The evolution of NFT: The exchange of goods is the most primitive form of expression of NFT, but due to the lack of a reasonable way of value discovery, it has been replaced by homogenized currency. With the emergence of blockchain technology, this kind of once value The way it is difficult to capture and record has returned to the human process. In principle, we believe that everything can be NFTized, but NFT without actual large-scale application scenarios and value mapping is meaningless and conveying value.
As early as 1993, the concept of NFT was proposed by Hal Finney, but due to technical limitations, the business scenario was stranded. Colored cards in 2012 and Counterparty in 2014 have made a lot of application landing attempts on NFT commercial applications, and have made great progress and success. Counterparty created “Rare Pepes” which is a popular meme sad frog. The application of NFT has won the support of many sad frog fans, and its non-replicability and the attribution of assets have given its value qualitativeness and laid the foundation for the presentation of NFT value.
This inspired Dieter to creatively propose the ERC721 standard when creating CryptoKitties in 2017, making every Crypto cat an indivisible and non-reproducible NFT. The innovation of value shaping and presentation made CryptoKitties quickly become popular and became the mainstream of the market, so NFT became popular.
The value discovery of NFT : The emergence of NFT essentially reduces the verification threshold before the transaction, so that the cost of trust in the transaction is reduced to a very low level, so that the liquidity of its value is fully released while guaranteeing the transaction The scarcity of its value. The current NFT market is still in its early stages. It is mainly a market supported by collection psychology, aesthetic psychology, and speculation psychology. At the same time, we are optimistic that more and more traditional industries and NFTs are combining and innovating. For example, Christie’s, NBA Top Shot, etc. occupy a very large share in the NFT market.
In addition, the biggest application scenario of NFT, the value mapping of Metaverse (virtual reality) has also opened its mysterious door, and the development similar to Decentraland has also attracted more and more players to join and pursue.
The development stage of NFT:
- The rise and advancement of crypto art platforms, such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Encrypted asset (NFT) trading market, such as Opensea , Rarible .
- The asset mapping of traditional assets, for example, there are now many traditional giants involved in NFT projects, NBA, Gucci, Disney, etc. have all bowed into the game;
- The original crypto asset NFT, among which the game track will be an important attempt. It is not only an important part of the meta-universe, but also an important driving force for the development of the meta-universe, such as Decentraland, which is currently being tried.
Closely:
- Opportunity NFT public chain like the track, in addition to Ethernet Square outside, Flow, Wax, BSC, Polkadot ( Boca ) NFT have a good basis to achieve;
- In terms of DApps (decentralized applications), NBA Top Shot, CryptoPunks, CryptoKitties, Sorare, Axie Infinity, Bored ape-yacht-club, Decentraland, etc. are all currently active and popular application tracks in the NFT field;
- In terms of trading platforms, Opensea and rarible are two representative trading platforms. Opensea is currently the world’s largest NFT trading platform by transaction volume. Rarible has innovatively integrated NFT and DeFi, expanded the margins of NFT, and explored new possibilities. Sex.
The origin and development of NFT
Thinking about the origin of NFT
In the development of human history, at the very beginning, we bartered items. At this time, the value of each item exchanged is completely determined by the needs of the other party. The two parties in the transaction just need such items from the other party, so yours Sheepskin just changed my eggs. In a narrow sense, each piece of sheepskin and each egg may be different, but the difference may not be so obvious.
Therefore, this homogenized demand exchange has prompted us to create currency “equivalent intermediates”, so that everyone’s needs are anchored to equivalent intermediates. From this we have seen the evolution history of currency, from shells, to financial currencies, to paper currency, to today’s electronic currency, and the future of Crypto currency. In fact, it essentially corresponds to an exchange of demand.
And what is NFT? In fact, the concept of NFT has always existed in human history.
The full name of NFT is Non-Fungible Token, which means non-homogeneous token. It is a unique data representation that is recorded in the blockchain and cannot be copied, replaced, or divided. It is used to verify the authenticity or rights of specific Crypto assets. , NFT can be used to characterize an asset. On the blockchain, cryptocurrencies are divided into two categories: Coin and Token. Native currencies, such as the familiar Bitcoin and Ethereum, have their own main chain and use transactions on the chain to maintain ledger data. Tokens are attached to the existing blockchain and use smart contracts to record the ledger, such as various tokens issued on Ethereum. Tokens can be divided into two types: homogenization and non-homogeneity. Homogeneous tokens, FT (Fungible Token), refer to tokens that can be substituted for each other and can be split almost infinitely. For example, there is essentially no difference between a Bitcoin in your hand and a Bitcoin in my hand. This is homogenization.
Many people may be confused about this explanation. We at Symbol Capital do an analysis, and we still use human history as a reference. Since the beginning of civilization records, human history began with a certain kind of symbol, followed by text that can be copied. When we study history, we often infer the situation of human civilization at that time by interpreting the life trajectories and symbol records left by humans at that time. , And these symbols are the unique record of human civilization in that era, and also represent that unique historical period. If they are placed in the current virtual world, these symbols can also be mapped into an NFT.
With the development of human beings, the emergence of characters makes civilizations reproducible and records, and its NFT attributes begin to weaken. These repeated characters become homogenous, but the expression of civilization becomes It’s complicated. We have all kinds of civilized thoughts and classics, such as the “Book of Songs”, “Spring and Autumn”, “Tao De Jing”, “Lao Tzu”, “Tao De Jing”, “The Art of War of Sun Tzu” in Chinese history, and “Hammurah” in the two river basins. The classic civilizations like the Code of Law cannot be copied, they are unique, we can also regard them as a kind of NFT, and then we can see various types of Wang Xizhi’s characters, Huang Gongwang’s paintings, etc., and Similar to the management of a certain kind of right representative, such as the tiger talisman used to manage the army, the emperor’s jade seal, and the real estate certificate and the company’s business license to today are the only rights and rights mapping, and they can all be seen. Cheng is a kind of NFT.
Everything can be NFT, but not every NFT is worthy of being given great value. That is to say, in our view, NFT is a unique, a pronoun for a kind of rights and rights that are difficult to separate; its core value still needs to return to the kind of value it contains or is given. We recognize that in the era of the Internet of Everything, when the parallel time and space of the virtual world and the real world come, everything can be NFT, but everything has done NFT, in fact, most of them have little practical significance. Really good NFT still needs to return to itself The value of this kind of value is either mapped to the rights and interests of a physical asset, or it is mapped to the rights and interests of a virtual asset (spiritual civilization).
The emergence of NFT
The concept of NFT was formally proposed in 2017 by Dieter Shirley, the founder and CTO of CryptoKitties. That year, as BTC rose from US$5,000 to US$200 million in just two months, a crypto cat game quickly became popular in this massive crypto bull market. In the summer of 2017, the ERC20 token standard and 1C0 based on ERC20 were particularly popular. After the launch of CryptoKitties, many users asked how Dieter CryptoKitties interact with ERC20. In fact, CryptoKitties and ERC20 cannot be compatible, because CryptoKitties It is based on another token standard, ERC721, which is a non-homogeneous token, while ERC20 is a homogenous token. In order to better explain the difference between CryptoKitties and ERC20, Dieter came up with a fixed and simple answer. Subsequently, Dieter proposed the concept of NFT, that is, the concept of non-homogeneous tokens. As a result, with the popularity of CryptoKitties, the concept of NFT quickly entered the public eye.
The most important feature of NFT (non-homogeneous token) is uniqueness and indivisibility. Each non-homogeneous token is different and is unique and cannot be replaced by each other. In addition, NFT cannot be split and cannot be split into many shares like crypto currencies. Just like a concert ticket, there is no concept of half a ticket, so NFT is also very suitable for making a ticket. The innovation of NFT is to introduce scarcity into the field of cryptocurrency and become a representative of non-homogeneous crypto assets that are different from cryptocurrencies. Therefore, Crypto assets no longer only refer to cryptocurrencies, but are composed of homogenized cryptocurrencies. It is combined with the crypto assets represented by the non-homogeneous NFT.
