Why Do We Need to Upgrade NFTs?

A few days ago, I spoke to the founder of one of the biggest PFP NFT projects on Solana and they asked me:

"What exactly does upgrading NFTs mean and what are the advantages of upgrading NFTs?"

The first question is answered in one of our previous blogs. Our Protocol Guide is an excellent place to start if you're a project and you'd like to make your NFTs upgradeable.

Let's address the second part of the question- What are the advantages of upgrading NFTs?

Utility

NFTs took over the world by storm earlier this year. However, most NFT projects lack true utility.

Think of the current generation of NFTs as Bitcoin, which is just an asset class. Most NFTs are just assets (at least the good ones) that serve no purpose beyond vanity. If there's a liquidity crunch in the market, most NFT projects will perish and the concept of digital ownership will be lost to the pages of history. The few surviving NFTs, such as Crypto Punks or Bored Ape Yacht Club, will be treated and traded as relics.

If we want more out of NFTs, if we want to unlock their true potential, we need to add utility. We need "Ethereum of NFTs".

While Bitcoin was just an asset class on Blockchain, Etherum enabled brought true utility to the Blockchains and allowed other projects to build on top of it. Without Etherum, we wouldn't have DeFi or NFTs today.

We believe upgrading NFTs will bring utility to digital ownership. Think of all the projects that can grow beyond just an "n Number of X pics." Meta Blocks protocol is the Ethereum of NFTs.

Commercialization and Mass Adoption

Austin Virtz, Head of Marketing at Audius and previously at Solana believes that *"Community is the heart and soul - the voice of the people. Without conviction, dedication, and unity, there is nothing."*

Community is the greatest asset of an NFT project. I've seen dozens of NFT projects with amazing art tank or even fail to sell out due to a lukewarm community. On the other hand, any project with a thriving community (irrespective of its art), sells out within a few minutes.

Unfortunately, for NFT projects, their most valuable asset is also a one-time asset. Once they've sold out "n Number of X pics", there's nothing for the community to do. If a project somehow manages to sustain even a fraction of their community weeks after the original mint, they'll earn the secondary sales commission but they're nowhere close to the margin on mints.

Now imagine if these projects could reuse their most valuable assets. It's a win-win for both the community and the projects.

On the other hand, we have brands and projects with a strong community but light footing in the digital space. These brands have the power to drive their communities to the digital space and lead Mass Adoption outside of the crypto native spaces.

Dolce & Gabanna's NFT collection was a great example of this. They already had a strong community and they turned the eyes of the luxury fashion names to the NFT space with their collection. However, it lacked utility. It was just a dress that you owned but couldn't wear. Now imagine if there was an interoperable avatar that could wear that dress and travel across Metaverses and operate on web2, that's what 3moji is!

Metaverse and Games

Think of AAA RPG, where after hours and hours of grind, your charater looked the same, had the same weapons and the same skillset as it did at the beginning of the game. That would be dull.

Building web3 games where characters and in-game items, such as weapons and armour, are NFTs is impossible without upgrading NFTs.

Similarly with Metaverses. If your whole digital personality was locked and you didn't have any control over its characteristics, it'd get pretty drab after a while. A few, such as the Punks, would stand out but the Metaverse is not just for a few, it's for all of us and hence we need to upgrade NFTs.