NFTs have enabled the digital art and content scene to explode far beyond anyone’s expectations. So much so that many within the cryptocurrency space consider them to be the next bullish phase of the industry.
They aren’t wrong in many respects.
It got us thinking.
What are other uses of NFTs?
We have previously covered individual NFT projects, but not with a round table of experts.
In our round table discussions, we discovered a few surprising use-cases of NFTs.
One of those deserve mention.
Fundraising for the people of Ukraine.
Our thoughts, hearts and prayers are with the victims of the conflict.
Our experts were gracious enough to give us their time in covering this topic.
The insights gained have been invaluable and can’t be measured by any metric.
Megan Barraford Serial Entrepreneur And Co-Founder Bullishly Bred
Most NFT projects focus on art and very few dedicate the time to use the technology to solve a problem.
Why would they when they can build a large community around a digital art piece and make a significant amount of money?
With Bullishly Bred, we aren’t driven by the need to make large amounts of money. In fact, we aren’t doing this for money at all.
The goal is to simply make the breeding space better. If you join any dog group on social media you will see many sad stories of unhealthy pets, high vet bills, scams and stolen companions.
Bullishly Bred solves these problems. We are using NFTs to list French bulldogs on the blockchain – hosting dna, genealogical information and ownership.
So why does the matter? Many people have asked us. It matters to those who have exotic breeds or designer breeds.
The dogs can’t be registered with the main registries like AKC thus their genealogical information isn’t properly recorded, their colors are misrepresented and many unethical practices happen as a result.
Imagine getting a new puppy to find out they are extremely sick. Upon DNA testing you find out they have more than 40% inbred rate.
This is a typical occurrence you will see with French Bulldogs – a breed well known for health problems.
Our project doesn’t stop there – it can be used for horses, cats abs other species with DNA data sharing requirements.
Mr. Khurram Adhami Partner & Growth Lead at DAO PropTech
Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been picking up steam since early 2021 with no end in sight.
NFTs represent unique digital ownership on the blockchain and play an imminent role in proving digital scarcity, uniqueness, and transfer of value.
Look beyond the hype, and we see that an NFT is more than just unique digital ownership of assets; It represents community, culture, and a sense of belonging.
Pair these with skyrocketing valuations for some NFT projects, we see celebrities investing in NFTs to sports clubs launching their tokens to incentivize supporters and promote loyalty towards the club, everyone wants to take a slice o the pie.
It is only a matter of time before new marketing paradigms will emerge around NFTs and brands will start to focus on building communities, culture, and engaging with their customers around NFTs rather than existing as faceless organizations.”
Related: How The NFT Definition of Art Impacts Its Equity Value
Serge Sosniak CMO at Hiveon Ukrainian Cryptocurrency Mining Company
How NFTs Have Played a Positive Role in the Ukraine War
In a world first, a number of NFT initiatives have enabled people from around the world to contribute directly to the Ukrainian government, raising funds for weapons and for humanitarian efforts.
It has also allowed the crypto community and those working in the crypto space to play an active role in the defense effort, directly defending freedom and peace.
The reality is that often when one contributes to humanitarian or other causes, one does not know where one’s money is going.
A large portion of donations are absorbed by administrative and staffing overheads.
With NFTs the ‘middleman’ is removed, and donations go directly to where they are intended.
About Our New NFT Project
Hiveon is very proud to have launched an NFT project to benefit Ukraine. We’re a crypto mining software solutions provider based in Kyiv.
While we’ve made direct donations to support the armed forces, and have staff members fighting on the frontlines, the Hiveon team wanted to do more.
We launched a series of art NFTs to raise money for our government’s military forces, evacuation, shelter, medications, etc.
All the funds go directly to the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation (which has created Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets for donations) and anyone buying an NFT can track the funds on the blockchain, so it is completely transparent.
We know that there are many people around the world who feel helpless and do not necessarily want to donate to large charities as they won’t know where their money is going.