It is precisely because of the inseparable and unique feature of NFT that NFT is usually linked to certain specific assets and used to prove the ownership of Crypto items, such as game skins, Crypto collectibles and other intangible assets and tangible assets such as tickets and real estate certificates. ownership.
The value of business requires the carrying of technology, and technological progress also requires business prosperity.
Although the formal concept of NFT was proposed by Dieter in 2017, similar concepts and applications based on NFT appeared earlier. Understanding the historical evolution of NFT will be more conducive to our understanding of the value and application of NFT.
1993: Crypto trading card
The concept of NFT and its predecessor can be traced back to 1993 Crypto Trading Cards.
The general situation is that in 1993, Hal Finney (the first senior cryptography expert to receive Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin and a pioneer of Bitcoin) shared an interesting concept, the general idea of which is:
“I thought more about the idea of buying and selling Crypto cash, and I thought of a way to show it. We are buying and selling “crypto trading cards.” Enthusiasts of cryptography will love these fascinating examples of cryptographic art. Please note that its perfect combination is a mixture of one-way functions and Crypto signatures, as well as random blinding. This is a perfect work worth collecting and showing to your friends and family.
In addition, your friends will undoubtedly also like these crypto trading cards; they will eagerly want to exchange them; collect a whole set, they come in various types, from the ordinary 1 series to the more rare 5 series, Up to the rare 1000 series, everyone can enjoy hours of fun.
Friendly crypto trading card dealers will also want to join, and they will be as interested in buying your trading cards as selling them. Try this charming and timely new hobby today!”
This may be the earliest elaboration and idea about NFT that we can find. Although the logic is the same as when we were a kid, we bought a whole set of Water Margin cards; but the form of expression is based on the form of encryption and mathematics. Then randomly arrange a set of cards to form a series, and Hal defines it as an encryption card.
1993 was still in the early days of the Internet era, and even big butt computers were not even popular. At that time, computers were still an expensive device, mainly used in laboratories, military aerospace and some important institutions. So we can imagine how far-sighted and remarkable it is to have such concepts and business thinking. At the same time, we also see the inseparable relationship between Crypto assets and mathematics, cryptography, and technology. Without the development, popularization and support of technology, it would be difficult for Crypto assets to be popularized and disseminated, just like the encryption card idea of Hal in 1993.
2012: Colored Coin
In 2012, the first NFT-like token Colored Coin was born. Colored coins are made up of small denominations of bitcoins, with the smallest unit being one satoshi (the smallest unit of bitcoin, one satoshi is equal to one hundred millionth of a bitcoin). It can represent multiple assets and have multiple uses, including property, coupons, and issuance of company shares. Although there are still many defects in the design of colored coins, the colored coins show the plasticity and development potential of real assets on the chain, which laid the foundation for the development of NFT.
2014: Counterparty
The birth of colored coins has made many people realize the huge potential of issuing assets on the blockchain. In 2014, Robert Dermody, Adam Krellenstein and Evan Wagner founded Counterparty. This is a peer-to-peer financial platform, and a distributed open source Internet protocol has been established on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Counterparty supports asset creation, has a decentralized exchange, XCP contract currency, and many projects and assets, including card games and Meme transactions.
What really promotes the emergence of NFT is the “Rare Pepes” created on Counterparty, which makes the popular meme sad frog an NFT application. A meme is translated as a meme, which is actually a kind of emoticon, a picture or a sentence, or even a video, an animated picture, which can be simply understood as the “stalk” we are familiar with.
The sad frog meme originally had a huge fan base, and some rare sad frog meme pictures were put on the chain “Rare Pepe was moved to Ethereum in 2017” to ensure that the sad frog meme on these chains cannot be copied and cannot be copied. The scarcity of the split has gained considerable attention and support. This kind of non-copyability and ownership of assets gives its value qualitativeness and promotes the presentation of NFT value.
June 2017: CryptoPunks
In 2017, when the Ethereum ecosystem began to exert its strength, two developers who were not in the cryptocurrency circle came to this ecosystem with more than 10,000 pixel avatars by chance and developed the world. The first NFT project-CryptoPunks.
Two people, John and Matt, who were originally doing mobile app development, made a pixel character generator in early 2017 and created many cool pixel character avatars. When they were thinking about what they could do further around these avatars At the time, they paid attention to the blockchain and Ethereum, which was relying on the ERC20 token standard to become popular at the time. So they decided to put these pixel avatars on the blockchain, so that these pixel avatars, which are also very personal in themselves, can be verified through the characteristics of the blockchain, and they can be owned by others or allowed to be transferred to others. . Since the ERC721 or ERC1155 token agreement specifically for the NFT field had not yet been born, the two made appropriate changes to the ERC20 standard, and finally successfully moved these punk-spirited pixel avatars to Ethereum.
As a result, the world’s first NFT project, CryptoPunks, was born. It pioneered the introduction of images as crypto assets into the cryptocurrency field. When various tokens were flying in the sky at that time, it gave many practitioners new inspirations as a clear stream.
October 2017: CryptoKitties
As the innovative project CryptoPunks has been hyped up on Ethereum, this non-homogeneous token has also brought a new trend of thought. The Dapper Labs (spun-off from AxiomZen) team was inspired by CryptoPunks and launched the ERC721 token standard specifically for building non-homogeneous tokens, and then based on ERC721, the Dapper Labs team launched a crypto kitty game called CryptoKitties , So that each Crypto cat is unique and its value cannot be copied. “Scarce can maximize the value.” The innovation of CryptoKitties in the presentation of value shaping made CryptoKitties quickly become popular and became the mainstream of the market, so NFT became popular.
We can see that the main reason for the success of NFT is that blockchain technology gives it the basis for presenting value and protecting value, so that its value is endowed with uniqueness by blockchain technology, so that the value is fully reflected. At the same time, due to the immutability of blockchain technology, the value of its re-copying cannot be reflected, and the value rights and interests can be fully protected, so the attributes of its value being transmitted and traded are magnified. Therefore, we see that the success of NFT is not actually a commercial success, but the success of the combination of technology and business. It can be said that there is no technology, and NFT is just a concept like an encryption card. But with commercial attempts and development, technology can also innovate rapidly, just like ERC721 appeared during the prosperity and development of meme.
Value description of NFT
The core value of NFT
Homogeneous commodities can be exchanged at equal value, and their value comes from the relationship between market supply and demand. The value of non-homogeneous products comes from the question of how to prove their authenticity; just as someone stole the “Fuchun Mountain Habitat” and copied an exact copy, we need to find many art appreciation experts to verify it. Whether it is true or not, if it is true, its value is very high; if it proves to be a fake, it is worthless. However, this verification process is costly, and identification errors may occur.
Therefore, in the past, the exchange of such scarce items was a very high threshold. The emergence of NFT perfectly solves this problem. NFT uses smart contract technology to store and record its unique information on the blockchain: this means that every time an NFT is created, one of them can be stored verifiably. NFT creators can also encode details, such as rich metadata or secure file links. Such technical capabilities have allowed us to reduce the verification threshold for issues such as authenticity and ownership to a very low level. Due to the lowering of the verification threshold, scarce items can be transferred and traded safely, effectively and verifiably.
Therefore, the essence of the emergence of NFT is to lower the verification threshold before the transaction, thereby lowering the threshold of the transaction; fully releasing the liquidity of its value, and at the same time ensuring the scarcity of its value in the transaction. This is the core reason why NFT can be widely promoted and applied.
The psychological world and the future world mapped by NFT
Collection and Aesthetic Psychology: The Void of Value Supported by Vanity
Since the beginning of ancient times, after hunting is completed, humans will pull out the teeth of their prey, such as tiger teeth and wolf teeth, and hang them on their necks as a status symbol; on the one hand, it is to show off and show off their achievements, on the other hand. It is an aesthetic consideration; even today, snipers still draw marks on their sniper rifles to record how many enemies they have killed, and pilots draw five-pointed stars on fighter jets to record how many enemy planes they have wiped out. From the perspective of the development of human history, in ancient times, we collected scarce shells; in ancient times we collected calligraphy, paintings, jade pendants and other decorative objects; today we collect mobile phone numbers, virtual game equipment and even early game level numbers, etc. Human beings have always had a hobby of collecting scarce and special objects. These collections are for the pursuit of certain beliefs and values in their hearts, on the one hand, they may also be for the enjoyment of aesthetics. But they all show one point, vanity is a very important value support for collectibles.
