TL;DR

• There're only so many Discord community chats that folks in the NFT space will be able to bare, before they become fatigued.

• Which means, at a certain point 'community access' is bound to become an over saturated selling point, and turn into a burden.

• Plus, if NFTs are eventually going to be used by everyone - art and community access can't be the only applications (it won't scale).

• So we figured we'd spit ball a potential timeline between now and the point at which NFTs are everywhere. Here's the rough timeline of applications we're imagining:

• Art & Collectibles → Community Access → Gaming (👈 we are currently here) → Online Social Identities/Accounts → Everywhere-ness.

Full Story

So the ​Azuki​ team just announced they'd be releasing 20,000 new ​NFTs​!

Each NFT in the 'Elementals' series will grant holders access to...something - no one knows just yet, it was only ​recently announced​.

But given the size of the Azuki project, it's probably going to be greater than just new art and access to a gated online community.

In fact, it kind of needs to be at this point...

Not just for Azuki, but for all projects. Here's our thinking:

There're only so many Discord community chats that folks in the NFT space will be able to bare, before they become fatigued.

(At a certain point 'community access' is bound to become an over saturated selling point, and turn into a burden).

Which got us wondering...

If NFTs first functioned as 'digital art,' then evolved to grant access to gated online communities - where does it all go from here?

Because if NFTs are eventually going to be used by everyone - art and community access can't be the only applications (it won't scale).

So we figured we'd spit ball a potential timeline between now and the point at which NFTs are everywhere.

Here's the rough timeline of applications we're imagining:

Art & Collectibles → Community Access → Gaming (👈 we are currently here) → Online Social Identities/Accounts → Everywhere-ness.

If we had to boil it down, we'd summarize each milestone like this:

1. Art & Collectibles: digital art and collectibles, made sellable.

2. Community Access: NFT gated online communities.

3. Gaming: collect NFTs as in-game items.

4. Online Social Identities/Accounts: think 'Sign in with Google,' but it's 'Sign in with a ​crypto wallet​ holding a certain NFT.' The difference being: you own your digital identity/data, instead of Google.

5. Everywhere-ness: all of the above... Plus: anything that requires proof of ownership, ticketing, or rewards (flights, concerts, movies, conferences, real estate, loyalty programs, etc.)

The sticking point:

​Blockchain​ systems need to become way cheaper, faster, and easier to use for any of the above to happen.

(They need to feel largely indistinguishable from our current ​Web2​ experiences).

Will we get there? No idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But it'd ​be a lot cooler if we did​.