2021 was an excellent year for non-fungible tokens and other blockchain assets. But what does 2022 hold for non-fungible tokens in general? This article will analyze some of the top NFTs making a rave in the crypto world this year.
Art Blocks
Art Blocks is an Ethereum-based platform that provides customized generative art NFTs. Art Blocks have produced some of the most valuable NFTs available today. One such is the Fidenza Collection by Tyler Hobbs, a visual artist. He considered these generative NFTs as his most versatile algorithm.
Art Block NFTs are such unique artworks that users do not know what they look like until after minting them. Such a design is possible because its base of reference consists of random strings of code. Thus, the user can only mint and see the asset after buying it. As of December 2021, Art Block NFTs have surpassed $100 million in trading volume.
Gods Unchained
Gods Unchained is an NFT game that is all about playing trading cards to earn rewards. Gods Unchained is available only on PC, but its developers plan to launch a mobile version in 2022.
The game runs on Immutable X, a scaling Ethereum network primarily for generating, trading, and transferring digital assets at a low fee.
Since its launch, Gods Unchained has maintained over 600,000 active users. More so, it has sold $52 million worth of non-fungible game cards to players.
Otherdeeds for Otherside
Presently, Otherside is still a non-existing Metaverse. Yet, Yuga Labs sold out all 55,000 plots of land quickly. Otherdeeds refers to the land NFTs in the Otherside metaverse platforms. These virtual real estates are in 15 categories, and Yuga Labs is currently working to provide utility for every category of LAND.
The Otherside NFT mint made ETH burning rate hit a new all-time high. This burning rate triggered high gas fees, which ended up disappointing users. Notably, some users paid up to 5 ETH for gas fees per transaction. By the end of the event, buyers had paid ETH worth over $177 million to mint this NFT.
Ethereum Name Service (ENS)
Domain Name Service DNS is a web2 internet naming convention. On the other hand, Ethereum Name Service ENS is the web3.0 counterpart of DNS. ENS names are non-fungible tokens that you can mint and trade.
ENS gives .eth names to your Ethereum wallet address. Therefore, you can give names to wallets from MetaMask, Gnosis, Enjin, etc. This name helps to reduce the risk of copying and to paste a wrong address when trying to send crypto to an ERC-20 wallet. Due to ENS’ decentralized model, it is almost impossible for another individual to take over your domain name.
Moonbirds
The PROOF collective is a community made up of 1000 members. While some of these members are NFT artists, others are NFT collectors. Kevin Rose, Justin Mezzell, and Ryan Carson co-founded the Moonbirds NFT collection.
This team’s expertise contributed to the popularity of Moonbirds NFT. Admittedly, becoming a member of the PROOF collective is pretty expensive. Nevertheless, members have multiple benefits and special privileges, including access to the project’s private chat group and physical events.
When PROOF launched the Moonbirds collection, it sold about 10,000 non-fungible tokens. Before this launch, it made a raffle available to the public. The raffle winners had the opportunity to mint one Moonbird NFT at 2.5 ETH. Whereas PROOF members minted 2 Moonbirds for each PROOF NFT they own.
Azuki NFTs
In January 2022, Azuki launched a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs. Each of these digital assets possesses a randomized trait selection. From the onset, this project intended to use Dutch Auctions in selling its digital artworks. They planned to peg the minting price of each NFT at 1 ETH. However, things changed, and they had to reduce the price by 0.05 ETH until it reached 0.15 ETH.
Before Azuki’s launch, it received lots of hype from popular crypto influencers. Therefore, the attention resulted in the NFT selling out within 3 minutes. More so, it sold at 1 ETH, earlier intended. Today, Azuki NFT is one of the top NFTs in the blockchain space.
Genuine Undead NFT
Genuine Undead is one of the digital art collections, creating a path for itself. Despite its release in August, the value of this set of virtual assets has increased drastically. The increase in value was because OpenSea accepted Genuine Undead into its catalog, and the project regularly engages in social media giveaways and interactions.
An anonymous artist released this collection of digital pixel tokens. It contains about 10,000 non-fungible tokens in various categories. There are 5995 classics, eight legendaries, 3996 cyberpunks, and 200 hand-drawn traits. In addition, the creator pegged its market cap at 3900 ETH at launch.
CloneX NFTs
CloneX is a collection of 20,000 avatars classified into eight DNA types. Among the CloneX collection, human types are the most commonest, and some possess a trait known as ‘Vitiligo.’
Takashi Murakami is a notable character that has helped CloneX NFTs receive wider adoption. Later, the project added a new clone type, Murikami clones, into the clone pool. Yet, the Murikami clones are not the rarest but the Alien DNA subtypes. Out of the entire 20,000 CloneX NFTs, there are only 30 of them with Alien DNA, and a user demonstrated their rarity by purchasing one for 89 ETH.
Renga NFT
Renga NFT is one the newest collections, launched in September 2022. DirtyRobotWorks designed the 10,000 handcrafted characters, and in the future, it intends to include those holding Renga NFTs in the project’s storyline.
In addition, DirtyRobotWorks designed and launched Renga Black Boxes. Each Black NFT is hidden in black cubes spinning on a loop. Their function is to open for Renga NFTs to enter the Renga universe.
Meanwhile, those cubes are also storage facilities for information about activities in the Renga factory. So, buyers can access unknown worlds in the Renga universe by owning Black NFTs.
The Potatoz
The Potatoz is a collection of NFTs players buy to become Memeland members. Memeland is a sort of Metaverse game, and Potatoz functions as its primary utility token. Meanwhile, Memeland developers launched it in June 2022, and within 2 months, it has grown to the top 150 collections on OpenSea.
When players store Potatoz NFTs in a wallet, the assets can gradually go through six stages of evolution. They grow into other kinds in each stage and might even become more valuable.
Closing remarks
Although the NFT boom of 2022 is well below that of 2021, some NFT projects still ripped massive gains. As this article has considered the top NFTs of 2022 with notable use cases, more blockchain platforms will likely launch new non-fungible tokens in the future.
Consequently, the NFT trend will only keep growing as digital assets become a norm of the day and the metaverse takes over the entertainment world.