The NFT solves one of the most important problems in the collection process, which is to satisfy the collectors to prove that this thing is unique and only I have the vanity psychology; so that NFT can perfectly support a bigger one in the actual scene in the future. The world of vanity; the value of this vanity will change with the expansion of the market economy environment and virtual parallel world, so we think it supports a virtual ceiling rather than a solid ceiling; just like a period of good economic conditions , The art market is booming, and during the economic downturn, the art market is relatively sluggish.
When NFT reflects the actual asset mapping, it also reflects the phenomenon of Maslow’s demand theory. When the economic environment is good, the pursuit of art and spiritual pursuit will be more vigorous, and vice versa. From the relationship between per capita GDP and industry opportunities, we can also make a judgment on the future demand of the entire NFT market.
According to past data, when the per capita GDP exceeds US$8,000, there will be a boom in the art market and the collection market.
Hype psychology: speculation driven by money-making effect
Since the birth of Bitcoin in 2009, blockchain has entered the world of the masses. After 12 years of development, the application of blockchain has not only spawned due to its pre-financing design (the project can be financed through tokens in the early stages) A large number of entrepreneurial projects quickly built a huge ecosystem, and at the same time gave birth to the largest asset bubble in the market. NFT, as one of the application scenarios of blockchain, is of course also an important part of this bubble.
From the nonfungible data, it can be seen that the active wallet address is completely positively correlated with market conditions. During the 17 years of CryptoKitties hype, the peak value of the active wallet address was 34985; the NFT market in May 2021 was hot again, with the active wallet address The peak value is 20323; and with the recent market downturn, the average number of active addresses in the last 30 days has dropped to 11405.
The total amount of NFT transactions has also fallen from a monthly peak of 325 million U.S. dollars to the current 56 million U.S. dollars; from the relationship between the number of active wallet addresses, the total transaction amount and the market, we can judge that the current NFT market is obviously a speculative market with huge market bubbles; In the bull market, the money-making effect is obvious, the wallet address is active, and the transaction volume increases sharply; the market is in the bear phase, the money-making effect is missing, the active wallet address decreases, and the transaction volume shrinks sharply.
Therefore, the current NFT market and the current cryptocurrency market are in the same line, and they have not yet reached the stage of value presentation.
Investment time: Positive emotional feedback loop in which emotional accounts are positively correlated with willingness to pay
The length of time the aborigines have settled in the Internet dominates the mainstream of the market, and more and more emotions and time are invested in the virtual world, so that the willingness to pay for goods in the virtual world has shown an overall upward trend.
The report shows that as of January 2021, the world’s population is 7.83 billion. Currently, 5.22 billion people worldwide use mobile phones, equivalent to 66.6% of the world’s total population. Since January 2020, the number of mobile phone users has increased by 1.8% (93 million), while the total number of mobile connections (one person owns multiple devices) has increased by 0.9% (72 million) to 8.02 billion (January this year).
In January 2021, the number of people using the Internet worldwide reached 4.66 billion, an increase of 316 million over the same period last year, an increase of 7.3%. Currently, the global Internet penetration rate is 59.5%. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on reports of the number of Internet users, so the actual number may be higher.
Internet usage time All users average 140.1 hours per month, and the average daily online time reached 4.67 hours; the Internet aborigines in the Z era averaged 174.9 hours per month, and the average daily online time reached 5.83 hours.
The number of global game users is close to 3 billion, and Roblox’s single game has reached 150 million people; the virtual world game-the virtual world model of the metaverse-“Minecraft” has reached 1.3 people.
With the changes in the demographic structure, the post-90s and Z-era people have gradually become the mainstay of the demographic structure. They spend more and more time in the Internet world, which is equivalent to storing emotions in an emotional account in the Internet world until To have complete trust and dependence on the Internet world. In the foreseeable future decades, the surfing time in the virtual world will become longer and longer. It may reach 8 hours online, 8 hours real world, 8 hours sleep 3-8 The structure of the three-level parallel world; by then, the weight of the virtual world and the real world will become the same or heavier than the real world, so the needs of interaction will be transferred to the virtual world in addition to the basic material needs. The value problem of NFTs, the value bubble of virtual assets, etc., which still exist today, will all be naturalized by the real needs of the virtual world market.
The presentation of the original value of the virtual world: the biggest future of NFT
What is the Metaverse?
Metaverse: From the third book “Snow Crash” by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson (Neal Stephenson) published in 1992; Stephenson created an Internet that was not in the past. It is a three-dimensional Crypto space that is closely connected with society-virtual reality (Metaverse), parallel to the real world, and people who are geographically isolated from each other in the real world can communicate and entertain themselves through their “avatars”.
In the novel, the protagonist Hiro Protagonist’s job is to deliver pizza to the Mafia that has controlled the territory of the United States. When not working, Hiro Protagonist will enter the meta-universe: a networked virtual reality. In this virtual reality, people appear as “avatars” designed by themselves, engaging in secular (talking, flirting) and extraordinary (sword fighting, mercenary espionage) activities. Like the Internet, the meta-universe is a collective, interactive endeavor, which is always in progress and is not controlled by any one person. Just like in a game, people live and control the characters that move in the space.
Characteristics of the meta-universe
- Sustainability: The world can exist forever and will not stop
- Real-time: able to maintain real-time and synchronization with the real world, and have all the forms of the real world
- Compatibility: It can accommodate people and things of any size, anyone can enter
- Economic attributes: There is a fully operational economic system that can support transactions, payments, and labor to create income, etc.
- Connectivity: Digital assets, social relationships, objects, etc. can run through various virtual worlds, and can be converted between “virtual world” and “real world”
- Creativity: The content in the virtual world can be created by any individual user or group user
Meta universe: a new era in the post-Internet era
In the last section, we predicted that in the near future human time will likely enter the 3-8 era-8 hours in the real world, 8 hours in the virtual world, and 8 hours in the sleep world; we can perceptually predict that with AR/VR and With the advent of the 5G era and the 6G era, when the hardware and software development of the virtual world are sufficient to support a complete virtual reality world, the possibility of humans building a more concrete three-dimensional virtual world and swimming in it will become a deterministic result.
At that time, human beings will enter the three-dimensional virtual reality world from the two-dimensional Internet era. Just as the University of California, Berkeley held a graduation ceremony in “Minecraft”-“This virtual Berkeley campus was jointly built by more than 100 students and alumni in “Minecraft”, and more than 100 buildings were constructed; the ceremony; On the same day, the graduates from Berkeley, California participated in an unforgettable “virtual” graduation ceremony in “Minecraft”, which fully included the principal’s speech, degree awarding, and hat throwing.” This is the same as ours in the real world. The experience is not much different, and with the development of technology, such an experience will be no different from the real world.
The famous communication master McLuhan once put forward the three famous theories-“medium is the message”, “medium is the extension of man”, “hot medium” and “cold medium”.
In the book “The Medium is the Message”, McLuhan proposes:
The medium itself is the truly meaningful message. Only after possessing a certain medium can human beings engage in communication and other social activities that are compatible with it; the most important role of the medium is to “influence our habit of understanding and thinking.”
For society, the truly meaningful and valuable “message” is not the content transmitted by the media of each era, but the nature of the communication tools used in this era, the possibilities it creates, and the social changes it brings.
The existence of the media has changed the way human beings perceive the world, feel the world, and influence the world through behavior. The content and information delivered by the media are relatively minor compared to the impact of the media on the development of human society.
In the book “The Essence of Technology”, it is also mentioned that all the results currently presented are the results of technology. With the development of technology, the idea of human beings swimming in the virtual world will completely become a reality. So in the world of virtual reality, what will be the role of the general equivalent in the exchange of values? Obviously the answer is cryptocurrency. And in the Metaverse, what is the value and uniqueness of real estate, cars, games, collectibles, etc., which are similar to real assets? Obviously the answer is NFT.
