will tell.
11. CryptoPunks wasn't on my list as its out of my price range until they made some hires and released a statement about taking it slow to revamp the projects future. Watching like a hawk.
12. Bored Ape Yacht Club another project well out of my reach but worth watching, they launched ApeCoin and Otherside recently right after acquiring LavaLabs. If Otherside MetaVerse game is as good as it's hyped up to be, the stock on BAYC & ApeCoin is going to the moon.

My Key Takeaways

While pretty profile pictures look nice and may satisfy the inner art collector in all of us its the utility and ability to help an industry better serve its customers where the future of NFTs are heading. I love seeing creators be rewarded for their creativity and believe this will be the biggest disruptor in 2022.

For me Im looking at how we can make NFTs better serve an industry. I ask myself what do they do wrong, what can they do better and what would something so out of the box for them look like. Then I tinker and map out what makes sense. Voila innovation.

I'll also be exercising my inner art collector to acquire some NFT art that I really like. I came across this creator called Orbseer and he had a piece in his collection here please do take 2 minutes to check it out. I like the combination of art, calmness and music in one NFT.

If there are any NFT projects I should take a look at please drop them in the comments and thanks for sharing