Untold stories of the NFT Boom
Victor Langlois is one of the world’s leading digital artists. Also known by his alias FEWOCiOUS, he has staged successful releases, including two trailblazing collaborations with RTFKT studios. In addition, he has also collaborated with Odius, Parrotism, and others. He has managed to make millions of dollars in sales along the way.
Overnight success
Hearing authors narrate their own work reveals the voice they imagine inside their heads when writing. The same can be said of artists. The bidding for his NFT started on SuperRare, an NFT marketplace. “I can’t believe this. The auction is at 40.7 ETH.” He said to one of his friends. A year ago, Langlois was a broke High school student living in his grandparent’s basement.
“It takes 10 years to become an overnight success”- Jeff Bezos
It would sound like he was an overnight success, but long ago, he had been drawing acrylic paintings. Periodically, his grandmother would peek into his room, and he would show her his paintings. She would dismiss his paintings as “ugly.” Little did she know that the seeds were being sown for her grandson to become an overnight success.
Those paintings she called ugly were soon to be worth thousands of dollars. He now lives in his own home in Seattle. Thanks to the power of blockchain, artists like Langlois can get rewarded for their creativity in ways they never dreamed possible.
At the start of the bid, a popular NFT art collector called @thegreatmandol offered 15ETH for the digital painting. As at that time, 1ETH was $1,600. This means the digital piece of art had just been sold for $24,000. But it was not over. Another collector @yeahyeah offered 18 ETH. Finally, it sold for $75,000.
Basement Compartment
Living in the basement compartment is not a new thing. Many great entrepreneurs today started from the “lower-level suite.” From Demi Lovato to Jennifer Lawrence to Bradley Cooper, and many others lived with their parents.
Harv Eker, the New York Times best-selling author, tried different businesses during his twenties. He started with a dream of making a fortune. However, his results were dismal. Even though he worked his butts off, somehow, he kept coming up short. In the same business line, many of his friends succeeded, but in his case, nothing of such. He still managed to be broke.
Then one day, a friend of his father’s came visiting and saw him where he had moved back in with his parents. He lived in the low apartment suite, also known as the basement. His father’s friend showed him the missing piece in the puzzle. He showed him that he needed to follow the right principles that favor abundance.
“What made Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk succeed? Was it their technology or their mindset? Personally, I think mindset is an entrepreneur’s most critical asset.” Peter H. Diamandis
The sudden twist
‘Someone just tweeted a video of me freaking out,’ says FEWOCiOUS. His unique NFT works and paintings got a lot of attention. “I feel like I am dreaming or something.” Langlois has always had it rough. Everyone in his family worked two jobs, still, they found it difficult to make ends meet. They lived in “terrible” parts of California. His family were immigrants from El Salvador.
His paintings depict his darker emotions. He creates bizarre digital pictures and moving images. These are often monstrous-looking caricature portraits. One of his popular works, “The sailor,” depicts a huge-headed figure with its brain exposed. It had two eyes that seemed like they were engraved from magazine pictures. It looked like a scene from Godzilla where Gareth Edwards says, “Run! It’s Godzilla!” Langlois drew most of the image on his iPad. Then he used animation software to add motion.
Really, Langlois isn’t selling digital art. What he sells is the digital representation called a non-fungible token. Even though the art is available online for anyone to see and download, still it is unique. It has characteristics that make it possible to know who owns it at a particular time.
The NFT Boom
Lately, NFTs have been the subject of countless headlines. Remember that teenager who sold an NFT for millions of dollars? The NFT craze started when “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” by Beeple sold for $69,300,000. By the following spring, digital files were being minted into NFTs. There were clips of LeBron James dunking, Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, and lots more.
No one knows the direction NFTs are heading. They are a precursor of the future of digital property. They are a glimpse of the future when people will spend their income on digital items they can trade or keep as an investment. People would rely on the impeccable algorithm of blockchain networks.
But they are still risks because the technology is still nascent. There are greater rewards in NFTs and DeFi because the risk is greater and the underlying network such as Ethereum and Cardano are volatile. In comparison, with the traditional ecosystem, the risks have been around for a while and are well understood. They include custodial risks, censorship risk, and the likes.
