Over the past couple of years, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have exploded in popularity. Throughout 2021, the number of NFTs sold ranged from 15,000 to 50,000 each week. This is a drastic increase from the beginning of 2017, when sales often struggled to reach 100 per week.
In this article, we will discuss some of the top modern use cases of NFTs right now, and the creative ways that companies are leveraging them.
1. Taking out loans
Long gone are the days when you’d have to turn up to your bank and slog through a painstaking credit check to take out a loan. Now you can use your NFTs and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) assets to take out loans through platforms like Drops.
Drops enables users to leverage their idle DeFi tokens and NFTs in order to obtain loans and earn extra yield. The protocol features lending pools that give people the opportunity to use any type of asset as collateral. This includes NFT collectibles, metaverse items, financial NFTs, and DeFi tokens.
Ultimately, this allows users to obtain instant liquidity, and reduce the opportunity cost of money invested into NFTs.
2. Buying digital real estate
The Sandbox is a virtual metaverse. It gives users the opportunity to build, own, and monetize gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain.
The platform gives users the opportunity to create NFTs, upload them to the marketplace, and integrate them into games, using the platform’s utility token, known as SAND.
Users can also buy LAND, which is essentially a digital piece of real estate in The Sandbox metaverse. Users can populate the LAND they own with games and assets. They can also combine multiple LANDs to create an ESTATE. They can also rent them out to others.
3. Creating unique fashion collections
In September 2021, Dolce & Gabbana sold its first NFT collection for $5.7 million. The NFT sale was launched on UNXD, a luxury marketplace that is built on Ethereum layer 2 Polygon. The buyer of each item received an NFT, along with the physical version of the item, and exclusive access to Dolce and Gabbana events.
Luxury fashion brand Jimmy Choo launched its own NFT collaboration with New York artist Eric Haze only a month later in October 2021. The collection consisted of 8,888 ‘mystery boxes’ that were available for purchase.
NFTs can also be used in the fashion industry to track original collections, and prevent the creation of counterfeits. If a piece has been tagged for tracking through NFTs, it could help to reassure buyers that the piece is original. This would be especially useful for physical pieces sold through auction houses.
4. Identity verification
NFT ledgers can be used to store sensitive personal records without compromising confidentiality.
Given that NFT transactions must be validated by multiple nodes before they are added to the blockchain, this ensures that every record is protected from malicious intervention. This is particularly useful in the medical industry.
For instance, it can be used for storing an individual’s medical records in order to grant medical professionals quick and secure access. It can even be used as a way for a healthcare provider to issue a birth certificate to a newborn, in order to create a lifelong identity on the blockchain.
5. Storing academic credentials
NFTs are a convenient and secure way of storing academic credentials and providing proof of attendance, qualifications earned, and other important, sensitive information. This could ultimately make paper certificates unnecessary.
Given that storing this data on the blockchain creates an immutable record, it can also ultimately help to prevent people from claiming that they have false qualifications through presenting fraudulent certificates.
As you can see, there are way more use cases for NFTs than buying and selling artwork online (although this is certainly a very popular one!).
As NFTs continue to become more mainstream over the next few years, there is very little doubt that we will continue to see more of these use cases going mainstream.
