Thousands of close speculators, amateurs and professionals are equally attracted to digital assets like tokens, Bitcoin and other latest cryptocurrencies.

Figures of prices, highs and lows, and multimillion-dollar deals are focused on largely by them.

However, these figures are only superficial. It is important for anyone in the technology industry to understand and learn the popular trends that arise from the distributed ledger technology (DLT) first. We intend to summarise this through our article.

1. Virtual Assets InGaming

Digital assets and rewards have been used in computer games (or games on any platform for that matter) since years now, including skins, swords, currencies, and others. Newzoo(via CNBC) found that gamers globally spent $138 billion on games collectively in 2018 alone, which concludes a vast potential market for in-game assets.

As of now, the in-game artifacts are stored on the game publishers’ servers. Someone who knows rare in-game items does not really own anything. Also, these in-game assets are vulnerable to inflation; say, the USD value of gold in the game World of Warcraft has been reported to fluctuate many times.

The virtual tokenized assets in games create a limited supply, hence, users tend to spend more. They might even treat these expenditures as investments. Although Lego toys have outperformed bonds and stocks, virtual properties in the game cannot be seen as a new alternative investment.  

A much higher transaction is required for widely adopted and frequently exchanged gaming assets, even more than what existing blockchain networks can provide. Game developers are already able to test with the tokenizing factor of their in-game market.

One can only use on-chain transactions for in-game transfers among the players, other operations can be carried out on servers off-chain. This way, the gameplay will continue to be unchanged for maximum players. Either way, heavy spenders still tend to pay more, knowing that the assets are freely tradable and have a limited supply.

2. Identity Management On The Blockchain

As we clearly know, companies like Google and Facebook have access to our online identities and the ability to control them. DLT-based IDs might serve to be an alternative way for centralized identity management by the government or large enterprises.

We believe that solutions for the same will be developed in the future so that the user is able to control and secure their private identifying details (name, age, date of birth, address, etc) and use DLT to confirm and reveal it.

A user might be able to locally save private documents to a mobile application with public-private keys cryptography, which is similar to what is used in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Companies would then be able to request the confirmation of the ID by making a transaction with the user’s public key. After which, the user may sign with their own private key, and allow confirm the requested details without having to reveal it.

The biggest opportunity and challenges lie mainly to develop an efficient experience for the users for creating and managing their identity, and not the real implementation of the DLT. The fact that Google and Facebook logins are easy and quick, does not really allow for any alternative solutions, although new decentralized technologies can be experimented by everyone. 

3. Tokenized Digital Collectibles

This is one of the most exotic implementations of DLT for digital collectibles. We all must’ve heard about CryptoKitties, which is selling for upwards of $100,000and that is only the beginning.

Crypto wallets are soon going to be adopted as a common feature on our smartphones, because of manufacturers like Samsung and browsers like Opera. Hence, wallets would represent any digital assets and hold non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

People are already hoarding sticker packages on messenger apps, digital gifts, and GIFs, even though they seem silly.NFTs, in comparison are often limited and unique. This adds a whole new level to the digital collectibles’ experience. It may also exchange the world that uses traditional collections like stamps, coins, etc.

NFTs are believed to make the badges and other achievements more appealing. These rewards could be limited and tradable, create a demand among many users, enable improvisation and functionality, and also increase engagement from the audience.

Offline marketers may also use NFTs as a digital alternative for traditional giveaway merch, like pin badges, medals, and such. It is possible to collect NFTs on a single wallet as proof of your support for causes, instead of wearing all the charity merchandise all at once.

Uncertainty

This article creates a haphazard of uncertainty over new opportunities that we have explored. Maximum use cases of these are still dependent on advances in the user experience, acceptance of digital assets and transaction effectiveness.

These are used way beyond speculation to create new opportunities, it is best to follow and implement on the use cases that are most relevant for your business and to pay attention to DLTs that are gaining the most attraction.

Currently, Ethereum is leading in terms of applications created on it and the developers, but the competition still remains which pushes the industry towards advancement.