With the changes in the demographic structure, the generation after the 90s and the Z era gradually became the main population structure of the society. At the same time, with the development of technology, the original inhabitants of the Metaverse after the 90s and the Z era will be born out of the first generation of the Metaverse. , 2nd, 3rd, the world of virtual reality will become our main survival scene. The total equity of assets in the virtual world is likely to exceed the total equity of real-world assets at that time.
The evolution of NFT
The current industry pattern of NFT is mainly in the fields of collectibles, games, public utilities, Metaverse, art, DeFi and so on. In the two-dimensional Internet and blockchain world, the pattern of NFT is just an extension of real assets.
But we believe that in the world of three-dimensional chain-network integration and meta-universe, NFT is not only an extension of real assets, but also the starting point of native virtual world assets.
In the two-dimensional Internet and blockchain world, NFT is included in real-world assets, which is an inclusive relationship. In the three-dimensional meta-universe world, NFT will transcend the attributes of assets and become a new asset medium and Symbolic.
NFT in the two-dimensional Internet and blockchain world
Although NFT is now widely used in collectibles, games, public utilities, meta-universe, art, Defi and other fields, we know that NFT works in the fields of collectibles, games, public utilities, and art are now extensions of real assets. There are now crypto artists like Beeple, but most of the applications are still traditional art and collectibles platforms, such as Christie’s attempts on the blockchain. Although such NFTs have brought hot traffic and attention to them, However, the nature of poor liquidity has not been resolved, and the attributes of long-tail assets remain unchanged. And the concept of meta-universe has just emerged. The NFT generated in meta-universe is indeed the real future of NFT; but the hardware and software foundation required by meta-universe still needs a long industry growth cycle to be realized, so we can boldly predict Several stages of NFT development in the future:
- Asset mapping for traditional assets, such as various current NFT projects, NBA Top Shot, Christie’s, Coolkey, Disney, etc.;
- With the rise and advancement of the crypto art platform, the game track will be an important attempt, which can be regarded as the predecessor of the meta-universe; such as Decentraland, which is currently trying;
- NFT mapped to crypto native assets in the meta-universe period.
It’s just that the market share of NFTs of different natures at different stages is different. In the first stage, the traditional asset-mapping NFT must occupy the mainstream of the market; while in the first and second stages, it is possible that traditional asset-mapping NFT still occupies the mainstream of the market, but the proportion of assets in hot money is also slowly rising, but the virtual asset mapping in Metaverse is still in a relatively small period. When the meta-universe period arrives, the game-based NFT in the second stage changes rapidly to the virtual asset-based NFT in the third stage, and then the virtual asset-based NFT becomes the mainstream of the market.
We can look back on Tencent’s small game “Jump Jump” many years ago. In the later stage of the game, every box has begun to accept advertisements. I can see KFC and other types of boxes begin to appear; today you can have yourself in Decentraland. You can also auction your land and house. We can foresee that in the near future, the real world will only undertake the reality mapping of virtual world assets, the virtual world will become the mainstream, and the real world will become the acceptance field of material reality.
NFT structure and investment opportunities
Judging from the current market structure of the entire NFT, the largest number of users is still NBA Top Shot, but Axie Infinity and Opensea have surpassed NBA Top Shot in terms of transaction volume.
NFT has a very high popularity, but its total active trading volume may not be as good as a small mainstream cryptocurrency project; the market is still in a very early stage.
The current NFT is still a niche market, but its growth rate is amazing. The popularity continues to rise after the DeFi and other sectors are cold. In the future, it is expected to see teams and listed companies with technical advantages, IP empowerment advantages, and platforms with operational capabilities gradually Incoming.
Technical advantages
This is of course reflected in better NFT presentation forms and transaction circulation, such as faster, smarter, and more convenient NFT creation platforms, sales platforms, aggregation platforms, quotation platforms and even storage platforms, online exhibition platforms, etc.; That said, the creation and transaction of NFTs still have high technical and cognitive thresholds, but we believe that with the development of technology, these thresholds of NFTs will become the same as today’s Internet, easy to use and simple; in addition to the technology The above opportunities also lie in more expressive NFT works. Current NFTs are mostly collections, artworks, and game expressions. The expressiveness of the product itself is still relatively primitive. With the future VR/AR technology With the development of NFT, more and more expressive NFT works will appear, and technical teams and platforms with the ability to enrich and diversify NFT works will be expected to become hot investment targets in the market.
IP empowerment advantages
At present, the most leading project in the NFT field is FLOW created by the Dapper Labs team. Its most star project NBA Top Shot has reached 337,416 users and 217,586 active users, accounting for about the entire NFT track users. About 65% of the number. The reason why FLOW can reach such a large number of users in the market is simply because of two reasons. One is the huge user base and IP advantage of the NBA, and the other is Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties, which became popular in 2017, was created by this team). ) Has extensive experience in NFT operations.
Now we see that world-renowned brands such as Disney and Lamborghini are beginning to enter the NFT market. In the future, we believe that more and more brands will join the track. This kind of brand with traditional well-known IP advantages is a good way to enter the NFT field. The starting point, but it does not mean that they will definitely be able to gain in the NFT field. Because the largest IP in the future of NFT is very likely to be generated in the virtual world meta-universe, not in the traditional IP field. Therefore, in this regard, we are extremely concerned about game and meta-universe project opportunities with good user experience, such as the hot Bored Ape Yacht Club, a virtual land sold to Decentraland for more than 900,000 US dollars. These blocks The native NFT opportunities in the chain field are also fascinating and anticipated.
Platform with operational capabilities
Take the Bored Ape Yacht Club we talked about above. The reason why the project has caught the user’s psychology is that the low price has room for imagination and is easy to be hyped. The previous cryptocurrency projects such as Dogecoin and Shib are exactly the same. . Bored Ape Yacht Club priced all the initial 10,000 apes NFTs at 0.08 ETH, and these apes sold out in less than two hours, with a total income of 800 ETH, or about 2.8 million U.S. dollars.
In addition to the speculative effect of wealth at low prices, Bored Ape Yacht Club is also very good at using celebrity effects to operate. For example, when they sold the first 10,000 NFTs, 20 minutes after the sale, the famous NFT collectible project Avastars was founded Human J1mmy.eth tweeted that he bought more than 100 apes. With the blessing of this celebrity effect, of course, many people will be attracted to follow the trend, and the price itself is not expensive. After these celebrities purchased these apes, they replaced their avatars with these apes expressions, and then further generated a greater heat effect, so for a time Bored Ape Yacht Club became the most dazzling star project team in the NFT field.
The main opportunities for technological advantages are reflected in the investment opportunities in infrastructure, and the opportunities for platforms with IP-enabled advantages and operational capabilities are mainly reflected in application landing scenarios and the track of commercial enabling capabilities.
The NFT field, according to the focus, can be divided into public chains that carry NFTs, NFT-based applications, market platforms mainly used for NFT transactions, and infrastructure supporting NFTs. We use them according to different directions. More representative projects to explain the development and trend of NFT in different directions.
Blockchain public chain (Chain)
The public chain is the cornerstone of carrying NFT assets and the cradle of various NFT applications. Around the public chain, many NFT-related ecology can be built, but these ecology will gain some advantages and disadvantages due to the characteristics of the public chain itself.
The most popular public chain at the moment is Ethereum. Ethereum has the largest blockchain application ecology. We will not introduce more here, but look at the public chain ideas of other teams.
FLOW
Project introduction: Flow Network is a new blockchain built for the next generation of applications, games and the Crypto assets that support them. Supported by Dapper Labs, it aims to support game applications to drive the entire Crypto asset ecosystem.
Project features: The two main features of Flow, one is that its founding team has a strong ability to innovate and can continue to create explosive blockchain applications, which can guarantee the ecological development of Flow itself, and the other is its public chain. Technological innovation.
