A Deep Dive into Top NFT Use Cases for Businesses

Non-Fungible Tokens are the asset that brings the new version of the internet to what can be marked the digital renaissance. This is the golden age of a new culture, a much more accessible one with the elements of decentralization becoming popular.

The distribution of art, in its many forms like digital paintings and music, is much more accessible in the form of NFTs bringing down the costs of its production, distribution and marketing aspects at the same time.  

As more people realize the potential behind these words, more markets expand their opportunities. The Web3 is constantly developing, which creates more opportunities for businesses to profit through cryptocurrencies and NFTs. The world of NFTs isn’t only focused on money, rather it is focused on bringing more transparency, reward-systems, loyalties, and accessibility into the ecosystem. 

NFTs hosts the most talented opportunists, contributing to various causes with different intents, all taking place on the most secure blockchains. To delve deeper into business use cases in terms of how NFTs contribute to their growth, this article will look over the best NFT use cases available nowadays.

What are NFTs or Non-fungible Tokens?

Before getting into the use cases for NFTs, it’s worth going over NFTs and its utilities are. At first launched in 2014 as a way for artists to claim ownership and control over their artworks and revenue, Non-Fungible Tokens have taken over the internet and global communities rapidly. Whilst NFTs don’t represent tangible objects, they represent tokens and the ownership of those objects that are recorded on the blockchain.

To make it easier to understand, let’s talk about the NFT in terms of a painting. An artist will have to create the artwork at first, which they will then “mint”, meaning they publish the piece on the blockchain making it purchasable. The mint is then assigned a unique digital token, which is the NFT itself, and the painter will be able to track every selling and purchasing activity of their painting on the blockchain. Then the NFT can be put on the market for buyers to bid on or directly buy. Not all NFTs are priced or auctioned. Many projects around the world do NFT giveaways as a token of gratitude or reward, sometimes backed by ecosystem benefits to their NFT holders.

The Difference Between NFT and Traditional Physical Assets

Many art collectors might be distressed at the idea of not owning a physical painting to hang on their walls and might wonder why an NFT is counted as the best competitor of this concept. The easiest way to argument this is that there are screens and monitor stands which can showcase NFTs, even those in video formats. So, imagine having a unique way to present your NFT in your own home, leaving guests captivated at what innovative artwork you have in your home. This way, not only digital art can be presented in digital frames, but also digital merch, videos and any other type of visual NFTs.

NFTs just make it easier to prove that you really own an art piece, even if it is halfway across the world, all thanks to the security of the blockchain and the decentralized history records attached to it. There is also no way anyone can break in and steal it off your hands, or to minimize any security measures that you have taken to protect it.  

You can buy NFTs to diversify your investments and pay for them by using cryptocurrencies. Some inclusive NFT agencies like Digital Artists even offer Fiat payment options (like USD and EUR). Most importantly, and what the best NFT use cases that follow are focusing on, are the ways that NFTs contribute towards business growth, effective marketing and the growth of the Web3 community. 

Top Use Cases for NFTs in Businesses to Help Them Grow

By focusing your attention on NFTs, your business can grow rapidly all while generating additional revenue streams. Because of how big the NFT community is, you can attract customers from all over the world and grow a bigger client base. This will not only show your competitors that you have the right attitude and power to grow, but also investors will recognize that your business embraces innovation, creativity, and adaptability as per recent trends. 

Not knowing where to start, or what an NFT project can look like and do for your company might be stopping you from reaching new heights. To prevent that missed opportunity, your best way forward is to contact a creative and experienced NFT agency to guide you through the process. Such agencies can provide a transparent and innovative strategy with a great outcome in terms of profit.  

Any limits and barriers stopping your creativity and full potential will be broken down by experts into a step-by-step guide to concur your dreams. The following examples are the best examples of how businesses can implement these strategies into their campaigns. 

Own Digital Collectibles and Collect Fine Art

Introduce your customers to exclusive digital collectibles for an increased interest in your products. If you have a loyal customer base, for them to own a unique collectible representing the brand that they stand behind and love, means to possess a once-in-a-lifetime product. Even if that is just an artwork that they can only keep for themselves and show here and there, the fact that they own your product, which only a limited number of people can own, means a higher personal status within the fanbase.

