5 Best NFT Projects to Watch for 2022

The NFT sector has been the greatest hit of 2021 so far, and even though it is far from being the only trend that marked this year, it is undoubtedly the one it will be remembered for.

With that said, Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, have grown closer to the other major trends that this year has brought, particularly when it comes to DeFi, metaverse, and blockchain-based gaming. Of course, there were also countless projects that offered NFTs tied to digital and physical collectibles, art, and alike, but today, we were focusing on projects that have major plans in store, as they have great potential to truly blow up in years to come.

So, in search of the projects with the greatest potential, we managed to come up with a list involving the following five.

1. Decentraland

Decentraland (MANA) is a metaverse project that offers an entirely digital world for users to explore. Its world consists of digital plots of land that users can purchase and either rent to others, build upon, or organize in some other way.

Each plot of land comes in the form of an NFT token, of course, meaning that purchasing one of them grants you the ownership of the corresponding NFT and the plot of land alike. Since this transaction will be stored on the blockchain, you will remain the undisputed owner of the land for as long as you keep your NFT safe in your possession.

What you do with the land after buying it is your decision. However, the project expects landowners to create, experience, and monetize content and applications. This, of course, can mean a lot, such as running a new kind of digital business or developing dApps, games, or other kinds of software.

It can even include building up galleries and displaying art collections, and other kinds of digital collectibles. In the end, possibilities are endless, and you can do pretty much anything that you can come up with.

To learn more visit our Investing in Decentraland guide.

2. Axie Infinity

In the second place, we have Axie Infinity (AXS). This is easily one of the most interesting projects that the NFT sector gave birth to, as it functions as blockchain-based trading and battling game. Not only that but the way it was designed it to be partially owned and operated by its very players.

Axie Infinity is a Pokemon-like game, where players get to explore its world, buy, sell, breed, and upgrade their monsters, and use them for battle. The monsters, known as Axies, are all unique, with each of them being an NFT that players can take out of the game and sell on one of many NFT markets out there. And, as mentioned, you can also breed and upgrade your monsters, with over 500 different body parts available, including beast, bird, aquatic, bug, reptile, and plant parts.

You can make your ideal monster and turn it into the most dominant beast in the game if you are really dedicated to it. And, of course, having the most powerful beast is important, as winning battles against other Axies and their owners allows you to earn AXS tokens, which can then be used for further in-game purchases, or simply withdrawn and used for trading, investing, or even converted into cash.

Axie Infinity is the biggest and most popular blockchain-based game at this time, and as such, it definitely deserves its place on the list of the best NFT-based projects.

To learn more visit our Investing in Axie Infinity guide.

3. Flow

In the third spot, we have Flow. Now, this is a project that was launched back in 2020, and it comes from the same team that consistently delivered some of the greatest consumer blockchain experiences, including the likes of CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot, Dapper Wallet, and alike.

This is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly project that was designed as the foundation for the next-gen dApps, games, and digital assets. It functions as a layer-one blockchain designed to push for mainstream adoption, and it is the only one that builds usability improvements into the protocol layer.

In 2021, with the rise of the NFT markets, this project became a go-to playground for the NFT sector, offering a new hub for digital collectible items. Simply put, it offers a user-friendly space for developers who wish to build and trade NFTs, and it has the potential to become the primary place for NFT development in the future.

To learn more visit our Investing in Flow guide.

4. Enjin Coin

In the fourth spot, we have Enjin Coin — a project of a company called Enjin, that offers an ecosystem of blockchain-based, interconnected gaming products. The company’s main product is the Enjin Network, with Enjin Coin being its native cryptocurrency. The network itself acts as something of a social gaming platform that allows users to create their own websites and clans, engage in chatting and even host virtual item stores.

The Enjin ecosystem is rich with games, and each game features tokenized in-game items that come in the form of NFTs. The items are issued by the platform and backed by Enjin Coin, which gives them value and allows them to be bought, sold, or traded.

What makes the project unique is that every token that gets minted with the Enjin platform is directly backed by ENJ, as well, so all in-game items get real-world liquidity. The tokens can then be traded on the Enjin Marketplace, which is the project’s own marketplace, launched in September 2019. The items can also be exchanged back for ENJ at any time.

The real value of this comes from the fact that the more items get minted, the more ENJ gets withdrawn from the circulation in order to back the items’ value, meaning that the circulating supply of ENJ becomes scarcer and scarcer, which in turn means that the coin’s price will continue to go up with a greater number of games, players, and in-game items.

To learn more visit our Investing in Enjin guide.

5. Gala

Last, but not least, we have the Gala. Gala (GALA) is a cryptocurrency of a company called Gala Games, which aims to revolutionize the gaming industry by taking it in a different direction and giving players control over their games. The project wishes to create blockchain games that players would actually care about, and be interested in playing. So far, the gaming industry has been taking the money away from players, offering them to buy in-game assets and spend hundreds of dollars on them, only to then spend hundreds of hours playing various games.

And, in return, the players did not even get full ownership of their games, since everything they had bought can be taken away from them with a single click of a button. Gala Games aims to change this and give players greater control, not only of their in-game assets but of games themselves.

Like the other projects on this list, Gala uses NFTs to do so, by granting players full ownership of all purchased in-game items by having them buy them in their NFT form. Once the transaction is recorded on the blockchain, no one can take the NFTs away from the player. Furthermore, Gala Games is more than a single game — it is an entire gaming ecosystem that will consist of multiple blockchain-based games that will all function in a similar way.

Furthermore, its native token, GALA, will be used across the ecosystem, in each of the games that make up the Gala Games network.

To learn more visit our Investing in Gala guide.

Conclusion

The blockchain industry is experiencing a new kind of revolution with every new trend, and right now, the NFT sector is still the hottest game in town. From everything we have seen so far, it doesn’t seem like NFTs will go away anytime soon. In fact, given their crucial role in the next big blockchain trend — the metaverse — we can only conclude that NFTs will become even bigger and more important as an aspect of the crypto industry.

With that said, we have presented you with five major NFT projects worth keeping an eye on, especially these days, when the prices are once again surging, and the potential for earning from trading and investing is once again on the rise.