The NFT Skill Tree - TokenSmart NFT Humpday Report #39

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Welcome to the 39th issue of the NFT Humpday Report, a weekly column covering and providing embedded analysis on the NFT economy’s biggest topics du jour. Brought to you by WIP meetup collaborators and nft42 community hub TokenSmart.

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More than a few people enjoy likening the cryptoeconomy to being akin to a real-life massively multiplayer online role-playing game, a la popular franchises like World of Warcraft. A hallmark of such MMORPGs is character skill trees, i.e. ability maps that can be advanced through via leveling up one’s skills. 

If you find this “crypto as MMORPG” mental model useful, then something interesting to do is to zoom in and consider how your personal NFT skill tree looks right now. 

The context: I started thinking about this idea of the NFT skill tree courtesy of a recent tweet from Degen Spartan, one of decentralized finance’s most popular pseudonymous influencers. In that tweet, Degen Spartan said: 

“[I] was here from the start of DeFi, it never really occurred to me that you need prerequisite knowledge in certain things to use other things in DeFi [...] kind of like a skill tree I suppose.” 

The skill tree Degen Spartan used as an example.

In that same thread, Degen Spartan went on to break down how he thought such a DeFi skill tree works. 

찌 G 跻 じ MBA, CFA, FRM, CFP, NGMI, HFSP, HENTAI @DegenSpartan

- improving in 1 direction may help or have no impact to another mastery - masteries may not overlap can still synergize your build - finite time to learn also means finite skill points - some people start with existing skills - some people have a larger skill point ceilings

찌 G 跻 じ MBA, CFA, FRM, CFP, NGMI, HFSP, HENTAI @DegenSpartan

- it is a myth that more masteries means a better character - some people are great at some things but suck at others - min-maxing and focusing on what your build strategy is probably more effective than jack of all trades master of none strategy

All that said, the DeFi and the NFT ecosystems are sister fields and quite interconnected, so it’s no stretch at all to apply these same kinds of ideas to NFTs, alas this idea of the NFT skill tree. 

Why it matters: The development around NFTs is only just beginning, so the amount of new innovations that will be rolled out in the years ahead is hard to fathom. 

Yet what is clear is that you will have to keep your skills sharp in certain areas and to stay up to date with current happenings if you want to be able to acquire the prerequisite knowledge to approach those future advancements competently. In other words, you’ll have to keep chipping away at your NFT skill tree. 

To be sure, if you plucked someone from the 2017 cryptoeconomy and dropped them into the cryptoeconomy circa today, they’d be lost for some time and face more than a few steep learning curves. Then in contrast you have those of us who have been around since 2017, learning and growing all the while, and as such our skill trees are now well cultivated for the branches that lie ahead — even if we ourselves don’t know exactly what these branches will be. 

Focus on your build: There’s no need to focus on mastering every NFT-centric skill. Instead, target the areas that matter most to you. 

For example, if you’re an artist that’s still a relative newcomer to NFTs? Start with the basics and work your way up, like learning how to do a basic “lazy minting” NFT ➡️ then how to mint an on-chain NFT ➡️ and then how to mint on your own smart contract ➡️ and so forth. 

Of say you’re already an NFT collector of intermediate skill, cautiously try new things around the ecosystem so you can stay current with contemporary trends and their associated skills!

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Thanks for reading the 39th NFT Humpday Report! Check back this time next week for more excellent NFT ecosystem coverage! Cheers 🌠