The second edition of NFT Paris exceeded all expectations with over 10,000 enthusiastic participants, from curious onlookers to artists, gamers, developers, investors, and students. We take this opportunity to showcase NFTs potential.
What are NFTs?
Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs for short, are digital assets stored on decentralized digital ledgers (blockchains). Each NFT unit is unique and cannot be replicated or divided into smaller parts, unlike cryptocurrencies like XTZ, BTC, and ETH or fungible tokens like CTez, USDTez, Tether, and USDC.
NFTs date back to 2017 with the launch of CryptoKitties, a blockchain-based game that allowed users to collect and trade virtual cats. Since then, they have become increasingly popular and found other applications.
Why are NFTs not just gifs or digital images?
Web3 is relatively young, and NFTs are a recent and evolving technology. There is still much to learn and discover about them. While there may be misconceptions and controversies surrounding NFTs, they have enabled the democratization and the first use of blockchain for the wider public. They have opened up new opportunities in art, gaming, music, and video domains. Moreover, other potential application domains are popping up. In principle, any notion or object that a unique piece of digital content can represent could be "NFT-ized". Let's review some of the (potential) usages.
The most known is the Art domain. NFTs have gained significant attention. They provide a way for artists to prove ownership of their creations and monetize their digital artwork on the primary and secondary markets. This can be seen with the push of impressive platforms like Objkt, fx(hash), Rarible, Minteed, and many more on Tezos, but also the very well-known OpenSea and newcomers like Blur on Ethereum. Gaming, virtual reality, and metaverse have also been known and continue to be an enormous success. NFTs can be used in games to represent unique items, characters, or experiences. They allow players to control their assets and sell or exchange them. For example, we participated in the Rarible project on Tezos, where Ubisoft launched the Ubisoft Qwartz project. Sports areas are using more and more NFTS to create collectible items that fans can purchase and trade, such as digital trading cards. The best example is the excellent Sorare project with its soccer, NBA, and baseball trading cards.
Other areas are very suitable for the use of NFTs. In Real estate, they can represent physical real estate assets. Unlike traditional markets, a blockchain allows exchanging them more transparently and with lower fees. We are participating in the Fraktion project, which should launch Q1/Q2 2023 with many innovations in this field. NFTs in Ticketing could represent event tickets, providing a secure and decentralized way to manage and verify ticket ownership, transfer, and resale. Most of all, some projects, like Billy, want to give a second life to our old tickets, like concert tickets, by giving them customization and even more advantages.
Finally, there are a lot of use cases for NFTs that we could spend hours discussing: Intellectual Property that could represent ownership, or rights for patents, trademarks or copyrights. Advertising, where they could represent unique advertising campaigns allowing the brand to engage with customers. Fashion and Luxury, where they could be used to sell virtual fashion items and represent ownership of valuable luxury goods. Governance, where they could represent voting rights or stakeholder ownership. And, of course, the Music area, Digital identity, Supply chain, and many more use cases.
Conclusion
In summary, there are plenty of good use cases for NFTs. It is up to the individuals to decide how they are employed. So, don't blame the knife if someone used it to commit a murder.
At Functori, we help startups and corporations in all stages of NFT or non-NFT projects. Whether you need a comprehensive solution from analysis to development, targeted support specifically for blockchain backend, or just smart contracts implementation or audit, we have the expertise to help you succeed. We could help you navigate the world of NFTs and unlock the full potential of this exciting new technology.
