NFTs give Web3 a bad name. Here’s what Web3 can really do

Monkeys, dogs, cats, punks… pixelated art with suspect owner’s copyright, all being bid up into the stratosphere by a seemingly endless stream of crypto-enthusiasts on an “investment” premise with bigger idiots. And now it crashed.

The good news is that none of these things are “Web3”.

Yet the die was cast, and now many think of NFTs as merely a mechanism for the tokenization and sale of their digital intellectual property, with little regard for real value or utility. Many people have been completely derailed by the “get rich quick” ethos of the v1.0 version of NFTs and thus miss the core of the opportunity and value that Web3 brings.

Defining Web3

Before we know how to leverage it to drive connectivity, increase revenue, or reduce fraud, we need to understand the technology we’re talking about.

“Web” is simply short for the interconnected society and economy:

• Web1 was the availability of information.
• Web2 was the advent of social networks, blogging platforms, video tools and other forms of writing, creation and engagement.
• Web3 leverages blockchain technology to enable direct ownership, portability, accessibility and provenance of everything electronic.

Related: If you have no idea what Web3 is, you’re not alone. Here is an overview of the future of the Internet.

Understanding NFTs

One of the biggest byproducts of Web3 technology is the ability to tokenize digital assets, often called “nonfungible tokens” or NFTs. Fungible and non-fungible tokens are going to completely transform the world. Businesses, content creators and individuals will do incredible things with them. But it is still early days and many infrastructure issues must be resolved before it can take flight.

While there have been some modest financial success stories, the early movers in music, sports, influencers, corporate brands, etc. have risked their intellectual property and damaged their brands by jumping into things too quickly out of v1.0 greed without thinking the consequences of poor choices of infrastructure providers and a lack of engaging content or targeted use.

• NFTs are for so much more than creating digital art (or trading cards, or music tracks, or whatever) and selling it to a minimal audience.
• NFTs are for direct audience engagement and relationships.
• NFTs are for portability of ownership and origin of the thing(s) the NFT represents.
• …and so much more.

Related: NFTs will soon be inevitable. That’s a good thing.

What Web3 can do

While early in the game (I would suggest that only the very first pitch has been thrown in the first inning), and while many critical infrastructures have yet to be deployed to enable widespread adoption, we’re seeing some cool use cases starting to emerge that point us toward what the technology can do. These include:

Sports — Autograph has nailed the value prop with Tom Brady’s NFTs. These are not just any trading cards or short video clips. No, these are “season tickets” that provide ongoing updates, offers, invitations to events and special access to The Huddle tokenized website.

Car – Delorean gearing up to make cars again and now taking deposits. People get NFTs that represent their rights to a car, especially where they are in the delivery queue (the number of the NFT is their place on the assembly line). They will continuously add production updates, brochures, invitations to special events and other things (data) to the NFTs that future owners have (note that this is not in the form of new NFTs sent to owners, but instead simply new data added to the vault that the existing NFT unlocks).

Furthermore, given the portability of NFTs, if a holder wants to sell their rights and queue to someone else, they can go to a secondary marketplace like eBay or Autotrader and easily do so. It feels fitting that the “Back to the Future” icon will lead the charge regarding Web3.

Related: The DeLorean ‘Back To The Future Car’ Looks Pretty — Futuristic

Medical equipment — Globus Medical, a multi-billion dollar biomechanical manufacturer, stamps an NFT into every cervical cage, disc and spinal screw a surgeon places in a body. This solves the problem they have with people setting up lathes in the workshop, establishing the provenance of their devices and components, preventing counterfeiting and limiting patient liability.

Music – Royal.io doesn’t just sell tracks and albums. They enable fans to share in the benefits of their favorite artists by becoming (partial) owners of those songs and albums and receiving a share of the royalty streams. NFT owners will also receive “gifts, surprises and priority access to tickets, goods and events”.

And now…

Everything that has come before these use cases – all the dogs, cats, monkeys and punks – has set the stage for the transformative impact that Web3 will have on the connected world. We should appreciate the early formative iterations of the industry (ICOs and NFTs) even as we put them in the rearview mirror.

The task now is to educate businesses and content creators about the incredible things they can do with Web3… and for my team at Fortress to build the infrastructure that secures the data, enables new generations of use and engagement, and makes it available to every person on the planet .