NFTs for blood donations

We've all seen JPEGs sell for ridiculous prices, and no, I don't get it either.

But I'm really excited about the NFT space, and I think everyone reducing them to art sales is pretty narrow-minded.

And NFT is a token, and that's it. If people want to use them for art, great! But the limits are our imaginations.

So here's some other possible uses of NFTs.

Smart Contracts

A smart contract is code that specifies the conditions of an NFT being transferred. You've probably heard that, even after an art NFT sells, all future sales of that NFT still specify a portion of the sale that will go back to the artist, say, 5%.

This is totally impossible in a world without NFTs, that I know of.

But smart contracts aren't limited to paying back the original artist. It's just code, and it's only limited by our imaginations. So, let's think about how that relates to ticket sales.

Concerts and sporting events

I love concerts and big events, and, as any concert-lover also understands, I hate scalpers.

Popular ticketed events have constant issues with people (or bots) buying the original ticket releases, and then re-selling them for extortionate prices to the actual fans. Actual fans have issues with buying tickets on the secondary market, and are sometimes surprised to find they bought fake tickets - so even overpaying didn't get them into the concert.

In a world where tickets are NFTs instead, the organiser can bake conditions into the smart contract, like that it can't be resold for a higher price - or maybe some threshold, like 10% higher. The buyers can then know for sure they're buying a real ticket.

Now, I've seen event organisers try to make their own solutions to this. AND THEIR HOMEBAKED SOLUTIONS ARE A DUMPSTER FIRE. Shoutout to Splendour In The Grass 2015. So from my perspective, having a broader solution to this is a win.

Ticket stub souvenirs
So, if your ticket was an NFT, now you get to keep it as a souvenir forever! Apparently people have sold ticket stubs to major historical sporting events online, after the event, to fans. I have no idea why anyone would buy those, but in a world of NFTs, this becomes much easier too.

Gated community access

Let's take fashion. Nike might sell 100 NFTs that give the holders early access to hypebeast sneakerhead releases.

Let's take renowned people. LeBron James, or Warren Buffett, or Pewdiepie... doesn't matter. They could choose to sell three NFTs, and whoever's holding the NFT at the start of every month gets an hours worth of mentorship that month. The holders can keep it or sell it to someone else, but the celebrity in question doesn't need to care about this.

Let's take online communities. Maybe there's a gaming discord server, and to get access you need to hold one of 3,000 NFTs. There's a benefit to communities being gated by NFTs. Presumably everyone wants their NFTs to be valuable, so everyone is incentivised to make sure being in the community is valuable.

Certificate of authenticity for physical goods

Let's say there's an author selling signed copies of their book. They could sell an NFT alongside each physically signed copy, so the legitimacy of those signed copies is never questioned. If someone's trying to sell you a signed copy, they need to have the complementary NFT as proof that it's the real deal.

Souvenirs, Rewards, Badges, and POAPS

This is NFTs that represent "I went to an event" or "I did a thing". POAP stands for Proof Of Attendance Protocol, and is essentially the equivalent of an event tshirt or badge.

I've donated blood before, and to be honest, the first time I did was partly to get one of those "I donated blood today" stickers. I wanted to cover my laptop in them. I can somewhat guarantee that if a blood drive gave a souvenir NFT to a blood donator, and the donator could show that off in their digital wallet, some more people would be lining up to donate blood just for the flex - and honestly, I don't think that's a bad thing.

I've done Hacktoberfest before for the free shirt. Hacktoberfest requires you to make five open-source code contributions in October in exchange for a shirt. They have issues where they're getting too many submissions, and can't produce that many free shirts. So, why not keep the shirt for the first 20k people or thereabouts, and give a participation award NFT for everyone else? That's sure to get some people still keen to work for it.

That's hypothetical, for now, but recently Ukraine did something very similar. They have been asking for cryptocurrency donations since Russia invaded, and decided to thank donators with a POAP NFT to commemorate that you donated during the war. That's... actually kind of cool.

I'll be at NFT Syd this weekend, so say hey if you see me. And yep, they'll be giving out POAP NFTs to attendees.