NFT: A New Field with Big Drops?

8 min readMay 1, 2024

Most cryptohunters who recently entered the digital industry have probably heard of “NFTs.” However, due to their past, many hunters approach NFTs with suspicion as they do not understand the true essence of this term.

In this article, we’ll break down what NFTs are in general, their purpose, the prospects of NFTs, and what major drops you can snag with a couple of NFT activities in a project.

What Are NFTs?

NFT stands for non-fungible token. Unlike fungible tokens like Bitcoin and ETH, each NFT is unique and cannot be replaced with another. In the Web3 industry, fungible tokens are used for their monetary attributes, while NFTs are mainly used to confirm the authenticity of ownership of something.

In simpler terms, NFTs are a method of proving ownership rights to digital assets and their authenticity.

Each NFT has unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from each other. Whether it’s an image, video, game item, or even a car, house, or diploma in the real world, all can be represented as NFTs. Thanks to digitization and tokenization, NFTs allow true ownership of items, whether online or offline: as in games like Counter-Strike 2 or Dota, for example (where NFTs can be unique characters, rare items, and so on).

NFT Standards

NFT images have standard sizes (1028 x 1028, 760 x 760), and images are in JPG and other specified formats. All these “digital assets” have widely used standards.

ERC-721 is the most popular Ethereum standard for NFTs, thanks to its convenience for developers.

In addition to ERC-721, other new standards are being developed, such as ERC-1155, which combines ERC-20 (tokens on the ETH network) and ERC-721, expanding the possibilities for creating and managing decentralized applications.

Storing Data in NFTs

NFTs themselves exist on the blockchain, while the asset representing the NFT is stored on a centralized server or in a decentralized protocol like IPFS.

Thus, the non-fungibility of the blockchain ensures the authenticity of NFT assets, solving the problem of digital ownership.

As the issuer (creator) of an NFT, you can set the number of issuances and other information in the smart contract, creating artificial scarcity. Additionally, NFTs enable decentralized trading of virtual assets.

A Brief History of NFTs

There have been many attempts to launch NFT collections throughout history. However, we’ll focus on the most significant ones.

The real boom in NFTs began to thrive in early 2021, evolving into art pieces, digital collections, and games, gradually becoming the next hot spot after DeFi.

For example, in February, a painting by the renowned digital artist Beeple, “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” was auctioned as an NFT, fetching $69 million and remains one of the most expensive NFTs in history:

Following the most expensive NFT, a strong trend of this narrative began, especially in GameFi:

In mid-2021, the NFT game Axie Infinity attracted a large number of players with its Play-to-Earn mode, where players had to buy in-game NFTs to play against each other to earn coins. The new narrative and innovative concept ignited GameFi. At this time, NFTs truly became public property, and global celebrities took the initiative to spread NFTs, leading the NFT market into the next phase of rapid growth.

Among other expensive NFTs sold at the peak of the NFT narrative were:

YUGA LABS, 101 NFTs from the BORED APE YACHT CLUB project, $24.4m (at the time, crypto monkeys were the most popular NFTs):

Larva Labs, CryptoPunk #7523, $11.8m (symbolizing the COVID-19 pandemic):

Tim Berners-Lee, NFT WITH THE FIRST WEB CODE, $5.4m (a painting by the founder of the WWW):

Thus, the NFT narrative has significantly expanded, and the total NFT market capitalization in February 2022 already exceeded $18B!

Agree, it would have been nice to get a couple of million for selling “digital” pictures in 2021. But now it’s already 2024, which means the narrative could have changed significantly. Isn’t it?

NFT Market

If we look at the current NFT market, PFPs are actively developing in this sector:

For PFP NFT users (Profile Picture or PFP avatars), it is likely the most accessible type of NFT, and it currently accounts for the largest share of the overall market.

The explosion of CryptoPunks and Bored Monkeys has led to a boom in avatar NFTs, and projects with both aesthetic and commercial value have emerged, such as Azuki. NFT fans with various avatars, such as monkeys, bears, zombies, and even goblins, are very common on social media.

Except for a few “blue-chip” projects that have formed strong community consensus, avatar NFT projects are quickly changing and extremely diverse in theme, but the narrative still remains.

NFT PFPs also serve social functions, such as displaying attributes and entry tickets.

Take BAYC, for example; users with BAYC NFT avatars are available to the BAYC community and have some additional privileges, including NFT airdrops (which have become essential marketing for projects and a benefit for drop hunters). BAYC’s success is inseparable from its celebrity effect and its mature community building.

It is not excluded that in the future, NFTs will be used as identification documents (passports), NFTs for apartments and cars as proof of ownership of real estate, NFTs for diplomas and certificates — instead of a regular resume for employers, NFTs for renting premises, and so on.