Dapper Labs, the founding team behind Flow, is a group of developers with original intentions and innovative ideas. At present, ERC721, one of the two most popular Ethereum token standards, came from the team. Then in 2017, they created the most popular blockchain game CryptoKitties based on ERC721 in 2017, and in the year when lCO was rampant. NFT is on the stage of history. And this year’s NBA Top Shot is also an official NBA. The blockchain application jointly launched with the team has also been a great success. Therefore, Dapper Labs is very experienced in how to make a popular blockchain application. of. Today, Dapper Labs holds world-renowned IP such as Disney and Hello Kitty, and has received hundreds of millions of dollars in financing. I believe that they can still be expected to continue to produce excellent NFT game projects.
In addition to continuously launching popular blockchain applications, Dapper Labs also has their own ideas about the public chain. They were originally in the Ethereum ecology. When CryptoKitties became popular, they clearly realized that Ethereum is not enough to carry the blockchain. The future of games, even including Ethereum 2.0, cannot meet their needs.
At present, the expansion of the blockchain depends on a certain kind of sharding or sidechain, but the Dapper Labs team has long realized that these methods make the interaction between smart contracts more complicated and error-prone. In other words, sharding is a good payment solution, but it is not suitable for the ecology of complex applications such as games or social networks. Therefore, the Dapper Labs team considered to develop a public chain independently from zero to one, making it more friendly to developers and empowering blockchain applications with billions of users, and this is Flow.
After nearly two years of research, Dapper Labs has launched the Flow blockchain design, which can meet the expectations of mainstream developers and consumers without disrupting the network or affecting decentralization.
In order to improve performance, Flow decomposes the blockchain verification task to be completed by a single node into four different businesses, and according to the logic of the pipeline, divides all nodes into four types of nodes, collection nodes, execution nodes, and verifier nodes. Consensus node. Let each node only use a separate business, so as to achieve the purpose of improving the efficiency of blockchain operation by means of pipeline division of labor.
Such an architecture can allow Flow to scale to higher throughput and lower costs, while maintaining a shared execution environment for all operations on Flow. This ensures full composability and the best user experience, enabling developers to easily build each other’s work.
At present, Dapper Labs has launched NBA Top Shot and successfully imported hundreds of thousands of users into Flow. At the same time, it has also brought CryptoKitties into the Flow ecosystem, gradually benefiting from the new game world and other applications.
Therefore, Flow’s starting point is to meet Dapper Labs’ expectations for future blockchain applications. At the same time, the team behind it has the ability to develop new blockchain standards and explosive blockchain applications. With these as the premise, Flow can be said to have the potential to become a leading NFT project. At present, Flow is slightly weaker. Ecological construction. There are very few ecological projects on Flow. Basically, Dapper Labs is still relying on Dapper Labs to carry the banner. However, Flow has not been running for long, and it will take some time. We can wait for its development.
Wax
Project introduction: WAX stands for Worldwide Asset eXchange, a global virtual asset trading platform, a blockchain specially made for trading virtual items.
Project features: Wax is a blockchain project launched by OPskins, the world’s largest e-sports jewelry trading market, which was once invested by Pantera Capital. It is a DPoS blockchain based on the architecture of the EOS project.
The Wax team did not put much effort on the public chain itself. They directly borrowed from the mature high-performance chain EOS. Because its performance is much higher than that of Ethereum, the TPS can reach thousands, so there is not too much trouble in performance. Blockchain applications running on Wax can have a better experience than applications on Ethereum.
Wax belongs to standing on the shoulders of giants. In addition to standing on the shoulders of EOS, Wax also stands on the shoulders of traditional games. The Wax team is born with the genetic blessing of games. They are doing traditional game virtual item trading business. They have a large number of user groups, and they can be said to be handy in doing virtual item trading business. Therefore, when they start to do NFTs with the same transactional attributes, they will be familiar with it. At present, well-known game manufacturers Capcom, Atari, and some celebrities have cooperated with Wax to launch different NFT products, such as the classic IP Street Fighter series NFT, Star Trek actor James T. Kirk’s NFT and so on.
Wax has the innate soil in terms of user resources. At the technical level, it has also taken advantage of the performance advantages of EOS, and coupled with the continuous cooperation of well-known IPs with Wax, the current Wax ecosystem still has a place in the NFT field. At present, the Wax ecosystem is a self-contained system. Although the NFT on Wax is less discussed at the social media level, the number of people participating in NFT transactions on Wax can surpass the number of people participating in NFT transactions on Ethereum, which is highly popular. , The customer unit price is relatively cheap.
Binance Smart Chain （BSC）
Project introduction: Binance Smart Chain is a blockchain launched by the world-renowned centralized exchange Binance Binance-Binance Smart Chain BSC. Binance also has another public chain called Binance Chain. The two chains run in parallel.
Binance Smart Chain is an innovative solution that brings programmability and interoperability to Binance Chain. BSC relies on a system composed of 21 validators and adopts a new type of PoS consensus mechanism—Staked-of-Staked-Authority (PoSA) consensus, which can support shorter block time and lower fees .
Project situation: BSC has three main characteristics. The first is to use the PoSA consensus mechanism to replace the high energy consumption and low performance PoW consensus mechanism. Compared with Ethereum, it has a very large performance and cost advantage.
The second is that BSC is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine EVM. This means that developers on Ethereum can access the same Ethereum tools and DApps on BSC, allowing developers to easily migrate their projects from Ethereum to BSC. Therefore, BSC can easily divert the largest blockchain application ecosystem on Ethereum and quickly start the ecosystem.
The third is that BSC has the support of Binance, which is currently the largest cryptocurrency exchange. The development of any project is inseparable from funds and participants, and Binance has millions of active trading users, which can divert users for high-quality blockchain applications on BSC, and these blockchain applications can be on Binance. Conduct transactions, empower Binance, introduce funds and users, and form a virtuous spiral upward spiral.
Based on the above three characteristics, the current DeFi development speed on BSC is getting faster and faster. Many DeFi applications, such as transactions, lending and other directions, have begun to catch up with the development of Ethereum. Similarly, the logic verified by DeFi is likely to happen again in terms of NFTs. Therefore, despite the late start of BSC, the development of NFTs on BSC is likely to be backed by the Binance Exchange and later.
Just in June this year, Binance officially launched the NFT platform. We can directly trade NFT on the Binance exchange. With this support, I believe that the NFT application on BSC will soon usher in the spring.
Polkadot
Project introduction: Polkadot is a blockchain public chain project launched by the original CTO of Ethereum, Dr. Gavin Wood. It aims to build a blockchain network that can connect all blockchains together, with strong scalability and Interoperability (that is, cross-chain). Although Polkadot still belongs to the public chain logically, its actual effect has achieved a lower-level infrastructure (Layer0) than the public chain (Layer1).
Project situation: Dr. Gavin is the biggest contributor to the realization of Ethereum at the code level step by step, and the EVM virtual machine and Solidity smart contract language on which the popular NFT ecosystem is based were invented by Dr. Gavin, but on Ethereum He is more a practitioner than a designer. He who knows Ethereum best when he invented EVM and Solidity at the time was also very clear that these two technologies were not the ultimate solution.
Therefore, when Dr. Gavin started from scratch and constructed his own idea of Polkadot, he adopted a new idea. For example, Polkadot itself is compatible with EVM, and the parachain on Polkadot ecology can add EVM modules to allow the ecology on Ethereum to be transferred to Polkadot ecology, but Polkadot’s own thinking is that EVM itself is backward. Yes, there should be a new solution. For example, if you want to issue assets on Polkadot, you no longer need a token standard like ERC20, but directly use a Balance module to solve this problem. Similarly, there are new innovations in the expression of NFT-related assets on Polkadot.
The NFT standard RMRK is a new NFT standard in the Polkadot ecology. It was developed by Bruno Škvorc, a technical educator of the Web3 Foundation behind Polkadot. The first NFT artwork on the Polkadot Advanced Network Kusama is based on this Standard development.
