CNP Utilities: Beyond PFPs

NFTs are starting to provide many more benefits to their owners.

When you buy a profile picture NFT (PFP), what types of utilities do you look for?

For generative PFP projects, common utilities are airdrops, access to free mints, and rights to participate in the pre-sale of future collections (whitelist).

It all sounds exciting because this is how NFT investors have accumulated wealth. For NFT projects, offering these types of utilities has been considered the best way to increase a collection’s floor price.

However, this business model is not sustainable as there isn’t real value created within the project. In fact, this is one of the main causes of the current winter in the NFT market.

So, what utilities do we really want? Which projects are offering real value to their NFT holders?

Taking the CryptoNinja Partners collection (CNP) as an example, I would like to discuss how an NFT project can create utilities that improve people’s daily lives by offering services beyond PFPs and Web3.

What are CryptoNinja Partners (CNP) NFTs?

CNP is a 22,222 generative PFP collection released in May 2022. It is the no.1 generative collection by market capitalization in Japan. You can find out more about the project here.

CNP Floor Price Chart (Source: OpenSea)

Full disclosure: I own CNP NFTs at the time of writing.
CNP founder’s comments are from my recent interview with him. 

CNP Owners & CNP Friends

In September 2022, the CNP team announced the launch of the following services to its NFT holders:

  • CNP Owners
  • CNP Friends

CNP Owners

CNP Owners provide discounts and gifts to CNP holders. Within a few weeks of the website release, over one hundred businesses have signed up, so that they can attract CNP owners to their services.

Examples of the perks offered are:

  • One free plate of Gyoza (dumpling) by a Ramen restaurant in Saitama
  • 50% off the room charge for a guesthouse in Okinawa
  • Weekday free rental (up to two hours) by a party room rental service in Osaka
Yoko
It is impressive to see the wide range of generous offers listed on the website. I’m sure that many CNP owners are enjoying the perks!
Source: https://www.cnpowners.jp/

“I wanted to offer a utility that could benefit our owners’ everyday lives. Perks like airdrops are just one-offs and don’t create long-term value.  But with CNP Owners, our holders can continue enjoying these benefits with their family and friends, which I believe would be a significant incentive for them to hold on to their CNPs for the long run,” commented Road, the founder.

The team plans to expand the service globally in the near future.

CNP Friends

CNP Friends is a smartphone app available to holders of CNP – the Beta version was released in September 2022.

Source: https://twitter.com/cnp_ninjadao

Currently, the app is used as a communication tool, with the aim of adding facilities like a step-counting mechanism in the future. Road plans to combine Web2 and Web3 services by offering events like move-to-win competitions and rewarding winners with special NFTs.

“CNP Friends app offers simple and familiar Web2 utilities to our owners. As we add more attractive facilities to the app, its usage will increase and eventually becomes a part of the user’s life, ” Road said. He believes that NFT projects should not limit themselves to only Web3-related services. “As the NFT market matures, investors will start to look for projects that offer utilities that can benefit our daily lives. And that’s what we are trying to achieve.”

Are Airdrops and Metaverse Relevant?

How about Web3-related perks like airdrops and future access to the metaverse? Would they not contribute to increasing the value of NFT collections?

“Of course, web3-related utilities are also important to NFT projects. Events like airdrops and free mints can provide entertainment to our community, and the metaverse has a lot of potential to create substantial value for our project in the long run,” Road commented.

The CNP team has announced projects and utilities like:

  • Development of CNP Land in the metaverse
  • Makimono (ninja scroll) airdrops
  • burNin’ – an NFT exchange mechanism

The team owns an estate in the Sandbox metaverse, and its construction is underway.

As an NFT collector, I think that utilities like airdrops are what make PFP projects unique and exciting. But they are not enough to justify the prices of many collections currently in the market.

When these PFPs stop being just a piece of art or a speculative tool and start providing actual benefits to our daily lives, that’s the time that investors take them seriously and consider buying with a long-term vision.


The content is for informational purposes only. Investment/financial opinions expressed by Web3 Zen.com are not recommendations. As always, please do your own research prior to making any investment decisions.

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