Despite the 2022 market downturn, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) continue to find diverse applications beyond digital art, with new projects coming online. At the NFT.NYC 2023 conference, experts, projects, companies, and the NFT community shared insights on how NFTs are shaping the digital world. NFT-based gaming projects are now entering the market after years of development, paving the way for a future where real life and games blend seamlessly. Industry leaders highlighted the potential of interoperability, with NFTs being seen as digital goods that can be collected and traded across platforms. Competition in the gaming sector is increasing as more projects and developers strive to address blockchain-based challenges, including interoperability, according to Alex Connolly, co-founder of Immutable.

"We're seeing a few alphas. There's been a few things that have been playable here at NFT.NYC. Building games is hard. It takes a while [...] To make them good. But I think we're starting to see some of the best Web3 games that have ever been built [...] I can own my stuff and trade inside the game. I think that's really powerful."

Linus Chung, Origin Protocol's VP of Product, advises companies seeking to incorporate NFTs in their business to prioritize addressing a specific pain point that traditional methods cannot solve. He emphasizes that the recent bull market has demonstrated people's willingness to overcome the challenges of acquiring crypto and setting up MetaMask wallets, as the potential benefits of NFTs outweigh traditional approaches.

Speakers at the event highlighted how NFTs are being utilized in real-world applications, with a particular focus on the tokenization of investment assets, including the real estate industry. Ripple, a fintech company, is collaborating with other businesses that are developing real estate marketplaces and tokenized NFTs, according to Emi Yoshikawa, Ripple's VP of Strategy and Operations, as shared with Cointelegraph.

"Real estate is one of the big focuses of the market that we are very excited about. Obviously, it's a massive market, but it's very illiquid and also very inefficient [...] We are partnering with some companies who are building a marketplace to provide tokenized NFTs for real estate," She pointed out that Japan is at the forefront of the tokenization market in Asia, emphasizing its leadership in this area.

During his speech at NFT.NYC, Maxwell Lyman, CEO of Solon Labs, highlighted that while many projects, blockchains, and coins claim to be decentralized, their infrastructure still relies on centralized ecosystems, posing security and censorship risks. Lyman explained that although these protocols may be decentralized on the backend, with smart contracts hosted on blockchains like Ethereum, their front end is still hosted on centralized servers like AWS. He emphasized that true decentralization is yet to be achieved in the space, and NFTs could be a key factor in making it a reality. Lyman coined the term "global personal capitalism" to describe the potential of NFTs in enabling individuals worldwide to control and monetize their personal information, activities, and creations.