In addition to basic NFT commands such as casting, sending, putting on shelves, buying, and destroying, the RMRK standard will also implement nested NFTs (other NFTs can be accommodated in the NFT), conditional rendering and reactive NFTs (show NFTs according to different conditions) ), multi-resource NFT (NFT can have image, sound, text, video and other resources at the same time), NFT DAO (NFT can be decomposed into Token, and used for DAO governance), NFT custom field (variable configuration on NFT Field, so that the caster can customize the NFT and get smart contract functions without smart contracts) and other new NFT attributes, which greatly increases the scope and usability of the NFT, and is also for the related developers and creators of the NFT Brings more possibilities.
Of course, new technologies need time to train developers, develop ecology, and educate consumers. Polkadot has just started the slot auction of Kusama, and implemented its cross-chain function. The development of Polkadot is still very early. Mentioned here, I mainly want to mention the progress of the NFT standard due to the progress of the public chain itself, which is also an important development direction of NFT, which needs to be shown to everyone.
Summary: From the perspective of the public chain, the development of NFT is mainly based on two legs. One leg is to explore what kind of public chain or standard NFT needs. The path is based on technological innovation. The other leg is based on the existing one. Technology to build a richer NFT ecosystem to explore what other gameplay or business models of NFT. It’s just that for now, the path of the former is to expand in unknown areas after all. It is indeed more difficult, and it takes a certain amount of time to verify and develop. But from a global perspective, the two legs expand the technical boundaries and commercial possibilities of NFT respectively, and the two complement each other to make NFT go faster and farther.
Decentralized Application (DApp)
At the DApp level, NFT is mainly divided into issuing assets, using assets, and the direction of both. We have selected some representative projects to show you some of the current development directions of NFT.
NBA Top Shot
Keywords: blind box, collectibles
Introduction: NBA Top Shot is a collection NFT project developed by Dapper Labs, the team behind CryptoKitties and Flow, officially authorized by the NBA. The project is deployed on the Flow public chain.
Business model: NBA Top Shot is to make the star’s highlight moments into NFT, and set them as Common, Rare and Legendary according to their brilliance. Users can extract different NFTs by purchasing card packs. Users can also buy other people’s NFTs on the trading market, or sell their NFTs to others on the trading market. The price is determined by factors such as rarity, current star, and serial number.
NBA Top Shot actually moved the traditional physical star card business to the chain, taking advantage of the blockchain’s non-tamperable and easy-to-verify advantages to improve liquidity and lower transaction thresholds. Compared with the physical star card that uses static pictures, in addition to graphic introductions, NBA Top Shot also contains the highlight moments of the stars and presents them in a three-dimensional dynamic way such as GIF or short videos. Therefore, it is also more collectible. Sex. Coupled with the official endorsement of the NBA, the NBA Top Shot has been sought after by original star card enthusiasts as soon as it was launched. In less than a month after it was launched, the daily transaction volume exceeded one million US dollars, and the total number of participants It quickly reached hundreds of thousands.
CryptoPunks
Keywords: Collectibles
Introduction: CryptoPunks is the world’s first NFT project. It is a collection of 10,000 artistic avatars composed of 24×24 and 8bit irregular pixels. Each avatar has a unique appearance and characteristics (or no unique characteristics, which can also be regarded as a characteristic), and the project is deployed on Ethereum.
Business model: As the creation of NFT, CryptoPunks has taken the first step in the art of encryption. Its birth even predates the birth of the most mature token standard ERC721. Although these avatars are all pixel-level, they look rough, but in combination with the cryptocurrency field at the time when various lCO projects were flying all over the sky, crypto assets different from other cryptocurrencies could be born, and they are also quite collectible. Participants of this veteran NFT project can also show off one of their NFTs generously, as a social currency to tell everyone that they are an industry OG (that is, an industry veteran).
CryptoPunks does not have any other gameplay, nor is it written by a well-known IP or a well-known author. It is just an asset generated on a pure chain. At the beginning of the official promotion, the acceptance was not high. Most of the 9,000 works were given to the community in the form of donations, and then I found a big V to write a soft article, propaganda and holding it symbolizes that I am an industry OG, and gradually Only by improving its social currency attributes can it be known and bought and sold by more people. In the end, it has been widely spread due to its scarcity and social currency attributes. At present, as more and more people are involved in trading, the price of a single NFT has reached tens of thousands of dollars, and CryptoPunks#7804 even sold a high price of 7.57 million US dollars. The officials gradually took out the earliest 1,000 NFTs and auctioned them out with the help of the traditional auction house Christie’s NFTs, thus obtaining a generous return.
Cryptokitties
Keywords: collectibles, games
Introduction: CryptoKitties is the world’s first blockchain game produced by the Dapper Labs (spun-off from AxiomZen) team. It is also the first blockchain game based on the most widely used ERC721 token standard in the NFT field. Users can pass There are three operations such as buying, breeding, and selling, collecting Crypto cats and breeding new Crypto cats. Each Crypto cat is unique and 100% owned by the user. It cannot be copied, taken away, or destroyed. The project was originally deployed on Ethereum, and has now been migrated to the public chain Flow, which is also developed by the DapperLabs team.
Business model: As the world’s first blockchain game, CryptoKitties also let the world know what NFT is for the first time, and also let the world know that the original blockchain combined game can be played like this. CryptoKitties has the first 100 creation cats, generation 0 cats, and one generation 0 cat is born every 15 minutes. At present, the number of generation 0 cats has reached the official upper limit of 50,000, and no new ones will be born in the future. The 0 generation cat is now. Each Crypto cat has unique appearance characteristics (pattern, prominent color, eye color, eye shape, basic color, accent color, mouth and fur) and special attributes such as algebra (generations), reproduction speed, and official A feature category that has not yet been disclosed, and these features and parameters together form the genes of a Crypto cat. Each appearance feature will have a different degree of scarcity, and these determine the scarcity and value of the Crypto cat. .
In addition, CryptoKitties has a reproductive system. The combination of a male cat and a female cat can give birth to the next generation of cats, and the new cat will inherit part of the parents’ genes and have a certain probability of giving birth to rare attributes. In this way, many players who want to cultivate scarce attributes are attracted to continue buying and breeding. Because of this, CryptoKitties quickly gained widespread dissemination as soon as it went online, and its popularity even caused congestion in Ethereum for a time. Also let the world remember this application.
HashMasks
Keywords: blind box, auction, collectibles, mining, NFT+FT
Introduction: Hashmasks is a blind box + Crypto collection project created by the Suum Cuique Labs team, created by more than 70 artists around the world, with a total supply of 16,384 NFTs, each of which is a unique personal portrait.
Business model: The business model of HashMasks is a model that revolves around NFT paintings and combines two gameplay methods.
NFT paintings are personal portraits created by more than 70 artists around the world. These paintings are composed of five different elements, namely characters (men, robots, etc.), masks, glasses colors, props, and skin colors, thus creating a unique 16384 NFT.
In the early days of HashMasks, if you want to obtain these NFT paintings, you can’t buy them like buying and selling art, because at first these paintings can only be obtained through auction, and the auctioned NFT cannot know What it looks like is in the blind box state at the beginning. The answer will not be revealed until the end of the auction 14 days later. The auction method uses curved auctions, which are auctioned in batches at gradually increasing prices. From the earliest 3000 NFTs sold at 0.1 ETH, to the last 3 NFTs sold at 100 ETH, in the end, all the works were sold. After the auction, a total of 10243 ETH was obtained. This is the first gameplay of HashMasks, the blind box curve auction.
The second gameplay is a set of FT economic models designed around the naming rights of these works. For a painting, you can’t just have an image without a name. The name is also the attribute most directly related to the work. Whether it’s the smile of the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper, these famous paintings just listen to the name. Can think of the screen. Therefore, the 16384 NFT paintings of HashMasks were initially unnamed, and those who succeeded in the auction could give them names to complete the finishing touch of a work.
