It’s been an incredible year for NFTs. Beyond Beeple’s nearly $70 million NFT art sale at Christie’s back in March, on-chain NFTs have gained substantial utility as Chainlink oracles connect them to compelling off-chain data.
Pioneering much of this new frontier is Ether Cards, a platform that connects NFTs to the real world via Chainlink VRF (Verifiable Random Function). This framework allows creators to maximize the value of their digital artwork as dynamic NFTs that change to reflect real-world events.
In June, 2021 NBA Rookie of the Year LaMelo Ball made history by becoming the first athlete to launch dynamic NFTs that reflect career highlights in real time. The collection, produced in partnership with Ether Cards, features 3D avatars that evolve with Ball’s achievements and unlock verifiably random opportunities to win personal memorabilia.
“Some of the rewards that fans might win are straight from my bedroom,” Ball told Chainlink Today.
With 2022 on the horizon, Chainlink Today caught up with the Ether Cards team to reflect on the past year, which they deemed “the initial Big Bang of metaversal creation.”
“Most of the platforms currently under development have just begun within the past year,” the team said. “Based on the current state of dynamic NFTs, we are now entering the Toddlerpillar stage of the infinite potential of the metaverse.”
Ether Cards’ conception of the metaverse is “the manifestation of pure thought and emotion into an evolving, transcendental existence.” Because the metaverse is made by and for creators – in a decentralized economy, everyone is a creator – they said the metaverse is “precisely what we make of it.”
In ten years’ time, the team expects the metaverse will transform far beyond the real-world connective utility of Ether Cards NFTs for athletes and artists like LaMelo Ball and Steve Aoki. The universal implementation of much more comprehensive AI may even advance the metaverse to a state “we will likely not even be able to understand without machine assistance.”
And yet, what makes the team so excited about this technology is applications that allow people to create and share “deeply personal experiences” with their communities. For Ether Cards, the metaverse ultimately should answer this existential question:
“How do you envision your existence and what would you like that experience to be?”
To learn more about Ether Cards, check out their website, blog, Discord and Twitter.