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Quick Summary of NFTs:
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital tokens that authenticate the ownership of assets. These assets can come in the form of all kinds of real-world items. Tokenising these assets, or linking them to an NFT, makes them easier to buy and sell, while taking away the threat of fraud.
Many industries are realising the potential utility of NFTs because of their ability to mark digital assets and prove ownership. These certificates of authenticity are all stored on the blockchain, making them transparent and secure.
NFTs are giving power to creators through ownership and they’re fitting right in with several industries. Let’s look at some NFT trends that we may very see coming this year.
Upcoming NFT Trends in 2022
The next few years are going to be an exciting time to be a human if you’re interested in NFTs. There are now so many industries that are looking into NFTs and their potential.
Here are 6 exciting trends that we may see take off in 2022:
1. Continued Growth in Art
Digital art is the first industry where NFTs announced themselves. The greatest spike in NFT awareness occurred when Beeple sold a piece of art for $69 million. This caused major a shock in the art world and brought upon the dramatic rise in digital art NFT collections.
Since then, NFTs have brought upon crazy opportunities for artists of all kinds and have given them the chance to obtain full control over their work and sell it all over the world.
The introduction of NFTs has also radically increased the interest in digital art. Buyers of art or collectors see the possibility of reselling art pieces and earning profits off this.
NFTs are now providing monumental incentives for artists to sell their work and earn royalties from secondary sales. For this reason, we will continue to see a dramatic rise in the art industry as a whole - an industry that has been quiet in recent decades.
2. Music NFTs
Another space where NFTs will reward artists majorly is the music industry. Right now, artists’ music is very much in the hands of large corporations and they’re losing control of their work.
Music NFTs can be divided into various parts of production or music-making. It can be certain elements of the song, lyrics, the song itself or even the album cover. All of these parts can be created, minted and sold on secondary marketplaces.
Right now, global music revenue is generated largely through our favourite streaming services. The companies behind these platforms give a tiny cut to the artists who provide the product to these companies.
NFTs will give ownership and control of music back to the artists and ensure they are compensated fairly for their work. They’ll also have full decision-making on where their music is sold and shared.
There are numerous platforms popping up that have the potential to be hubs where artists can launch and sell their music. Here are a few examples:
Async.art
Projects like Async.art have created a marketplace for artists where they’re able to buy and sell stems, which are essentially individual parts of a song.
This means artists can monetise their work not only through releasing albums or individual songs, but just by creating individual elements of a track.
Artists or collectors can either buy completed songs which are called masters, or individual elements which are called layers.
Projects like these lead to endless collaboration and artists can earn from sharing their music, or just stems of their songs.
The Return of LimeWire
After almost a decade of inactivity, LimeWire is planning a return by creating an NFT marketplace for artists to launch and sell their work.
LimeWire plans to relaunch in May 2022, where they will have a "mainstream-ready" marketplace where artists can sell their music and collectors can broaden their library. LimeWire aims to make the marketplace east-to-use without the hurdles that current blockchain marketplaces provide.
3. NFTs in Gaming
Perhaps the most exciting trend of all is the entry of NFTs and crypto into the gaming industry. A term that has taken off in the past few months is the saying “play-to-earn”. This implies that players may finally have the chance to get compensated for their time in games.
The thought of having non-fungible tokens as in-game items and other virtual assets really does make sense and it gives more credibility to gamers for their efforts. Right now, in-game assets are stored on a closed-off data system run by game companies. With NFTs as in-game items, players can gain full ownership and control over their items.
These in-game items can be sold on open marketplaces, or they can be used to benefit the player’s growth in the game. Rare items in popular games will have serious value, so there’ll be many players willing to pay a lot for them. These items will be able to be purchased with a native cryptocurrency (or other cryptocurrencies) which in turn can be traded for other real-value cryptocurrencies. This is where the play-to-earn (P2E) element comes in.
We're already seeing some countries become heavily reliant on play-to-earn games as a form of income, such as the Philippines.
Another huge plus that NFTs bring about is the opportunity for smaller game developers and publishers to raise funds for projects. These publishers can drop NFT collections where investors can mint/buy NFTs and gain exclusive benefits for being early adopters. The funds raised from these collection drops can be put straight into project growth and development.
Although high-quality games take years to build, we’re going to see plenty of smaller, but fun games getting released in late 2022 and early 2023. It could take a while before we see the big game publishers enter the play-to-earn scene, but there are certainly some exciting projects that have already raised some crazy money. Here are a few promising titles:
Big Time
Big Time is a cooperative role-playing game (RPG) powered by NFTs. The game will be in third-person and combines fast-action combat with exploration in a huge online world. The graphics for Big Time look incredible and their team includes vastly experienced game engineers. Members from the likes of Blizzard, Epic Games and Riot are all on board.
