Passive income is coming to the NFT space and it’s going to mint a whole new generation of millionaires this year. Last year was the year of rarity and clout. Who had the coolest, most sought after profile picture? (thanks BAYC). But this year the question people will ask before investing into NFT projects will be how much passive income will this net me? Let’s dive into what’s behind this and which projects you can invest in right now that are ahead of this theme.

Crypto has brought on many incredible advancements. One of those biggest advancements being DeFi (decentralized finance). A lot of the time this term is used when referring to the act of staking your coins in order to yield a passive return. This has led to VC’s pouring millions into leading DeFi platforms such as Aave, Compound, and Curve. Legacy centralized banks cower as the average person now has an alternative to their .05% “high yield” savings accounts and turn to DeFi to earn as much as 20+% on some stable coins. When investing in cryptocurrency a big factor for a lot of people is now “how much yield will I passively earn on this investment?” In 2022, NFT investors will start asking the same question.

In 2021 people chased the next big fad. What’s the next Bored Ape Yacht Club? What’s the next Cryptopunks. This led to some winners (Alien Frens and Doodles) and a whole lot of losers (*insert any adjective* ape club). The market simply has become too saturated with generative art NFT projects. Now users are looking for utility. Utility in the NFT space simply means “what will this NFT do for me other than look pretty as my profile picture?”. Some examples of utility has been access to exclusive whitelists, voting rights in a DAO, air drops of other NFT’s and so on. In 2022, the big piece of utility you’ll start to see is token yield. Many projects will launch with an ERC-20 token you’ll be able to earn alongside the NFT. I believe by Q2 2022, a vast majority of investor money will be going exclusively into these passive income NFT vehicles. Let’s dive into a couple projects that are taking advantage of this theme before others:

Cold Blooded Creepz

Cold Blooded Creepz is a newly minted NFT project from a team of NFT vets including several BAYC holders with art masterfully done by Psychrome (https://twitter.com/psychrome). This project also has an ERC-20 token launching with it called $LOOMI. By staking your lizard army of Creepz you earn a daily yield of $LOOMI that can be spent on further building your army with other reptillians such as government pidgeons and shape shifting Elon Musks (you can’t make this up). It’s the intersection between many popular up and coming themes in the NFT space including DeFi, gaming, and memification. With the reveal of its stroke of genius art on January 8th, I believe this project is destined to join the ranks of the blue chips. Creepz has front run many other popular projects to a token launch and is positioned very well to capitalize on these first to market tailwinds. I see this project as an excellent entry point for the average investor to get into the DeFi NFT space. If these DeFi themes take off, you can be looking at tremendous upside potential.

Mutant Ape Yacht Club

You might be asking why I’m including Mutant Ape Yacht Club and not Bored Ape Yacht Club. Simply put, this entire ecosystem will become a DeFi project and Mutant Ape Yacht Club is the cheapest entry point into it. This year BAYC will be launching an ERC20 token $APE that will without a doubt become one of the hottest cryptocurrencies on the market. As of now the strongly rumored plan is that it will be airdropped to all BAYC and MAYC holders. You don’t need to buy a $250,000 NFT to enter this ecosystem, you can get one for much cheaper just by getting into the MAYC. By getting in the cheaper way, you’ll have access to all the DeFi products BAYC will send to its holders. This is probably the most realistic way the average investor will be able to get into this crem de la crem NFT ecosystem.

The Sandbox

The last one and potentially biggest one I’m going to talk about is The Sandbox. The Sandbox is an upcoming metaverse that has the potential to be the biggest blockchain experience out there. It’s Minecraft meets Web3. You can own lands, items, and experiences that are all powered by NFT’s and crypto. And on top of that, everything can earn you passive income. By purchasing a LAND NFT you literally own real estate in the metaverse. From there you can earn income off that land by renting it out to others, building your own quests and experiences, or by just opening up shop. It’s going to allow for multiple streams of income while still providing a fun gaming experience. If this lives up to the hype it could be the biggest metaverse experience, and the closest we get to a Ready Player One ideal.

These are the 3 best NFT DeFi examples I’m watching closely as we get into the new year. I think all three have potential to make their owners unimaginable amounts of money. If you have any other examples you want me to talk about feel free to reach out to me at my twitter @NFT_GOD.