NFTs allow these individuals to offer direct support to the Ukrainian government, see where their money is going AND own an NFT that will likely escalate in value over time.
Each NFT has its own unique backstory and was developed by Hiveon designers.
[This is probably a lot of detail but thought I’d include if you’re interested:]
Our Favorite NFTs
The Dove of Peace: The dove is commonly a symbol of peace, but in this NFT the dove is wearing military armor in support of the free Ukrainian people in their struggle for such a desired peace.
Fraternal Unity: The people of Ukraine are peaceful and hospitable.
But when the enemy crossed the borders of a sovereign state, launched rocket attacks on residential buildings, killing thousands of people, Ukrainians, like honey badgers, showed their ferocious temper in protecting their children, relatives, and close ones.
Among the People. Ukrainian reality: Spring has come, but ordinary people do not see flowering, buds, and new shoots.
The view from the windows of all Ukrainians has changed: now they see pillars of fire and smoke, destroying all life around and bringing death to their native land.
Girl in a red hat. Ukrainian reality: The destructive warfare is woven like a bloody thread into an everyday life that will never be the same.
The invasion of Ukraine destroyed everything dear to the hearts of the ordinary people: their homes, native streets, and cities; only ruins surrounded them.
An inexhaustible desire to protect their homeland and restore its former beauty empowers each Ukrainian to defend the Motherland no matter what.
The Freedom Cocktail: Due to the invasion, Ukrainian men stood up for the defense of the Motherland.
Meanwhile, women and children don’t stay away – each day they gather to prepare Molotov cocktails to protect their homes and everything dear to them.
Dream Team: Previously, the duck was a child’s toy. Since the start of the brutal invasion of Ukraine, this symbol has gained another meaning, turning into a military duck.
The collection showcases the team leading Ukraine to victory: the military, doctors and medical workers, territorial defense, volunteers, and others who showed tremendous courage in protecting their free and independent Ukraine.
How NFT Projects Can be a Force For Good
Artists, creators, crypto enthusiasts, software developers and individuals who one would think may not be able to play an active role in defending their country or in humanitarian efforts, can now become active participants in the effort in Ukraine.
This has significant implications for future conflicts and other emergencies around the world, as these individuals are suddenly powerful new actors that can change the course of a conflict.
The Benefits of the NFTs For the Ukrainian People
The funds raised through Hiveon’s NFT initiative, and some other initiatives, will all go directly to the Ukraine Ministry for Digital transformation, for the government’s military forces and reservists, evacuation, shelter, medications, etc.
Hiveon’s history in the Cryptocurrency Blockchain and Web3 Space
Hiveon is a leading crypto mining software solutions provider based in Kyiv.
Since its launch in 2017, Hiveon has been committed to developing innovations that drive financial decentralization and anticipate and solve significant mining challenges, particularly the high financial and environmental cost of mining. Hiveon’s product suite, forming the largest crypto-mining ecosystem, includes:
Hive OS, developed for managing GPU ASIC mining devices, is used by 1 million miners and has more than 2 million devices using the platform.
Hiveon Pool is an Ethereum mining pool that is among 5 leading Ethereum pools in the world.
Hiveon ASIC Firmware aims to provide extra hashrate and high protection from viruses for the ASIC miners.
Hiveon ASIC Hub is a solution to install thousands of ASIC miners within minutes.
Rob Frasca Managing Partner at Cosimo Ventures
Past Present and Future of Rights Management
Past – Back in the day there were newspapers, broadcast networks, movie theaters.
They were the only way you could consume media (magazines etc). Digital rights management was centralized in respect to production, and distribution.
Present – It has become easier to produce content, and easier to distribute (due to the internet). Even though we are in a decentralized internet with many avenues for distribution, these distribution networks have become quite centralized (twitter, facebook, youtube) are all large single centralized servers of content.
All over the world people have become content creators.