Grow Fan Engagement with Token and NFT Rewards

The rewarding system is known to everyone, but is very interesting when combined with the use cases for NFT. Customers love to be recognized by their beloved brands through rewards and exclusive benefits. How to implement this in your business? By simply providing NFTs to your most loyal and engaging fans/customers for their activities or contributions. As long as you know your customers, why they enjoy your brand and what they might expect, the creation process of those reward tokens and the criteria of rewarding them will come easy to you. If you wish to explore the rewarding mechanisms for your business, NFT agencies like Digital Artists can help you to build an engaging strategy.

Create Digital Merchandise and New Revenue Streams

Merch is the easiest way to show your support for a brand. People express their personalities and interests through clothing, so it’s easy to understand how this might be beneficial for your brand to have in the product line. NFTs are a great way to establish a community of NFT holders and to provide them exclusive perks like digital merch. Your community can receive NFTs of this merch and then request the physical merch through their NFTs. You can also set up various token gating methods where the merch/NFT holders can have access to various product discounts, events and other company-wide benefits. 

You could also release branded merch to be sold to anyone, not limited to NFT holders. By expanding your e-commerce presence, you will most definitely create new revenue streams to fund your business. But furthermore, you would be giving your loyal customers a bigger catalogue of products to choose from. This is always a good way of free marketing when your loyal customers go out and wear your merch, visible to everyone else. By promoting your brand this way, you’re helping your brand awareness to grow and become even more recognisable. 

Ticketing and Exclusive Membership

Tickets to festivals, concerts and exclusive events in the form of NFTs? That’s right, scrapping the old paper tickets for a digital ticket is an amazing way to provide fans with yet another unique memorabilia. NFT Tickets can represent a picture only or be interactive, accompanied by music and visual effects. Even if you release a thousand tickets all looking the same, the unique way to differentiate them is through their own unique smart contracts, personalized ticket numbers and names on the ticket itself. 

You decide who can purchase them, but they are also a great perk for exclusive memberships. Many NFT collections offer exclusive memberships to their NFT holders and that is what has created the boom and loyal communities around them. These memberships offer NFT holders exclusive merch, events, additional NFTs free of charge, and so many more other individual benefits.  

Band Kings of Leon was the first to release NFT tickets, priced at 50 ETH (equalled around $90,000 at the time). The ticket grants the owner four front row seats for any show in the world (once per tour), a luxury SUV to get the owner around for eight hours, and a concierge to support the attendees with a unique experience including a meet-and-greet with the band. Further benefits like additional NFTs are included, and the initial NFT ticket is updated every time there is a new tour, so the owner can claim the benefits again, and again, and again.

Manage Royalties and Secure Licensing

In these NFT use cases, we have already mentioned several different ways on how to profit from NFTs, but here comes another one, and that’s through royalties. In short, once you’ve sold the NFT to someone, they own it, as any usual transaction goes. But you as the creator can set royalty percentages on all your NFTs. These royalties come in handy should the NFT be resold by its new buyer.  

Depending on what percentage you set for it, that’s the amount of money that will be taken from the price and transferred to your account. That’s just another amazing revenue stream. However, with selling and buying NFTs, it’s vital to know about NFT licensing. This topic revolves around the rights of the buyer. How can the NFT be used and distributed, all protecting the intellectual rights of the NFT creator. 

The Best NFT Use Cases Already Set in Motion

All industries and markets become more competitive every year, and NFTs are a great way to leave your competitors behind. With the speed of the revolution of the internet, and technology advancing simultaneously, businesses can only look to benefit from that. NFTs are, as we already mentioned, not only for digital paintings. The number of different industries taking the power of NFTs in their advantage is increasing as well.

Of course, different collectives are focusing their power and creativity on creating the perfect NFT collection, which they can sell for millions after minting. But not only they influence the hype around the digital assets’ market. The gaming industry has created opportunities for virtual worlds, the sports industry has released collectibles for fans and even restaurants are reshaping their interiors to reflect the increasing interest around this topic. Following, you can read what other industries are implementing NFTs and specific examples on how they are successfully doing this.

Art and Collectibles

The NFT technology was created around art and for artists to claim ownership and real income from their artwork. Logically, the biggest industry involving NFTs even to this day is the Art and Collectibles. This is because artworks, like the following use cases for NFTs in art, are being sold for millions of dollars. The most expensive NFT sale ever, to the time of writing this article, is still Beeple’s artwork called Everydays: The First 5000 Days. The artwork consists of 5000 artworks and drawings, drawn daily by the artist Beeple, and was sold for $69.3 million in March 2021.  

Christie's is proud to offer "Everydays – The First 5000 Days" by @beeple as the first purely digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house. Bidding will be open from Feb 25-Mar 11.

