NFT predictions for 2023 🔮

Dear Bankless Nation,

2022 is coming to a close, and the new year’s just around the corner now!

That said, I personally have lots of predictions for the NFT ecosystem in 2023. I think we will see things like:

1. The Big ABC (Art Blocks, BAYC, and CryptoPunks ecosystems) continue to dominate trading volume
2. The Polygon infra stack keep winning over big brands
3. The crossroads of AI advances + NFTs boom like never before
4. The Arbitrum and Optimism L2 NFT scenes enjoy big activity surges
5. A few more NFT project acquisitions by huge companies
6. Web3 social platforms gaining lots of new ground amid continued Twitter chaos
7. An uptick in projects exploring use cases around dynamic NFTs
8. More DeFi projects embracing NFTs in their operations, e.g. NFT credit scores
9. Big growth in the number people using creator-owned infra like Manifold and Zora
10. The arrival of the next breakthrough NFT game

To be sure, there are many more possibilities in play too! My main takeaway here is that there’s plenty to be excited about going into 2023, and I think in the new year we’ll see considerable growth in numerous areas of the NFT ecosystem.

In the meantime, let’s zoom in and get you up to speed on the past week’s NFT headlines in our usual Friday recap. Thanks for reading everyone, have a great weekend ✌️

-WMP

📣 General NFT News

• Async Art announced a system for creating dynamic and generative NFTs called Dynamic Blueprints.
• Bankless released its 4th Bankless Collectible, Ultra Sound Money ft. Justin Drake.
• Bonfire, a no-code platform for NFT creators, opened to all creators:

• Carly Reilly announced OPJ NFTs.
• Lens Protocol is eyeing being able to support +50k transactions per second for its web3 social infra.
• Sotheby’s is hosting its Natively Digital: Relics II auction event through Dec. 21st.

🏆 Digital Collectibles

• Moonbirds introduced customizable backgrounds:

• OSF announced plans to curate a rektguy vault.

🎨 Cryptoart

• Deca introduced Etch, a unique art and writing platform created in collaboration with artist Matt Kane:

• Ensemble, a platform where artists can sell artifacts from their creations, arrived.

🎮 Decentralized Gaming

• Axie Infinity entered a partnership with esports organization Cloud9.
• Illuvium launched its Overworld beta this week:

💽 Music NFTs

• Daniel Allen and Reo Cragun released Criteria, a collaborative 8-track album, via Bonfire and Sound:

🌐 Virtual Worlds

• Decentraland published a guide on LAND rentals in its marketplace.
• M○C△, a.k.a the Museum of Crypto Art, launched its interoperable metaverse spaces known as ROOMs:

💎 DeFi x NFTs

• NFTfi passed $300M USD worth of cumulative loan volume. 

• Tessera announced an $APE Vault for compounding ApeCoin staking yields. 

  • Tessera also kicked off an auction for Chromie Squiggle #6052 but activated refunds and will later restart the sale upon an initial misconfiguration