Unlike other P2E games coming up, Big Time will not have a native cryptocurrency as the in-game currency (as of now). This means that the player's main incentive is to collect in-game assets which can be sold on the game's open marketplace. These assets can be bought with dollars or Ether.
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Sipher
Sipher is a 3D live arcade-style RPG built on the Ethereum blockchain. Players can battle it out against enemies (PVE), or other players (PVP) in the quest to build their heroes (which are NFTs) and earn $SIPHER, the in-game currency that can be traded on worldwide exchanges.
The Sipher team looks to be creating an incredibly satisfying game, with the potential to host hero progression and earning while doing so. I personally can't wait to see Sipher launch to the world.
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4. The Metaverse
Similar to gaming in a way, the metaverse refers to an online world where there is an integration between virtual and physical spaces. Like gaming, there are hundreds of projects currently raising funds in the form of ICOs (initial coin offerings) and are looking to cement their place as a recognised name in the metaverse industry.
Operating in the metaverse one day will be the same as operating in today’s world, but everything will just be virtual. NFTs will be attached to every object within the metaverse, whether its land, avatars (our characters) or any other necessary item.
There is going to be substantial earning potential for investors in the metaverse. Whether it’s renting out land, working a job in the metaverse, or selling digital assets. This is bringing about crazy amounts of investors and even Grayscale has stated that the metaverse could easily represent an over $1 trillion annual revenue opportunity.
We’re only just beginning to see some exciting projects take shape. Please note that there isn’t one big metaverse, but rather several metaverses governed by different projects. Here are just a few exciting prospects that we could do see launch in 2022:
Gamium
Gamium plans to create a decentralised social metaverse that interconnects other metaverses. They aim to make avatars (digital body) and digital assets compatible across different metaverses.
Along with this, they aim to provide a platform where people can build interact, work in a virtual world and build digital careers.
The only thing needed to enter the Gamium environment is an Avatar, which is one's digital identity. These Avatars have a price, but this is very much necessary in order to avoid attacks on the Gamium ecosystem.
Gamium will work on the Ethereum blockchain.
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5. NFT Ticketing
Ticketing is another industry that NFTs will without a doubt disrupt in the near future. The current ticketing industry is flooded with fraud and untrustworthy exchanges, and NFTs have the power to fix all of it.
One of the biggest problems NFTs will solve in ticketing is preventing scams and fake tickets. Current ticketing measures can be replicated and prospective ticket buyers can be lured into buying false tickets.
With NFTs sitting on a blockchain, buyers can be reassured that they are buying real tickets on a transparent platform.
Prospective ticket buyers can purchase tickets on NFT marketplaces, but also list and sell them there easily if necessary, making the whole process of reselling tickets a lot more efficient and comfortable.
We’re going to start seeing a lot more functions and events bring in NFTs to ensure efficiency and security amongst the exchange of tickets. Coachella is a great example of an events company adopting NFTs for ticketing purposes. They're selling lifetime passes for those interested. Holders of these passes will always have access to Coachella events (real events or virtual) until they sell their passes on an open marketplace.
6. Personal Data NFTs
An exciting and less thought of trend we’re going to see, is the way personal data is shared and utilised through the use of NFTs.
Our activity on the internet is extremely valuable to some of the biggest companies in the world. These companies store our data and in many cases sell it off to other companies, who use it to enhance their customer targeting strategy.
Because of this, we lose control of our personal data as it is exchanged amongst large corporations for the benefit of their marketing.
We can potentially get compensated for sharing our personal data with others, and to be honest, we should. As mentioned, our data is crucial to the marketing strategies of any company, so why aren’t we earning from sharing it?
Soon, we will be able to sell our data as an NFT to interested companies. This way, we can earn from sharing our data and also be able to decide where our data goes. One more thing - we will also be able to track our data NFTs as it’ll be stored on-chain.
There are already a few projects that are onto this movement and I’ll mention a two:
Ocean Protocol
Ocean Protocol aims to unlock the real value of personal data. They're developing an application where data owners and consumers (companies) can publish, discover or consume data.
This gives the opportunity for individuals to take ownership of their data earn from sharing it on Ocean's app. Data consumers can buy data from Ocean, with the intent to improve their marketing strategies, and data providers will earn from this.
The Ocean system requires three components: Providers (us), Consumers (companies that need data to operate better) and Marketplaces (facilitates the data transactions).
