In a fast growing industry like web3, everyone is looking out for the new Meta and Microsoft. This birthed the idea of Dynamic NFTs as the next Meta.

Until recently, NFTs have been known to be static assets. Though unique, they couldn’t be altered or updated. The emergence of Dynamic NFTs or dNFTs has brought a new dimension to this and helped solve this problem to a large extent.

What are Dynamic NFTs?

Dynamic NFTs or dNFTs, is a type of NFTs that its metadata can be updated and evolve by programmed features encoded by their creators.. Unlike normal static NFTs, Dynamic NFTs can change some of its inherent traits based on external conditions.

I love this definition by CoinTelegraph

“Dynamic NFTs are real assets similar to living entities. They grow, morph, degrade and regenerate based on external stimuli”

How does Dynamic NFT work?

Dynamic NFTs are the combination of first generation NFT technology (static NFTs) and real-time data feeds. These data feeds can either be on-chain or off-chain. For the case of off-chain data (which holds the more enticing use-cases), this data needs to be added to the blockchain for analysis by the smart contract. Oracles like Chainlink play a pivotal role in performing this service.

Various things cause the change or update, as programmed by the developer, could be a change in weather, the passage of time, an update in sports data, and even interaction with other NFTs.

Dynamic NFTs make all of this possible by using smart contracts to integrate these elements inside the metadata of an NFT. For example, a PFP’s hat might change depending on the weather in France, or a sports star NFT character might show a different emotion depending on the outcome of their most recent game.

Use Cases

Thoughts are this will thrive in the next wave of the NFT bull run and it's no surprise. Dynamic NFTs have begun to prove useful in several industries.

Sports

Dynamic NFTs could be leveraged by professional athletes to take charge of their personal brands and build direct personal relationships with their fans.

Let’s say that we have a dynamic NFT representing a real-world football player. The NFT could have information, such as milestones achieved, records broken, titles won and other statistics, even details like speed, agility, strength, goals scored, assists, etc., stored in the token’s metadata.

However, as the footballer’s career progresses, these details will change as, for example, the player might score a few goals. This means that the dynamic NFT might have the option to fetch off-chain data regarding the player’s progression and update the metadata accordingly. This would not be possible with a static NFT since the metadata would be permanent once someone creates the token in the first place.

Real Estate

For tokenized real estate, details of assets can be updated and represented on its NFT. This would help provide real time changes taht occur to the property, which is of interest to potential buyers.

So, for example, the metadata should present maintenance history, age, market value, past sales, etc. As such, when tokenizing real-world assets such as property, it’s clearly beneficial to have the ability to update and change the metadata of the tokens.

Gaming

Recently in blockchain gaming, characters are updated as new traits and levels are unlocked. This can translate into the character becoming more efficient and having special advantages in-game.

For example, the speed and accuracy of a racecar in a game can improve when a user takes it for servicing and updates its wheels, but as time goes by, the efficiency reduces.

Conclusion

Dynamic NFTs are the combination of first generation NFT technology (static NFTs) and real-time data feeds. These data feeds can either be on-chain or off-chain. Could this be the perfect intersection between real life and NFTs? We will find out