NFTs are a hot topic of debate (non-fungible tokens). For others, they’re simply another trend that will go away any day soon. Others see them as the future of cryptography. In 2022, digital collectibles like these will continue to influence the crypto market, regardless of how you feel about them now.
Digital artist Beeple sold an NFT of his artwork Everyday: The First 5000 Days for a record-breaking $69 million at Christie’s auction house in early 2021 when NFTs first came to popularity. More non-fungible assets such as crypto art, NFT avatars, real estate, and GameFi have since emerged due to this milestone. Collins English Dictionary chose the abbreviation NFT as its word of the year in 2021 because of its prominence in the media and on social media.
New advances in smart contracts, the Ethereum blockchain, and many others have opened up a whole new arena for blockchain technology in the wake of NFTs.
NFTs’ popularity continues to rise as developers find new ways to use the technology. We’ve compiled a list of the newest and hottest trends for 2022 to give you a sense of where the industry is headed.
Going Art, Going Up
In 2021, there were several high-profile NFT art sales, including Beeple’s record-breaking NFT coup. So, just to refresh your memory, a GIF of Nyan Cat, the Pop-Tarts®-bodied feline meme hit, went for $300,000 at one point. a digital card depicting a hybrid between Homer Simpson and Pepe the Frog named Homer Pepe sold for 205 ETH (equal to $320,000 at the time) a month later, in March of the following year
A specialized NFT marketplace named Sotheby’s Metaverse, which purportedly sold approximately $100 million in NFT art by the end of 2021, was developed by Sotheby’s Auction House in response to the growing popularity of NFT art (or crypto art).
In addition to crypto art, NFT avatars, algorithmically created digital pictures of cartoon characters, swiftly became the next big thing, selling for millions of dollars. Celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Jimmy Fallon are admirers of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks collections, including avatars from the year 2021.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club has created an ape avatar.
It’s only natural that the meteoric ascent of NFTs in the art world has prompted debates about the nature of value in art, how ownership will be structured going forward, and what more we might anticipate in the years ahead.
Buying and selling fractional NFTs of real-world artwork by prominent painters looks to be the new fad for 2022. For high-value crypto assets, fractionalized NFTs bring new investment options at a fraction of the cost.
Keep an eye out for the sale of NFTs symbolizing Banksy’s “Gorilla in a Pink Mask,” an artwork taken from a wall in Bristol, England, in September 2020. Banksy is well-known for his street art. As a collection of 10,000 fractionalized NFTs, each selling for roughly $750, Exposed Walls, the company that destroyed the art, plans to sell it this year.
Another firm, Particle, plans to follow in the footsteps of Exposed Wall by launching the sale of NFT collections representing art treasures from all around the globe. Particle splits each work of art into a grid of 10,000 NFTs, like Exposed Wall. Platform paid roughly $12.9 million in May 2021 for the digital edition of Banksy’s 2005 piece Love is in the Air, which was sold at Sotheby’s auction. Particle’s division of the artwork will generate $14 million into 10,000 NFT components, each of which will sell for slightly over $1,400.
Despite its unconventionality, fractionalizing assets have begun to gain momentum in 2021. A fractionalization of Picasso’s Fillette au béret (priced at $3.68 million) into 4,000 NFTs (or $920 per fractionalized share) was announced in July 2021. Several online auction houses, such as Masterworks, also allow investors to purchase and sell fractionalized shares of multi-million dollar works by well-known artists like Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring.
NFT art has inherent shortcomings, even in the middle of the boom in NFT art. Since technology is becoming accepted as the future of fine art collections, art investors take advantage of it.
Additionally, this new business model benefits creative industries by making it easier for artists to commercialize their work while simultaneously opening up investment opportunities to a wider range of individuals. In addition, digital art artists will be able to collect royalties from the sale of their work to other parties.
Additionally, NFT art can democratize and promote transparency in the $50 billion-a-year art business, making it more accessible to the general public.
NFTs Spice up Gaming
Probably the second most important growth area for NFTs in 2021 was gaming. The blockchain-based “play to earn” games developed by GameFi (a combination of gaming and finance, also known as NFT gaming) opened the road for this development. These games reward players with in-game NFT assets.
P2E games like Gods Unchained, Axie Infinity, Genopets, Illuvium, and My Neighbor Alice (ALICE) made a splash in 2021 thanks to their play-to-earn (P2E) models. Because they are their property, players may do anything they want with their NFTs, including accumulating, buying, and even selling them. NFT assets may be moved to NFT markets, where they can be sold for cash or exchanged for other assets, unlike conventional in-game assets tied to a specific platform.
