Dynamic NFTs as the future of Skills
At Grey, we are building a new decentralized version of our current skills economy using Dynamic NFTs. Dynamic NFTs and Skills are a perfect fit. Like tokens, skills always belong to someone, there is no skill without an owner. Also, skills are non fungible, they are unique because their owners are unique. Finally, skills are not static, they are dynamic. Skills are always changing, adding experience, falling into disuse or even merging into other skills. The immediate consequence of having this perfect fit between Skills and Dynamic NFTs is the ability to build a decentralized Skills economy, and we have already started the journey.
Dynamic NFTs
At their onset, tokens were just a mapping from owners to their balance, an integer number that represents the amount of tokens that belong to an account [1]. Later, Non-Fungible tokens were built using mappings from owners to Ids, integer numbers that are unique [2]. Now, we are expanding these NFTs with properties that are malleable and can change depending on specific conditions. This implies rethinking previous approaches like ERC-721, since it is not suitable for these new organic requirements applied to current NFT technology. We are currently solving this problem by building a substrate runtime specifically designed for these new challenges and expectations.
Next Generation NFTs
Next generation NFTs will not only represent something that you own but also will be able to do things for you. The Grey ecosystem uses NFTs with extended features that make learning content available to owners, and collect royalties for creators. Also, NFTs in our Skills Protocol issue claims on behalf of their owners in order to increase the value of other NFTs. These extensions on the NFT paradigm have the ability to perform actions for their owners and are the building blocks of the Skills economy of the future.
Future of Skills
Further into the future, our Skills NFTs will be more than just a digital representation of our capabilities. Each one of our Skills will give us rights and privileges, from receiving shares in a DAO, to opening physical gates to gain in-person access to restricted areas. Future Skills NFTs will be more like digital agents that will serve their owners, with digital and IRL capabilities according to their reputation.
Dynamic NFTs have opened a new gate with more powerful abstractions that will boost the innovation and adoption of Web3 products and services. Following the natural evolutionary cycle, we at Grey started on building one of the most important economies on a new vertical- the future of skills. We are exploring and building on top of new technological capabilities that were not available a few years ago. These are a perfect fit for inherent issues within the skills industry that were sitting there waiting for a solution to come.
