It’s common in a crypto bear market to hear people say that it’s time to build, and it’s good advice. If you’re not developing a product yourself, but just looking to invest, then you’ll want to identify which teams are busy and well positioned for the next bull run. In that case, let’s take a look at some promising NFT projects that are hard at work and building for the long term.
Yuga Labs
Image credits: Yuga Labs
It’s no secret that Yuga Labs–the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club–has big plans, and if we’re looking for solid bets and justified hype, then Yuga has to be on the list. When it comes to building out a product to go with the JPEGs, it’s all about Otherside, which is Yuga’s shot at creating a metaverse.
Yuga is working with Improbable, a British metaverse tech company, to build their virtual world. Improbable also powers MSquared, which aims to create a network that will connect interoperable metaverses. The co-founder and CEO of Improbable is Herman Narula, who has laid out a philosophical case for the metaverse in his book, Virtual Society.
Last Saturday, Otherside successfully executed First Trip, a tech demo entry to its developing metaverse that was accessible to Otherdeed holders. Footage from the event looks very impressive, showing a smooth, game-like spectacle, and an evolving litepaper lays out the important details from here.
Crypto Packaged Goods
Image credits: Crypto Packaged Goods
Explore Crypto Packaged Goods (CPG), and you’ll find it’s sprawling and a little difficult to get your head around. NFT meta during the bear has been for simplicity (no Discord, no roadmap, just mint it and hope for the best), but CPG is a product of the bull market, when projects became increasingly complicated.
Basically though, CPG aims to build networks and mentorship, act as a product incubator, offer consultancy and onboard people and organizations into web3 (which includes decentralization, crypto and NFTs). The project was founded by Chris Cantino and Jaime Schmidt, who are both well known in the web3 space.
CPG NFTs are still not cheap, but, here in the bear market, are selling for a lot less than they were a couple of months ago. The two collections available are the Genesis Passes and the Pop set.
WAGMI United
Image credits: WAGMI United
If you’re interested in sports and NFTs, then you’ll want to follow WAGMI United. This web3 venture has actually bought Crawley Town FC, an English football (as in, soccer) team in EFL League Two. WAGMI United also partnered with Adidas, and the team’s new shirt features a Chromie Squiggle.
The WAGMI United team includes well-known names from the NFT space including Gary Vaynerchuk, Snowfro, and Justin Taylor. Anyone familiar with lower league English football will know it’s a gritty, unforgiving environment where the grind for points is even more punishing than the Discord grind for an NFT whitelist spot, so it’s going to be interesting to see how that intersects with the web3 digital world.
At the time of writing, WAGMI NFTs–which give access to merchandise, tickets, voting decisions, and other benefits–can be picked up on secondary for 0.23 ETH, while there are still NFTs remaining to be minted at 0.35 ETH. The fact that they haven’t minted out is a negative, but at the same time, the sale has already raised around 3 million GBP, which is a significant amount of investment for a League Two club, and club ownership is a long-term, formal business venture, so although things might not always go smoothly, this project is just getting started.
Altered State Machine
Image credits: Altered State Machine
Who hasn’t looked at their JPEGs and thought to themselves, if only they were intelligent..? Leading us optimistically to a future in which blockchain-based cartoon apes wage war on humanity is Altered State Machine (ASM), which has funding from investors including Enjin and Animoca Brands.
It’s an innovative project that connects NFTs to Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the ASM protocol, you create an AI bot called an Agent, which has a Form NFT, a Brain NFT, and Memories that are stored in the Brain. The Form is the visual part, and the Brain is the AI part that is trained using ML models, the outputs of which make stored Memories.
Some applications for the Agents might include game and metaverse characters, digital assistants and DeFi trading bots, and it’s fascinating to watch AI, ML and NFTs intersect. ASM Brains are currently trading at a floor price of around 1.4 ETH, well below a peak of almost 5 ETH back in January.
Land and Accommodation Projects
Image credits: Satoshi Island
It’s always interesting to find people experimenting with new crypto use cases, and there are several projects that are finding ways to tie together NFTs and real estate.
Satoshi Island is located in Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, and this private island is home to a project that will use NFTs as proof of land ownership and citizenship. The plan is to build a real-life crypto community, with a crypto-based economy, and it’s all being done with approval from the Vanuatu government.
Cabin is a project aiming to build a decentralized city and a network of neighborhoods. It’s taking the web3 digital philosophy and mapping it onto the real world (with a first location node in Texas), and it will incorporate NFT Passports.
Stay Open is aimed at digital nomads, creates pod hotels from repurposed buildings, and plans to use a blockchain-based rewards system and NFTs that bring benefits and utility to holders.
Kift DAO is all about the vanlife, and aims to create a community network of like-minded members. Its Kiftable NFTs, which were created by the founder of Vanlifer, are still minting.
