Twitter feed and internet is flooded with one word “NFT”. The value of NFT quadrupled last year marking $250 million according to NonFungible and L’Atelier. NFTs are taking the world by storm and redefining the value of digital assets and blockchain games. If you wonder what are NFTs, how they work and how can you benefit from these, this paper will clear your doubts.
How NFT Business works:
To understand the business model of NFTs, we first need to understand what are NFTs. Non-Fungible Tokens aka NFTs are the digital assets on the blockchain.
These assets can be any digital file (an image, audio, or video), a token, a piece of art, or even a physical collectible. These assets are digitalized through cryptography and put on the blockchain. These digital assets are extremely unique and can not be exchanged for another. Comprehensively speaking, we can exchange a $10 bill for another, or we can exchange 1000 karats of gold with other 1000 karats of gold because these are exchangeable, or say fungible assets. Conversely, we can not exchange the painting of the Mona Lisa for anyone’s painting because that is unique and has its own value so can not be exchanged, hence non-fungible. Now coming to the next part, these files are attached to cryptocurrency tokens in a way that the person who has that token owns the asset. This token is more or less a certificate of ownership based on blockchain. So, this association of “non-fungible” assets to “tokens” makes these assets “Non-Fungible Tokens” or NFTs. NFTs can be bought and sold just like any other cryptocurrency.
NFTs are used for various purposes and have value depending on their use case. NFTs provide the proof of ownership for the digital files, used as assets in games, and mimic real estate to trade in a decentralized way. There are other plenty of reasons like fundraising, promotion, and brand awareness that come in the scope of NFTs. To make it clearer, consider a game where you like a character and you buy an expensive skin to stand out. But the problem is you can not use this asset in other games and the worse is the asset is lost if the game seems to work as you never actually owned that character or avatar. Blockchain games solve this problem by turning these collectibles into NFTs. The players will actually own these assets in and outside the game. They can use it in other games and can lend it to other players to earn interest.
Why NFTs are becoming mainstream:
You probably have heard about Nike coming to NFT business and Facebook rebranding itself as Meta. Well, that’s the spell of decentralized NFTs. The video game industry was worth $173 billion in 2020 which has now grown exponentially in 2021. The play to earn Games and Metaverse is reforming the gaming and social experience altogether. With the inclusion of big names and mainstream adoption, NFTs have become the future of the gaming industry, decentralized finance, and the social experience of the metaverse. Games and Metaverse environments require digital assets that are sold on marketplaces. Nike now owns a company that will be making shoes for the metaverse.
How to earn from NFTs:
There are plenty of ways to earn from NFTs depending on which project you choose. Play-to-earn games offer tokens as a reward as well as you can collect and upgrade the in-game NFTs for potential cashouts. You can buy and hold NFTs to earn interest and some projects even offer to stake your NFTs to earn additional perks. The rewarding mechanism is different for different NFTs. Following are some Hot NFT projects that offer potential rewards.
NFT Projects that Are Hot and Happening Now:
Cryptopunks are the most popular NFTs nowadays and have maximum trade volume. Based on the Ethereum blockchain, these are 10,000 computer-generated punks that belong to different families. They could be claimed by anybody with an Ethereum wallet but they were claimed quickly and now you can only buy these from Marketplaces like Opensea.io. The total sale volume of these NFTs exceeds more than $1.8 billion, as of the time of writing this paper.
Bored Ape Yacht is coming with a lot of potentials and the value of their NFTs will skyrocket as they plan to launch a Blockchain Game. The team behind Bored Ape Yacht Club has just teamed up with Adidas. Bored Ape Yacht Club provides a membership card to holders grants access to members-only benefits. Bored Ape Yacht is a collection of 10k Unique NFTs having a floor price of 49.269k ETH.
Axie Infinity game is a blockchain game and collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain. You can collect these fierce Axies and use them across the game to beat other players or trade them for potential profits. Axie players can earn tokens such as DAI, KNC, and SLP. These tokens can easily be converted to Ethereum later. Axie Infinity has a strong cryptocurrency token $AXS with very strong liquidity.
Like Axie Infinity, Decetraland MANA is a rising ecosystem of blockchain games and Metaverse. The ecosystem includes a 3D VR experience and a marketplace to create and trade the collectibles. MANA like other metaverse projects, became the epitome of the NFT frenzy after Facebook rebranded itself to Meta. Decentraland base RTFKT Studios have also joined the Nike team and the collaboration will create value for the whole ecosystem.
The Sand Box is a Metaverse and blockchain-based community-driven ecosystem. Sand has a unique and user-friendly environment where users can easily create and monetize their assets to earn rewards. This makes The Sand Box a top NFT collection to invest in. The Sand Box Game Maker helps users to create 3D games. You can play the Alpha Game and earn 1,000 Sand Coins and 3 NFTs.
Disclaimer: This paper only illustrates the top NFTs based on their volume and popularity. No sponsored content is included. It is NOT financial advice. Cryptocurrency trade involves risks. DYOR (Do Your Own Research) before investing.