Non-fungible tokens continue to sweep across the world of Web3, flooding marketplaces like OpenSea with new collections emerging almost every day. As the NFT craze accelerates, it’s necessary to consider the real potential of these digital assets, and it all centers on the concept of “utility”.
Throughout the “crypto winter” that began in January 2022, the value of NFTs has suffered. Transaction volumes plummeted from the heady heights of the previous year when multi-million dollar NFT sales were hitting the headlines almost every day. The trade in NFTs fell from a high of $17 billion in January 2022 to just $46 million in September of that same year, representing a drop of 97%.
Part of the reason for these declines is the significant challenges faced by the NFT industry, such as the potential for scams, the lack of regulation, and the fact that blockchain infrastructure is not standardized. NFTs suffer from scalability issues, too, as we saw during the minting of the Stoner Cats NFTs when users lost more than $700,000 in collective ETH gas fees.
With NFTs facing so many challenges, there’s a clear and urgent need for digital assets to provide additional benefits to users. People need tangible reasons to want to buy and sell NFTs, and that’s where the utility will come into play.