What are the 4 most popular NFT trends in 2022

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have been the cynosure of all eyes since the past one year and for real reasons. For the uninitiated, this ZebPay blog talks about what NFTs are.
The sales volume of NFTs crossed over $27 billion in 2021 according to a Chainalysis report. However, there are specifically 4 NFT trends that dominated the rest and would continue to prevail in 2022. We present to you popular NFT trends.
NFTs as digital art collectibles
* NFTs empowered the artists to sell their work directly to those interested in a peer-to-peer manner.
* It gave the buyers sole ownership of the unique digital art that is immutable.
* The NFT-based art gave fans a share in the future success of the digital art by offering fractionalized NFTs, or selling an NFT of a work in progress.
* NFTs with smart contracts can also enabled artists to gain profit from royalty payments and secondary sales of their artwork.
* The launching of NFTs from celebrated movies of Amitabh Bachchan and several masterpieces of Russian Hermitage museum in the form of NFTs were just few of the defining moments in this domain.
NFTs are transforming play-to-earn gaming
Online gaming has gained new vigour with the arrival of NFTs. In the blockchain-based, crypto-powered play-to-earn games, players become the owners of their in-game assets in the form of NFTs which can be further sold on NFT marketplaces for profits.
* Axie Infinity is one such game that became a rage and caught on in many developing, cash-strapped countries like Venezuela and Philippines.
– In August 2021, the Axie Infinity’s NFT market topped the trading volume at US$1 billion and the daily active player count also crossed 1 million
* Other popular play-to-earn games leveraging NFTs include The Sandbox, MIR4 and CryptoBlades.
* Gaming has also created significant interest in decentralised finance DeFi and dApps which has increased to 14 % since October 2021 according to DappRadar statistics.
NFTs as fundraising opportunities for charities
Yes, NFTs can and have been utilised for charitable purposes too in a decentralised and hassle-free manner. Some of the initiatives are:
* Digital artist Beeple auctioned off one of the pieces of the famous collection called OceanFront for donating the $6 million proceeds to the Open Earth in Foundation to combat climate change in March 2021.
* American comedian Ellen Degeneres also raised $33,495 in a series of NFT auctions,for donating the sum to the World Central Kitchen, a food-relief foundation in April 2021.
NFTs as alternative subscription models
NFTs have also brought alternative digital subscription models, which eliminate the profit-making middlemen.
* US-based Time magazine launched a new initiative TIMEPieces which offers NFTs from 40 artists, as an alternative to Times digital subscription.
* Loud Market, a music NFT marketplace enables musicians to mints their songs as NFTs and sell them directly to their fans.
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