Are you also sick of hearing digital JPEGs being sold for million dollars like hot cakes? Do you also just don’t get the hype around it? Well, thankfully, we are NOT going to cover that use case of NFTs in today’s post. We already discussed and came up with a framework to evaluate digital art using NFTs. While you might be thinking that has to be some kind of sensibility involved in this billion dollar industry now. Why would someone come up with the concept of NFTs? Well, today we are exploring just that. What are the uses of NFT outside the digital art world.
I hope to bring forth the power of ERC721 (Standard used in NFT tokens) in front of you through this blogpost so that once the clouds of hype fade away, we can leverage the real power of NFT technology. So here goes: Top use cases of NFT.
A. Fashion:
If you are from Delhi, you must have heard about the infamous ‘Palika Bazar’, ‘Sarojini Nagar’ and ‘Janpath’ (Colaba Causeway, Linking Road for Mumbaikars). What’s common in these areas? Yup, you guessed it right. They’re the home for remarkably well, counterfeited clothes. I assume that most people would know that before buying them, but there are cases where you need to check the authenticity of the purchase.
Enter: NFTs. Now one can enter put the entire journey of a product on blockchain. This entire data can then be stored on a QR code which can be scanned by anyone in the world. The end user can scan and check the origin of fabric, factories where that cloth underwent some sort of processing and finally the warehouses that shipped the end product to you. Cool right? Not only you can validate the brand’s authenticity but also check if a particular product batch is aligned with your values. Eg. I could now see if a cotton clothing is sourced from China, I can avoid it consciously.
B. Sports and Events:
Have you ever been duped by a conman who is selling fake tickets to a show featuring your favorite artist? Guilty! I was charged 10,000 about a decade ago to attend a show by Metallica. I wasn’t allowed to enter because tickets were fake. The show anyway got cancelled but that’s another story.
Well, if you observe closely, even tickets are non fungible. I book a certain seat in a theatre for a reason. I can’t just swap it with any other ticket. Therefore, it makes sense to use NFTs as tickets. One could check the authenticity of those tickets through immutable records on blockchain.
But there’s more. A new trend is emerging in the sports industry called ‘Moments’. You can now own a history altering moment in the game through NFT. Example? Say BCCI sells the image of Saurav Dada, taking off his shirt and swirling in the face of English team at Natwest Final in 2000. I would definitely pay for it. Sure I could download it from internet, but being an owner of that moment (certified by BCCI) would be an honour.
C. Domains:
My domain is pandatechie.in. Currently, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) controls the standard domain name service (DNS) and there is limited oversight of these domains. This raises a lot of concerns around censorship and security.
What if we could get rid of this intermediary, and put all these domains directly on blockchain? One evident benefit of this would be the trade-ability of these domains now. I could sell pandatechie.in to someone right away at whatever amount without giving a cut to anyone for enabling this transaction.
Decentralized alternatives to this issue is ENS or Ethereum name service and Unstoppable domains. They provide crypto-addresses similar to Instagram and Twitter handles.
D. Gaming: Real Estate and Collectibles
This may not make any sense for an average joe, but for those who love gaming, will go absolutely gung ho over this. So there are games like fortnight where you can buy add on weapons, skins for your character right? But the design has some inherent drawbacks:
A. Centralization: Whenever the creators of the game want, they can get rid of your favorite skin/weapon. NFTs can take away that control and give you the real ownership of your assets.
B. Trading: What if you could earn an in game asset with your skill and later trade it with noobs? NFT enables just that. Pretty exciting right?
Similarly, there are games where your character virtually travels in a digital world. You can now own a piece of land in that world. Just like real world, it may appreciate in value over a peroid of time.
E. Certifications and Validation:
Recently CBSE announced it’s plans to put out results on a blockchain (source). When an organization uses NFTs to certify your accomplishments, entire value chain is eased out. How? (A) They need not spend on paper and stamps for issuing certificates. (B) There’s no concern around counterfeits as the entire data is on blockchain. (C) Any one validating (HR, Auditor, Universities) those certificates need not do it any more as putting it up as NFT proves it’s authenticity.
Conclusion:
Agreed that rocks JPEGs being sold for millions are giving a bad name to this space. However, once this settles down, possibilities for NFTs are endless. I can’t wait for the world to come up with epic use cases of NFTs.
What do you think?
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Until next time..
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5 responses to “What are the uses of NFT?: Top Use Cases”
Man, you answered all my questions in this post. I have always wondered why people will spend fortunes on mere JPEGS, but I now know better: there is more to NFT than the current bubbles.
Thanks John. Glad you found it valuable.
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