To our knowledge, we’ve done something that’s never been done before. We believe we’ve created the best possible NFT out there. Sounds like a big claim, but by the end of this article, we think you’ll understand the game-changing value dynamic at play here.
It’s a long article because this is a highly complex topic. We don’t want you to simply take our word for it that we’ve created something incredible, we want you to understand it in depth. Only then can you appreciate the monstrous opportunity here and how early you are in discovering it.
If you want the TL,DR:
Our NFTs are like digital Pokémon cards that earn from sales of Pokémon products and have exclusive access across the entire Pokémon ecosystem, including games, products, and communities. We’ve not come across another NFT like it. Ours could be the first of its kind in the entire world. Welcome to the new paradigm.
NFTs can capture value in many ways, and these can be broadly grouped into these categories.
- Economic value - The NFT earns from some kind of economy
- Collectable value - The NFT is a digital collectable like a Pokémon card
- Ecosystem value - The NFT gives you access to a tool, service, or product within an ecosystem
- Community - The NFT has a large community of evangelists that create value
A promising NFT will capture at least one of these types of value. Some of the leading projects capture at least two.
We’re the only project we know of that can capture all four.
We believe we’re the first project ever to capture all of these types of value.
There are countless projects and we’re not aware of them all. It’s possible a team has got there before us, but we’re not aware of one. So, as you can imagine, we’re HYPED!
Economic value - The NFT earns from some kind of economy
Many NFT projects simply mint a token and reward their holders with it. It’s an incentive not to sell the NFT. The token can be sold on the open market, and thus an ‘economic’ benefit can be acheived.
The problem is, there is no logical need for a token. It’s not actually an economic value creator. It’s a marketing tool at best.
Why?
Logically, if value was being created, a token wouldn’t be needed. The value could be passed to (captured by) the NFT instead.
Usually, projects minting a token have to find a superficial use for it. E.g., you can stake the token to earn more tokens or income from another source, or you can use the token for merch, or buy other things within the ecosystem, but we already have plenty of good ways to transact, e.g., $ADA, FIAT, etc. The token isn’t needed.
That means its most desirable ‘use’ is selling it. That means people are more likely to sell it than buy it. And that means the token is destined to trend to zero.
Unless! Unless the project can keep creating perceived value elsewhere. The token then becomes a proxy for that value. It represents that value. The problem in the case of NFT projects, though, is that now there are more ‘things’ that need to capture the value of the project. The NFTs and the fungible tokens (FT). This dilutes the value that the NFTs could have captured on their own.
An token mint can be a great marketing tool to bring people in, but in the long run it is more likely to reduce the value of the original NFTs, because of the dilution we talked about above.
Instead, it’s much more attractive to create economic value outside of the system and enable NFTs to earn from it.
This is exactly what we’re doing in 2024. We’re releasing fantasy products and these can generate income, true economic value. We can purchase $ADA with this income and share some of it with Stag Alliance and Portal Pass NFT holders.
Thanks to work we’ve been doing in partnership with a leading legal services firm, our NFTs can earn income from real world fantasy product sales.
That means our NFTs are amongst the very few that capture real world value. There are some other projects doing this, such as GGMC and Derps (mining) and The Ape Society (Levvy/DeFi) and we commend them for creating a true economic value capture rather than simply minting a token and dishing it out.
It’s worth noting that economic value is somewhat measurable and straightforward. If I was approaching it, I’d ask: How much is the NFT worth? How much does it earn? Is that level of earning attractive to me? How does it compare to other things? Often, the economic value is capped within the parameters of those questions. It’s directly relative to other things in the same category.
Now here’s where things get really interesting.
Collectable value - The NFT is a digital collectable like a Pokémon card
Collectables are unlimited in value. Look at a Pikachu Illustrator Card (Pokémon), a Van Gogh painting, a rare ancient coin, a Cryptopunk, Azuki, or Bored Ape NFT etc. All of these things can have immense monetary value.
This type of value, collectable, is the most sought after for NFT collectors because it’s the most unlimited in nature compared to the other types of value capture. But it’s also the hardest to achieve. The collectable has to be in the right place at the right time with the right social, political and economic factors, and that’s difficult to achieve. Cryptopunks managed it, but very few have followed in their footsteps.
But what if there is a whole ecosystem of products built that relates to the collectability of the NFT. Just like a Pokémon card?
Many NFT projects rely on their mint funds to market and grow the project, but those are more likely to run out before the NFTs can be as canonized as a Cryptopunk.