Pretty much anyone can become a movie maker, photographer etc. Digital rights are being managed by large institutions sitting on a network. These institutions have a lot of control (control what you see, what you don’t see, cost, fees and royalties, etc)
Future – There will no longer be the gatekeepers to content (can’t decide what is posted, or what isn’t).
Content creators would grant the rights to display their content on aggregator platforms.
You would take the whole concept of distribution and move it to a world where it is decentralized.
Everyone serves up their own content, and allows them to manage their own content and royalty (payment) structure.
There will still be audience aggregators who charge “rent” to aggregate a large audience, but how it is done will change. This spans across the entire content spectrum from movies to music.
How NFTS Enable Rights Management Technology
For digital rights management to work we need the ability to manage a royalty contract via a smart contract so when payment or access/rights are paid for the content then it needs to be automatically distributed.
Additionally, you need to be able to have digital property. You have to be able to create/change the content into something that can be owned. You need the technology to make it unique (non-fungible).
NFTs allow for both of those things. They allow you to create unique digital property, and facilitate (or will be able to) a digital royalty rights contract.
A digital piece of property could also represent physical property.
Say you have a token and that token is linked to a piece of real property.
Like a house and a deed, or title to a car.
The deed displays ownership of the home. Why not have a digital, tokenized deed? We have the ability to do this. There is no limit to the amount of data a single NFT can represent.
These tokens are unique digital properties and can be traded, sold or bought.
They can exist in primary and secondary markets.
No one can dictate how you use your content, once it is sold it can be resold.
For example, Van Gogh selling his first painting and years later it’s worth millions.
Royalties would go right back to the creator (Van Gogh), forever, so Van Gogh would receive royalties for every resale thereafter, not just the profits of the initial sale (which of course greatly reduce an artist’s earning potential).
Another big issue is provenance – proving something was created by a particular artist or person.
NFTs show who has bought and owned an NFT at any point, at any time, forever.
The information is stored on the blockchain. A painting (or really anything) is worthless without provenance.
In the art world there is the possibility of fraud/forgery. This is taken out of the equation with NFT as authenticity can be easily verified on the blockchain. It is transparent, anyone can see it.
Blockchain can further add a cryptographic key to sign or attest a particular piece is real (authentic) – it is impossible to forge a cryptographic signature
How Utilizing the Underlying Technology of Web 3.0, NFTs and Smart Contracts Has the Ability to Greatly Impact Some of the World’s Biggest Issues
This moves royalty rights, media rights, and digital property from highly centralized to decentralized.
It’s like owning a house, storing ownership info (deed) on blockchain.
Decentralization is more resilient (can’t be censored, forged, etc) Takes the concept of trust and makes it resilient
For example, why do we need title insurance on a home? To protect ownership (or provide proof of ownership). NFTs and cryptography eliminates the need for this, as all info is on the blockchain and easily accessed/verified.
How NFTs and Their Underlying Web3 Technologies Solve the World’s Biggest Problems
Web 3.0 is not just about the NFTs, it’s about the idea “I am who my cryptographic signature is.”
It’s about identity. I can have a cryptographic key unique to me that cannot be forged and I can use as an identity across the web.
I can hold my information in a decentralized way that does not need to be uploaded to a repository.
Data on the blockchain exists “everywhere”, not just in one place.
It cannot be easily destroyed/removed in that sense. Someone would have to delete the entire network to lose or destroy your information.
NFT Projects That Rob is Investing in at The Moment
I have made investments recently into two very exciting projects, Tokentraxx and BEASY. TokenTraxx is an NFT marketplace for musicians built by musicians that allows them to manage their own music and curators to collect music directly from the artist. BEASY is a platform-agnostic technology solution that allows anyone to develop, mint, sell and manage non-fungible tokens (NFTs) directly from their website, Shopify or across popular marketplaces.
For athletes, entertainers, artists and social media influencers, BEASY’s built-in smart contract capabilities help streamline multi-party consensus and digital rights management, and makes it easy for fans and collectors to acquire and trade NFTs with fiat (cash) or cryptocurrency.
