You’ve seen me use the hashtag #notjustajpeg from quite some time. When I do, it usually ends up opening a pandora’s box of comments from those who a) understand non-fungible tokens (tokens = used for value exchange, ownership, and can be used for enhancing the holders experience), their uses and almost limitless potential, versus, b) the naysayers who don’t get NFT’s and also thought that bottled water and hip-hop music would never last.
What motivated me to finally write this? After being on a recent Twitter Space where a large group of people were on their shilling and bragging about all the ‘benefits’ their project was offering holders, I vetted some of them and found most of them had a roadmap with almost everything ‘TBD’. Most of what they were ‘selling’ was hype; if they had a website, it was full of regurgitated buzz words everyone has already used, some even throwing in an #ape hashtag into their site for indexing. I was disappointed at the large amount of words, but perceived little value for me personally as an NFT investor.
Don’t hate me, I’m not complaining, just explaining. These copycat-type projects are futile (the absence of real value increasing benefits), highly unlikely to generate any real community and the probability of failure is high. Lesson? In the planning stages of your project, establish a clear path so everyone wins in your community (not just buyers). Build in long-term success beyond the sale.
So, how specifically do we create real utility (usefulness and/or profitableness.) Let's take a look at a 3 projects and glean how they are providing real utility that will increase the value for the holders, those of us that invest in the NFT.
Creating real value and utility behind the NFT.
This is not complicated to do. By design, NFT properties on the blockchain have built in uniqueness, traceability (record of transactions to prevent counterfeit, proof of ownership), Rarity (scarcity, to keep value high), Indivisibility (cannot be divided to dilute value, like half a concert ticket), programmability (mechanics coded into the NFT). So, a NFT can easily be a ticket for any physical or virtual asset. Let’s see this from looking at features of 3 project examples:
Titans — A completely community driven project and focuses on only 400 Titan holders, which will be able to get a Hero at a later day. The Titans can be staked and when they do that, they will generate Titan Tokens, these token can be used to upgrade the heroes, new suits, weapons, helmets, etc. The tokens can be used in their next phase, the Titan Vault, where there will be unique merchandise, then enter their virtual world in the their own version of the Metaverse. If your a gamer, Titans have built a ton of utility that will certainly elevate the value of the NFT. Join their discord here.
Space Albert — Your Albert Einstein NFT is your time travel ticket with VIP access to the member-only rewards and benefits in the world’s first Time Safari Metaverse. Engage in gameplay and increase your value by collecting QuantumXP, the unique in-game token that powers the Time Safari ecosystem allowing you to unlock new experiences, assets, and other benefits within the game. The Space Albert team is dedicated to continually generating long-term rewards for all who joined the project. Check out their website, the utilities they offer already at the outset are definitely valuable to holders, but also insanely fun. Join their discord here.
Nifty Market — An entirely new NFT service from Germany. They have very cool utilities for artist to reward their fans allowing them to unlock up to 4 levels for the NFT by predefining different sensor data. A few of their utilities include: Streak — which rewards a user after reaching a defined amount of steps. Landmark — allows owners of your artwork to interact with it through defining special locations or by guiding a user towards a specific place. (Each place they arrive to their NFT evolves.) And, Time Capsule — Digital content controlled by time. Whether the NFT content changes once a day at lunchtime or only once on a special date in the future — time is a powerful tool to make your NFT creation unique and bind it to history. And Nifty Market are just getting started. The tool is completely mobile based and will offer the holder and the creator a ton of valuable opportunities to increase the value of the NFT as well as get brands to sponsor some of the locations, like at a conference, for example. In talking with them, their goal is to disrupt the NFT status quo with a new mobile creative economy for artists and collectors alike. Keep any eye on these guys. *No crypto necessary.
I could go on and on mentioning a number of NFT projects with cool utilities, giveaways, creative ways to use NFT’s as a verified token for physical goods and services of all kinds. But, I’m saving some of those for my part at Miami NFT Week. I’ll share them after!
One final note to prevent futility — Provide exceptional support to walk people through your process.
People need support figuring out new things, and for them to get the most out of your project (converting them from casual observers to all-in brand advocates) you should provide great support. Make sure people can contact someone in a relatively short time, use terms in the community that help them feel more comfortable with crypto and your process in general. *Pet peeve, don’t be like some of these large marketplaces that are black holes. No one responds, they dump you on their discord (which is riddled with scammers), and expect you to figure out their platform on your own. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Please chime in on the comments on new, specific utilities that NFT’s can be used for, like DDID’s, and more. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive post with NFT evolution which is still developing like a polaroid, yet I hope this information was helpful for you. ✌️
