Thus far NFTs have been used to verify the ownership of digital artwork and in-game assets, but the technology will likely find use in many other areas. This technology can be used to prove ownership, provide exclusive access to certain content, rights to virtual real estate assets, and much more. Here, we will look at some alternate uses for NFTs that will more than likely gain prevalence in the future.
Location-Based NFTs
In this instance, NFTs are used as an incentive to garner attendance to certain location-based events. For instance, Bright Moments NFT Gallery in Los Angeles gave visitors CryptoVenetian, which is an NFT membership token that gives visitors exclusive benefits and drops. These tokens can be resold to others to grant them access to the benefits and accesses the NFT provides. Where previously attending an event or venue would be confined to the physical time you spent in attendance, coupling this attendance with a membership token NFT increases the potential for further experiences, events, and exclusive access. In other words, what was once a simple trip to a museum can now extend into tailored, private events and membership benefits.
Restaurant NFTs
Gary Vaynerchuk, the well-known internet entrepreneur and founder of Vayner Media, was one of the first public proponents of NFTs. He started his own line of NFTs in 2021 called Veefriends, which he hopes to turn into their own media universe at some point. Owners of Veefriends now have exclusive access to a restaurant Gary started where only owners of his NFTs are allowed to enter. The venue offers a cocktail lounge and a private culinary experience, which greatly enhances the value of the NFT.
But he is not the only one who is trying out this new technology. Marcus Samuelsson Harmen’s Red Rooster is also exploring this technology. He created an NFT that you can redeem to access a private dinner for four people. The token itself comes with an artwork that creatively depicts his fried chicken. He hopes that culinary arts are not lost in this burgeoning digital world.
Marketing and Branding
Taco Bell is also pushing out NFTs with artwork related to tacos. The first batch of 25 NFTs was sold in under 30 minutes. Those NFTs change hand frequently, with the highest price sitting around 1.5 ETH, but the original owner retains the key perk, which is a $500 Taco Bell digital gift card.
NFT DNA
Genetics testing companies are currently facing scrutiny over how they manage the privacy of their users. Some of them collect user’s data and sell it to third party companies without the knowledge or explicit consent of the original users. A privacy breach is basically the cardinal sin in the eyes of cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiasts, which lost these companies favor in the public eye but also presented a new blockchain opportunity.
One company trying to capitalize on this opportunity is Nebula Genomics, which was founded by Professor George Church. Right now, Professor Church’s DNA data resides on the Ethereum blockchain in the form of a NFT, and serves as an example of a private, user-controlled environment for genetics data.
With genetic data being stored on a NFT that you own, there is no way for your data to be moved and sold to a third party company without your explicit consent and sale of the data stored within your NFT.
NFT Tweets
Tweets can be monetized as NFTs as well. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet was sold for $2.9 million to a businessman in Malaysia. That businessman paid about $100,000 for each character, and the profit was donated to the GiveDrectly Africa fund. Elon Musk was also looking to sell his own tweet, which got a bid reaching over $1 million, but he decided to cancel the sale.
Real Estate Title NFTs
This NFT use case goes even beyond virtual real estate, which we’ll discuss later. The physical real estate industry stands to benefit from NFTs, as they can utilize them as trustless property titles. Traditional real estate’s method of property transfer is a long and arduous process that requires many intermediaries for title management.
If you attach an NFT to a physical property, the transfer of the property would be fairly straightforward, as we explained earlier in our discussion of smart contracts. Propy, a real estate startup in Europe, is already exploring how NFTs can replace the paperwork and middlemen of traditional real estate deals.
Clothing NFTs
The fashion industry has also presented some interesting use cases for NFTs. This space has coined the term “phygital”, which refers to an item that has both physical and digital characteristics. This doesn’t mean that a sweatshirt has a screen sewn into the clothing, but instead allows for identical versions of the garment in both real and virtual spaces.
One company tackling this nascent area is Dissrup, an Israel-based design firm that saw massive opportunity in phygital clothing. They’ve released several sets of phygital clothes thus far, which guarantees the user a physical copy they can wear in real life, and also an identical NFT version that can be used to dress avatars in blockchain games or in the Metaverse.
Similar to how the NFT version is verified to be unique, the physical copy of the garment will have unique attributes built in that link it to the NFT version, certifying its uniqueness.
Gaming NFTs
In 2021, mobile in-game spending totaled a staggering $89.6 billion across the App Store and Google Play. This statistic does not include primary console spending, such as in-game spending on PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo. Massive multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPG for short, typically utilize in-game spending as a means to monetize their games, especially those that you can play for free. These are known as “pay-to-play” games, because in order to be competitive, you have to spend money to get the best equipment and weapons.
Runescape, for instance, allows you to purchase 100 million gold for $10 and CS:GO has a sniper skin that was sold for about $61,000. The problem with these items is that they are stored within the game’s central server and they do not have the same mobility that you would get from an in-game asset stored on a decentralized blockchain.
So, how can NFTs work here? Apart from transitioning in-game assets to NFTs that can be stored on a blockchain, crypto enthusiasts encourage the “play-to-earn” model whereby players would earn NFTs as they play. Players can then sell these items on any NFT marketplace, transfer them to other blockchain games, and display them in their virtual collections.
While this is still a burgeoning area within the crypto economy, people are beginning to make full-time incomes from play-to-earn games. One user reports making $20,000 per day via play-to-earn games, but this is far from what can be reasonably expected.
NFT-Based Virtual Reality
Decentraland is a good example of a virtual reality game with NFT-related features. Here, people can buy NFTs which define the ownership of various land parcels, which is essentially digital real estate. The owner of these digital estates has complete control over the environments as well as the applications they create.
Large institutions and investors have begun to purchase these digital plots of land as well, with the largest purchase totaling $900,000 for 259 parcels. This space can be used by companies to advertise products and set up in-game stores for users.
These NFTs, as well as the digital real estate they are attached to, can be bought, sold, and rented. Just like physical real estate, the value of these NFTs is determined by their proximity to popular areas. These plots of land can include roads, plazas, mountains, or any areas that can be combined into a theme community.
Sports-Based NFTs
Sports collectibles have existed long before NFTs surfaced, like collectible trading cards. Some platforms, like NBA TopShot, have pivoted to capitalize on this collection trend and have created officially licensed video highlights as NFTs. At the time of writing, only NBA clips have been licensed for use as NFTs, but the NFL is currently in the process as well.
Some of the most expensive sports NFTs show clips of LeBron James and Ja Morant dunks. These have sold for over $220,000 and $470,000, respectively.
