Where Utility NFTs Are Going Next - Ty Blackard

my way here this morning uh because there's no ubers and it's snowing um you know it's about a 17-minute walk from my hotel uh over here and i'm facetiming my mom you know shout out to mom and i just get wrecked by a car driving by in a puddle and so luckily i had one of my little puffy coats on kind of protected the nifty hoodie but you know funny little story so my name is ty i'm otherwise known as titan inc on twitter i tweet a lot so if you guys follow me on twitter uh good chances uh you're gonna get uh wrecked by my notifications uh but essentially i'm actually one of the co-founders and director of biz dev at nifty labs um and we'll be talking about where utility nfts are going next but before i do that uh quick questions who in this room owns at least one nft let's see a raise of hands okay that's pretty good all right there's there's actually not that many nft talks here so i'm actually surprised that more of you guys own nfts but you know you probably own nfts but you're probably wondering you know what can nfts do well that's the purpose of this conversation so almost caught it so uh yep titan inc uh my background i've actually been in the industry since 2017 uh so i've had a chance to meet a lot of really cool people uh i've traveled across asia i spent nine months in asia actually meeting a lot of really cool crypto people uh built a pretty solid network out there and actually happened to meet my co-founder and ceo digital lawrence who actually had one of the very first interviews with cz from binance so a little background about us but let's just talk about nfts right that's why we're all here so to start a lot of people may not know this but you know crypto punks they're very popular now uh you know very scarce assets very uh valuable assets but uh they actually started in 2017 uh and one of the things that really gives crypto punks a lot of their value is actually the time that they have spent on the blockchain itself and of course the blockchain is based on time so this makes a lot of sense and they really were the kind of the first uh you know cyberpunk or cryptopunk rather you know pixelated nfts that's where a lot of the trends come from uh for these type of styles of nfts and they're like considered the first blue chip nft project and they really started the idea behind pseudo-anonymous identity you know being able to use your nft uh you know as like your social identity uh being able to represent an asset a digital asset um as a you know a form of like a digital flex if you will and so uh after that uh shortly after a lot of you may know about crypto kitties uh they uh helped to crash ethereum in 2017. uh ridiculous gas fees ensued um after people started using crypto kitties a lot uh as part of the cryptokitties game of course people also use them as collectibles so um but they're most famous and popular for actually uh literally kind of crashing ethereum the gas fee spike transaction volume spiked and so it was very difficult to use ethereum at that time when cryptokitties was very popular and so another very popular uh you know company axiomfinity i actually know jeff g host personally we met in the philippines in 2019 as part of you know some of the people that i was able to meet axiomfinity was really the first to bring out play to earn i know all of you know that you know blockchain gaming is getting very popular and they were really the uh you know the first to uh kind of put nfts as like in-game characters and assets um and also build like actual token economy around that um for the game so obviously they they were awesome they built uh you know throughout 2018 2019 in the bear market and even 2020 when nfts finally started to trend upwards and then you all know uh board api club uh one of the most iconic web 3 brands you know since nfts have gotten popular really i think the the cultural aspect of board ape yacht club is uh the main factor to their success but they've also been very you know innovative in the way that they have approached uh you know how to use nfts and how to um you know kind of make it more of a cultural type of brand and so these are just some metrics on nft uh you know sales uh average price of an nft active market wallets that are um you know using nfts or have entities and so forth but really the most important metric that you should know is that uh in 2020 i believe the market cap for nfts was just over 315 million or so and now the market cap is sitting at just about 22 billion that is a year-over-year growth of 2400 plus percent uh which is absolutely insane uh but it just speaks to the volume of uh what nfts are doing right now that's just unlike what i call phase one really the speculative side but where nfts are going of course is more of a use case scenario more practical use cases if you will so wire nfc is booming uh well lots of celebrities large brands for example new york stock exchange just two days ago released news that they're going to be launching their own nft marketplace uh they skipped right over d5 went straight to nfts uh taco bell pizza hut canada charmin uh pepsi adidas nike i mean the list goes on all these brands are getting into nfts and it could be because you know on one side the regulatory you know framework around nft is a little bit more friendly for brands and then also it's a little bit more appealing you know for a their brand audience um in terms of like kind of being a part of the culture um it may be a little bit harder for them to uh appeal to like the d5 crowd because um you know traditional finance is hard enough let alone like