The 5 most unforgettable NFTs of 2022

by James · December 26, 2022

To call 2022 a “long year” is a huge understatement. From the Ethereum merger to the FTX scandal to the depths of the bear market, we’ve seen the good, the bad and the grey. But now that we’ve reached the final stage, it’s worth taking a look back at some of the most interesting NFT sales from the past twelve months. We are not talking about the most expensive NFT sale, nor are we pointing to the cheapest, best or worst.

Today we are looking at the most interesting and unforgettable. The NFT sales that, even months after their respective launches, left unforgettable impressions that haunt your mind with brilliant dreams of the future of Web3.

Goblins from Goblintown. — Credit: Goblintown/nft now

May 2022 was a tough time for the NFT community. The NFT and crypto markets crashed and eventually settled into the bear market conditions Web3 has had to contend with since. Hoping to give the NFT community a much-needed shot of positive morale during this difficult time, Truth Labs unceremoniously dropped the Goblintown compilation.

Within days, these ugly little goblins were all over Twitter, and legal derivatives of the project, thanks to the CC0 rights conventions, flooded OpenSea just weeks after its initial launch. During Goblintown’s first wave of hype, members of the NFT community got to rejoice Twitter space consisting of little more than several hours of goblin noises and the constant threat of being forced to drink pixie piss.

Since its launch, the collection has amassed a trading volume of more than 50,000 ETH on OpenSea, at the time of writing. Clearly, the Goblintown formula struck a chord with the NFT community at large. Who knew that the best way to face the rapid onset of a bear market would be to embrace absurdity?

A black and white photo of two women sitting at a table wearing white gloves and signing a marriage certificate. — Credit: Dejha Ti and Ania Catherine

For their contribution to ICONS X SuperTrans exhibition, the art duo Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti wanted to create a work of art that was unique domestically. The resulting piece from the commission, Let me check with the wife, is the couple’s marriage certificate embossed as an NFT.

So what benefit could the purchase of a couple’s marriage certificate possibly unlock? In the words of the artists, reverse benefit. The marriage certificate itself provides nothing, but the NFT associated with it is also linked to a second smart contract titled “Marital Obligations.” Inside this second smart contract is a chain printout of the couple’s marriage certificate written in plain text, which the couple is free to update whenever they want.

As of the project’s initial release, the couple currently have marital commitments set to be updated on July 19 each year, the day of their anniversary. On that day, the NFT’s holder may receive instructions that may not match their idea of romance. “You can do something for us because you have our work,” Catherine said in an earlier interview with nft now, explaining the piece’s subversive reverse utility.

apollo 11 pen — A million-dollar pen. Credit: Sotheby’s

In July 2022, something as harmless as a pen sold for well over $2 million at a Sothebys auction. That’s because it wasn’t just the broken marker it looked like on the surface. Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin used this pen during the landmark Apollo 11 mission to fix the spacecraft’s broken fuse box.

So what does this have to do with NFTs? Given the incredibly high price it fetched at the end of the auction, this pen, among others owned by Aldrin sold during the auction, had to come packaged in a way to provide all future owners of these items with an undeniable certificate of provenance and authenticity. Of course, that meant an NFT. The web3 platform MIRA handled the digitization of this pen, effectively creating a one-to-one virtual replica to be used for NFT. It gives the pen’s future owners one less thing to worry about. Without a certificate to lose in the traditional sense, the physical pen would have to be vaporized beyond recognition for the million dollar investment to really be at risk.

The house that sold for $175,000 as an NFT. — The house was sold for $175,000 as an NFT. Credit: RoofStock

2022 was an exciting year for Web3 real estate – and no, that doesn’t just mean all the virtual land sales that took place during the year. In October 2022, Web3 real estate solution RoofStock successfully facilitated its first ever sale of a house as an NFT.

Hoping to save some on fees and the time usually required to process such a transaction, the buyer partnered with RoofStock to purchase a two-story home in South Carolina for $175,000. “Instead of waiting months for drawings, appraisals , title search and deed preparation, I was able to purchase a fully home-insured, rental-ready property with one click,” buyer Adam Slipakoff said in a press release previously shared with nft now.

Will these one-click real estate transactions one day be the norm? Hopefully. Despite the success of this sale, it would probably help a bit more if houses were also affordable for most people to buy in the first place.

Toxic NFT cakes for some of the world’s most toxic leaders. Source: Walid Raad

2022 was not only difficult for Web3. The world outside this growing bubble of the internet faced enormous hardships during this calendar year, with events such as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict inflicting untold suffering on all those caught in the crossfire.

For artist Walid Raad, at the center of these massive humanitarian crises are what he calls “toxic leaders”. To satirically celebrate the dark legacy of leaders such as Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Robert Mugabe and more, the artist created a collection of virtual poison NFT cakes. Together, these cakes made up the Festival of Gratitude collection, which donated a significant portion of the proceeds to charities such as the Endaoments Support Ukrainian Sovereignty Fund.