In addition to the NFT that can be named after the auction, HashMasks also issued a pass called NCT (Name Changing Token), which is specifically used to change the name of the purchased NFT. The method of issuance is that for every NFT purchased, users can immediately get 3660 NCTs, and can get 10 NCTs daily for 10 years. This mechanism also allows HashMasks’ work to be regarded as a mining machine, even if it is auctioned off, it can be used to mine NCT. Since the number of NFTs is fixed, the time of issuance is also fixed, which means that the total amount of NCTs is also fixed. If you want to change the name of the NFT once, you need to pay 1830 NCT, and this part of the NCT will be destroyed. The expectation of the project team is that with the gradual destruction of NCT, all NFT works of HashMasks cannot be renamed in the end, and at this moment, these NFT paintings are truly completed as a work.
Let users participate in the completion of a part of the painting. Such a novel gameplay quickly attracted the participation of many users. HashMasks obtained a bumper harvest through this mechanism. However, judging from the current situation a few months later, whether it is HashMasks’s NFT or NCT’s trading situation in the secondary market is not ideal, the transaction amount has shrunk sharply, and the number of participants is also very small. It seems that the project is in the mechanism. In terms of design or business logic, there is no closed loop. If no one wants to change the name, will the demand for NCT decline? Therefore, HashMasks seems to have an anticlimactic feeling, but if you just sell these works, HashMasks has been successful, anyway, this innovative idea is worth learning and learning from.
Sorare
Keywords: blind box, collectibles, games
Introduction: Sorare is a fantasy football game based on Ethereum, which was launched in March 2019. Players can form their own teams by purchasing NFT player cards and participate in virtual competitions.
Business model: The two most influential ball sports in the world are basketball and football. The basketball field already has NBA TOP SHOT, and the football field has Sorare. Sorare also has Crypto cards similar to stars, which are also divided into different levels of rarity. Unlike NBA TOP SHOT, Sorare also has a game part, and the stars represented by each card have different attributes and functions, and can be 5 Two stars representing different positions form a game and compete with others to win prizes, including many rare cards, which can naturally be traded online.
Sorare has won many stars and has cooperated with football clubs. It has included more than half of the clubs in Serie A, as well as more than 140 clubs from Europe, the United States and Asia such as Liverpool, Real Madrid, and Bayern Munich. And just in June of this year, Sorare also reached a cooperation with the French Football Association and the German Football Association to jointly launch the official player NFT.
With the official endorsement, the scarcity of these star cards is guaranteed, and the willingness to trade and purchase the cards is increased through game competition. With the upsurge of the Champions League, Sorare seems to have caught up with this express train, with long-term turnover. In the top five.
Axie Infinity
Keywords: games, social
Introduction: Axie Infinity is a Pokémon-inspired Crypto pet world game built on the Ethereum blockchain. It is different from the simple gameplay of CryptoKitties. Axie Infinity collects, trains, raises, fights, and socializes. In one, each Axie has unique genetic data stored on the Ethereum chain, with unique value. Anyone can get token rewards by participating in the game and contributing to the game world. According to data from Dappradar, Axie Infinity’s monthly transaction humans have now exceeded 58K, the monthly transaction volume has exceeded 100 million U.S. dollars, and the monthly transaction volume has reached 385,964. It has become one of the most popular NFT trading categories.
Business model: Axies Infinity defines itself as a fantasy creature living in Lunacia-an open world owned, operated and controlled by players. It is not only an interesting game platform, but also a huge interactive network, players can use the application to interact with the entire Axie Infinity universe. After entering the game, players need to buy Axies. Different levels of Axies have different prices. They need potions for reproduction, and potions also need to be purchased. The bred Axies need to be nurtured for a period of time before they can have combat capabilities. There are different props in the game world You can buy them to strengthen the defense capabilities of your land, and team up to defeat the enemy to get corresponding rewards.
It can be seen from the value inflow and outflow model of Axies Infinity that the inflow of value is mainly through the purchase of Axies, props, land and other game needs to increase the input of game value. Gamers can hold AXS or play against the game. Get the token rewards of AXS, and at the same time, you can also get rewards by cultivating the next generation (a total of 7 generations can be cultivated in the game, and a design mechanism to prevent fleeing) and then selling the next generation.
As the props in the game are not expensive and the scenes are more interesting, the number of players gradually increases, making the overall value of the business higher and higher due to the increase in the number of participants. The price of AXS reached a maximum of 11 US dollars, and the current price is also fluctuating around 4 US dollars. Therefore, there are some teams in Southeast Asia who are forming studios to earn AXS rewards and income. Although there is a lot of speculation in it at present, this innovative game mode and primary social attribute design seems to let us see the prototype of the meta-universe, and we can also boldly imagine that with the upgrade of the game and Ronin’s With the upgrade of the second-tier expansion side chain, Axies Infinity can also develop a larger ecological scene.
Bored ape-yacht-club
Keywords: collectibles, social
Introduction: Bored Ape Yacht Club was founded by Gordon (cryptocurrency trader), Garga (media practitioner), Tomato and Sass (software engineer); after witnessing the birth of classic projects such as CryptoPunks, CryptoKitties, Hashmasks, they decided Set a scenario: “The story takes place ten years later. Every ape who devotes to the encryption field will have wealth and freedom, but at that time all liquid mining is no longer available for mining, so the apes begin to become boring. Get up. So what do the apes do every day? The answer from the four of them is: play with the apes buddies in a secret club in the swamp.”
And the entertainment they designed for these wealthy free monkeys was “graffiti on the walls of the Bored Ape Yacht Club Bathroom.” Every ape NFT holder can draw on the canvas as he pleases, and draw a pixel every 15 minutes.” These apes are called wealth-free apes. This is a very good concept, and it is obtained in one fell swoop. Very much sought after and favored by people.
Business model: The key to the success of Bored ape-yacht-club is:
Grabbing everyone’s psychology of wealth, freedom and venting evil, most of these apes’ heads are depressive, and then you can do graffiti in most places in the club. For example, if you have an NFT with a monkey’s head, you You can draw any pattern on the wall of the toilet in the club or even on the toilet, including the drawing of indecent drawings.
The initial price of each ape is not high, only 0.08 ETH. Even the highest speculation price now is less than the price of 50 ETH. Compared with the transaction price of CryptoPunks and Hashmasks, which are often hundreds of ETH, the transaction price of these apes is very low. Very good liquidity, so that an ape is traded every few minutes;
The community consensus and the ownership of the corresponding income rights, the famous NFT collectors J1mmy.eth, Pranksy, DANNY and even some Hong Kong movie stars such as Shawn Yue and other well-known celebrities have purchased these ape heads and replaced their heads with these ape emoticons The blessing of celebrity effect makes these apes more and more valuable, and the market is also extremely hot. At the same time, holders of these apes NFTs can also generate new NFTs from the secondary creation of these apes. The income rights of the new NFTs belong to the original NFT owners. These NFTs can also be authorized to other industries, such as Someone authorizes the ape avatar to some DIY clothing team, and then the authorized income is also owned by the NFT owner.
We can regard Bored ape-yacht-club as a special kind of copyright. This kind of copyright has strong social and IP attributes, which makes it obtain special commercial value; a consensus has been formed. This has inspired us to develop and observe the possibility of developing NFTs with the traditionally strong IP and niche economy.
Decentraland
Keywords: virtual reality, Metaverse, social, games
Introduction: Decentraland is a virtual world driven on Ethereum, where you can explore 3D creation, play games and socialize. It is built, owned and profitable by its users. It is made up of a limited number of plots called “LAND” on which users can build their own experience. They have full creative freedom and can earn income from anything they create. The Decentraland market is an open, decentralized market where you can buy, sell and manage these lands.
The biggest difference between VR projects in other virtual spaces is that Decentraland is a decentralized system, which proves that Decentraland’s space is owned by everyone, and it is a virtual space hidden in the Internet world, rather than a company running through a server. The space that comes out has no intermediary fees. This is the biggest feature of Decentraland. The use of this space does not require anyone’s consent. As long as you run the program and connect to the network, you can use it; secondly, the decentralized structure allows Decentraland to run. It is more stable and less vulnerable to attacks. Another point is that Decentraland uses blockchain to record user ownership. Through an identification system, users will be able to track and verify whether a content has obtained the consent of the original creator through an crypto signature. This is the first blockchain-based virtual world platform. You can have your own virtual space, and you can control your own virtual space, publish your own applications to create value, such as publishing your knowledge on the virtual space platform Property rights games, on the other hand, players can make low-cost payments directly on the virtual world platform.
