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Gate.io Blog NFTs Annual Review(Part Ⅱ): The Move Towards the Metaverse

NFTs Annual Review(Part Ⅱ): The Move Towards the Metaverse

28 February 09:34



Summary



1. In the 2nd half of 2021, NFT was closely integrated with the metaverse, which played a role in many fields such as games, entertainment, and social interaction.
2. The first trending NFT topic in the second half of 2021 was the rise of GameFi.
3. Axie Infinity stood out from the many GameFi games and became the most important one to make the "Play-to-Earn" popular. The "Play-to-Earn" model is another factor that makes GameFi popular.
4. In addition to the enthusiastic participation of individual investors in the transaction, institutions, and celebrities also entered the market in the second half of 2021.
5. 2021 could be said to be the year that NFTs made itself known outside of the crypto space. In 2022 where we are now, we believe that NFT will be integrated into our lives on a wider and deeper scale.

In the first half of 2021, NFTs repeatedly made news headlines with their digital collections; in the second half of the year, NFT was closely integrated with the metaverse, which played a role in many fields such as games, entertainment, and social interaction. In August, the sales volume of NFTs totaled $3.4 billion, surpassing the total volume in the first and second quarters in just one month. NFTs and the metaverse seem to have become the story that dominated the discussions in the entire crypto space.


The rise of GameFi



The first trending NFT topic in the second half of 2021 was the rise of GameFi. NFTs has brought clear, transparent, and immutable property rights to the gaming. Gaming itself achieved the decentralization of property rights management through converting characters, equipment, and various game elements into NFTs. Evengaming companies in the on-chain games were unable to tamper with the game data without being written into the blockchain, which made the economic system in the game real and reliable. It can be said that NFTs are fundamental to the existence of the on-chain gaming economic system.

Axie Infinity stood out from the many GameFi games and became the most important one to make the "Play-to-Earn" popular. The "Play-to-Earn" model is another reason for GameFi's popularity. Axie Infinity (AXS) is a digital pet cultivation and battle game produced and published by Vietnamese game developer SkyMavis in Ethereum. Since it has the similar world view settings to "Pokémon '', Axie Infinity is also known as the Pokémon of the NFT world.

There are two tokens in Axie Infinity's game ecosystem. One is the task incentive asset SLP in the game, which can be obtained through battles and can be utilized to breed pets and trade. The other is the governance token AXS, which can be used for game improvement plan proposals and voting governance. Players can obtain game asset rewards SLP by winning the duel in the game or completing the specified tasks, and then cultivate AXS. Players can earn income while playing games by selling AXS and SLP on secondary markets. People in countries like the Philippines and Vietnam even quit their jobs to earn money to support their families by playing Axie Infinity games. Therefore, the price of Axie tokens bucked the trend in the overly-declining market at the time. In August, Axie Infinity had 2.8 million traders and $1.8 billion in trading volume.

While the Metaverse and NFT markets were skyrocketing together, the Game-Fi market as their application carrier was also growing explosively. In addition to Axie Infinity, games like the emerging Decentraland and The Sandbox were also highly competitive in on-chain games .

For NFTs and GameFi, please proceed to read the following article:

How NFT and Blockchain Bring New Potential to Play-To-Earn

For NFTs and the metaverse, please proceed to read the following article:

Into the Metaverse, Where Sci-fi Meets the Reality

The Metaverse Fuels the Booming Digital Property Market: What did JJ Lin buy for $120,000?


Celebrities Enter the Market: NFTs Move Towards the Metaverse



The multiple NFT collections are scarce due to its algorithm and of collectible value.In addition to the enthusiastic participation of individual investors in the transaction, institutions, and celebrities also entered the market in the second half of 2021. Payments giant Visa bought CryptoPunks #7610 for $150,000 in August, leading the growth spree for CryptoPunks. In addition, Bored Ape released on May 1 last year was another well-known avatar NFT. Bored Ape is also a group of NFTs containing 10,000 unique apes. It is built on Ethereum according to the ERC-721 contract standard, and the avatar data is hosted on IPFS. Stephen Curry, the well-known NBA star, purchased a bored ape NFT for 55 ethers in a tweed suit and used it as his social media avatar at the end of August. This caused a heated discussion on social media and helped NFTs gain more popularity outside of the crypto field again. In addition to Visa and Jordan, Shawn Yue, JJ Lin, and other celebrities that we are familiar with all hold CryptoPunks or Bored Ape.
These institutions and celebrities directly drove the upsurge of NFTs investment, while some other famous institutions and celebrities directly launched their own NFT projects or metaverse projects.

Facebook announced on October 28 that it would rebrand its name to Meta, going all-in the metaverse. This further fueled the popular metaverse theories. The building and growth of the Metaverse is also inseparable from the application of NFTs. NFT properties were the last trending topic in projects such as the Sandbox and Decentraland that have both GameFi and metaverse characteristics..

The DappRader data showed that the total market capitalization of NFTs properties in November 2021 reached $4.6 billion, up 228% from October. Prices of virtual plots on Decentraland and Sandbox had even hit record highs. On November 23, Metensrse, a subsidiary of Tokens.com, purchased a piece of virtual land with a total area of about 566 square meters on Decentraland with 618,000 MANA. The Mana was valued at $2.43 million, setting a record for the sale of virtual property.

For a list of celebrities that invested in the NFTs and metaverse, please proceed to read the following articles:

Bored Ape: Why is a Single Ape Avatar Being Sold for $180,000?

The Metaverse Fuels the Booming Digital Property Market: What did JJ Lin buy for $120,000?

With Jordan Launching his NFT Platform, What Impact will Web 3.0 have in Reconstructing the Fan Economy?

Phanta Bear NFTs earn 60 million RMB | “Unspeakable Secrets” Between Jay Chou and Fans

Why Is META (Previously Facebook)Betting Big On Metaverse?


Conclusion



The NFT market has been expanding from 2018 to 2021, and became widely known to the public in the first half of 2021 thanks to the promotion of a series of popular events. And its market capitalization reached $2.5 billion. 2021 can be said to be the year that NFTs came to popular attention both in and out of the crypto space. In 2022, we believe that NFTs will be integrated into our lives on a wider and deeper scale. A growing number of enterprises will join NFTs, applying NFTs in more diversified areas.



Author: Ashley. H, Gate.io Researcher:
* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
*Gate.io reserves all rights to this article. Reposting of the article will be permitted provided Gate.io is referenced. In all other cases, legal action will be taken due to copyright infringement.



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