The Hottest NFT Trends in 2022

NFTs are taking over the newly forming landscape of what is known as Web3 by storm. This is no secret anymore thanks to industry giants like Nike, Louis Vuitton, and even McDonald’s entering the stage with big ideas and plans for the upcoming years.

What started as a movement of crypto punks and art aficionados has become a multi-billion dollar industry that is booming with ideas on how NFTs can be used apart from profile pics and digital collectibles. This year will be the second upcoming of NFTs, this time with real-world utility and plans to blur the lines between what we know of the internet today and the elusive term of Web3.

While millions of dollars for single NFTs might seem like a lot of cash for a space that only started to gain traction in the last year, NFTs can have numerous use-cases thanks to being traceable by anyone and their ability to be programmed according to the use case their creators have in mind.

This allows for NFTs to be used in a lot of different industries and to create more transparency due to the nature of blockchains. Sitting on a public and encrypted ledger, NFTs serve numerous use cases that form trends while more and more users dabble their feet in the deep waters of crypto space every day.

NFT Trends in 2022

This article will give you an idea about NFT trends that are in the pipeline this year, we will look for the hottest NFT market trends you don’t want to miss out on and give you an idea of what to expect from Web3 in 2022.

There was massive skepticism around NFTs in the beginning. On one hand, there’s a growing number of people that buy into different projects, and on the other hand, there are a lot of stories of lost crypto-assets by shady projects that are out for naive investors’ money. This makes it hard to determine which NFT art trends are worth investing in and which to stay away from.

Nonetheless, the utility of NFTs is obviously given and new use cases are found by the hour. Let’s take a look at the biggest NFT market trends that await us this year.

Tokenization Powered by NFTs

Thanks to being able to be leveraged on the Blockchain and to represent both palpable and digital assets in a secure and censorship-free way, NFTs can act as publicly traceable certificates of ownership for any imaginable asset.

Even real estate can be tokenized to create a more democratic and accessible way of distributing time shares of holiday homes, for example. To tokenize a given asset, owners can easily create a smart contract that is connected to a given NFT and let it be used as a token that represents the value behind it.

A great example of intangible assets that can be tokenized as NFTs are written articles. Ever wondered what would happen if paywalls for news sites cease to exist? To stay on top of creating high-quality content, innovative creators and press agencies make use of NFTs to create an environment that allows more freedom of censorship and fair compensation for content producers.

Increased Utility With Certificates of Authenticity (COAs)

One of the biggest culprits people fall for when shopping online is whether the object of desire is authentic or just a fake. Imagine there’s a luxury watch you want to buy from the secondary market and the only way to be sure it is the real deal was to look at the pictures provided. NFTs can be issued by manufacturers to guarantee their authenticity.

If the manufacturer makes use of this NFT trend, the COA can be traced directly to them because the creation and every step taken can be publicly seen by everyone interested.

The first company we heard of to jump on this NFT market trend is embroidery art house Vagngart in France, their COAs are all backed by blockchain technology which will make it nearly impossible to fake their products in the future. Other luxury brands will follow for sure to create the next surge in NFT price trends.

Revolutionize the Digital Art Industry

We can’t write an article about NFT trends without mentioning the hottest digital art creator in 2021. Beeple created Everydays: The first 5000 days and was able to sell it for a mind-blowing US$ 69 million last year. This mind-boggling auction revived the world of digital art and new NFT art trends started to rise again.

NFTs allow artists to create and sell their art in a peer-to-peer fashion which gives them the opportunity to stay close to their fanbase. Other examples of NFT art trends are new options to monetize digital art. To name an interesting one, artists can sell a work-in-progress for early investors and believers of future success. Even fractionalized NFTs can now be created to make it possible for small-time investors to hold a piece of their favorite NFTs (Hey BAYC, wen?).

Community-Owned Brands

Another great example of the possibilities of NFT trends that will change the landscape of crypto is community-owned brands. Letting a community decide where a brand will evolve into or what NFT trends to follow adds huge value as experts say.

The best showcase for a trending community-created brand is the well-known Bored Ape Yacht Club. A year ago this community was just a mere collection of pictures of bored Apes, through a decentralized and democratic take on community management, the team behind BAYC has managed to not only become the most sought-after NFT art trend but one of the hottest fashion trends in late history. They even partnered up with big fashion labels like Adidas to release branded merchandise.

While not every big company will jump on this trend, there is a high chance that people will be able to cast their favorite NFT to represent a brand in marketing campaigns and monetize their collectibles this way.

