PFPs and NFTs: Identity in the Metaverse

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NFTs come in a variety of categories and forms; one look at the OpenSea home page and you'll see Music, Art, Collectible, Sports, & Photography NFT categories. One category that's exploded with NFTs is PFPs. Why are PFPs linked to NFTs & what's the importance of this? 🧵 👇

The use case of PFPs was suitable for NFTs because: a. Identity is non-fungible - it's how we navigate our IRL world & so it makes sense it'd be how we navigate our digital world. People want to build value in their identity & have that transferable across the internet!

Use Case of PFPs in NFTs: b. Affect & Emotion - PFPs have a strong personal and emotional value for many people, making them attractive for collectors. Ultimately, NFTs are just digital collectibles w/ authenticity and verifiability so they were primed for this use case!

Use Case of PFPs in NFTs: c. PFPs are small in size and easy to share, which makes them simple to tokenize and trade on blockchain. Early in the industry this was important as the Ethereum blockchain required 'gas' to use and so transaction sizes needed to be manageable!

While there are many additional use cases that caused PFPs to be one of the primary early use cases of NFTs, we wanted to use the rest of this 🧵 to explore how SAPIENZ will innovate on the base PFP concept to move us to a world of non-fungible identity in the metaverse!

Sapienz Innovates on PFPs: a. Identity is Evolutionary - Our identity is not static - we change it with our clothes, repping items & outfits that show our personality, haircuts, tattoos, etc. PFPs are static. To show support for a new community we have to change our identity!

Sapienz Innovates on PFPs: Sapienz will allow the community to change their PFP with new items & outfits that show off their interest, personality, and other communities they're involved in w/o changing their central identity.

Sapienz Innovates on PFPs: b. Brand-Building - In IRL, I am a sneakerhead, music fanatic, and root for certain sports teams. These each make up my "brand" & how people know me. In the metaverse, Sapienz will allow that same brand building w/ TBVs.

Not only can you name your Sapienz but this identity will have a way of storing value, owning assets (other NFTs), transfer identity across apps, & communicate w/ others. You can also become the sneakerhead of the metaverse by storing all your sneaker NFTs in your vault!

Sapienz Innovates on PFPs: c. Value-Stores - Sapienz' TBVs also serve to solve a major problem in the NFT industry which is the ponzi nature of airdrops & how value is maintained. With TBVs all your airdrops can stay bundled w/ your Sapienz, unlocking additive value of PFP.

Sapienz Innovates on PFPs: d. SSO - we have SSO with our IRL identities (Google, FB, OAuth, etc). NFTs are our SSO identities of the digital world. Sapienz makes this portable by making ENS a native feature of the NFT, rather than an external feature the user has to setup!

Hopefully this 🧵 has shed some light on why PFPs are so powerful in web3, how Sapienz hopes to push the concept of PFPs forward with tech innovations, and how we expect identity to evolve in the metaverse! If you like this content, press the ❤️, RT this post, & follow us!