Bored Apes are Forgotten! But the NFT Community is not Looking Behind

Bored Apes are distracting the NFT community and nonfungible token technology growth

Not so long ago, Bored Apes NFTs were the talk of the town. But, now it's time to move on from Bored Ape Yacht Club because it is bad for the nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Due to Bored Apes, and the countless imitations they've spawned, NFTs are getting a bad rep. "Bubble," "money laundering" and "scams" are all terminology associated by critics with the new "Beanie Babies craze."

Bored Apes are still priced at more than $100,000 (a fifth of what they were worth at the market's peak). But they're tied to the tumult of cryptocurrency volatility and market sentiment, which has fallen along with the tumbling crypto market. However, Bored Apes have been the face of the NFT hype cycle for a long time. They might be the closest thing to the aforementioned Beanie Babies in the NFT space because of their status. But there's a categorical mistake in painting an entire industry with the same brush: The hype is not the technology.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have suggested that NFT ownership powered by smart contracts could provide citizens control of who accesses their health records. Citizens already give up their information to medical applications, but smart contracts could allow them to sell their data as NFTs if they choose. Hospitals and private institutions routinely sell patients' data via so-called data brokers to companies like Pfizer — it's a multibillion-dollar industry. This might seem harmless, but you never agreed to it. Maybe you wouldn't have if you knew how much your data was worth.

Selling or securing your data as an NFT could become a real option, as long as the proper hack-prevention measures are in place. Adding encryption to NFTs can keep content private while also enabling it to remain in public storage. Another service NFTs can perform is streamlining royalty payments. Artist resale royalty rights haven't been codified into U.S. law, only proposed. The EIP-2981 royalty standard made this a coding choice on Ethereum, leading the way for Polygon and other chains.

With enhanced security and the versatility of NFTs, private documents can be airdropped into users' wallets. These could be legal documents served by law firms or deeds to properties. Hypothetically, we could see a work contract on the blockchain, which interfaces with decentralized finance payment protocols to provide salaries based on duties completed.

NFT art has flipped the traditional art industry on its head — not just because of the headline-grabbing numbers but also the promise of provenance. Even if profile pictures stole the show, the technology came first and will thrive without its Bored Ape counterparts. It might also be better to leave the term "NFTs" in the past as a genre only defined by a limited boom-and-bust cycle and to move forward with "digital collectible," a term that some have started using.