The most popular game is Axie Infinity (AXS), where over $1 billion in in-game assets have purportedly been transferred. The NFTs in the game is called “Axies,” based on Pokémon-style collector pets. Axie Infinity Shard (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) are the game’s in-game tokens used as currency in the Axie Infinity ecosystem.
Shortly, Illuvium will be the first AAA blockchain game. Illuvium is the source of the image (ILV)
The GameFi market isn’t only about play-to-win games. NFTs are also used in text-based games. There are many examples of community-created “loot bags” that include random lists of stuff, such as weapons and other equipment, that may be used in games made by the online community. Loot is one example of this. Collectible NFTs that are free are included in the game (apart from associated gas fees). The attributes of loot bags’ minted loot items are unknown.
NFT-powered games are only getting started. There will be several blockchain-based games in late 2021 and early 2022, including Thunder Lands, Idle Cyber, Sipher, and MetaWars.
NFTs Take on Hollywood
The mechanism for how studios produce and commercialize new films has changed as even blockbuster films now go directly to streaming due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Changes in the television industry have also occurred due to the rise of nonlinear streaming.
Streaming has transformed the way we watch entertainment. Is it truly the future of entertainment to have a middleman who decides what you may and cannot watch? NFTs, according to some crypto experts, is the next big thing, and they might fundamentally alter the way people consume content.
A poster for House of Kibaa’s NFT TV program GenZeroes. The House of Kibaa is the source of this image.
Movie and tv productions may now be monetized, merchandised, and crowdfunded in new ways thanks to NFTs. NFT TV series have already been released by some of the biggest names in the business, such as:
Live-action NFT TV series, GenZeroes, will be released in March 2022 by House of Kibaa. Only those who buy the NFTs will have access to the show’s NFT release and episodes. Viewers may get access to various perks, such as graphic comic books, special memorabilia, and even a stake in the program, depending on their level of NFT purchase.
In an NFT sale that offered investors the exclusive right to view episodes of the adult cartoon web series Stoner Cats (showing cats that get high), $8.4 million was raised. According to reports, the NFTs, which are essentially lifelong subscriptions to the show’s live feed, apparently sold out in less than 30 minutes. No surprise considering that Mila Kunis is producing the program and has a star-studded ensemble that includes the likes of comedian Chris Rock and actors Ashton Kutcher and Jane Fonda, and Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin.
The Stop-motion series Dominion X, created by Steve Aoki and Robot Chicken’s creators, is currently in production as another NFT TV show. After selling out 500 Dominion X NFTs in record time, the project was able to secure funding for a pilot episode. But unlike Stoner Cats, the Dominion X NFTs are not tickets to stream the show but rather snippets of the episode. Even if the pilot episode of Dominion X fails, the show’s rights will still be sold to distributors like Netflix or Fox.
Filmed in Q1 2022, NFTme highlights the emerging NFT industry by showcasing NFT brands, pioneers, and entrepreneurs and the people behind them. A primary objective is to inform the general public about the exciting things happening in the New Frontier Technologies (NFT) sector. Those who purchase NFTs will be granted VIP access to NFTme live events as part of the project’s first phase.
NFT TV shows are just a small part of a much larger photo. Time Studios, Time Magazine’s film, and television production company, develops the Robotos TV series based on NFT characters.
The pilot episode of Men of the House, funded entirely by NFT sales, is just one example of how NFTs are being used in television and film productions to raise money. Actress Jennifer Esposito (NCIS, The Boys, Crash) leveraged NFTs to fund her forthcoming directorial debut, Fresh Kills. A $3.5 million IPO of stocks on the Upstream platform was used to fund the film’s production.
By auctioning off his next horror film, Kilroy Was Here, Kevin Smith, director of Clerks, announced in April 2021 to participate in the NFT experiment. NFT, according to a statement from Smith, can be monetized in a typical way, or it may be decided that the film will never be seen at all.
The NFT platform will be used in Samsung’s MICRO LED smart TV, scheduled for availability in 2022. An image from Samsung may be seen here.
As the company recently stated, an “NFT Aggregation Platform” has also been included in Samsung’s newest smart TVs (Neo QLED, MICRO LED, and The Frame TV models), which will be released in 2022. It is possible to utilize the functionality to search for and purchase NFTs in various markets.
With this disclosure, we can see that the entertainment industry will only grow more intertwined with NFTs in the future.
Sing-Along with Music NFTs
NFT has migrated to the music industry as well. In the present arrangement, artists get paid just a fraction of a cent each stream, making it very difficult for them to make money. NFTs are getting more popular among indie bands because they provide more creative flexibility. In 2022, more and more NFT albums and songs will be released.
