Opinion | NFT 2024 will enter various usage scenarios through branding

The founder of the NFT project WeirdoGhostGang, Sleepy, shared his views on the future development of the NFT space for the next year. He believes that PFP projects, due to their brandability in completing the scene, will remain the mainstream and have the most growth potential in NFT development, while metaverse projects will continue to be lukewarm due to technological limitations.

Continued Growth of the NFT Industry

NFT + AA Attracting Users from Outside the Circle

Some NFT intellectual property will drive mass market adoption. Sleepy believes that relying solely on challenging traditional financial systems to achieve mass adoption in the blockchain industry is unrealistic, as inflation is not a strong driving force at the current stage.

NFTs with IP represent a continuous content output capability, and content is a better way to attract users from outside the circle. In addition, recent developments in account abstraction (AA) and intent-centric design technologies will continue to lower the entry barrier, potentially attracting more users from outside the circle.

Living NFTs are the Blue Chip Projects of the Next Bull Market

Note that what Sleepy refers to as "living" is not measured by data such as floor price or trading volume, but by whether the team is still making meaningful contributions to the project, such as developing new activities, creating new stories to enhance IP depth, or engaging in cross-industry alliances.

Avatar-style NFTs Create a Complete Brand Scene

PFP NFTs Enhance Social Scenes

PFP remains the mainstream form of NFTs. Most projects still want to use NFTs for marketing and will continue to issue NFTs in the form of avatar-style PFPs.

When users change their avatars, they become a promotional channel for the project on various social media platforms and may even become advocates for the brand. Compared to other types of NFTs such as art, game items, or memorabilia, users themselves are precise promotional channels for targeted marketing.

In addition, PFP NFT projects have the opportunity to build brands and integrate with a variety of products and usage scenarios to create super NFTs.

Emergence of Super NFT Projects Spanning Multiple Scenes

Projects starting from NFT IPs have a vast imagination space, as IPs can be combined with any product, field, or scene. For example, any project, whether in DeFi, RWA, GameFi, social, metaverse, streetwear, etc., can use a small ghost IP as the "spokesperson" for the project.

NFT IP projects have great potential for extension, as they can be connected to various projects or products in the future, blurring the boundaries between different fields to capture users' attention.

PFPs Without a Carrier Are Difficult to Survive

A "carrier" refers to a project's clear "operating model" and roadmap. Projects that previously entered the market solely based on memes will find it increasingly difficult to attract users in the future.

Meme PFPs have shorter life cycles. Although memes will never disappear, by 2024, users and the market will mature, raising the threshold for meme projects. While flagship projects may experience wild wealth effects, meme projects, in general, will have shorter life cycles.

In the future, there will be less time for new projects to explore business models after launch. Teams can no longer wait until NFTs are sold out to consider future planning. Future NFT projects will need clearer roadmaps and purposes.

The positioning of projects will become increasingly important, and projects without clear scenarios will struggle to survive.

Changing Trends in NFTs

Decreased Importance of Designers in Commercial Projects

Artists still have dominance in personal art NFT projects, but in commercial projects, they will increasingly become like tools.

With the development of AI, the artistic gap in NFT projects will gradually narrow. Unless the design of the IP itself is extremely unique or has strong branding, NFT designers will slowly lose importance.

Continued Optimization of NFT Liquidity Solutions

The liquidity issues faced by NFT projects in the past will be improved through more mechanisms and innovative services.

For example, there may be cross-chain NFT trading aggregators, or solutions that combine Blur and Flooring to enhance NFT liquidity.

Currently, Blur is attempting to invest the idle ETH in its Bid pool into Lido to increase the capital utilization efficiency within exchanges.

Integration of Virtual and Real Worlds More Practical than Metaverse

The performance of fully virtual metaverse projects will continue to be weak, but Sleepy is very optimistic about applications that integrate virtual and real worlds.

Purely virtual projects heavily rely on user experience, and especially when bearing the name of metaverse, projects with mediocre experiences will face criticism, not to mention that most metaverse projects cannot even achieve a "mediocre" level.

In addition to user experience, the metaverse needs to improve its social attributes, real-time rendering, and various other challenges. From a technological perspective, even in 2024, the market may not truly open up.

However, applications that integrate virtual and real worlds may be implemented first, as they offer lower user experience expectations, specific functionality orientation, and lower capital requirements, which may attract market attention next year.

Before virtual assets bring users into a virtual world, they can first bring them into the real world.

Conclusion

NFTs, as a tool, have often entered the market from a meme perspective in the past, successfully attracting attention at the time but not enduring. Therefore, whether it is new projects in the future or existing projects that survive, "branding" seems to be the key word in the NFT field going forward.

NFTs with IP or branding will be closest to users, giving them control and pricing power, becoming an alternative Web3 entry point beyond wallets.

However, the industry's development will still take time, filled with uncertainties. Therefore, whether the above predictions can truly be realized by 2024 will require a comprehensive evaluation from various perspectives.