The Wild Age of Digital Collectibles (NFTs)

I was fortunate enough to be invited to an offline meetup hosted by Flow Blockchain last week. Since the epidemic, I haven't seen so many people attending a physical gathering for a long time. As the host who received the attendance fee, I must write down my experience and record it.

Recently, the media in the currency circle has been hyping up digital collectibles (NFTs). There are two main reasons:

1. The infrastructure is not yet mature
2. Lack of "useful" application scenarios

Take Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to disassemble.

The infrastructure of DeFi is Ethereum, and the application scenario is to make money. People participating in DeFi can earn interest on savings or mining income. To put it simply, DeFi can make money, and if the handling fee is higher, it can be squirted out through gritted teeth.

But the main use of digital collectibles is not to make money (even weirder if it is), but to give a sense of prestige that varies from person to person. The handling fee spent for participating in DeFi can be regarded as an investment. For example, a handling fee of several hundred yuan is required to receive UNI coins, but the handling fee spent on digital collectibles is a cost.

That is to say, the financial application of DeFi can be built on Ethereum, which does not mean that digital collectibles can also be played on Ethereum. Li Xuan of Blocto summed it up very well that day, entertainment applications on the blockchain have to overcome two obstacles:

1. Barriers to entry should be low enough
2. entertainment itself must be fun

Barriers to entry are technical issues that are usually addressed first. But the fun of games is a business problem, and it depends on many people to try and make mistakes.

The technical problem may have been solved by now. Flow blockchain is a blockchain specially built for entertainment applications on the chain, solving the problem of handling fees and account (assets) scattered everywhere.

Although there were a lot of technical introductions on the day of the event, I only remember that from the user's point of view, in the end, people will not feel the difference between whether the game is on the chain or not, but just feel that there are more things that can be done in the game.

"Unconsciously" in operation will be the complete body of blockchain application. It's like the experience of DeFi applications, but also in a familiar direction. After all, the result that the learning threshold is too high will eventually be used by no one.

Relative to on-chain finance = DeFi + Ethereum, or DeFi + Cosmos

Current on-chain entertainment =? ? ? + Ethereum, or? ? ? +Flow

Just like after Ethereum went live in 2015, it took people 3 years to find applications like DeFi. Most of the digital collectibles apps I know today still emphasize that the asset is actually owned by you, not owned by the game developer.

This is a weak argument. After all, in order for people to feel the difference strongly enough, the game developers have to be dissatisfied enough. But which game developer would blew himself up?

Taking the time to stress that NFTs are not just screenshots is doomed to do less. It's as tiring as spending time convincing parents that BTC is not in the hands of wallet developers, but in their own hands. Now more and more people know that as long as you drop a DeFi application (yEarn or PoolTogether), people know that the two are very different.

Applying it to NFTs, the way to do more with less is to find out what real application scenarios NFTs can’t do with screenshots, such as allowing players in mobile basketball games to make special actions?

Here are some extended links:

1. [Game] NBA Top Shot (locked area): https://www.nbatopshot.com
2. 【Introduction】Flow blockchain and fundraising plan: https://coinlist.co/flow
3. [Podcast] Give me games, don't tell me about blockchain ft. Blocto wallet founder Li Xuan: https://blocktrend.substack.com/p/-ft-blocto-