Complete Guide To NFT Memberships

The word on the street is that NFT memberships will disrupt the age-old membership model. This guide contains all you need to know about NFT memberships and what it means for your NFT project.

What Is An NFT Membership?

Private clubs have existed since the 1700s, mostly for the most affluent individuals to privately meet and converse among those with whom they share similar backgrounds and interests. Today, brands understand that creating such private groups within their larger customer base can convey a sense of exclusivity, which increases overall brand equity and eventually profitability. Given that NFTs use blockchain technology to ensure a verifiable proof of ownership, the introduction of NFTs can bring traditional membership models to the next level.

Several sports clubs, public gyms, restaurants, and apparel brands have already released NFT memberships to reward some of their most loyal customers. This phenomenon has been featured on various mainstream media and is quickly gaining traction. With the upcoming metaverse, there is virtually no limit to what NFT memberships can offer.

Benefits Of NFT Memberships

1) Exclusivity:

Traditionally, memberships have been issued to any customer that is willing to pay the membership premium. While this provides an additional income stream, the exclusivity of this membership decreases over time, which may decrease brand equity in the long run. Besides, if a member has to relocate or has different interests, the membership can become a financial liability.

On the other hand, NFT memberships often have a limited number of tokens that are released into the market. This maintains the sense of exclusivity for all the members, which may even push up the price in the secondary market.

2) Authenticity

NFT memberships significantly reduce the odds of missing membership cards or forgery. Many physical membership cards today can be easily forged as they use basic barcodes or RFID tags. Whereas blockchain technology allows companies to verify and check the history of ownership. Also, since the NFTs are kept in digital wallets, users are unlikely to misplace their membership cards.

3) Better user experience and onboarding

NFT membership effectively simplifies the lengthy process of signing up for memberships. In addition, members can use mobile applications like Metamask and Instagram to verify NFT ownership and gain access to member-only perks, whether online or at brick and mortar stores. Furthermore, when a member thinks it is time to move on, the membership can always be sold on the secondary market.

4) As form of NFT utility

Investors are always searching for additional perks when deciding which project to ape into. In the past, we have seen projects such as VeeFriends, Azuki, and BAYC organise member-only events and were extremely successful. These events effectively bring the digital community closer together, while rewarding members with other perks such as merchandise, POAP NFTs, celebrity appearances, and exclusive insights. Another NFT project, 8SIAN NFT recently held a Halloween birthday party for their founder Nicole and NFT holders were invited.

NFT Membership Tools

Here are a few tools you can use in a typical NFT membership:

NFT-gated content

Many NFT collections have created a gated-community for their NFT holders. While many NFT collections allow just about anyone to join their Discord, there is usually a private Discord channel where only NFT holders are allowed to access. For instance, a financial education channel can share the latest trends and patterns in the market to their members weeks before sharing it to the general public. Furthermore, platforms such as Third Web and Highlight are making the token gating process much easier today.

Discord wallet verification

There are several Discord tools that enable NFT membership. Collab.Land ensures that only users that hold certain NFTs are allowed to access a Discord server. The bot can even remove their access if members sell/transfer their NFTs in the future.

WordPress plugins

You can also use various plugins that are available on WordPress to support your NFT membership. Web3 Login & NFT Embed enables login and sign up features using crypto wallets such as Metamask and WalletConnect, where only NFT holders can access the website. Whereas NFT Maker allows you to sell NFTs through your website.

Brands That Used NFT Memberships

So far, many companies have launched their respective NFT memberships. The 1,000 PROOF Collective passholders have exclusive access to the PROOF podcast, its private Discord, in person events, and other perks. On the other hand, restaurants such as Flyfish Club and Brooklyn Chop House have launched private member-only dining experiences to their NFT holders.

Recently, NFT.NYC 2022 used NFT memberships to verify event attendees given that many private events were only open to specific NFT holders. In addition, top Esports organisation Fnatic launched their NFT membership program where members can gain access to exclusive drops, discounts, partner perks, and various Fnatic merchandise.

Challenges With NFT Memberships

One of the issues that might occur with token-gating your content with NFTs is that if there is high demand for your NFT membership, the price of the NFTs on the secondary market might soar. Once your NFTs have been sold out, it will be difficult to control the price of your memberships in the future.

Summary

While NFTs have been increasing in popularity over 2021/2022, there are still many people that do not have digital wallets. According to analytics firm Nansen, there are 2.46m Ethereum NFT wallets as of September 2022, which is nowhere close to the number of global consumers. This is a key aspect that you may need to consider before deciding to launch NFT memberships to your customer base.