Business model: Unlike other virtual reality games that are firmly controlled by game developers, Decentraland completely returns the decision-making power in virtual reality to users. Users can freely create their own land and enjoy land sales and trade. Users can use simple Builder tools to create scenes, artworks, challenges, etc., and then participate in activities to win prizes. For more experienced creators, the SDK provides tools to fill the world with social games and applications. At the same time, Decentraland is controlled by DAO, which owns Decentraland’s most important smart contracts and assets. Through DAO, you can decide and vote on how the world works.
The most successful point in the Decentraland business model is to hand over the ownership, revenue rights, and governance rights of game assets to users, which motivates users to participate in the construction of this virtual world to the greatest extent, and users’ marketing costs and participation costs are reduced to a minimum. The lowest, the biggest advantage of the user-centric business model is to minimize the cost of consumption, so that all the platform benefits are returned to users and contributors, and this distribution mechanism is still determined by users and the community, making the consensus reached Unprecedented height. At the same time, due to the immersive experience of the virtual reality world and the development of technology, Decentraland is expected to become an upgraded version of “Minecraft” in the web3.0 world. We must know that the number of users of “Minecraft” worldwide has reached 130 million people. It can be expected what kind of killer application Decentraland will be under the comprehensive technical realization.
Market
Opensea
Project introduction: OpenSea is currently the world’s largest market for crypto Crypto collections. It was established in January 2018 and covers the widest categories, the most transferable Crypto collections, and the best prices. Investment institutions include Coinbase, 1confirmation, etc. OpenSea cooperates with game developers to create customizable online stores for users to automatically purchase and sell their crypto collections; it is equivalent to the Taobao platform of the NFT industry.
Data: According to the data of DappRadar, the number of traders on Opensea is 140,120, and the trading users rank third only in NBA Top Shot and AtomicMarket; but the total transaction amount reached 648.91M US dollars, ranking first in the NFT market.
Subjective description: With the increase in the number of users, the addition of different NFT types, and the increase in the ease of use of Opensea’s own tools, Opensea is expected to become the “Amazon” or “Taobao” platform of the NFT industry. Now the number of users has only reached 140,000. We can believe that with the development of blockchain technology, the innovation of business models, and the advancement of Metaverse, the number of participating users in the NFT industry will increase by more than a hundred times in the future; The opportunity brought by market expansion is a true early-rising bonus, which is worthy of our follow-up and layout.
Rarible
Project introduction: Rarible is an NFT trading platform and minting platform running on Ethereum. Users can mint coins, buy and sell Crypto collectibles, without any coding skills, and realize zero-threshold minting of their own NFT. At the same time, users can conduct market liquidity mining (Marketplace Liquidity Mining) by holding Rarible’s governance token RARI.
rarible is currently also cooperating with YFI’s online DeFi insurance project, yInsure, to present its insurance policies in the form of NFT tokens. The creation of insurance policy NFT tokens is carried out on the Rarible platform, which allows users to transfer insurance policies, mortgage, etc. operating. This is a major breakthrough in the NFT field, which means that NFT has found an entry point in the DeFi field, which can solve the long-standing problems faced by traditional insurance policies; an effective attempt to integrate NFT-DeFi has been carried out.
Data: In terms of data, according to dapprapar, the number of rarible transactions is 58,178, ranking fifth in the entire NFT trading market; the transaction volume is 162.7M US dollars, ranking fourth.
Subjective description: Rarible was created in early 2020. Because the process, experience, design interaction and other aspects of creating and trading NFT on Rarible are very friendly to zero-based personnel, during 2020 its transaction volume once surpassed the old NFT platform OpenSea and became the largest Digital collectibles trading platform. Especially after the DeFi insurance policy was jointly created with YFI, it once became an innovative product of NFT-DeFi integration, and the limelight overshadowed OpenSea. However, with the cooling of DeFi, Rarible’s trading volume began to decline, returning to the normal market trading volume level. We can judge that in the future, as the DeFi field becomes more heated, and with the innovation and development of DeFi and the increase in categories, Rarible is very likely to become a big beneficiary.
Regarding the current risks of Rarible, RARI liquidity mining lasts for 200 weeks and is expected to end in May 2024. This undoubtedly has a certain inhibitory effect on the price of RARI tokens; therefore, in the absence of the entire market and the number of Rarible trading users is not expected to increase on a large scale, it is necessary to be cautious to participate in this liquid mining to suppress the price of the currency. Investment in the secondary market.
Christie’s
Project introduction: Christie’s auction house (CHRISTIE’S), founded by James Christie in London in 1766, is the world’s oldest art auction house and one of the world’s famous art auction houses. Rare works of art, watches, jewellery, cars and wines from all over the world.
Business model: Although Christie’s is an auction house with a long history, its long history does not mean that Christie’s will be as conservative in style as some traditional old shops. In fact, Christie’s has always been keeping up with trends and grasping the forefront of development trends.
As early as 2018, Christie’s turned to blockchain technology to ensure the security of its art sales and related sources of data. And they finally chose to cooperate with Artory, an independent Crypto registration agency for artworks, to conduct a pilot program of crypto registration of artwork transactions on its blockchain platform. However, this time Christie’s use of the blockchain is still only on the immutable function of the blockchain, and it has not really involved the role of the blockchain in carrying value and delivering value.
However, after seeing the blockchain, Christie’s will definitely not stop there. Two years later, Christie’s focused on the use of NFT and used two tough battles to start its own in the field of NFT. The reputation of NFT has also brought NFT out of the circle of the crypto art circle, allowing more people in the traditional field to understand its unique charm.
The first battle was a blockbuster, because it was the first time NFT conducted an auction in the traditional auction field. In October 2020, Christie’s held a large-scale Bitcoin-themed art auction in New York. This auction was mainly around Block 21, a Bitcoin-related artwork. Block 21 is the 21st of 40 works in the “Portraits of a Mind” series built by London artist Ben Gentilli. “Portraits of a Mind” is a series of 40 discs, each disc contains part of the Bitcoin code, and they add up to form a complete Bitcoin code. Because the author believes that Bitcoin should be stored in the same way as the Magna Carta documents, and the complete code of Bitcoin is undoubtedly the best interpretation of Bitcoin.
Such a creative concept fits well with Bitcoin, which has a geek attribute, and is also favored by many cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Block 21 is an NFT that includes physical works and crypto assets, and was eventually sold at a price of $131,250. Christie’s first NFT auction set the highest NFT auction price at that time.
The NFT auction on the traditional auction platform has attracted a lot of attention and discussion. Just as everyone is talking about the highest NFT auction price set by Christie’s, Christie’s is still looking for a better target.
As a result, Christie’s second tough battle started in February 2021, a few months later. And this second game raised the ceiling of the previous game to a height that surpassed everyone’s imagination. This is the collaboration between Christie’s and the well-known Crypto artist Beeple. Beeple was originally an ultra-popular Crypto art writer with 1.9 million fans on ins. Under the influence of his peers, he witnessed the charm of NFT and wanted to try to NFT his own work. So he hit it off with Christie’s. His most special painting “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” was auctioned off. This painting is a collection of all its paintings over the past 5,000 days, which is equivalent to a collection of Beeple’s wisdom over the years. In this auction, the huge traffic alone was enough to make Christie’s very rewarding. 33 buyers from 11 countries around the world participated in the auction, and 22 million visitors flocked to Christie’s official website to watch the auction. Finally, This work was auctioned for a sky-high price of US$69,346,250, which immediately went viral and made the headlines of well-known media in various countries.
Through two auctions that shocked everyone, Christie’s directly stood at the commanding heights in the field of NFT art auctions. Subsequently, various collaborations and concerns came in, such as the well-known NFT application, the world’s first NFT project CrypTopunk team cooperated with Christie’s, or various celebrities cooperated with Christie’s to launch personal NFT auctions and so on. After only two auctions, it has gained industry status, with huge income and huge traffic. The subsequent realization is too easy for Christie’s.