You’ve heard the term and you know the famous digital apes selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars– NFTs are a huge part of entertainment in our culture. NFTs are a particularly tricky asset to manage but assets like this can be digitally stored or showcased on content management systems like echo3D.
While it’s not hard to create a digital copy of an NFT, there can still only be one true owner of that asset. These assets are bought and sold using online ledgers. Because the XR space, also referred to as “the metaverse”, deals with both 2D and 3D assets, there is significant crossover.
NFTs and Virtual Real Estate
One of the significant examples of NFTs in the metaverse are platforms such as Decentraland, Sandbox and Bit Country. These are three-dimensional worlds that users can visit, buy, sell, invest, build and trade property and goods in. These parcels of land and some of the assets within the worlds can be NFTs which allow exclusive ownership rights and controlled unique experiences. Gamers enter the virtual world using virtual reality, augmented reality or desktop. These virtual worlds offer an incredible experience while taking the users through an exceptional digital world experience to another level.
BrandEssence Market Research reports that the metaverse real estate market is projected to grow at a rate of 31% a year from 2022 to 2028 with NFTs contributing to that growth. More prominent companies such as H&M, Zara, Adidas, and Nike have already entered the virtual world of fashion collections and effectively used NFTs to allow users to experience these one of a kind virtual worlds.
Late last year, the “first NFT digital house in the world” sold for half a million dollars. This colorful 3D home called Mars House was designed by Krista Kim and sold on SuperRare for 288 Ether which at the time amounted to $512,000. Kim has partnered up with Spatial to allow users to tour the NFT space.
View the Mars House in 3D by clicking this link https://go.echo3d.co/ucWp or scanning this QR code:
NFTs in Gaming
NFTs may seem like an organic fit for gaming considering the uptick in monetization in games and digital asset collections. Despite these enormous efforts to focus more on monetization-forward game design by game publishers and game engines, many game studios and gamers are not interested in adopting this philosophy. To many, gaming is a source of joy and community that is threatened by increased in-game transactions. According to a survey by research company Globant, only 34% of gamers are interested in crypto transactions within XR gaming and only 16% of this same group have purchased NFTs. .
In the past, Ubisoft minted thousands of NFTs for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint as a free gift to users. The users resold less than 100 of them which is an indication of the lack of enthusiasm for NFTs according to Ars Technica. If done well and fairly, NFTs as an add-on for gaming can be exciting and generate a buzz but perhaps that has not happened just yet.
NFTs as Investments and Collectibles
Art is a collectible item. Although blockchain-based investments are different than traditional investments where a client has a quantifiable idea of the intrinsic value of the stock or bond, blockchain-based investments are unstable which can actually work in favor of investors. A perfect example of that is the Bored App Yacht collection. The most expensive Bored Ape NFT, Bored Ape #2087, sold for $2.3 million. It was then sold twice within 4 months of purchase to other investors.
Investments like this are influenced by popularity rather than fiscal value and that’s what keeps NFT collectors on their toes. Creators of the Bored Ape series are now working on a metaverse project called Otherside and looking at ways to integrate their wildly successful Bored Ape NFTs into the virtual world which they describe as, “Grand Theft Auto but in real time.”
Some organizations have turned to NFTs as an additional revenue source and opportunity to offer their committed fans unique one-of-a-kind opportunities to own branded assets. The McLaren Racing Collective dropped an NFT collection for fans. They can buy NFTs to make up the full composition of the car. Unlike their last NFT drop the year prior however, fans can trade parts on a user-to-user NFT marketplace. McLaren is using the Sweet NFT marketplace which guides users through the entire process making owning and trading these NFTs.
McLaren also partnered with InfiniteWorld, a metaverse platform that bridges branded NFTs with the metaverse. The brand wants to use these new offerings to create a deeper and more engaged digital experience by minting NFTs of McLaren cars along with other branded content. They are looking to offer exclusive NFTs to actual McLaren owners to turn owning a McLaren into more of a McLaren lifestyle.
NFTs as Art
Since NFTs are primarily works of art, it makes sense they are treated as such. With NFTs, digital art now has an edge that physical art has: true ownership. There can be duplicates of a Van Gogh painting but there is only 1 true version. Now, digital art can be treated as such by minting it as an NFT where ownership is determined with the NFT’s respective ledger that is stored on a blockchain.
Some artists go so far as to create NFTs and physical art as part of a series. Artist Andres Reisinger, a digital artist based in Barcelona, Spain, designed a surreal chair called the “Hortensia” chair that had both digital and physical interpretations. The chair was covered in geometric pink petals to capture the sense of blooming flowers. After sharing the work on Intagram, Reisinger put the chair into production and sold them as limited editions. Each chair sold for about 30,000 euros depending on the edition number.
NFTs bring a level of exclusivity and control to digital art which can be very useful within the metaverse infrastructure. We are curious to see how all of this all comes together ultimately and are optimistic that echo3D can be used as the backend for hosting many of these 2D and 3D projects.
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echo3D (www.echo3D.co; Techstars ’19) is a cloud platform for 3D/AR/VR that provides tools and network infrastructure to help developers & companies quickly build and deploy 3D apps, games, and content.