decentralized finance um it's a lot easier to relate to uh you know jpegs if you will rather than maybe uh uh i don't know lending and borrowing on on d5 which i still don't understand and i've been in the industry for years um but obviously we also have you know athletes celebrities uh you know they're also picking up their own nfts using those nfts as um you know their own pseudo-anonymous identity even though we know who they are uh it's it's still a really cool way to just do like a little digital flex i mean there's a reason why you buy rolex's there's a reason why you buy you know louis vuitton and all these big brands and you want to wear them and you want to show them off to people in person well in an era where you know like covid for example uh you can't go out and meet people uh there needs to be some some form of like digital asset or internet native uh flex um to be able to uh you know show people and whatnot and then obviously you know it really helps if you can resell uh you know and gain some value in the process so so uh the current use cases for nfts right now they're being explored obviously we just talked about digital identity you know student anonymous identity where you don't have to you know tell anybody who you are necessarily but you can just be represented by your nft itself and of course you can represent your your net worth in some ways through that nft as well which is also great when you're trying to join like certain clubs and um you know get attention and whatnot a lot of different celebrities or athletes or even just new businesses that are trying to get more attention they'll use this approach to be able to do just that get more attention another one obviously gaming you know play to earn uh that's a big one i mean there's uh networks that are literally dedicating entire arms to blockchain gaming to get more uh you know in the way of play to earn games on their own networks and so this is you know in use case it's been vastly explored initially by axio infinity of course they're really the most successful to do this uh music there's a few players that are exploring uh music nfts in fact i think just today snoop dogg release that he's going to be doing a music label you know dedicated to like music nfts so that's cool uh metaverse and virtual land uh decentraland is a good example of you know being able to purchase virtual land uh you know in the metaverse you can actually buy parcels of land and resell them if you want to or you can hold onto those pieces of land and you can host your concerts or you know whatever in your own venues and you know if you wanted to you could have tenants in your own little virtual apartments and you can kick them out if you want if they don't pay rent virtually of course so a lot of really cool things are going on the metaverse social gating is another thing basically being able to use nfts to gain access to like social communities like private discords private telegrams uh you know some of these things could be expanded upon like maybe even if you're familiar with gather town it's a pretty popular virtual office application where if you could use an nft to join a virtual office so social gating is pretty popular and then event gating a lot of you are probably expecting to be able to use your nfts to get into you know in-person events and that's something that we've actually built ourselves at nifty labs you know being able to do just that use your nft as a ticket per se and gain access to physical events and so what is next for nfts uh there's a lot of things that are being explored uh actually samsung one of the samsung universities is now exploring uh i just saw this news today using nfts as diplomas when you graduate the university uh there was some other stuff being said about using nfts as resumes and then of course you know some of the some of the things on the presentation here like soul bound nfts uh which we got um termed from chris cantino on twitter um you should check him out uh soulbound nfts are basically non-transferable nfts i like to think about these uh in a way of like user access control so if you're you know let's say you have a very uh big company and you want to be able to maybe uh monitor all the employees in your company and give them certain access rights and you can actually do that by giving them non-transferable nfts and essentially you know non-transparable nft would mean that you can't transfer out of your wallet um that would be bad if you did have an employee that uses an nft for access and they transfer to their buddy or their hacker friend and uh you know bad things happen so that's one thing that's being explored user access control uh borrowing platforms uh being able to use an nft uh against you know essentially as collateral to borrow uh money this is gonna become more popular as more institutions come in because you know as more money comes in to sort of you know support the collateral for these nfts and obviously as these nfts continue to get bigger and bigger and become more scarce and more risk averse the institutions will definitely supply uh the liquidity needed to be able to back those nfts loyalty exchanges this is probably going to be very popular with a lot of the big brands um because if you think about it like for example all the airlines uh i fly all the time but i i don't actually like check in with all my loyalty rewards points because i have to make an account for each of these uh you know these companies and i really don't feel like attaching my uh accounts to all of my flights uh when i'm just kind of wheeling and dealing and whatnot so you'll probably see uh