Avatar Casting

Speaking of casting Avatars, this might be one of the biggest NFT market trends for NFT collectors in 2022. If you managed to buy and hold a famous profile pic NFT, you might be in for a golden treat!

Advertisers got hold of the potential that lies within NFT trends and start utilizing this to push marketing to new levels. Using an NFT as a model, or in this case avatar, for a brand will be one of the next big ways to give your favorite digital art piece real-world utility.

Imagine your Bored Ape being printed on a can of Coke and shipped around the world for thousands of thirsty people to see it. It isn’t hard to recognize this as the next surge of NFT price trends around famous collections.

Shake up the Music Industry

The search for NFT trends is not over yet. The music industry will be changing as we know it in the future, again. And it’s all for the best of the artists this time. New bands are forming out of NFT communities and they are already open to being developed by their respective communities.

To name just one big name in the industry, Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter to pursue Block which was formerly known as Square with the goal of onboarding streaming services like Tidal to make use of NFTs in music. This makes way for artists to drop their music as NFTs and royalties to be publicly traced by fans and bands alike.

New platforms like Stationhead are forming to create a platform for people to release their music and stream it across platforms without legal issues. Fans can earn rewards by participating in communities and events that will gather around artists creating a new way to form a deep relationship between artists and fans. Other possibilities that arise from that new NFT market trend will change the face of the music industry for good.

Change How We Look at Future Gaming

Blockchain gaming emerged in 2021 and makes marvelous use of NFT trends. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you will have heard about the new model of play-to-earn gaming which skyrocketed with games like Axie Infinity last year.

This was only the start though. Looking at NFT search trends, there’s a clear direction into gaming being one of the biggest NFT trends to rise up in the near future. Triple-A publishers are entering the world of Blockchain Gaming and will change the way we look at ownership of in-game assets.

Ever since Axie Infinity managed to create a base of more than 2 million daily users, play-to-earn games are on the rise. To get started, players will need to buy at least three Axie Infinity NFTs, which creates an incentive to collect these NFTs while the user base is growing daily.

Applying the technology behind NFTs to in-game assets, we will see true ownership of items and other related gaming assets for the first time. Ubisoft plans to enter the Metaverse with their own NFTs that will be tied to in-game assets that can be traded by players or even sold off if a game is played through or not interesting anymore.

Raise Funds for Good Causes with NFTs

With all the mentioned NFT trends, there is a growing group of people that make use of Web3 technologies by using NFTs for fundraisers for example. NFTs can help to make donations to charity organizations not only traceable but more transparent too.

This will make charity organizations run much more effectively and incentivize efficient use of funds throughout the space. Being secured by Blockchain technology, NFTs, and smart contracts offer a secure way to transfer large sums of money at a much lower cost than by using traditional financial institutions.

Famous advocates like Beeple and Ellen Degeneres used NFTs to raise funds for charitable causes like the Open Earth Foundation to combat climate change, for example.

Proof of Participation Protocol (POAP)

Remember social media trends like Foursquare? This was used to let users check-in at places or events to show off their participation and earn rewards. Take this idea and combine it with Web3 technology and you have a basic idea of what POAPs are.

Each POAP is a gift from event issuers to collectors to create a shared memory on the Blockchain ledger. As these participation medals are deployed as NFTs, people will have a whole new incentive to go out and take part in different events or visit new places. Not only real-life events and places can be turned into POAPs, but even participation in Metaverse events can also be rewarded and collected to share your favorite memories in your wallet.

POAPs can be used like the mentioned case above without giving away sensitive info about users, unlike their Web2 counterpart which turned into a data security nightmare at some point. The technology would even have the capabilities to be used as a digital form of a passport, but this is another chapter and will be part of future articles for sure.

Summary

This article covered some of the biggest NFT trends that emerged and will be the center of attention in 2022. It should be clear that NFTs are more than a fad by now. Worries about NFTs being a Ponzi scheme or multi-level marketing schemes are put aside by true utility that gives this entity of Blockchain technology its place in the sun.

NFTs and smart contracts moved up to be an inherent part of Web3 and we can only imagine what the next NFT trends will look like. We hope that we were able to give you an idea of what to look for in NFT market trends with this article and recommend you to check out more articles in our blog to learn more about NFT trends and everything around it.

DISCLAIMER: All information is provided merely for informational purposes. NFTdroops does not provide investment advice.