Learn more here https://t.co/srx95HCE0o | NFT issued in partnership w/ @makersplaceco pic.twitter.com/zymq2DSjy7

— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) February 16, 2021

Adding to this, collections of NFT profile pictures (PFPs) are also sold for millions, mostly for hundreds of thousands, but accumulating millions overall for the whole collection. One such collection is the famous CryptoPunks collection by Larva Labs. The most expensive CryptoPunk was the #5822 which sold for $23.7 million in February 2022. With these prices, and the fact that more and more artworks and collectibles are starting to sell for even higher prices, the future of this industry and the NFTs connected to it is promising. 

Music

Music is something each of us enjoys in peace in our own unique way. Be it pop, rock, jazz or else, different genres are what help people to uplift their emotions daily. So how could we think about music in the form of NFTs? Quite peculiar as it is, the industry already has many ways to successfully convert music in NFTs. As we already know, NFTs can take many forms and music is most certainly one of those. Many artists and record labels have started to release EPs and Albums as NFTs for a small number of fans, thus generating additional revenue streams. For example, Artist 3LAU sold an NFT album for $11.7 million, which included a limited-edition physical vinyl of the album and access to unreleased music along other benefits for the NFT holder.

Media and Entertainment

Knowing that NFTs can be converted to NFTs, it’s easy to imagine all the different media and entertainment businesses to take advantage of the format. There are already numerous examples for the best NFT use cases in this industry, but the following ones stand out the most.  

First, we have IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE – DAY ONE NFT by director Wong Kar Wai, a minute and thirty-two seconds long rare footage from the first day of production of the movie. The NFT sold for $545,756.75 at a Sotheby’s auction. Another great example for a media NFT sale is that of the Zero Contact Movie NFT collection. It represents the movie itself as an NFT, featuring the Academy Award winning actor Anthony Hopkins.  

Additionally, there is a collection of a puzzle, that is updated as it gets solved, and the final grand price is said to be revealed once solved, which is hidden deep into the Zero Contact universe. Different editions of the movie were launched like 25,000 NFTs of the collector’s edition and 2,500 of the exclusive edition.  

Numerous benefits were provided to NFT holders like posters signed by cast and crew, access to unseen footage and even the opportunity to be in the movie as an actor, all depending on what type of rarity their NFT is. The collection is said to have raised a significant six figure revenue and all was possible through the Vuele.io platform.

Fashion

Most major names in the fashion industry have worked with NFTs. Some better than others, but still giving freedom to people’s ideas on how to connect NFTs with the fashion industry. Brands like Gucci, Wrangler, Vogue and Louis Vuitton are the leading names behind this most famous use case of NFTs, i.e. in the fashion industry. A collaboration between Vogue Ukraine and Vogue Singapore birthed the Fashion for Peace NFT collection.  

Gudu's piece for @voguesingapore x @VogueUkraine's 'Fashion for Peace' NFT collection, depicts the white forces of good against the forces of evil.

The sale goes live @opensea on 15 March 8pm SGT here:https://t.co/jnkvJKQYCJ. All proceeds will go to Save The Children Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/s3GjEjXn5v

— Vogue Singapore (@voguesingapore) March 15, 2022

The idea behind this project was to collaborate with six designers and artists to create 10 artworks of 50 NFTs each and to raise funds for the Save The Children Ukraine charity through them, priced at 0.5 ETH each. This is the perfect example of how humanity can come together and create an exciting charity NFT fundraising campaign.

Sport

Sport NFTs are a big market for any type of sport. Football, soccer, basketball, baseball and many other top sports have a constant fanbase that is excitingly collecting sports memories, and now they can do via Sports NFTs. There are videos of match highlights of specific players and their achievements in a match that are turned into NFTs and sold as a collectible to fans. Team kits NFTs representing a beloved team’s jersey and branded clothing items are also very popular. Sports memorabilia is very important for fans and this includes NFTs of team trophies and autographs from players.  

Sport cards are probably the main reason why this phenomenon is still a leading collecting type throughout the whole world and why sports NFTs have come to exist. Not only baseball and football, but basketball and soccer collectible sport cards are collected by fans worldwide.  

A separate market has emerged from collectible cards, where cards are graded based on their cleanliness and originality and sold for thousands, if not more. The sport industry knows that this exists, and they knew how to uplift the collectibles game. The NBA released own NFT collection, the NBA Top Shot, raising $2 million in the beta window of the platform, before launching to the public in October 2020.  