Among the artists who have sold digital versions of their songs as NFTs for thousands of dollars apiece is musician Daniel Allan, recently profiled in Time Magazine. He utilizes platforms like Glass to promote his electro-pop songs. Rather than relying on a middleman to market their material, artists own every video on Glass, which allows them to choose exactly how their work is monetized.
NFTs (Networked Feed Transactions) in the music business allows users to participate in the revenue generated each time a song from a platform’s repertoire is played live. In the next 18 months, Band Royalty hopes to have 12,000 NFTs on its platform, up from the current 3,000.
NFT music by musicians like Nas is available on DJ 3LAU’s Royal music platform built on NFT. Images are from Royal.io
DJ 3LAU is a well-known musician who sold a crypto album for $11.6 million in less than 24 hours, making it one of the fastest-selling albums. In a Twitter auction, the EDM producer sold 33 unique NFTs of his album, Ultraviolet. Fans may acquire NFTs to partake in the royalties generated by their favorite performers via his upcoming Royal music platform, which will be built on NFT technology.
Rapper Meek Mill, who said last year that he would release an NFT mixtape in 2022, is another well-known musician who has shown an interest in NFTs. NFT was also released by Kings of Leon (When You See Yourself). The band released three distinct tokens: an album bundle, bonuses including lifetime front-row performance tickets, and audiovisual art only available via the band’s website.
Using the examples above, you can see that this new formula has worked. As record companies join the NFT bandwagon, it’s not out of the question that more major musicians may follow suit.
Using NFTs to Get a Loan
NFTs have a wide range of applications that go well beyond play-to-earn games and prohibitively costly cartoon profile images, despite the impression that this is the only area they may be used. NFT loans are a promising new use for this technology. Investors utilize their NFTs and NFT collections as collateral to get loans for unexpected expenses and new ventures.
Loans utilizing NFTs as collateral were made possible by several DeFi (decentralized finance) platforms that were developed in 2021. NFT-backed loans are offered via platforms like Arcade, a DeFi platform. Before Arcade’s smart contract secures the collection in an escrow account, the borrower and lender must first agree on the conditions. The NFTs are locked away and cannot be retrieved until the loan is paid in full or defaulted.
DeFi lending sites like Arcade allow NFT holders to put their specific pieces and collections to work. Arcade provided the image.
NFT avatars from Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks have been supported by Arcade as of January 2022, according to a report. Crypto investors Pantera Capital and Franklin Templeton have invested $15 million in the platform’s Series A round.
NFTfi, a marketplace where users may pledge NFT assets as collateral for loans or lend money to other users, is another popular DeFi platform for NFT-backed loans. Any ERC-721 token may be pledged as security in return for an ETH loan. The NFT is returned to the borrower after the loan is repaid. If the loan is not paid on time, the asset is given to the lender.
Coming Soon to a Major Brand Near You
As the NFT market grows, more and more companies find innovative methods to get a piece of the action. Limited-edition NFT collectors from food and apparel companies such as Campbell’s, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell are leading the drive to create brand loyalty, increase social media engagement, establish new income streams, and raise money for charitable causes.
The Pringles® CryptoCrisp is a limited-edition digital collection of “virtual taste” crisps with a crypto-themed concept. Pringles® For a limited time only, the NFT is an MP4 file that depicts a golden Pringles can with the “CryptoCrisp” taste rotating in a golden light.
CryptoCrisp’s NFTs were sold for 0.0013 ETH (around $2), which is what it costs to buy one Pringles can. OpenSea and Rarible have the NFTs for sale, with prices beginning at 4 ETH.
Pringle’s NFT with “CryptoCrisp” flavoring.
To illustrate this point, consider Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) NFT line, which has Charmin® toilet paper rolls. With each NFT, there is a physical display that anyone can use to showcase the NFT toilet paper “alongside genuine rolls.” A humanitarian foundation, Direct Relief, received all of P&G’s auction earnings for the NFT and distributed them to healthcare professionals.
According to a recent report, many huge businesses already use NFTs to produce brand value, and the trend isn’t slowing down until 2022. Expect to see more brand-specific NFTs created by corporations across all industries as marketers begin to explore innovative branding potential in the metaverse.
The Verdict on NFT Trends
Digital art and the blockchain are undergoing a radical transformation thanks to NFT ownership. There are many possibilities for NFTs as the technology progresses from simple and exploratory to more substantial use cases. More and more new NFT projects with innovative uses are being developed even as you read this text. Consider the possibilities: NFT tickets, NFT streaming, and so on.
There has been a steady rise in the popularity of NFTs over the last year, and this trend will continue.