NFT Games
Many developers can be seen playing blockchain games to the extent that it has become their major source of income. Games like Axie Infinity have taken the world by storm. An increasing number of developers left their jobs to play online games. Gaming is not new to developers since most of them learn to code by playing coding games.
Play-to-earn models evolved from the early-stage NFTs like CryptoKitties. By integrating finance with the gaming industry, a whole new space, known as Game-Fi, is providing opportunities to earn income by playing games.
Within NFT games, players can earn in multiple ways. While traditional models of earning through gameplay involve finding, winning, or breeding rare collectibles, players can choose to experiment with various gaming models. One of the prototypes gaining significant popularity is “Play-to-Earn.”
How do NFT games work?
NFT games are different from the virtual collectibles that can be held in our wallets. They involve NFTs in the rules, mechanisms, and player interactions in the game. For instance, within an NFT game, a unique character or avatar could be an NFT or virtual items like the weapons used in the game could also be NFTs.
Players can swap or trade the NFTs with other players to earn profits. The new model in NFT games, i.e., the play-to-earn model, offers players a way to earn from NFT games. The NFT game is created by implementing rules and conditions in a smart contract.
Play-to-earn NFT games
Play-to-earn NFT games offer the chance to generate income to the users through playing. The longer they play, the more tokens and occasional NFTs will be rewarded to the players. The tokens earned hold utility inside the game, or they can be sold on exchanges. Typically, In this model of NFT games, users can consistently earn tokens along with the rare distribution of NFTs.
Axie Infinity has emerged as one of the popular play-to-earn NFT games. The users need to purchase three “Axies,” the Pokemon-like pet of the game, as an initial investment or get a scholarship from another player to start playing the game, who then might be able to claim a percentage of the user’s earnings. Axies can range in price but can sometimes cost upwards of $200 USD. Once a user finds a starter team and continues to complete the tasks and challenges, they can earn Smooth Love Potion (SLP), an ERC-20 token that can be traded on exchanges.
What are in-game NFTs?
In-game NFTs provide another way of generating income from NFT games. In-game NFTs allow users to earn NFTs representing collectible items, unlike fungible tokens such as Axie Infinity’s SLP.
The collectible items have different values based on their cosmetics, rarity, or utility within the game. One of the examples of the in-game NFTs is CryptoKitties. They rely completely on the collectibility of in-game NFTs. The latest NFT games offer both play-to-earn models and in-game NFTs.
Popular NFT games
As a result of the success of games on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum (ETH), others have also started to spring up. While some games offer a traditional video game experience, most games center mainly on collecting NFTs. Here are some other emerging NFT games:
Sorare
This is a fantasy football game that involves tradeable and collectible soccer players from real life. Users can create a soccer team with five players by using free cards or purchasing tokenized cards. Players can earn more points and level up their game every time they win, score a new goal, or complete an event.
Gods Unchained
Gods Unchained is a tradable NFT game built on Ethereum, and it is similar to “Magic: The Gathering” and “Hearthstone.” Players build decks with the powers and strengths they possess to fight other players. As the players win, they can earn in-game items to use or sell.
Some ranked games, including Gods Unchained, allow players to earn Flux. Flux can be used to craft powerful NFT cards. Players can profit by selling them or reinvest in new cards and continue the process.
Binance NFT Collections
The NFT marketplaces on Binance offer an NFT gaming experience to the users with the help of NFT mystery boxes and collection partnerships. They can range from digital artists to NFT games. Every mystery box contains a random NFT of different rarity and collections. Users can open the box to reveal the NFT, or they can even sell it without opening the box.
NFT collections contain NFTs and Mystery Boxes that are centered around a theme or a project. Game-fi Mystery Box Collections are the most popular collections, including:
The MOBOX Collection: This platform is built on BSC and combines DeFi yield farming with NFTs. The NFT Mystery boxes contain MOMO NFTs with random hashing power on the MOBOX platform. If the hashing power is higher, then the MOMOs will be more valuable in MOBOX’s games.
The My Neighbour Alice Collection: My Neighbour Alice is a virtual world-building game. The game features NFT cosmetic items. The assets contained in the Collection’s Mystery Boxes are only cosmetics. Users will value them and give them worth in the secondary market.
This article isn’t financial advice and I am not a financial advisor. Do your own research before making any investments.
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