Source: Blockchain Knights

Over the past two years, crypto asset developers and venture capital have been overly focused on supporting infrastructure projects, while neglecting consumer-facing applications.

If you look around the Crypto asset industry, you will find that there are a large number of tools for developers to integrate privacy features, decentralize information and expand the platform, but there is a lack of applications that can use these tools.

Blockchain may provide a solution to this problem.

Moreover, Crypto assets and underlying blockchain technology have the potential to completely change the way of interaction between the Internet and reality.

In particular, blockchain, as an identity verification tool, can solve the increasingly serious crisis in the consumer goods market and provide an unchangeable source of truth for verification information.

In this field, more people need this kind of integration with the physical world, which can be called "non-fungible tokens" (NFT).

The collapse of the NFT market and the failure of the Metaverse, coupled with the onset of the Crypto asset winter, caused many developers to retreat from consumer-facing applications and instead focus on improving decentralized infrastructure.

That same year, media coverage of FTX’s bankruptcy severely damaged the industry’s reputation.

Perhaps it was not the time to attract mainstream users, while developers focused on solving issues such as scalability, user experience, and security.

Now, these aspects have been improved.

Zero-knowledge (ZK) Rollup improves the speed and efficiency of the first-layer protocol, account abstraction enables a user experience similar to Web2, and from the first quarter to the second quarter of this year, hacker attacks have reduced.

This year, BTC and Ethereum ETFs were approved, stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization received mainstream attention, and BTC prices reached all-time highs.

For decentralized application builders, there has never been a better time to expand their business to Web2 users and enterprises.

It just needs to be proven that blockchain is more than just a speculative asset platform.

As a transparent, immutable source of truth, blockchain can be used as an information verification tool in the digital and physical worlds.

This year, the second-hand clothing market alone is worth approximately US$230 million, while the second-hand collectibles market is valued at US$134 billion.

It is foreseeable that with the development of the second-hand goods industry, from Ebay to Depop, TheRealReal, etc., there will be more and more opportunities for counterfeiting.

In fact, the counterfeit goods market will be worth nearly $2 trillion by the end of this decade.

Imagine what it would be like if there was an on-chain authentication solution that could verify the origin of goods. This will bring unprecedented opportunities to integrate blockchain into the fashion and luxury markets.

In the digital field, the development of decentralized finance (DeFi) meansThis means that more and more people are starting to trade assets without centralized participants.

While privacy is a core value of DeFi, an identity verification method is also needed to prevent fraud. Blockchain authentication tools can be used again here.

Blockchain and artificial intelligence can be combined to improve verification methods.

Currently, identity verification is completed by the individual. But AI can enable image and pattern recognition and object detection on a much larger scale. Blockchain can be used to store information collected by artificial intelligence tools to provide a secure record.

NFI brings real-world utility to NFT technology.

NFIs can be used as powerful authentication tools by crypto-linking physical assets with their “digital twins” on the blockchain.

For example, if a user wants to make a luxury watch, a private Crypto key can be embedded to verify the watch's origin to prevent it from entering the second-hand market.

Why should brands invest in this technology?

Because if the buyer can guarantee a return in the second-hand market, it can bring greater value to the asset. This isn’t limited to watches, shoes, jewelry, and collectibles can all be verified on-chain.

As a result, fashion and luxury brands have not given up on NFTs completely.

9dcc’s NFT-linked fashion series debuted at this year’s Paris Fashion Week, with designs inspired by digital innovation.

The younger generation is also more concerned about the impact of manufacturing on the environment. Seeing brands embrace the circular economy through blockchain certification can be a boon to their marketing.

For a long time, developers in the Crypto asset industry have looked inward and focused on issues that have nothing to do with ordinary people.

The industry is maturing and we need to embrace use cases beyond finance.

Identity verification is a major area where blockchain can provide a better solution than existing technologies. The winter of Crypto assets has passed, and now it is time to bring back ordinary people.