Economic value, e.g., product sales can fuel the system and increase the collectability of the NFT. We’re publishing novels, audio books, online streams, games and social content about our NFTs. These products can generate income that enables us to grow our audience and sell more products. Thee products are about the NFT characters and the fantasy world they live in.
The products can increase the collectability of the NFT and the amount of passive, real-world income our NFT holders can earn.
We intend to grow the Elderworld into a household brand like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Pokémon, Marvel, the Witcher, Game of Thrones, and so on.
Imagine how collectable the NFTs relating to the Elderworld will be. Imagine the economic value capture potential of an NFT like that.
We’re yet to come across a project that links their NFTs to economic and collectable value in this way.
Imagine being early to that kind of opportunity. We think it’s a game changer.
Ecosystem value - The NFT gives you access to a tool, service, or product within an ecosystem
Some NFTs give access to services, products or perks within an ecosystem. For example, Tappy’s give you access to an epic set of trading tools on Cardano via Tap Tools pro. Jellycubes give you exclusive access to the Block Investment Group Alpha channel. Cornucopias NFTs give you perks within their game. This is an epic range of services and products, and NFTs create an interesting ticket to those services.
Similarly, our NFTs give our holders access to a range of perks directly relating to the NFT itself. This can increase demand for the NFT as well as collectability.
Ecosystem benefits
Early access, and in-game perks in ‘Elderworld, the Legacy’
Our browser-based fantasy game.
Exclusive access to highly collectable products
Such as hand-signed, limited edition hardcover prints of our fantasy novels.
Voting to shape the project
Our NFT holders get a voice in shaping the project, which can directly affect the collectability of their NFTs.
Exclusive community access
Holders get access to exclusive parts of our community and opportunities within it.
Your NFT gets canonised
Our top holders who earn the most Prestige within our ecosystem can have their NFTs canonised in our marketing and products, such as our books. This can directly improve the collectability of the NFT.
Free products
As our ecosystem grows, we’d like to give our NFT holders free fantasy products such as books and merch.
Community value - The NFT has a large community of evangelists that create value
NFT and wider web3 can reduce the barriers between producer and consumer. There is no longer the corporation and the customer. When every entity is incentivised to create value, incredible things can happen.
The general top-down approach, corporation down to consumer means the corporation benefits from growth and success and the consumer simply fuels that growth.
NFTs break that barrier because the NFT collector can benefit from the value they put into the project and community. Essentially, the NFT market value becomes a proxy for the total value of the community and any other entities in the ecosystem. Usually, this is a core team and community combo. And it can grow to be much bigger than that.
Take the Ape Society for example. Their community has created many projects that create value for the entire ecosystem. That’s so epic! and every holder has benefitted from that decentralised community effort. The Mallard Order has also pioneered these concepts of social value with their Raider’s Guild platform.
We empower our community to create value with us in several ways. Firstly, through incentivised social gamification, Heroes of the Herd, and second, through Guilds. Join our community to learn more and get involved.
Now that our NFTs capture economic and collectable value, our community is more incentivised to create value with us than ever before. Their actions can directly impact their earnings. That can mean reviewing a book on Amazon, making a promo video, a Tweet thread, or anything else. Our NFT holders can create and derive value with the community more tangibly than ever before.
We’re also extremely excited that our community have plenty of relevant topics to rally around. There’ll be fantasy books, an online game, community events and games, and much more. We, the community at large, aren’t going to be trying to spread the word about the NFTs for the sake of it. We’ll be spreading the word about the NFTs because we have a common affinity to the Elderworld, in many different ways. Whether it’s the core team, an NFT collector, a fantasy lover, a gamer, or a socialite, we all thrive when the project thrives. The NFT price can capture all of that incentivised community value.
Conclusion
Many NFTs and crypto tokens aren’t backed by anything, except for a community that will eventually lose interest when the price isn’t going up. Value needs to be created outside of the system and brought in to stimulate and incentivise growth. That’s basic economics, but many NFT collectors and crypto speculators forget that, or are simply unaware of it. For this reason. most crypto and NFT projects are destined to trend toward zero. You can see this on countless charts.
This article has proven that NFTs can be backed by something incredibly exciting. In our case, the NFTs are backed by the entire Elderworld ecosystem. They’re backed by four major types of value creation.
Our aim is to create a massive entertainment giant that features the NFTs, awards holders with income, and encourages our NFTs to become the most valuable out there.
We’re confident that we’ve created the best possible potential for success. Our mechanism means each type of value can propel the other. It gets us hyped just thinking about it. This is a new paradigm of value that would have been near impossible without the invention of NFTs.
Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re early. See you in the Discord.
