What NFTs Can Learn from LEGOs

It’s not too often that LEGOs are used as an analogy, let alone a case study for growth marketing. So when I saw a tweet from Li Jin discussing what NFT collections could learn from LEGOs, I was instantly intrigued.

Li parlays three concepts that LEGOs embodies:

1. Network effects – Each new user who buys them & each new collection purchased ADDS value to existing owners because they’re all interoperable and composable.
2. Hand-me-down acquisition – New generations of Lego players often get bootstrapped via hand-me-downs, making it easier to be inducted into the community.
3. Price tiers – There are different price tiers of Legos, so price discrimination can happen among superfans vs. casual fans, but importantly there are low barriers to entry for newcomers.

Overall, I agree with what Li has to say.

Personally, I think the network effects will really take shape as the collaboration between projects increases. For instance, BYOPills has utility in multiple different blockchain games, in addition to their own metaverse game they’re building. Not only does it make the value of this NFT greater, but through this interoperability, you actually merge communities together and create a larger pool of players for all of the games.

Q and I discuss Li’s theory in greater detail in the video below:

Ultimately, where this theory falls off is in usability. LEGOs are dummy-proof. An orangutan can play with LEGOs, but they cannot mint an NFT.

If there were anything that NFTs should aim to emulate from LEGOs, it’s the universal ability for anyone to pick up a LEGO and know what to do with it. This is a difficult task, of course, which is why you have players like Coinbase and YouTube entering NFTs. We’re at a unique time where making NFTs dummy-proof can go a long way in scooping up user bases.

We talk about this concept in greater detail on Episode 25 of the NFT QT Show – 6 Ideas that Will Influence the Future of NFTs –  which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/bBPOJbyDErw