New NFT Cathedrals Are Going Up Everywhere

Fungible memes have dominated crypto's conversation for the better part of two years now.

But as we’ve seen a million memecoins come and go, NFTs have been somewhat quietly been getting interesting again. I say quietly because attention largely remains elsewhere onchain.

However, if you’re not paying attention to NFTs right now, you’re missing some awesome opportunities. Creators are shipping new collectibles, new designs, new primitives, new possibilities. New NFT cathedrals are going up everywhere, and people are, yes, making gains on NFTs again.

Consider NFW, a new social NFT marketplace on Solana in the vein of Fomo, centered around a feed of trades and public calls. Some people are already up 6 figures here.

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And we’re back to the point where NFT mints are becoming clamored for again. Look no further than Jack Butcher’s Credits drop on Ethereum, which just fielded +120,000 mints!

Credits collectors paid $8 each via X Money. After the open edition closed, secondary prices reached +0.1 ETH a pop at one point, marking a +3,000% gain. Even with the current ~0.028 ETH floor, that’s +800% appreciation.

And new projects spawn new experiments in kind, of course. TokenWorks wasted little time in rolling out a CreditStrategy token, which will now work to automatically acquire and relist Credits for the benefit of supporters.

New releases beget new expansions, new expansions beget new ideas, new ideas make for new releases, ‘round and ‘round. And as things heat up in a bull market as we’re seeing now, this flywheel spins faster and leads to fresh opportunities at a rapid pace.

In other words, NFT enjoyooors have a target-rich environment once again. One where it’s common to be rewarded (in various ways, but quite often literally with tokens) for trying new things. Once more into the breach just like the good ol’ days, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaking of breaching, the Ethereum community’s NFT interest has returned anew this year via TokenWorks’ Fake World Assets, whose V2 gacha is humming along. Full disclosure, I’m an FWA holder/user, and spins have degen odds. The innovative design here is undeniable, though, and reminds us of the fresh second-order creations we can make around NFTs in this new era.

I specifically bring it up as a prime example of the interesting risk-reward opportunities we’re seeing boom again around NFTs. Indeed, FWA’s prizes can be sensational. For example, the protocol is acquiring PunkStrategy Cryptopunks and dropping their backing price by 1 ETH twice per day, increasing the likelihood they get pulled.

Someone just won a ‘Punk with a ~0.08 ETH spin this way over the weekend, and another one (#3190) is currently on the verge of being pulled any spin now, since its backing has now declined to the relatively low 1 ETH mark. Only in NFTs today can you permissionlessly win such a valuable collectible for so little.

These days we’re also seeing NFT opportunities increasingly appear in less trodden or frontier terrains, like DeFi and AI, where NFTs are being used to provide access to live systems.

In DeFi, consider the new onchain central bank project Standard Reserve, whose soulbound charter NFTs grant holders the “banker” role and a cut of the protocol’s issuance. Or consider the rise of NFT smart wallets (i.e. Token Bound Accounts) being used in Robinhood Chain tokenized stock projects like StonkBrokers.

As for AI, my mind immediately goes to identity.md, whose IMD NFTs offer access to a rising community-run AI swarm. These NFTs were released for free earlier this year, and now their floor is up to 1.7 ETH each as interest in the project has grown. We’ll see more like this, too.

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Sure, the efforts highlighted above don’t make for a comprehensive survey. There are plenty of other new interesting NFT projects out across various categories that I didn’t get to. But my grand point? There’s an explosion of activity around NFTs again, and in turn, an explosion of opportunities.

If you’ve been away from NFTs for a while, don’t keep sleeping on the space just because things have veered so strongly toward fungible memes in recent years. The bull run you’ve been waiting for might have already arrived.