Should I go to NFT – Newspaper Kommersant No. 232 (7433) of 12/14/2022

Digital asset management services — with all the interest of enthusiasts and regulators in the latter — are going through hard times at the end of 2022. And if in the summer the announced intention of VK to develop its own NFT platform (non-fungible tokens) looked like an ordinary implementation of the functions of competing social networks, then in December its announcement is perceived as something untimely.

At the moment when the first large technology company from Russia goes to NFT, technology is going through hard times in the world. A series of scandals in the crypto market that took place during the year also affected the global sales of NFTs. According to DappRadar data cited by Bloomberg, in November, trading in tokens on the five largest NFT platforms brought sellers $394 million – this is the lowest value in 16 months, poorly comparable to the January peak ($6.6 billion).

VK has to catch up not only with services initially focused on the economy of tokens, but also with classic social platforms, in particular, Twitter and Instagram (Meta’s activities on Instagram and Facebook have been declared extremist in Russia and banned). Some of the functions announced by VK are very similar to those already implemented in other social networks. Even the hexagon that VK will use to frame the NFT avatars is similar to the hexagon from Twitter, only slightly tilted.

Of course, the leadership in the implementation of a particular function is not a guarantee of success, especially when it comes to a specific geographic market. Refinement and adaptation of functions originally introduced by others is a common thing for Internet services, and when implemented in a timely and high-quality manner, it pays off. Take the same Twitter, which in 2021 managed to take over the functions of the then sensational audio service Clubhouse. At the same time, the attempt by the last of the major social networks Twitter in 2020 to make its own analogue of stories (records that disappear after a day) turned out to be a failure, and as a result, the function was removed.

The history of the NFT is still at a crossroads. Demand for tokens is no longer backed by the amount of money it used to be, and VK will no longer be able to catch the wave of hype around them. This technology cannot be called mass-produced either. VK’s further steps in such conditions are already being traced: the company, in particular, through its own training course, is trying to nurture new consumers who are now poorly versed in NFTs or, in principle, discover them from scratch.

But a more significant role here will be played not by training programs, but by convenient, understandable tools for everyone, which any Russian “big tech” will give to ordinary people who are interested in NFT. The main thing is that between the decision to make such tools and the date of their release, at least some interest in virtual property remains.