There are already NFT platforms leading the world towards such NFT-ization:

ICI Bucharest University created an NFT marketplace allowing the transfer and storage of official documents.
The Propy project launched an NFT platform for real estate trading.
The Meta-Ads service launched advertising in the metaverse (discussed below), where digital property owners earn income by renting out their property.

Not every crypto enthusiast knew about such breakthroughs in NFT until now.

Art and Gaming Items

NFTs of gaming props, art pieces, and digital collectibles are also extremely common types of NFTs.

Taking the gaming category as an example, the number of daily active users of Axie Infinity worldwide has remained at millions for a long time. Axie Infinity has been called the blockchain version of “Pokemon”.

In this game, each “Axie” pet is a unique NFT with various attributes and appearances. These players can train characters to participate in battles and complete tasks to earn income. To this day, Axie Infinity remains the NFT item with the highest transaction volume in history.

It is worth noting that the ETH ecosystem is the main hub for NFTs, as Ethereum hosts the most crypto projects and is the undisputed market leader in terms of volume:

However, some emerging public chains like Solana and Avalanche, and Ethereum sidechains like Polygon, are strong competitors with high performance and low fees. Other major blockchains, such as Ronin and Flow, have also gained a respectable position thanks to their star projects like Axie Infinity and NBA Top Shot.

Metaverses

A metaverse is a digital world accessible via the internet and compatible hardware devices. This world is always online in real-time, can accommodate multiple users simultaneously, and provides consumers with rich content. It provides a VR, AR platform for creativity, a reliable economic system, and an engaging interactive experience.

In such a digital world, NFTs that truly allow ownership of digital items are expected to become crucial infrastructure, ensuring a stable decentralized ownership system in the metaverse.

In the future, whether it’s real estate, clothing, artwork, or even food products, they can all become NFTs or tokenized assets that provide special privileges.

In the winter of 2021, we witnessed “metaverse land speculation” in Decentraland, Sandbox, and other virtual worlds.

Another important feature of the metaverse is reliable virtual identity, allowing users to participate in various social events with immersion and realism in the metaverse.

In the future, NFTs may become the core of the metaverse identification system. Similar to the current Ethereum ENS domain name service (which projects can use as criteria for airdrops), future metaverse identification may also be NFT-ized.

At the moment, there are not so many Metaverse projects, but we’ll leave a couple for further research:

Quarere — an NFT project with the concept of a spiritual metaverse (astrology), which operates on AI.
Elfin Kingdom — an MMO-RPG metaverse created based on Play-to-Earn and raised $9.5m in investments.
Planet Quest — a Web3 gaming universe representing the future 27th century, where humanity has reached the stars and planets.

Music

Musical NFTs are another possible trend in this bull market.

They represent proof of ownership of unique audio or musical works that can be bought or sold.

Musical NFTs are divided into several types:

Full songs and albums — NFTs are used to release exclusive recordings that may be in the early stages and not available to the public.
Digital art and photography — these NFTs play a significant role for both performers and their revenue. Such NFTs include limited edition project covers, posters, photos with the performer, and more.
NFT tickets — are also gaining popularity in 2024: exclusive privileges, luxury items, and NFT tickets to popular concerts by performers and musicians. Their advantage is that you are protected from fraud and risk nothing!

Many projects release NFTs in the form of digital assets: songs, albums, merch, and much more, making art monetization easier and more accessible in the modern world.

Conclusion

Thus, the NFT market is a vast field of opportunities for projects to showcase themselves and attract the attention of a large audience.

NFTs continue to remain a dynamic environment and constantly offer new updates, for example:

NFT with a meme coin on Solana — DogWifHat — was sold for $4.3 million. Crypto trader Gigantic Rebirth Ventures paid 1,210.8 ETH for it. An NFT from the CryptoPunks collection — was sold for $17 million.
The NFT was called AlienPunk #7804 and ranked 5th in the list of expensive NFTs in its industry.
NFT-Perp — the project launched a platform allowing trading various NFTs with leverage and participating in trading contests. The project may distribute an airdrop soon, so you can try your luck.

Based on the projects described in the article, it can be understood that any NFT project has significant potential for growth and can take a leading position in the entire Web3 industry!

Our platform also closely monitors the NFT narrative and has already selected the most potential project with a legendary drop.

This project is called Zora — a marketplace with significant investments and interest from TIER-1 funds!

Most potential drops, such as Zksync, LayerZero, and Blast, periodically release their NFTs specifically on Zora — thereby attracting attention from the audience and increasing the chances of a drop in Zora!