What does Hive have to do in order to take full advantage of the NFT craze, and establish itself as a dominant player in the market?
First of all we must explore whether that is a relevant question or not. Is the current NFT boom just a passing fad? Or are we simply seeing the starting of a new market and NFTs are here to stay?
Tulips From Digital Land
The story of tulip mania is an oft told story in finance used to warn against fad investing. The 'tulip bubble' is perhaps the most famous example of a bubble bursting in history.
In the late 1500s cultivation techniques got to a point whereby tulips could be grown in less than a year, dramatically reducing the previous 12-year cycle.
The new tulips were striped with different colours and immediately became sought after. Before long simply owning a striped tulip would make the owner wealthy, as the price just kept going up and up.
Soon, derivative markets sprang up and people started leveraging their tulip stakes, whilst others borrowed in order to get in on the action. Tulips were trading on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and everything was good.
Ultimately the prices came crashing down and people lost a lot of money, those in leveraged positions found themselves severely out of pocket as the borrowers could not afford to pay for promised assets.
You can draw a lot of parallels between NFTs and tulips, however unlike tulips NFTs are unique, non fungible tokens. Any tulip was practically the same as another, therefore when one fell they all fell.
NFTs On Hive
At the moment there seems to be a set way to work out which NFTs you should buy and which you should avoid. First of all you want to check out the community, and the only way of doing this at the moment is checking out the Twitter and joining the Discord for the particular NFT you're interested in.
This is where I think Hive can steal a march on the competition. We already have a ready made blogging platform and the ability to create communities on said platform.
Why is this such an advantage? Well, whilst Discord is a very useful tool and does indeed have its place. The difference is on Hive you're able to organically browse way more NFTs than you can if you're searching them individually and joining specific Discord channels.
Of course there are ways to browse NFTs at the moment, however it is much more interesting and informative to be able to read blog posts and comments, read past posts and generally gauge what the community is like.
When it comes to producing and listing NFTs, what better way to promote than to start a community?
The Roadmap
Hive NFT Wallet
As far as I'm aware you cannot look at your Hive NFTs in a private wallet, and that is a problem. For instance if you purchase something from the Hive Punks collection you can only view it on that site.
Now whilst I, and anyone who has been on Hive for more than five minutes, trust @markymark implicitly. New people coming into the ecosystem don't even know who he is. On top of all that, the best crypto systems are the ones that don't require trust to function optimally.
Ideally the NFT wallet will be both on the Hive.blog site and as a standalone product. I think once we have this Hive NFT growth will accelerate exponentially.
Hive Branding
In going forward with NFT Dapps or otherwise, we have to make sure that the Hive branding is strong.
Why does this matter?
The answer is simple, the brand has to be strong so that users, especially new ones, understand that they are interacting with the Hive blockchain, this in turn will entice them to stay on-chain.
At the moment the branding is a bit all over the place, we have a plethora of mirror sites and dapps which are not strongly branded, therefore there is no reason to expect that a new user coming across 3Speak or PeakD will have any idea that they are on Hive. NFT Showroom does state that it's on the Hive blockchain, but it would have been nice if they'd called it HiveNFTs or Hive NFT Showroom.
Splinter NFTs
Splinterlands has been a roaring success, it has over 300,000 users and is played daily with some cards being worth tens of thousands of dollars.
The game is a card game akin to Magic The Gathering, the cards have different attributes and can be used in competition against other players and cash can be won in the form of Hive.
In this regard Splinterland cards are also NFTs with the added bonus that they can be out there working for you!
Going forwards we need to shout about this much more, Splinterlands is an established platform and it is earning money for people in a variety of ways.
Summary
The NFT craze will settle down and there will be a bunch of casualties in the form of dead projects and useless tokens. However Hive is perfectly placed to take advantage of the current NFT phenom and to be part of the cream that rises to the top.
Going forward we just need a few more tools and some good collaboration between core developers along with a strong brand to take us into this exciting future.
The future is bright, the future is Hive!
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE CURRENT NFT SITUATION? IS IT JUST A BUBBLE WAITING TO BURST OR ARE THEY HERE TO STAY? IS HIVE PARTICULARLY GOOD FOR NFTS OR SHOULD WE BE CONCENTRATING ON OTHER THINGS?
AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Cryptogee
I do think there is an element of bubble to NFTs with people paying crazy money. Some do have utility in games, but if the game goes away then it's just data. You should be able to download the images in case the site goes down, but I expect anyone can have the file. It's all a matter of what you think having some sort of digital ownership certificate is worth. It is all artificial scarcity like those 'limited edition' plates. A few rich people may decide they want to own this rare stuff and push prices up. I think we will see a lot of companies try to cash in on the fad.
!PIZZA
Yeah, the actual images are stored on IPFS right? I'm assuming with Sol and others that have wallets, you can keep them there.
Cg
I agree although presently there is a reliance on Hive-Engine, for better or for worse. While Hive Keychain could be the local NFT browser you hope for, I believe it's also important to have a nice gallery website. Right now, inji.com from therealwolf is pivoting towards that. I hope it gains some traction.
Hmm, yeah I've only just downloaded Hive Keychain I didn't really think of it like that, as an NFT browser, but yeah I suppose so.
It is definitely important to have a nice gallery site, I hadn't even heard of inji.com, I just wish people would use the word Hive more when building these things. I think these clever developers need to start making friends with people in marketing and PR, because they're coming up with great sites, but terrible names.
Like you, I hope it gains some traction, I think it will, Hive is looking good at the mo.
Cg
Plus no tx fees for sending/listing etc which can be quite pricey on ETH!
Ah yes, how could I forget! Love the new profile pic by the way :)
Cg
I agree hive is working towards something special even though it has blown up recently and more people are coming here I think it's just the beginning. I have only been here for 4 months but have fallen in love, I'm a Splinterlands streamer and blogger now and found out about the hive blockchain through clove71 on one of her streams. Since learning about it I have been blogging a ton and recently started blogging every day and engaging with so many amazing people here. I feel that is what will really drive this platform to new levels is the number of people talking about it and getting the word out there. Before too long we are gonna see so many investors and people looking to build on it.
I do see a bubble with the NFT craze there is a lot of stuff flooding the markets I think HIVE and Wax are both incredible. I'm new to the crypto and NFT space as a whole so it is hard for me to judge but these are the two I'm currently invested in and very excited to be a part of them.
Wow a Splinterlands streamer, that's cool. What's your Twitch handle?
Like you say, a lot of good things happening, I think a lot of people will look back at this time and regret not joining up.
Cg
Cheers buddy
that's my twitch do a ton of giveaways over there and having a B-day bash on the 9th stop by if you can some really good prizes to be given out.Pic has not worked.
Cg
Hey Crypt.
I have a few thoughts on the subject.
https://hive.blog/hive/@quillfire/does-hive-have-a-future
Quill
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