you know exchanges or marketplaces dedicated to like loyalty rewards points from brands that are trying to just kind of attach their existing uh loyalty rewards ecosystems that they have through their points or maybe just who knows maybe uh you know explore social tokens i kind of doubt that they'll explore social tokens though because of the legal framework around them so they may try to just take nfts and just reward users for owning those nfts through their existing loyalty rewards ecosystems it just makes it a lot easier for them as well because these brands dedicate a lot of money just to being able to kind of support those low to rewards points systems so it makes the most sense for them to maybe keep that fractionalization uh being able to use an nft uh to actually um kind of like exactly what it sounds like fractionalize nft for um fractional ownership so let's just say that you don't want to spend 200 000 on a board ape yacht club nft but maybe you want to own a part of it well through fractionalization you'd be able to do that you would essentially own a part of that nft if the owner is willing to fractionalize the ownership of it there are applications out there right now that allow you to do that i think it's called fractional.art if i have the domain correct it allows you to put your nft on the application and then you can use social tokens to kind of get a piece of the ownership of that nft collateralization we just kind of talked about that on the borrowing platform side just being able to you know use nfts against some form of collateral multiplayer and leaderboards is similar to bounties and quests you can just imagine um you know going through games uh you know i think you know activision uh we'll explore this uh you know blizzard entertainment will explore this where essentially you can go through games you can get achievements and no longer are they just like these xbox achievements that you get that you might tell your friends about but nobody cares about maybe in the future you'll be able to actually get nfts as achievements which will actually serve some form of value and then beyond that you could probably use those nfts for some form of access or promotions discounts and things like that so it just makes more sense for the user playing the game and then obviously you'd be able to take those nfts and maybe port them over to the new games that are coming out instead of just having achievements that stay in your xbox and don't go anywhere nft indexes being able to kind of gather up uh you know a couple different nfts from different projects for example uh maybe you have a you know gutter cat nft a uh you know board api club nft and a crypto punk uh and if they're in one index and you can essentially um you know purchase ownership and all three of those nfts um you know in the index itself and capture upside as it uh as a trend upwards uh retail um this is gonna be much more popular especially as the big brands are coming in uh you know imagine buying a louis vuitton purse for example and uh you know having it tied to some form of wallet or just having maybe um what's called a poe app where you can just sign in with your wallet and receive an nft um after you've actually purchased a like a louis vuitton purse so you know you have like uh you got the purchase you get an email um it says hey because you purchased this we're gonna give you uh an nft that's kind of like a digital representation of your physical asset and we do see these brand you know items apparel and things like that as assets especially if they're a little bit more expensive um and i think that's most of these um that i'll touch on because uh there's there's quite a few things we could go into um but that is uh that for that uh and then this is what we're working on currently at nifty labs so we're building a product called social pass we happen to talk to quite a few big brands around the industry both on the outside and coming in to the industry for nfts so what we're doing is we're actually building a white label out of the box solution for those big brands to be able to just come into the industry have a you know supportive continuous engagement uh so that you know they're not having cash grabs as people will call them and they can actually you know have their users be able to use these nfts for uh actual utility instead of just you know looking at the artwork that's it is really cool but i think you know instead of looking at your artwork each day you might be able to want to use your nft for something more so some of the things that we'll be offering in our new product will be you know minting so whenever you're you know trying to mint a new nft from a brand that's launching you'd be able to go to a portal have you know all the brands white labeled branding of course their own domain and have a you know an effective minting dap that they could use or users could use gatekeeping which would of course be like ticket gating so being able to use your nft from that brand to get into any sort of physical events and things like that and also of course social gating uh being able to get into like community groups um you know so that's uh a quick rundown on social pass we're coming out with that pretty soon you guys are getting like the first look uh no one else has seen this before so congrats and if you guys want to follow us at nifty labs you can scan the qr code and follow us on our journey as we explore the world of nft utility and if you guys have any questions i'd be happy to answer awesome thank you thanks ty thank you if you have questions you can take them out in the hallway we just