The NFTs represent randomly selected moments from various NBA games, which fans can get in stunning NFTs as memorabilia. There are many benefits for the sport industry to gain from NFTs, all with tickets and increasing fan engagement, but providing fans with exclusive collectibles will always be a safe revenue stream. 

Gaming

There is no way the gaming industry can be left out of any list of use cases for NFTs. Granting that the gaming industry is purely based online and within the tech world, which are the two main associations with the NFT world, the two can easily be linked together. And they have, numerous times. One of the biggest gaming platforms like Axie Infinity claims its fame with 2.8 million daily users.  

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A post shared by Axie Infinity (@axieinfinity)

The point of the game is to collect digital pets, also known as Axies, and to raise, breed and battle them with other Axies, producing more powerful pets of future generations. The platform holds expensive sales, with the most expensive Axie costing $820,000 dollars. To better that amount of money, there were nine plots of virtual land sold for $1.5 million dollars. This has set a record and a very beneficial future for the gaming metaverse and NFTs. 

Food and Drink

NFTs cannot be eaten, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be transformed into amazing benefits for the food and drink industry. They’re even some of the top NFT use cases in business. Alone the topic of NFTs is an easy way to transform a single place to attract people, like many NFT restaurants. The world’s first NFT restaurant opened in New York, called the Flyfish Club, and has the biggest entrepreneur and NFT voices behind it, namely, Gary Vaynerchuk and his hospitality company VCR Group.  

Big fast-food chains like McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell all released NFT collections of their bestsellers and special products to raise funds. But NFTs can be implemented in different ways too. They can be introduced as recipes or limited one-on-one meetings with skilful chefs from around the world. The possibilities are many for the food and drink industry and with the increasing interest in them, new ways to introduce food related NFTs will surely immerse. 

Virtual Real Estate

Real estate, in some major cities, is already at its most expensive state than ever. With rising costs, the idea to buy a virtual real estate might seem ludicrous. But many investors are jumping on this early train to NFT homes as it is becoming more and more sought, and by the looks of it, it might become the best future place to escape to. Most of these lands are bought in The Sandbox, a virtual user-generated and blockchain-based world, where brands like the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Adidas have land plots.  

One of the most expensive lands on the platform costed $4.3 million in November 2021. Another very expensive sale was made in the Decentraland virtual world for $2.4 million. These places are getting filled with users and landowners, and the time to act upon securing a spot would be now before it’s too late. The best part about the playing aspects of these virtual realities is that they are, as we said, playable. This easily translates in opportunities to sale virtual gear, characters, personalized and even pre-built assets like houses, statues and whatnot else.

Decentralized Finance Loans

Decentralized Finance (DeFi), or NFT credit, is currently the most secure and preferred way to take on loans and gain money through investments with interest rates. This NFT business use case provides decentralized and very transparent process, with no way of alternation or cheating. This doesn’t involve any banks, but only people who invest their cryptocurrencies aiming to gain interest rates on them by lending them to other users who might need them as DeFi loans. There are many top DeFi platforms like Aave, Compound and DefiSwap, where people can expect a great return on investment.

The Best Way to Start Taking Advantage of NFTs

With the use cases of so many industries taking advantage of NFTs, it might have become clear to you why they do it. There are numerous benefits and the additional revenue streams created are always welcomed. But thinking about the best way to start taking advantage of NFTs, after so much information, might seem like a blurry thought.

Last but not least, if you want to ensure a successful business growth campaign through NFTs, by combining all the steps mentioned above in one seamless and efficient experience, then do not hesitate to contact an experienced and successful NFT agency like DigitalArtists. With all the services you need in one place, multiple payment options like Crypto and Fiat and many other NFT services, DigitalArtists can help you to create the perfect NFT project to gain the most recognition and additional revenue streams for your company. 

Conclusion: What Can the recorded NFT Use Cases Teach Us?

By familiarizing ourselves with the above mentioned top NFT use cases, we can conclude that they can teach us plenty, on a tremendous level. They can teach us that NFTs are not JPEGs, but that they represent something far greater. They stand behind the histories of many businesses and their years of testing, failing, trying again and finally succeeding to generate worthy and successful NFT collections.  

NFTs represent all those creative minds that secured millions of dollars through the right strategy of marketing, design and execution of NFT campaigns. We are taught that NFTs can be anything we want them to be, from digital artwork to full-length movies, to ordinary social media profile pictures and all the way to exclusive real-life experiences and event tickets. If you select an industry matching your business and correctly plan and execute your business growth strategy through NFTs, then you can expect many great adventures for your business.

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