My primary focus at the moment is investing in infrastructure that enables digital rights management. I have made an investment in NDAU which is a payment rail for royalty management.
My fund, COSIMO X, is the world’s first ever tokenized evergreen venture capital fund.
This means ownership is held in the form of a digital token, and that token gives the holder all economic interest rights to the fund.
We are actively engaged in the market and constantly evaluating for new and exciting early-stage blockchain opportunities.
Saro McKenna Co-Founder at Alien Worlds
Alien Worlds is a breakthrough NFT metaverse and the world’s most popular play-to-earn blockchain games by monthly users.
What we have developed allows users to gather, build, and compete in the metaverse, using strategy to advance their world.
Gamers then earn rewards by using assets such as tools, land and weapons, with each of these items represented as an NFT on the blockchain, making them valuable and tradeable.
Alien Worlds has a global network of player initiated communities that have been created on Discord, Twitch, Telegram and Twitter. Members come together to help each other succeed by sharing strategies.
The game launched during the pandemic, so we are delighted Alien Worlds has been able to provide a sense of community and involvement for people from the safety of their homes.
Jack Cameron Co-Founder/COO of Luna Market
The Future of NFTs
It’s hard to concretely say where NFTs are going.
However, from our perspective, we see NFTs as an enabler for brands and their IPs when trying to enter the Metaverse.
The free flow of assets backed by the same fundamental technology (Blockchain), will allow brands and platforms to collaborate in a way unseen before!
Problems NFTs Solve
NFTs solve scalability problems.
This is because they are built on trust-less infrastructure.
This means applications, games, DAO’s and more can use blockchain to authenticate transactions and NFTs can be the end results of those transactions.
Hidden Utilities of NFTs
I think the biggest secret about NFTs is that you can embed any type of digital content.
This means you can literally sell anything digitally – which makes the application of NFTs limitless.
This is why creators in the AR, VR, 3D, 2D, music, and much more are using NFT technology
Different Projects That Have Been Launched
Under Armour was the largest project that Luna Market was a part of.
The core of the project was the idea of Interoperability – empowering users and their items by allowing them to cross from one platform to another.
With 25M visits to the site, 17M in secondary impressions, and 1.2B impressions, it shows there is much demand for NFTs.
The Covalent Team
Covalent is a Web 3 infrastructure Blockchain company based in Vancouver, Canada.
The ways games monetise their user base has had three major phases over the last 20 years.
First was the ‘Pay-to-Play’ genre dominated by the likes of Call of Duty, Minecraft, GTA, and many more.
Second was the craze around ‘Free-to-Play’ (F2P) games like Fortnite, Farmville, Candy Crush and other mobile-casual games.
We are currently seeing the emergence of the third phase known as ‘Play-to-Earn’ (P2E) which has been brought to popularity by Axie Infinity.
Despite this innovation, the GameFi space won’t ever reach its full potential without first understanding the data around user behaviour.
Deep, granular, data on Ronin is extremely difficult to find, creating a barrier to entry for anyone trying to navigate this new and exciting genre of Web 3.
However, the Covalent API supplies full blockchain data transparency for every transaction, game event, and value transfer on Ronin.
Using this data, we have researched the 3 most important metrics that describe the behaviour of users in the GameFi ecosystem.
- Reach – The growth of new players.
- Retention – How many players does the game retain over time.
- Revenue – How much money is captured by the different parts of the ecosystem.
You can now cut through the noise and form opinions of your own based on irrefutable blockchain data.
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Using Covalent data, we’ve analyzed over 686M rows of on-chain Ronin data to give you unique insights into Axie Infinity’s player model and revenue metrics.
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The NFT marketplace facilitated more than $4B in sales for over 1.5M different wallets.
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The bridge has more than $5B capital inflow into the Ronin ecosystem.
