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Like it or not, the age of NFTs is upon us. Despite their reputation as expensive jpegs, NFTs actually represent new infrastructure for the future of the internet. They have the ability to provide market insights without grossly intruding on our privacy; they can create communities and organizations; they can provide the data architecture needed to construct the true vision of Web3. 

Forward-looking companies are currently scrambling to integrate NFTs into their tech stacks. We’ve seen NFT integrations by brands ranging from the NBA to Coachella. Some of these applications represent exciting advancements for membership economies, while others veer in the direction of co-opting the technology without delivering on the promise of Web3. As someone working daily to build NFT solutions, I present three things that companies can do to authentically integrate NFTs to bring their businesses into a more community-driven future. 

It all starts with membership

The first step is to begin offering memberships and building a community. That might include issuing NFT membership tokens to loyal subscribers granting them access to your insider community. It could also be issuing an NFT to early supporters and enthusiasts, like the first 100 people to buy a product when it first drops. 

These memberships provide an avenue for your company to offer the most interested and enthusiastic parts of your audience early access to products, news, content, special features or anything else. Further, by identifying the inner circle of your users, you can gain important insights and feedback into what matters most to them.

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These kinds of insider memberships enable your company to easily maintain and bolster users’ enthusiasm and ambassadorship of your brand. You can even grant that inner circle of users access to an NFT-gated peer-to-peer community space where they can interact with other members, help drive product feedback and help shape the future of the business. Using NFTs for memberships enables you to not only cement strong bonds with the community that’s most invested in what your company is creating, but also make your business a community-driven one.

Grant NFT holders early or exclusive access

Once you implement an NFT-based membership, a variety of possibilities emerge. One is granting early or exclusive access. For instance, a brand like Nike could offer subscription-based NFTs that give members inside access to early drops of sneakers. Members who buy a particular shoe could even gain access to a meet-and-greet or AMA with the designer. 

And this wouldn’t even need to be confined to online events. NFTs are incredibly flexible, platform-agnostic infrastructure that can enable seamless experiences for in