Games and tokenization are driving NFT industry maturation

From tokenizing investment assets to game avatars, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have an array of applications that go beyond digital art, with more projects coming online despite the market downturn in 2022. 

At the NFT.NYC 2023 conference, Cointelegraph’s team learned first-hand from experts, projects, companies, and the NFT community how the technology is shaping the digital world. Check out the highlights of the three-day event below:

NFT games show signs of maturing 

After years of development, the first batch of NFT-based gaming projects are entering the market, paving the way for a world in which real life and games will be blended, companies and developers told Cointelegraph.

“Ten years from now, I could be wearing my VR glasses or still using my phone, or probably using some new system interacting with the Metaverse, but I’m going to be able to port my avatar and my NFT items […] As a user, I’m going to start collecting more digital goods as NFTs, more than even physical goods, like clothing or watches or cars,” explained Origin Protocol’s co-founder Matthew Liu about skins being interoperable across platforms.

Alex Connolly, co-founder of Immutable, has noticed an increase in competition in the gaming sector as more projects and developers seek to address blockchain-based challenges, such as interoperability:

“We’re seeing a few alphas. There’s been a few things that have been playable here at NFT.NYC. Building games is hard. It takes a while […] To make them good. But I think we’re starting to see some of the best Web3 games that have ever been built […] I can own my stuff and trade inside the game. I think that’s really powerful.”

Linus Chung, vice president of product at Origin Protocol, believes that companies trying to merge NFTs in their business should focus on significantly improving one pain point in people’s lives that traditional methods do not solve. “The last bull market has definitely shown that people will go through all of the hoops of acquiring crypto, getting a MetaMask wallet because there is some carry at the end of that tunnel that’s way better than the traditional way of doing things.”

Real-estate NFTs

One of the real-world applications of NFTs is the tokenization of investment assets, and the real estate industry is one of its primary targets, event speakers said. Fintech company Ripple, for example, is working with other businesses that are developing…