Top 5 NFT Projects to Follow in 2022
Today, the potential of NFTs stretches beyond just creating art and minting it into collectibles. In 2021 NFTs overhauled digital ownership rights for arts, music and collectibles — and have shown tremendous potential in solving some real-world problems in real estate, music, art, supply chain and even the government.
This explains the record-breaking exponential growth rate of NFTs throughout the year and their wide acceptance. Did you know that by the end of 2021, NFT sales are expected to reach a whopping $17.7 billion, which represents an almost 60-fold growth in just one year?
The explosion in the popularity of NFTs and their increased acceptance is for good reason. and to help you put this into perspective, we have compiled a short list of the top five practical and promising NFT projects in 2022.
1. Decentraland (MANA)
You’ve probably heard about NFT use cases in the real estate industry. The Decentraland NFT project, powered by LAND and MANA, is an exciting space to watch in 2022 as it makes virtual land ownership a reality. Decentraland features a digital AR (augmented reality) universe powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Look at this project as SimCity or Second Life, only that users now have access to a decentralized universe on the ETH network.
Decentraland features two tokens, including MANA and Territory. MANA represents natural ERC-20 tokens or in-game crypto coins that players can use to purchase land. The project’s realm, the Metaverse, splits the virtual territory into 90,601 parcels, each measuring 16m by 16m. The Ethereum blockchain holds records for every parcel bought or owned.
Buying a parcel on Decentraland comes with outright ownership as an NFT. Besides controlling the piece of virtual real estate, owners can create other items such as 3D scenes using the in-built software development kit. Moreover, landowners can sell their virtual plots to NFT collectors on the Decentraland Marketplace for up to $4,210.
2. The Concordium Blockchain
Concordium technology is an emerging innovation that helps businesses harness the full potential of blockchain with zero to minimal risks. The science-centric tech advancement brings enhanced privacy on public and permissionless blockchain, while also adhering to industry regulatory compliance. For this reason, Concordium will likely experience mass adoption in 2022 and beyond, especially among businesses that can’t risk fines and sanctions due to non-compliance issues.
Blockchain users have always experienced problems when trying to achieve finality in various protocols. This presents various security challenges against scalability and perennial malicious behaviours. For instance, honest users may achieve partial guarantee that a given set of information on the blockchain is immutable. If this persists, malicious users can introduce forks (deliberate or accidental communication errors), which can cause delays or loss of information. Fortunately, Concordium brings a fast and provable finality as a service (FaaS), which introduces a finality layer on the blockchain to solve this issue.
On top of that, Concordium technology is future-proof, thanks to its sophisticated interoperability. The technology also has lower carbon print for long-term sustainability, unlike traditional blockchain that leverages powerful or giant in-house computers and servers. In other words, the pollution rate is low. Other amazing features pioneered by Concordium blockchain include:
- Lower gas fees and faster transaction
- Ability to track and verify transactions
- High-tech user identity verification protocol to mitigate fraud
- White label architecture and sharding
- User-friendly smart contracts deployment
3. Enjin Coin
The Enjin Coin project came to the mainstream radar from early as 2019, when the developers partnered with Samsung. The blockchain game will allow users to truly own digital collectibles, thanks to the platform’s ERC-1155 tokens. Typically, ERC-1155 tokens are an upgrade of ERC721 and ERC20 token variants. Game developers can purchase Enjin Coins from an open marketplace or through crowdfunding and turn in-game items, such as vehicles, weapons, and skins into ERC-1155 tokens.
The Enjin Coin project will likely be more successful than other blockchain projects as it facilitates:
- Actual ownership of digital items
- Central wallet for all in-game items
- Reserve value through the Enjin Coin crypto
- Seamless value exchange
This gaming network brings a new feature in the industry, known as the Enjin Multiverse. This feature stores gaming products on a shared blockchain instead of a specific centralized site, making them accessible to multiple developers for use in different games. Also, the Enjin gaming network facilitates in-game asset exchanges across the entire industry, not just a single game.
4. World Asset eXchange (WAX)
In-game items and collectibles are now lucrative if you sell them as NFTs. However, you’ll only have a good experience if you can access a seamless and stable platform, such as WAX. The platform offers the simplest way for building, buying, selling, and sharing virtual objects through a Delegated Pool of Stake mechanism. This consensus algorithm provides fast and seamless transactions, compared to traditional platforms, such as Amazon.
The WAX NFT creator package is also easy to use and supports the fractionalization of tokens. That means users can sell partial ownership rights of the gaming items instead of relinquishing them as a whole. Moreover, the platform’s developers, OPSkins, are the pioneers for the first-ever solution for buying and selling digital goods. You can count on them to bring more innovative features to WAX.
5. Altura NFT
Altura is a next-gen gaming platform to watch out for in 2022 and beyond. Altura uses both NFT and blockchain technologies to bring two-in-solution, offering a gaming platform and an NFT marketplace at the same time. The API interface allows gamers to mint in-app items, turning them into NFTs. The marketplace features two sections. The first section allows every user to list their NFTs, while the other lists only verified collectibles. It’s also worth mentioning that Altura comes with a native token, though we can speculate much about it because the project is still in its infancy.
The Takeaway: NFTs Are Here to Stay
It’s great to see how NFTs are evolving in a very short span. These projects will obviously disrupt the industry in 2022 and beyond. From massive marketplaces to innovative NFT games, developers have a lot in store for us. This also translates to many open opportunities for the average digital creator.
