The NFT narrative is changing: Understanding the evolution of NFT

Since the “crypto art” broke the circle in 2021, NFT (non-fungible token), as a unique digital asset on the blockchain, has quickly swept the global market. In just four years, more than 2 billion NFTs have been issued on mainstream blockchain networks, and the global market value has reached hundreds of billions of US dollars .

However, the narrative of NFT is quietly changing – it is shifting from a single digital collection to a core asset with practical functions and a wide range of application scenarios. In this evolutionary path, the potential of NFT is continuously being explored, redefining the decentralized digital future.

The starting point of NFT is the revolution of digital asset ownership. In the traditional Internet era, digital content can be copied infinitely, while NFT uses blockchain technology to give digital works unique identity authentication, making them scarce and have ownership. This feature quickly ignited the enthusiasm of the art, collection and cultural and creative markets.

More importantly, this stage has begun to breed a new bottom-up IP creation model. Traditional IP creation often relies on the promotion of large media organizations and brand capital, while the PFP project gradually forms a digital IP with global influence through decentralized community governance and consensus accumulation.

In 2017, CryptoPunks was the first batch of verifiable digital collectibles on the chain, followed by CryptoKitties, which ignited the market. In 2020, with the outbreak of DeFi, the cryptocurrency market has entered a new climax, and NFT has also risen rapidly in this wave. The emergence of Bored Ape Yacht Club marks the craze of PFP-type NFTs, the market transaction volume has surged, and the market’s pursuit of scarcity and uniqueness has made NFT a new generation of financial star.

The prosperity of this stage mainly depends on market sentiment, consensus and liquidity, and the price volatility of NFT is extremely high.

As the market matures, the narrative of NFT begins to move from a single digital collection to functional applications, showing richer value. First of all, the ENS domain name has truly achieved large-scale implementation and scenario expansion. Mapping complex on-chain addresses to simple domain names has achieved decentralized identity authentication and promoted the popularization and standardization of on-chain identities.

At the same time, NFT has exploded in the gaming field. Stepn’s in-game props NFT allow players to truly own on-chain assets, and Axie Infinity’s “earn while playing” model has further promoted the GameFi craze. Players can create economic benefits in the game, which greatly promotes the liquidity and value consensus of NFT.

The functional exploration of NFT has also extended to offline scenarios. Ticket NFT and the membership system have achieved anti-counterfeiting traceability and rights transfer through on-chain verification mechanisms. Brand membership cards have also emerged in the Web3 community, giving holders a unique social and rights experience.

At the same time, the application of PFP is no longer limited to avatar display. They have gradually evolved into community identity and social symbols, supporting airdrops, community verification and decentralized governance. Community-driven IP shaping has begun to show strong vitality.

What is more noteworthy is that the functionality of NFT is no longer limited to the Ethereum network. The Ordinals protocol brings NFT to the Bitcoin chain and realizes data storage through “inscriptions”, bringing a new decentralized digital asset model to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

As the market continues to develop, the narrative of NFT has gradually shifted from digital collectibles to the mapping and confirmation of real assets. The concept of RWA (Real World Assets) came into being. Through NFT technology, real estate, luxury goods, ticketing and other physical assets are mapped to the chain to achieve decentralized confirmation and transactions. This shift not only expands the application boundaries of NFT, but also promotes the deep integration of digital assets with the real world.

Traditional NFTs are mainly focused on digital art, collectibles, and the virtual world, while the rise of RWA represents a new application model: the digitization of real assets. More and more projects are beginning to explore how to register and trade physical products on-chain through NFTs, breaking the barriers of traditional asset management.

RareShop is the world’s first consumer-oriented RWA NFT product sales platform. Through the innovative ERC-7765 asset protocol standard, it promotes the large-scale implementation of RWA NFT. RareShop not only supports on-chain rights confirmation and transactions, but also provides a rich interactive scenario, including encrypted payment, privacy protection, product pre-sale, gift giving and physical delivery. Based on the underlying support of Mint Blockchain, RareShop provides a one-stop Web3 digital solution for global brands and enterprises, accelerating the Web3 process of the real economy.

The ERC-7765 asset protocol is the RWA NFT asset protocol standard proposed by the Mint Blockchain team to the Ethereum community, which aims to establish industry norms to make the issuance and circulation of RWA more transparent and efficient. The protocol allows NFT holders to perform specific operations on the chain, such as exchanging real-world goods and services through on-chain certificates, realizing a direct link between on-chain assets and real-world assets.

The narrative of NFT is undergoing a profound transformation – evolving from static digital assets to decentralized smart assets. At the same time, cross-platform and cross-chain interoperability is becoming a key breakthrough point. In the future, NFT will not only be a static asset on the chain, but also an intelligent entity with autonomous interaction capabilities and cross-ecological liquidity.

Decentralized smart assets will become the main theme of the new stage. The combination of AI Agent + NFT gives on-chain assets the ability to interact with each other and execute smart contracts. For example, AI based on on-chain data can automatically adjust the value assessment and liquidity management of NFTs, and even execute on-chain trading strategies, realizing truly intelligent asset management.

At the same time, cross-platform interoperability is also advancing rapidly, breaking the existing chain islands and achieving seamless circulation between multiple platforms and multiple chains. In the future, NFT equipment in games will be able to be shared and used between different games, asset interoperability between trading markets will be more convenient, asset liquidity and value capture capabilities will be significantly improved, and on-chain assets will no longer be restricted to a single platform, but will be able to freely shuttle between various ecosystems.

NFT is evolving towards diversification, and related applications will become more and more abundant in the future. As the underlying technology, NFT will gradually hide in our daily experience and become one of the infrastructures of the digital world. What drives innovation and development is the actual value and application scenarios achieved by technology.

Mint Blockchain is committed to expanding the diversified application scenarios of NFT, building an ecosystem covering all aspects of digital life, building a diversified ecosystem with NFT as the core, and deeply integrating NFT into various fields of life and digital innovation. The application scenarios of NFT will no longer be limited to digital collections, but will be widely penetrated into payment, identity, social, games, asset management and other fields, showing its unlimited possibilities.

Mint Blockchain’s vision and mission: Use NFT to connect global users and AI Agents, so that every individual in human society can freely own NFT assets, and let NFT develop into the most free value carrier in the crypto world!

This narrative about NFT has just begun.