Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin andDogecoinhit all-time highs last year, but 2021 was the year of the nonfungible-token.
Despite – or because of – that impressive figure, a stigma surrounds NFTs.
Critics regard NFT buyers as suckers who spend money on JPEGs they could simply “right-click-save” for free.
That refrain won’t be too accurate for long.
In 2022, for good or for ill, NFTs are evolving.
A year ago, that sentence would be incoherent.
It’s become an offline brand, too.
Fashionpartnershipshave been forged, magazine covershave been adornedand a book is being written,by Neil Strauss.
Yuga Labs' biggest recent move has been the launch of Ape Coin, its own cryptocurrency.
It was a big moment for Bored Ape Yacht Club owners.
That means there’s a lot of money to be spent in the ecosystem Yuga Labs is creating.
At the center of the evolution from art collection to ecosystem is a concept: Web3.
That’s what crypto boosters call the next iteration of the internet.
Web1 was the static pages of the ’90s, Web2 the social media revolution that turned users into creators.
This is where NFTs come in.
That asset can be anything: a video, a song or an in-game item.
Cryptocurrencies then allow you to trade those digital assets for money.
Finally, metaverses provide a place for these tools to be put to use.
These are large, open worlds frequented by hundreds or thousands of users at a time.
Most NFT projects claim to have metaverse aspirations, and create their own tokens to that end.
Most such projects are scams, and others aren’t successful enough to make that promise a reality.
Time is the true currency of metaverses.
Like social media, metaverses can be used for advertising.
Like gaming, people can spend money on digital items.
Creating that world is the unlikely next step for a bunch of ape avatars.
Whether or not Otherside turns into a metaverse of any merit remains to be seen.
