NFT Paris 2023: Key Learnings & Takeaways

Last week I had the great opportunity to attend #nftparis. You will have no doubt seen a bunch of write ups already but I wanted to add one more to the mix to round out the week as to me, while there's room for improvement next year, it was hugely impressive in many ways.

• Firstly, the ambition and scale of it with over 10,000 attendees.
• The calibre of speakers not seen before at any related conference.
• The venue (Grand Palais Ephemere) and location was stunning, with direct views of the Eiffel Tower.
• The curation of exhibitors, the clear investment and interest by the French government alongside the overall energy, enthusiasm and optimism.
• It also felt like a cultural moment being in Paris, a city synonymous already with art, fashion and culture.  
• Finally, it felt to be a huge signal for an increasing shift with the events landscape to be seeing Europe as the global powerhouse it is for emerging tech. With Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona all hosting significant events this year it feels like a movement is happening in Europe. We saw last year in the space at least, the noise mostly came from LA, NYC and Miami.

What was abundantly clear is that this isn’t a fad and it’s certainly now breaking out of being seen as a hype driven financial instrument in previous years to finding those hallowed longer term use cases and utility.

On the brand side we heard from everyone from:

LVMH, Chanel, Adidas, Salesforce, Volkswagen, Shopify, L’oreal, Warner Bros, Balmain, Givenchy, Hugo Boss, AtariX, Hennessy, Instagram, Highsnobiety and Porsche (apologies if I missed anyone off!)

Many talked about how they as a brand have implemented or are implementing NFTs as part of their ongoing community building, marketing and loyalty efforts. 

The web3 focused brands and projects were out in force too, more than any other related conference: 

Art Blocks, Doodles, Yuga Labs, RTFKT, Animoca Brands, Moonpay, Sorare, Deadfellaz, Ledger, POAP, Polygon, Tokenproof, GMoney, SuperRare, Arianee, World of Women, Tom Sachs, Rug Radio, Pudgy Penguins, The Fabricant, The Sandbox, Degods, Dapper Labs, oncyber. Exclusible, Ready Player Me, Decrypt and The Block. (Did I miss anyone?) 

I will add though that while it’s fantastic progress to see so many brands involved, many are still figuring out the best way to enter into the space. Both in a light touch way but also authentically and with the right body language, being sympathetic to the cultural nuances, ensuring they are additive over extractive to the space. And this is where we @ Monks have helped brands do this, for the likes of Macy’s, Gucci and Cool Cats amongst many others! 

It was also one of the first major conferences in the space where it acted as the central hub of activity where everyone was all in one place and not spread out across multiple floors or venues across the city. 

Which meant that meeting people and the networking opportunities was just generally easier but also more serendipitous too. And crucially this was one of the few where you actually wanted to stay at the conference itself - it became our hub. 

The side events were also excellent, it felt like they all upped their game on execution to match the quality levels of the conference overall. 

NFT Factory kicked off the days with a full day takeover by Ledger directly opposite from Centre Pompidou which itself has made the headlines recently as a cultural institution and Yuga Labs donating Cryptopunk #110 to the centre.

The Doodles founders put on a cocktail soiree which was a very high end, classy affair with a roof top view of the Eiffel Tower at night, canapés, gold embossed Doodles chocolates and an intimate guest list. 

Ledger made its presence known throughout to great success giving sneak previews of their upcoming browser extension and Stax product which I think has the potential to be the iPod moment for security and NFTs. Not long now until the Ledger Stax product release. 

Yuga Labs having a senior leadership presence at the conference itself and both running their own private side events and being present at others eg Rekt Guy is a huge positive for Europe, for Paris and for the conference. 

My 5 key takeaways: 

1. Products not promises:

Julian Holguin, Doodles CEO said this at their fireside chat at the conference and it stuck with me. 

Many brands and projects promised the world in recent years and didn’t live up to expectations.

While Doodles have had their own challenges with the market volatility, their move to Flow for Doodles 2 and long periods of silence from an external comms perspective, under selling and over delivering is going to be key for brands and projects to win in 2023. 

Even just sticking to what you have already committed has been challenging for many brands and projects as they realise that entering in to this web3 and NFT space is not on a short term campaign basis but a long term start of a programme. 

2. Removing barriers to entry is still a work in progress:

Moonpay, Tokenproof, Crossmint, Fair.xyz and countless others are making great inroads with seeking to reduce the friction of getting in to the space, whether that’s through being able to take payments with a credit card instead of crypto or being a ticketing solution that connects to a users wallet to prove membership or no code solutions that make it easier for both brands, projects and consumers to interface. 

3. Brands are here and want to be heard:

Last year, the conference speakers were individuals and influencers who were leading the charge getting into the space. This year, it’s now the brands that are taking the stage. Which is huge progress. Many talked about their commitment to driving forward the web3 and NFT agenda internally through testing, learning, educating and building the necessary processes. 

4. High entry price points make way for accessible utility:

We are moving past the era of inaccessibly high floor prices to enter in to a projects ecosystems. Of course, they will too remain but the key successes in recent times have been from projects starting at a free to low entry price point, building a volume of wallets but also continually building on the reason for a user to keep holding on to the token. 

5. Loyalty and membership programmes are emerging:

With wallets being the new cookie, everyone is watching how Starbucks’s Odyssey loyalty programme is performing in its infancy. Both on its ease of use and experience, its onboarding of users to Polygon and how brands might be able to create something similar themselves. 

Many web2 and indeed web3 loyalty companies are looking to solve for how to build, manage, incentivise and keep their holders coming back. For me, this is going to be one of the key areas of growth for brands and the tokenisation of their communities, creating the future of CRM enabled by blockchain technology.

Thanks for getting to the end and I hope you found it useful!

#NFT #web3 #NFTParis