Meet the Projects Looking to Level up NFTs

Despite the broader crypto market slump, the NFT economy is booming with record-high sales recorded for the sector in Q2. Let’s round up some of the most promising projects in the NFT space as the industry sets out to break new records in Q3 and beyond.

NFTs on Bitcoin

Perhaps the most surprising move of late was the announcement that Nifty Labs was going to start production for an NFTs on Bitcoin marketplace, powered by RSK - a smart contract blockchain secured by the Bitcoin network. It marks a departure from the dominant use of Ethereum as the main NFT marketplace blockchain and will focus on categories including sports, gaming, digital art, 3D avatars, music, and virtual land parcels. The marketplace gallery will use RSK on the Bitcoin network to provide users with a more cost-effective minting and transacting experience, including exchanging NFTs for alternative tokens based on RSK technology.

Art and Fine Wine

On the art side of the NFT market, auction site Valuart is set to begin an exclusive series of NFT masterpieces from notable artists. Auctions kick-off on July 22 with “Spike” - conceived from the artwork by Bansky - with Valuart creating a digital original of the piece and certificate of authenticity, using CGI to show Spike floating through the Universe and heading back to Earth as an NFT.

Later in the year, Valuart plans an NFT drop of the “Mantum and the Stole” realized by Stefano Zanella and worn by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the opening of the Holy Door of the Vatican Basilica. It will be released on October 22 in recognition of the date he celebrated his first holy mass.

The fine wine investment market and governments are also looking at NFTs to modernize its ecosystem, with the WiV platform connecting vineyards and investors to purchase NFTs issued for bottles and cases of fine wine. This opens up fractional, frictionless, and highly liquid trading within the asset class, introducing a new generation of investors to the market and providing valuable funding to the industry. Recently, WiV partnered with the Georgian government

Sports and Gaming

Following the minting of an NFT commemorating Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier’s “Fight of the Centrury” anniversary on Ethernity, South America’s football body, CONMEBOL, has partnered with the NFT platform to celebrate the 47th Copa America final between Argentina and Brazil. Five digital collections were created to commemorate the event, including the tournament trophy, the two competing teams, winning captain Lionel Messi, and the tournament’s top goal scorer.

NFT trading card platform Splinterlands, which enables players to compete to earn scarce in-game cryptocurrency and NFTs, recently reached the adoption milestone of 100,000 users generating over 600,000 daily transactions. Splinterlands demonstrates just how well the two sectors work together. Its NFT-based play-to-earn model generates higher player retention and engagement with in-game assets that can accrue in value over time and be traded or rented out to other players.

Combining Defi Functionality

Combining the NFT and defi markets, Spores allows users to issue NFTs, auction assets, decentralize NFT trading, and access the broader defi market from the same platform. The NFTs can be fractionalized and used on decentralized exchanges, lending, and staking platforms to improve liquidity. Spores also offers NFT swaps and wraps across major blockchains, including Cardano, reducing fragmentation and opening up the marketplace.

Ethereum-based platform Hoard enables the trading, buying, selling, and renting of NFTs including in-game items, digital art, and domain names. It has now also added flash loan capabilities, allowing users to borrow uncollateralized tokens from a smart contract pool provided they are repaid within the same Ethereum transaction. These low-cost transactions will open up significant arbitrage opportunities for the platform's users as it further integrates with broader defi functionality.

Decentralizing NFT Infrastructure

With a focus on creator economy infrastructure, Unifty allows users to mint, buy, sell, swap, and create low-cost NFTs in a matter of minutes - with no coding skills required. Operating multi-chain marketplaces across Ethereum, xDAI, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, Celo, Moonbeam, and Polygon, Unifty has set out to create the “Wordpress of NFTs” with plans to expand on Polkadot and Solana and provide interoperability between the networks for ease of use.

While the ownership and authentication of NFTs are controlled via decentralized smart contract enabled blockchains, corresponding NFT images, videos, or audio files are stored on centralized servers like AWS, leaving them vulnerable to single points of failure.

Decentralized storage networks like Bluzelle, that store NFT files in a distributed way, can now offer a solution to this for NFT platforms, ensuring files remain secure, available, and censorship-resistant. Distributed storage brings NFTs closer to the ethos of crypto, and will help this new world of digital collectibles to thrive.