NFT Types in the Market: Which Type Do You Favor the Most?
Although CryptoPunks have sparked the NFT wave, the contents of NFTs now go far beyond personal profile pictures, art, and collectibles. Today, hundreds of new projects on the blockchain are proposing dozens of new use cases, some of which are more likely to become popular than others.
This article aims to provide a convenient classification guide for beginners, introducing six mainstream types of NFTs currently present in the market.
Contents:
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1. Collectibles
2. Artworks
3. Digital Asset Games
4. Sports-related
5. Website Domains
6. Virtual Worlds
Conclusion
Collectibles were the first NFT type to enter the mainstream. As early as 2017, people started paying high prices for computer-generated images of strange types, such as Curio Cards, Rare Pepes, and CryptoPunks. Years later, the term “NFT” became well-known, and holding and collecting non-fungible personal profile pictures without practical value became synonymous with this category of digital assets. Subsequently, projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club attempted to turn these collectibles into something bigger by building communities around them.
By market capitalization, trading volume, and floor price, BAYC, MAYC, and CryptoPunks are the largest collection projects. They are more popular compared to the categories of art and digital asset games, and are considered the blue-chip projects in the NFT space.
Another popular type of NFT is digital art. Its most prominent feature is that artists can own the copyrights to their artworks, and buyers can confidently purchase authorized originals, eliminating the risk of counterfeit copyrights. Additionally, artists no longer have to rely on intermediaries to protect their works, saving on intermediary fees and ensuring that artists receive more income.
The most memorable example is Beeple’s artwork “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” which sold for as much as $69.3 million at an auction in March 2021. This artwork sparked another wave of NFT art types, and NFT art projects continue to emerge. For example, Art Blocks Curated is a representative project, ranking 7th in terms of trading volume in the past 30 days.
Currently, many games adopt the Play to Earn model, where each character in the game is an NFT, such as avatars, equipment, and cards. Players can acquire these digital assets by participating in the game. They believe that the uniqueness, scarcity, transferability, and provable ownership of NFTs are crucial for enhancing the value of in-game items.
However, after NFTs began to gain popularity in early 2021, game programs combined with NFTs have evidently attracted many people. Data shows that the number of users participating in these games has been increasing monthly, reaching an all-time high in January 2022.
Axie Infinity is one of the companies that first implemented this model, allowing players to spend more and more time in the game. The most notable country is the Philippines, where hundreds of thousands of people play NFT games every day. During the pandemic, they earned more income from playing games than from traditional jobs. Various game-related applications, such as M2E, have emerged since then.
NBA Top Shot is one of the most successful cases of collaboration between professional sports and NFTs. NBA Top Shot is essentially an NFT version of basketball cards with its own marketplace. One of NBA Top Shot’s most famous moments is a clip of LeBron James dunking, part of the Throwdowns series. It is currently priced at over $380,000, making it one of the most expensive sports collectibles ever.
ENS domains are built on the Ethereum blockchain and consist of customizable encrypted wallets containing identifiable names or numbers. They simplify the typical Ethereum address, which is just a long string of alphanumeric characters, with “.eth” being the most popular. They allow users to easily send and receive funds.
ENS domains can be used for website addresses and applications, as well as sold as NFTs. Users can register a domain name on the Ether Name Service website for prices ranging from $5 to $640.
According to the rankings from Footprint Analytics, ENS: Ethereum Name Service has consistently ranked within the top 10 in terms of trading volume in the past 6 months. In September alone, there were 437,000 new registrations. The sharp rise in user interest is mainly due to the high transaction prices that these domains can reach, sometimes amounting to millions of dollars.
However, the biggest drawback of crypto domains is that most browsers currently do not support them.
Virtual worlds include digital games and lands within the virtual world. Although still highly speculative, these types of NFTs have enormous potential and can be used for advertising and creating virtual assets in digital games.
Many different types of NFT projects have emerged. They are not only closely related to digital and virtual assets but also with continuous technological breakthroughs, real-world-related NFT applications will continue to be created, and transactions will become more transparent and secure from there.
This article is from the Footprint Analytics community contribution.
Footprint Community is a global collaborative data community where members create impactful insights using visualized data. In the Footprint community, you can get help, make connections, and exchange knowledge and research about blockchain-related topics such as Web 3, the metaverse, GameFi, and DeFi. Many active, diverse, and highly engaged members motivate and support each other, creating a worldwide user base that contributes data, shares insights, and drives community development.
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