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The median wallet can break even after 4.5 months of gameplay with revenue of $192 per month and a total cost of $862 to build a team.
Related: The Legal Perspectives Of Non-Fungible Tokens
Allyson Downey Co-Founder at Meta Angels
With Meta Angels, we’re building a community of problem solvers who want to roll up their sleeves and help others.
That could mean opening doors and making introductions, offering their expertise, or even presenting employment opportunities.
The heart of Meta Angels is a tool called The Wishing Well that allows our members to provide help, connections, and advice in response to specific asks from the community.
Dive into our Wishing Well on Discord, scroll through to see where you can help, and post your own wishes!
We’re committed to inclusivity and access, and have developed a mechanism that allows holders of multiple Meta Angel NFTs to loan membership to a mentee or other individual who otherwise would not be able to participate.
This is yet another way for community members to live the value of generosity, by extending access to a valuable community to someone who could not purchase the NFT themselves.
Our smart contract is the first NFT lending mechanism of its kind, and we hope will inspire other projects to consider access and inclusion as part of their own structures.
Jonathan Teplitsky Founder at Pipeline Marketing
After soliciting crypto donations and raising well over $60 million, with that money continuing to rise, it is evident to see that crypto and NFTs have uses that have a far reach.
It should be noted that the government of Ukraine just passed a new law that creates a legal framework for the cryptocurrency industry.
Furthermore, Alex Bornyakov, deputy minister of digital transformation for Ukraine, unveiled the country’s NFT ‘museum of war’ strategy to ramp up fundraising.
These recent landmark developments show how cryptocurrency is redefining global citizenship, enabling people and businesses to circumvent restrictions in traditional cross-border financial transactions so they can proactively lend support to tragedies around the globe.
However, Ukraine’s success in crypto and NFT fundraising is just the beginning of how the crypto industry is disrupting fundraising and philanthropy worldwide.
NFTs allow creators of all sizes to secure donations.
PipeFlare, an NFT project building upon the success of P2E gaming platforms, recently launched its Ukrainian Charity NFT, which provides gamers perks on PipeFlare and various games on its platform.
After just two weeks, over $5,000 has been raised with all profits going to 1kproject.org.
Nima Behnoud Founder at NIMANYCLUB
Going from digital to physical products has been the main roadblock to date for most NFT projects.
All fashion and luxury brands are eager to join the metaverse, but the key challenge is to deliver NFTS with utility…and to have the skills to deliver that utility.
We have spent the last eight months on research and development so that our brand can deliver a project to our community with integrity and a clear roadmap, and to demonstrate our expertise and intent, we have already produced the actual redeemable watches prior to the project launch which is set for mid-April.
Moving from digital community demand to production is the new form of fashion and luxury retail, and NIMANYclub has an edge in the sense that we are longtime-luxury industry veterans with creative and production experience as well as being early adopters of cryptotechnology.
The first NIMANYClub NFT project offers a lottery of 1810 digital watches that carry several layers of utility: the ability to claim a physical pairing of digital watch and physical watch, a clear gamified roadmap, and an entry ticket to the NIMANYClub which offers seasonal perks with membership.
This is the only project thus far that has funded the production of the physical watches that are high-end luxury watches along with an NFT release, and we are also proud to be the very first NFT native luxury watch brand.
After this project, we have already mapped out the next NIMANYCLUB NFT projects on a seasonal schedule aligned with a typical fashion calendar, so members can expect to receive digital or physical goods several times a year depending on their membership level.
I founded NIMANYClub to meet the demand and opportunity in the metaverse for luxury goods. Being on social media we all have digital identities.
NFTs help us recognize this digital identity and enhance it with digital luxury goods.
The fact is that the lines between digital and physical realities are blurring.
Once that happens, our digital identity seeks the same association to the luxury goods in a much more exciting and less limited world, but our NFT projects ensure that scarcity will remain the same as with classic, tangible luxury goods.
Related: NFTs Are on the Rise. Will the Fall Follow?
