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The NFT Invasion Nobody Noticed

Some of the most interesting NFT use cases today are from teams that aren't "NFT projects." Expect more of this.
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Feb 24, 2026 • 2 min read

"Everything will be an NFT."

So started a tweet I came across by Paul Brody, the Chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, this morning.

As something of an NFT wonk myself, I totally agree with Brody here.

Ontologically, NFTs are just ownable handles for unique pieces of onchain state. As a format they are fundamentally flexible in this way, and you can apply them anywhere where ownable digital records are useful.

It's because of this flexibility, combined with onchain programmability, that we'll likely continue seeing NFTs taking up root across every area of human life, even if this blooming is steady and quiet in places.

Of course, since 2021 most people think of art, PFPs, and game assets when they think of NFTs. And we'll definitely continue to see advances and new experiments in these categories, like To Be a Machine, NORMIES, and DX Terminal Pro.

But NFT proliferation won't just accelerate in these tried and true cultural corners. As Brody suggested above, NFTs will also keep eating into the finance and business worlds, too.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen live projects that offer us early tastes of what's to come here. For instance:

  • Polymarket underpins the Yes/No outcomes of its prediction markets with conditional ERC-1155s.
  • Uniswap V3 and V4 liquidity positions are minted and managed through ERC-721s.
  • Liquity allows "Trove" borrow positions to be transferred as ERC-721s, giving way to onchain debt markets.
  • ETH Strategy issues long bonds partly composed of American call options that are represented as ERC-721s.
  • Flaunch lets coin launchers access and transfer their trading fee revenues via ERC-721 Royalty NFTs.
  • Sablier represents both Flow and Lockup-style real-time payment streams as ERC-721s.
  • ENS allows ownership and transferability of its onchain domain names via ERC-721s.
  • Courtyard tokenizes collectibles like Pokémon cards as ERC-721s to streamline secondary markets.
  • FundingWorks vests raised ETH through soulbound NFTs and issues patron NFTs that can be burned to reclaim unspent funds.
  • RAILGUN is putting ERC-6551 NFT smart wallets inside shielded addresses so people can use public DeFi apps privately.
  • Warren supports deploying multi-file websites onchain with no external dependencies via NFT containers.
  • zOrg mints badges as NFTs to attest to membership positions in its onchain DeFi corporation.

And these are just the use cases I had fresh in mind. Surely I missed more than a few others that are already out in the wild, too.

NFTs winning as a format isn't the grand point here. It's what NFTs represent and power that matters, which is why the 12 apps I mentioned above aren't considered "NFT projects" and don't lead with NFTs as a selling point. For them, the NFT is just the most elegant and flexible tool for the jobs at hand.

Over time, more and more people will come to this conclusion in similar ways, and sometimes toward entirely new ends.

Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.

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