The PFP era is over

So says RTFKT

Considered a blue chip PFP project — it has a floor price ranging between 10 and 15 ETH — the 20,000-strong CloneX collection has received a significant upgrade.

Created by RTFKT (pronounced Artifact, and owned by Nike), all CloneX owners can now access a full body 3D asset file — in various formats — which enables them to import their NFT into software such as Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Unity and Unreal Engine.

You can even make a Snap filter.

Alongside this, RTFKT has unlocked CloneX’s commercial rights, which is technically a collaboration between RTFKT and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

In this way, RTFKT hopes CloneXs will start to propagate more widely—streaming, fashion and games as well as merchandising, both physical and virtual.

As it argues, “the era of PFPs is over, welcome to the Avatar Economy”.

More generally, the move is part of an ongoing trend to add utility to PFP collections, notably in terms of expanding commercial rights and transforming these typically 2D projects into 3D for game and metaverse integration, as well as wider cultural engagement c.f. Doodles’ hiring Pharrell Williams as its chief brand officer.

The flipside, however, is adding utility has the potential to make these collections less pure — and perhaps also less valuable — at least from a conceptual point of view.

Certainly the transformation of ‘originally flat’ NFTs such as CryptoPunks, Doodles and Bored Apes into 3D objects presents more of an issue than for projects such as CloneX, which were designed in 3D from the get-go.

A minor point maybe; there’s also the issue of adding a 3D body. For example, should all Bored Apes have the same body shape and animation style?

Equally, what is clear is that full body animated 3D projects such as Hape — which directly arose from the desire of some Bored Ape owners for 3D animated versions — haven’t attracted the same level of collector adoption as their 2D meme brethen.

No doubt, there are multiple reasons for this, but the fact remains if the PFP era really is over, the avatar economy is going to be a lot more complex to navigate, if only because it will be more aligned with the professional skills required to make the most of these assets, not pure ownership.

Of course — back to the current glut of 2D meme collections — this might not be a bad thing, but it will be different thing, and one that also could become a lot more fragmented in terms of the look and feel of these NFT collections if they start trying to gain their utility from different metaverses.

One obvious example is how/does the appreciation — and value — of NFTs change when they are brought into worlds with their own distinctive graphical style such as The Sandbox?

Put another way — in terms of the fat protocol theory — how important is the original CloneX art style if The Sandbox and its voxel art filter becomes the entry point for mass market metaverse?

If The Sandbox becomes the only game in town, forget buying a 15 ETH CloneX. I’ll just make my own mangled version in VoxEdit.

In this regard interoperability would seem to be the enemy of brand consistency.

But if consistency — in terms of obvious widespread brand identity — remains the prime factor underpinning price then ‘Houston, we have a problem’.

To be clear, I don’t think such philosophical concerns will impact the overall rise of NFT avatars.

And things will be much cleaner in terms of game avatars, which will generate their value and build their brand awareness from their very specific settings rather than navigating the verisimilitudes of metaverses. But this will also limit their mass appeal and wider value.

In the meantime, I think we’re in for *interesting times* as the current blue chip collections desperately add more functionality and try to extend their audience with new assets — ranging from Doodles’ Dooplicators and Genesis Boxes to Moonbirds’ Oddities and the now-expected Ravens.

Similarly there will be dynamic changes in price as uncertainly rises: witness ex-Proof COO Ryan Carson selling off his personal Moonbirds’ collection and then immediately deploying capital from his new 121G NFT fund by sweeping up Moonbirds’ floor, acquiring 34 NFTs in the process.

Personally I think that’s a pretty strong sell signal equivalent to Visa’s $150,000 CryptoPunk purchase, which marked the start of that collection’s boom-relative-bust cycle.

And more generally, I think RTFKT’s positioning is probably correct.

The corollary is NFT pricing will have to decouple from pure brand identity and become anchored by some form of utility, although at this point, I don’t think anyone can pretend to know exactly what that means.