NFT Use Cases Beyond Art

What you'll learn

• NFTs Are Not Just Profile Pictures
• Event Ticketing — The Boring Win
• Gaming — Promise, Hype, and Hard Lessons
• Domain Names and On-Chain Identity
• Music and Sports Collectibles
• Virtual Real Estate — The Hype That Cooled
• Real-World Asset Tokenization (RWA)
• The Bigger Picture

Key terms

GET Protocol

A Dutch-headquartered NFT ticketing infrastructure provider that has issued more than 4 million NFT-backed tickets across 121 countries, often as a white-label backend for traditional venues.

Ronin bridge hack

A March 23, 2022 attack on the Ronin Bridge (the L2 used by Axie Infinity) that drained approximately $625 million in user funds. Attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group; partially reimbursed via Sky Mavis's $150M Binance-led raise.

ENS (Ethereum Name Service)

The leading on-chain naming protocol on Ethereum. Names like vitalik.eth are ERC-721 tokens that map human-readable names to wallet addresses. The ENS token airdrop on November 8, 2021 distributed governance to ~137,000 holders.

Soulbound Token (SBT)

A non-transferable NFT permanently linked to a specific wallet, designed for credentials, memberships, and reputation. Coined in the May 10, 2022 SSRN paper "Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul" by Ohlhaver, Weyl, and Buterin.

NBA Top Shot

An officially licensed NBA collectibles platform built by Dapper Labs on the Flow blockchain. Peaked at approximately $224-226M in monthly volume in February 2021 and crossed 1 million users by May 2021.

Real-World Assets (RWA)

A category of tokenized financial assets including money-market funds, Treasuries, real estate, private credit, and commodities. Major examples include BlackRock BUIDL ($2B+ AUM since March 2024) and Franklin BENJI (~$1.98B AUM).

BUIDL

BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, launched March 2024 on Ethereum. The first tokenized money-market fund from a tier-1 traditional asset manager, with over $2 billion AUM as of 2025-2026.

Ondo Finance

A leading independent RWA tokenization issuer with two main products: OUSG (institutional short-duration Treasury exposure) and USDY (a yield-bearing stable-value token for non-U.S. retail).

Token-gated access

Restricting access to content, communities, events, or commerce based on whether a wallet holds a specific NFT or token. Increasingly common as a membership and rewards mechanism.

POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol)

A widely used NFT-style protocol for issuing free, non-transferable badges for event attendance. Often serves as a lightweight precursor to fuller credentialing systems.

Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS)

A neutral, open infrastructure for issuing on-chain attestations (credentials, claims, references). Has emerged as a default substrate for non-NFT identity primitives in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Tokenization

The process of representing ownership of a real-world or digital asset as a token on a blockchain. Encompasses both NFTs and fungible permissioned tokens depending on the underlying asset.