I’m a causal observer on the whole subject of NFTs, I’ve had to have a Look into the technology for work, but in general I’m far from an expert, however, I do have a knack for understanding tech and looking at viable applications, so here are a couple of ideas where I see NFTs being more than a passing fad.
- IDs for the Metaverse – running the risk of making this buzzword bingo, I think one of the interesting applications of NFTs is as ID cards of Avatars in an open source metaverse. Essentially these would be tied to wallets and like a passport, represent the closest thing to a real, unique person that you can, its possible that a single person may buy multiple NFT avatars, but if your membership is a unique NFT string, thats far more compelling.
- NFTs of characters in-game – similar from the IDs for metaverse, if we go one level lower, NFTs of unique character files makes them a tradable asset, the NFT string being used as the access to the character which could then be loaded as the players character in something like world of warcraft, only for NFTs to be truly useful, this game would need to be open source, where individuals can add and change the universe – all aspects of this universe could be NFTs, e.g. you could design a new house for the game, and trade the NFT, the person who posses the NFT can load the house on their land.
- NFTs of unique cards, eg. In Magic the gathering – I think this is a pretty straightforward application, but the condition here is that the ledger of NFTs ensures transparency on the owners, so if you were playing a tournament for Magic your card deck would need to be verified against your NFT ownership database to ensure that the cards you use, you truly own.
Whist these ideas demonstrate some of the applications of NFTs, I think that whole NFT technology is still premature, we’re too early to really see practical consumer application at this point, and so, I’m somewhat cautious, I feel that this tech is much like VR, where aside from some very specific fringe applications its really not that useful (at least at this stage)