NFTs: The Next Wave

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

By Ster­ling Campbell

If you blinked you might have missed it, but over the past quar­ter NFT trad­ing vol­ume sur­passed $10.67B, jump­ing 704% from Q2 to Q3 and over 38,000% year-over-year.

The first half of the year saw the rise of NFTs as a series of high-val­ue 1‑of-1s, with Beeple’s col­lage, Every­days: The First 5000 Days, sell­ing for a record-break­ing $58 mil­lion. Before NFTs, Beeple hadn’t earned more than $100 for a sin­gle print.

What’s fuel­ing the recent surge is not 1‑of-1s, but rather large-scale, 10k projects (here­after described as “10ks”) designed to increase a project’s dis­tri­b­u­tion, enable low-cost onboard­ing of new entrants into the space, and build a mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ty. The val­ue of util­i­ty baked into smart con­tracts has also begun to be defined through larg­er scale projects.

There will always be a place for mean­ing­ful (and expen­sive) 1‑of‑1 projects, but the val­ue of 10Ks should cre­ate a new era of inno­va­tion for cre­ators of all sizes. The future of NFTs lies in their util­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty, and some of the biggest cre­ators are start­ing to lever­age the true val­ue of NFTs.

We have seen what’s pos­si­ble when cre­ators are able to build hype, but the next wave of inno­va­tion will lie in a team’s abil­i­ty to exe­cute, not speculate.

Artists Are Lead­ing the Way

Bren­dan Murphy’s Boon­ji Project is a per­fect exam­ple of what is pos­si­ble when a project chal­lenges the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty in gen­er­a­tive art, util­i­ty, and com­mu­ni­ty. Boon­ji Project launched on Octo­ber 21, 2021, and through its Dutch auc­tion, sold out in one of the biggest pri­ma­ry on-sales of all time at an aver­age price of .42 ETH ($1727 USD). In less than 4 hours, the project has already seen over 1,000 ETH in trans­ac­tion volume. 

To best under­stand this project’s suc­cess, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er all of the fac­tors that have gone into build­ing the trust of the community. 

Artist

The cur­rent NFT mar­ket is sat­u­rat­ed with pro­file pic­ture projects fea­tur­ing cute ani­mals and pix­e­lat­ed char­ac­ters, with most tra­di­tion­al artists focus­ing on 1/1s and indi­vid­ual pieces. 

Most of these projects have mar­ket­ed them­selves due to their roadmap, with many promis­ing NFT hold­ers access to Meta­verse games, real-life expe­ri­ences, merch, and future drops. Oth­ers have lever­aged the unique­ness of their com­mu­ni­ty as the source of their collection’s val­ue, treat­ing the indi­vid­ual pieces with­in the col­lec­tion as dig­i­tal col­lectibles to be swapped based on rarities. 

These types of projects must step out­side of the art because those behind the project are either not very well known or are not artists them­selves. These projects expe­ri­ence severe volatil­i­ty because most of the time very lit­tle is known about the artist or their com­mit­ment to the project.

Boon­ji turns this on its head by mak­ing its artist, Bren­dan Mur­phy, the focal point of the project. Bren­dan has been an artist for over 20 years, and his sculp­tures and paint­ings have been col­lect­ed by the likes of Steph Cur­ry, Ser­e­na Williams, War­ren Buf­fet, and more. 

There is lit­tle doubt that Mur­phy is ded­i­cat­ed to this project; he’s spent most of his cre­ative life build­ing the cen­ter­piece of this col­lec­tion. The back­grounds and many of the assets used in the gen­er­a­tive process are all tak­en from his pre­vi­ous works, cre­at­ing a beau­ti­ful amal­ga­ma­tion that is unde­ni­ably his. 

Util­i­ty: NFTs as a Medium

While the NFTs as art would accrue in val­ue on their own, Boon­ji Project is bak­ing util­i­ty into the NFTs, show­er­ing hold­ers with $5 mil­lion worth of phys­i­cal art, merch, and even a fes­ti­val in Antigua

“Fun­ni­ly enough, the Boon­ji Space­man series is not about space which peo­ple find sur­pris­ing,” says Mur­phy. “It’s about the step the space­men are tak­ing. The step into the unknown — that’s what the Boon­ji Space­man series encap­su­lates for me.”

Mur­phy is by no means the first tra­di­tion­al artist to use NFTs as a medi­um. Dan­ny Cole, a young visu­al artist from New York City, has lever­aged his life’s work to build Crea­ture World, ulti­mate­ly deliv­er­ing the Creature’s jour­ney to his com­mu­ni­ty. Artists like Dan­ny and Bren­dan are imbu­ing jpegs with util­i­ty and dri­ving inno­va­tion for­ward, and the val­ue of their con­tri­bu­tions has not gone unno­ticed by their incred­i­ble communities. 

Com­mu­ni­ty

In a mat­ter of weeks, Boon­ji Project has grown its Dis­cord to 135,000 peo­ple despite only offer­ing 11,111 unique NFTs. The team has quick­ly amassed a vibrant, active com­mu­ni­ty that has encir­cled Mur­phy, bring­ing new eye­balls to his work and ampli­fy­ing oth­er cre­ative endeavors.

What has made the com­mu­ni­ty build so suc­cess­ful? Beyond what has been men­tioned above, the game mechan­ics employed as the com­mu­ni­ty has grown have been noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar. From the begin­ning, the team has promised that those who engage with the project the most would be reward­ed, and the com­mu­ni­ty has respond­ed beautifully. 

More than 12 peo­ple have got­ten tat­toos of Boon­ji. Hun­dreds of memes have been cre­at­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty in an attempt to be rec­og­nized and added to the “whitelist,” a list that con­firms that they will be able to mint at face val­ue (and ulti­mate­ly avoid a gas war). Deriv­a­tives are already being cre­at­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty in appre­ci­a­tion of the IP that defines the project. They even dubbed the night before the mint “Boon­ji Eve,” gath­er­ing en masse to cel­e­brate what will be a mas­sive cul­tur­al moment in the NFT community.

What the Next Wave Looks Like

It’s dif­fi­cult to argue that there isn’t a lev­el of sat­u­ra­tion in the 10k space, and there will be a time where many of these types of projects are no longer viable for anony­mous teams. The indus­try is enter­ing a phase in which its most suc­cess­ful projects need to tran­si­tion beyond hype and into an exe­cu­tion phase.

This process will only accel­er­ate as more dig­i­tal artists, musi­cians, ath­letes, and oth­er cre­atives build their own projects. What will come next is a series of Web3-enabled fan clubs that will give mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences to those will­ing to hold onto NFTs, and a new era of cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion as this new medi­um is explored. It’s a mat­ter of when, not if, and those that seek to enter the space mean­ing­ful­ly and push the bound­aries of what is pos­si­ble will find an incred­i­ble com­mu­ni­ty is at their fingertips.


Ster­ling Camp­bell (’21) is an MBA grad­u­ate from Colum­bia Busi­ness School and a builder at Mino­taur. He has invest­ed at Grishin Robot­ics, Lerer Hip­peau, Charge Ven­tures, and Endeav­or. You can find his beginner’s guide to NFTs here.



Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *