Is the rise in NFT’s a product of the pandemic?

Unless you have been living under a rock, you can’t have missed the massive rise in the world of NFT’s and the crazy prices some of the collections have been achieveing. As I am working as a CTO in a metaverse project with a strong NFT play, I have been pondering on why NFT’s exploded and ways we can launch a successful project.

One of the NFT buzz words, which every web3 project has in their pitches and every VC is obsessed with is, community. We all wax lyrical about how important it is and point to examples of how xyz project has such a strong community and that is why they sold out in 3 seconds. What is is about this community aspect that is so crucial? I certainly believe having a community of dedicated fans is a massive advantage to any project, it is free advertising at the end of the day. We are after all pack animals, and history is littered with ways we have organised ourselves into different communities, from religion to sports, to gangs and secret societies we crave that sense of belonging to the group.

My question is, how real these NFT communities are, would they have formed in ‘normal’ times, will they last as we get closer to normal again?

When the pandemic hit and most of the ways we got our subconscious hit of belonging to a community were removed, well we all felt a bit lonely and isolated. Fun as remote working can be, we missed the little reminders of belonging to something we used to get from idle chats in the office while making a cup of tea, or the shared experience of concerts and sport. There was a gap, our brain was trying to fill and like a knight in shinny armour in rode NFT’s and crypto in general, offering a world of discord and twitter where we got a hit of idle chatter, and if you had the right JPEG you could join the gang. The timing was perfect, and the effect immediate. Obsessively prices were checked as we hunted for the next big thing, we debated fiercely on social with anyone who dared to question the validity of the space, but perhaps most importantly, we had a space where we belonged.

Now we are emerging into the sunlight as COVID subsides, and we can go back to the pub, or sporting events, and see our friends in person again. It makes me wonder if many of these NFT communities, we loved so much, can withstand the comparison with real life. When you have no choice, hours spent on discord can be justified, but maybe we are all going to rediscover real life face to face interactions again and time spent scrolling inane chat will feel like wasted time?

My view is that NFT projects are going to need much more then an overpriced JPEG and a discord channel to cut it. Not to mention the fact that prices are tumbling down. Metaverses may be a solution, but only if they can offer something brilliant that captivates us, and really gives us that sense of belonging, which is really what most of us are trying to do. It is time for the promises of genuine community and the blending of the real world and physical world to become a reality. Projects with substances will thrive but many others will not.