Early adopters of NFTs are getting in the way of NFTs
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have gained a lot of attention in recent years as a way to authenticate and monetize digital art and collectibles. But their very name, like jargon, and their focus on technology rather than consumer value is stalling their mainstream adoption.
NFTs are used as a way to authenticate and monetize digital assets, such as art, collectibles, and other forms of media. They offer a number of advantages over traditional database entries, including:
- Non-fungibility: NFTs are unique and cannot be replaced with other tokens, making them ideal for authenticating and tracking ownership of unique items.
- Verifiability: NFTs are stored on a decentralized blockchain, making it easy to verify their authenticity and provenance by anyone savvy enough.
- Immutability: The data stored on a blockchain is permanent and cannot be changed, ensuring that the ownership and history of an NFT is secure and immutable.
- Liquidity: Because NFTs are stored on a blockchain and can be bought and sold on various marketplaces, they offer increased liquidity compared to traditional database entries.
Consumers ultimately care about value and brand, and little about the underlying technology. Consider something as important as a bank or credit card. Do you know how numbers are tracked, transferred, calculated, verified/etc before they appear on your bank statement or online portal? What matters is that your costs and money are right, not how it happens.
In the realm of digital collectibles, Nintendo has icons that can be purchased with their own coins, but those icons and coins aren’t on a blockchain and don’t need to be. The power of the intellectual property and ecosystem created by Nintendo disc usage. If you want a custom icon from one of their games and you want it to appear on your Nintendo profile, that’s the only way to get it. On their private icon market with their coins.
Likewise, when people use Twitter, they don’t care about posting text to a database associated with their account; they care about “tweeting” and the reach of those tweets.
As with any new technology, early adopters are often the first to embrace and promote its benefits. This is certainly true with non-fungible tokens (NFT). While early adopters may be excited about the technology and the values it represents, ultimately most consumers are more interested in the value that NFTs can bring them. This is why it is important for NFT projects and platforms to focus on creating value for the consumer, rather than getting bogged down in the technicalities of the technology. By demonstrating the value that NFTs can offer to consumers, it is possible to drive widespread adoption and mainstream success.
Demonstrating the value they offer most likely does not involve supporting the 4 elements listed earlier, unless there are problems users actively want to solve or are struggling with.
For NFTs to see adoption on popular blockchains like ethereum