NFTs are more than digital art. Today, NFTs enable use cases across industries, providing novel solutions to ownership, authenticity and engagement.
Read on to discover the most exciting NFT use cases and learn more about their real-world applications.
By providing a secure way to prove digital ownership, the list of NFT use cases is surprisingly long. Here, we’ve listed the ten most exciting ones (beyond crypto art and PFPs).
One of the areas with the most potential is gaming, especially with the rise of play-to-earn models, where players can monetize their skills and time spent in virtual worlds. In this setting, you can truly own your in-game items and then trade or sell them if you feel like it.
One notable example of this is Axie Infinity, which allows players to breed, battle and trade creatures named Axies and earn crypto rewards in the process. Other cases include Star Atlas, Aavegotchi, Alien Worlds and more. Learn more about NFT gaming here.
NFTs can also be used as tickets to events. NFT tickets prevent fraud and forgery by creating a single point of truth for buyers and event organizers. From the first sale to the resale, a ticket’s entire movement is immutably stored on the blockchain.
Ticket NFTs also have the benefit of resale, allowing enforceable royalties to the creator or simply fasciliating easy transfers.
VisitorApp is a ticketing application powered by Camino Network, a blockchain designed for the travel industry. The platform ties regional attractions into global traveling experiences in the form of mintable NFTs. As such, it demonstrates how Web3 can make regional travel simpler for both travelers and industry participants.
One of NFT's distinguishing features is it's ability to store information. In a supply chain, NFTs are being used to verify a product’s entire journey from manufacturing to shipment just by scanning a QR code.
Companies can use blockchains to track products all the way to the delivery, making it easier to prove where they originated from, what they contain and any other information they choose to store.
Among the companies deploying blockchain and NFTs for supply chain management is Walmart. It uses ‘digital twin’ technology, in which NFTs act as virtual replications of real-world goods, to monitor the food supply chain ecosystem and increase trust and accountability.
Another potential use for NFTs is to establish real estate ownership or fractional ownership through fractionalization.
A person selling a house or apartment could create an NFT representing ownership of the property and then transfer it to the buyer(s) when all the conditions of the sale are met.
An example of such a platform is Propy, which uses blockchain technology to keep track of the entire real estate life cycle and supports decentralized title reports. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch and Arrington XRP Capital, has sold his apartment as an NFT via Propy.
The digital identity sector demands high security and verifiability, both of which can be achieved with NFTs. These NFTs can represent and authenticate a person’s digital identity, allowing secure online interactions and more control over personal data. This includes social media, online transactions and voting systems.
An example of an NFT-based digital identity would be Lens Protocol on Polygon, which uses NFT Profiles to represent each user's unique profile, content, and social connections as individual NFTs. Using Lens, every user’s digital identity—including posts, followers, and interactions—is stored in their crypto wallet.
NFTs can also be used to engage with customers and build brand loyalty as they can represent loyalty points or rewards. The customers can subsequently redeem these digital items for free or discounted goods or services.
One of the best examples is Nissan Passport Beta, the popular vehicle manufacturer’s loyalty program based on NFTs. Its goal is to reward current users with four categories of Membership NFTs, granting them access to exclusive benefits and experiences and attract new customers.
NFTs are also used in the music industry, where they can open new revenue streams for artists who can tokenize their work. Additionally, NFTs can foster a closer connection between musicians and their audience by allowing fans to buy unique pieces of music or get access to exclusive content.
Platforms like Audius allow creators to upload and stream their music and audio data in return for instant payments in the AUDIO token. At the same time, they retain total ownership over the content and earn crypto rewards from interacting with fans.
Speaking of art and exclusive content brings us to another important issue: protecting intellectual property (IP) rights.
Minting their creations as NFTs allows artists, writers and developers to prove their original ownership and retain oversight of how their work is used. This way, they help fight against piracy and guarantee that recognition and compensation go to the right person.
Recently, Binance announced the launch of the TCOM Global IP creation and governance platform on its blockchain. Creators can make original works based on famous classic characters like Astro Boy and Black Jack, submit them for community votes and earn airdrops. x
Combining physical and digital collectibles, the so-called “phygitals” bridge the gap between the physical world and the digital.
Phygitals enable purchasing and selling real-world physical goods and experiences through digital collectibles or NFTs. Consumers get both an NFT and a connected physical item.
The Nouns Vision project allowed customers to buy the brands high-end sunglasses by initially purchasing an NFT. To get the glasses shipped you had to burn the NFT.
As a cross-industry phenomenon, NFTs can be used in literature and publishing to represent rare or limited edition books, or even individual works like poems or short stories.
NFTs in digital publishing can work through or independent of traditional publishers. Mirror is a new platform enabling writers to convert their work into NFTs. Users can mint entries as "Writing NFTs". Readers can "Subscribe to Mint NFTs", opening up new ways to interact with authors and their works.
The Magic Eden marketplace lets you explore, mint, sell and buy NFTs across a diverse range of categories.
From in-game assets, crypto collectibles and trading cards to generative art, music, Magic Eden has it all. So connect your wallet to the marketplace and explore everything that NFTs have to offer.
Enter Magic Eden to immerse yourself in the new era of NFTs.
There are plenty of practical uses for NFTs. These include in-game assets in play-to-earn games, tickets and collectibles for certain events, supply chain management and product authenticity, property ownership and fractionalization, digital identity, membership and loyalty rewards, music royalties and fan engagement, intellectual property, phygitals and literature, just to name a few.
Although digital art can be represented as an NFT, not all NFTs are digital art. NFT technology increasingly represent a diverse set of assets, including art, music, real estate, and much more. Creators adopt NFT technology for it's strengths in verifiable ownership, immutability, copyright management, and ease of transfer.`
The information provided on this website is provided for general educational purposes only and is in no way financial or investment advice. Certain information may have also been provided to us or prepared by third parties; these materials are provided for convenience and are not an endorsement by Magic Eden. Magic Eden is not liable for any errors, changes or amendments to such information, including any actions taken in reliance on such information.
