Anybody participated in whitelists and minting new NFTs before? A friend of mine is in the early listing Discord for this one. I'm interested to see how it plays out. Minting is Sunday, I think. https://twitter.com/doodles
I've done a few. I'm actually getting together a photography set to mint in the next month or so. I can say with 100000000000% certainty, the majority of NFT's are going to be completely worthless in the coming years. Outside of the major ones already released and the 1/1 of original art, most projects are pure money grabs with little utility. With that said, scrolling through the comments on their tweets, there's some decent sized names in the NFT space who've commented on this particular release, but from looking through what they are trying to raise, I doubt this mints all the way through. It's possible, but tell your friend don't go crazy.
I think there is real value in using NFT's for digital assets in video games, or video game ownership. All that time and effort turns into a digital sword to be used in a game? NFT. It can then be stored in your personal wallet, or auctioned off, or sold/transferred to someone else, or sold via consignment on an exchange. Grind hard enough in NFS? Get a Lambo NFT that unlocks the car in the game. That kind of thing has real value and makes sense. All this shit about digital video clips or gifs or other digital art that can be cut/pasted? Useless... who REALLY has the need to show that they actually own that one of unlimited copies floating around the internet? Unless you're using it as a way to show gratitude and help sponsor an artist, I'm not sure I get it.
Without getting into the validity of the art, most of the projects are ways for artists to get paid for their digital creations. It's like an updated/blockchain verifiable version of doing projects on Fiverr. There are some "roadmaps" people are trying to incorporate into their project where early adapters will get whitelisted into future releases and there's some NFT's where you can use your purchase in online games and little contests, but they are very few and far between. The major players, Punks, NBA/NFL/MMA etc are releasing what basically amounts to a 1/xxxxxx limited edition something. It's basically a collectible like any other and has a value based on the going market for the item. It's a way to bring collectibles into the digital world and do so using blockchain which guarantees authenticity. The only interesting thing about NFT's is going to be the first company who is able to transition it into an everyday application that the general public will flock to. Apple took the mp3, a simple technology at the time, and created an empire out of selling iPods/iTunes. Once a company does something like this with blockchain, you will start to see it getting put into everything digital.
Exactly my point. I think the current "art" or digital collectibles will have initial value due to novelty, but in the end, they will fade. The digital item is NOT unique, only the NFT is. That MMA clip? a million people can have the exact same clip. The only thing the NFT does is say "you officially own it". Great. What value is there in that ownership? Beanie babies had the exact same arc. It's new, and people are trying hard to find something that works with it... and throwing terms like "Metaverse" around. But in the end, I still believe that as purely digital assets, in-game items, or actual games, etc, are one of the few legit use cases I see for this right now. One big difference about NFT's is that they have auction/exchange capabilities built into the spec, and smart contracts are able to enforce a financial obligation upon transfer of ownership. For instance, a Publisher makes a game, and the license for said game is an NFT. If you want to resell that game, a smart contract embedded in the NFT can say "you must pay Publisher $X in order to transfer ownership of this NFT/game". This is a huge thing, and what I believe GameStop is working towards with their NFT efforts.... they can now resell digital games in a way that will appease the biggest complaint of publishers in the past.... they get paid on the re-sell.
And I might add that as of November 1, I head up a new group that is responsible for developing and implementing cryptocurrency and NFT systems, including online marketplaces, for the game tech company responsible for over 70% of the games in the world. This is now my core focus for the foreseeable future, and I have millions of dollars of budget for marketplace and technical analysis, etc. I get to try and forge the technical underpinnings of the new "metaverse". God I hate that term.... what marketing hype bullshit.... just like Web 2.0
This friend has "invested" in some TopShot stuff and has some other NFT and crypto experience. I think they are going in pretty big. The folks behind it are established artists that do work for major corporations and behind TopShot. I think there are a few celebs and high dollar investors getting in, too. I'm interested to see how it plays out. I'm like Nett. I understand it but I don't really get it. I am anxious for my friend.
There’s always money to be made early if you ride that initial FOMO wave, and get out fast. Long term? There may be money in the systems and infra to support the NFTs. For instance, Layer 2 networks that drastically reduce minting and transfer costs, like Loopring. Or Lightning. They behave more like a normal crypto trading system with broker/institutional wallets and private blockchain components, making NFT transfers “free” and instantaneous.
The core problem is that the only thing blockchain offers above a basic bitch ledger is trust, and then only trust in the accuracy of the ledger. That kind of trust just isn't that lacking in most applications. If you're into the kind of shit where the NSA will alter records and try to make you disappear, sure, but proving you paid money for a video game? Just call up VISA and they'll be like "yes, we processed that transaction for that amount of money, your honor." And that's in the so-rare-I've-never-heard-of-it scenario where Steam or Apple or whoever is denying the transaction ever took place.
No, blockchain also provides mobility and freedom. It means that 2 people can trade nft’s independently of a closed system. Right now game publishers are very proprietary. I cannot swap an EA game asset for an Ubisoft asset. If the assets were nfts on the public blockchain, you could. Part of the technical paradigm shift would involve assets being stored in a user’s local crypto wallet, not in the publishers proprietary online db of achievements and unlockables. This creates a public, cross platform market.
But this requires the publisher's buy-in, and if the publisher were willing to buy in there are much easier ways to achieve it. Again this goes back to blockchain only adding trust in the veracity of the ledger, it can't force someone to care about the ledger.
I would disagree with the “easier ways” to do it. Implementing an already public standard is a hell of a lot easier than getting the industry to develop and implement a common standard for such interoperability.
I disagree, I think this will be a technical, business, and customer service nightmare for gaming companies and they'll opt not to have anything to do with it.
And you are a Well, as someone who is actively working with a dozen major game companies on exactly this, I respectfully disagree.
Software dev in gaming. If management came to us and said "we're going to make our inventory system dependent on blockchain" my response would be "fuck off." Colleagues in customer support who will have to deal with the inevitable "I got scammed in a system with no reversibility" would have a similar response.
It's actually getting cheaper and cheaper with the new updates in Ethereum. Never mind the Layer 2 technology.
I think you drastically underestimate the non-big-publisher markets. There are 5 billion downloads a month of Unity games... 70+% of the top 1k mobile games are made with Unity. And it's not just the games... it's the in-game assets. What if there were an NFT-based artist asset marketplace for game devs to take advantage of? Look... I'm the first one to shit on blockchain bullshit. I don't even believe in BTC, and look at it as a pump and dump rather than a currency alternative. Talking to game devs, studios, artists, and publishers for the last little while, I can tell you that there are very legit use cases for NFT, and to be clear, they are the ones asking for it. Is it going to be 100% adopted? Oh fuck no. But as everyone talks more and more about the "Multiverse", what underlying tech is going to facilitate it? Right now, NFT seems like a viable, valid part of that vision, and people are still working shit out and trying new things, seeing what sticks.
Oh... and one thing I forgot to mention is regulation. More and more, the government is pushing for harsher regulation around in-game assets, loot boxes, etc. "Game" stuff is turning into real fintech, with KYC and AML requirements. And proper licensing. We are almost to the point where we need to have proper commercial financial licensing to deal with this kind of thing. It is non-trivial, to say the least. Most game companies and publisher do not, or cannot deal with that level of technical and regulatory requirement, so will require a third party service to do it.