Value creation and value capture in NFT business models: insights from blockchain-based ventures

This paper sets out to explore how blockchain-based technologies, particularly non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are influencing future business models. Drawing on the relevant literature and a multiple case study of blockchain ventures, we demonstrate how the technology leads to new polyadic mechanisms of value creation and value capture. A clarification of NFTs and related concepts, together with their use values and exchange value determinants, led us to argue that the polyadic mechanisms differ from those in dyadic and triadic business models. Overall, we identify a total of 39 NFT technology affordances that fall into four types: utility, social, financial, and legal affordances. In addition, the NFT business ecosystem is mapped in terms of sources of generativity, mixed-side network effects, and the convergence of complementors within the ecosystem. Finally, this study explores three distinct mechanisms of stakeholder collaboration using NFTs: token distribution and fundraising, polyadic value creation and capture, and smart contract-enabled facilitation of stakeholder interactions. Based on the insights, we discuss the impact of NFTs and blockchain technology on society (illustrated by two cases of NFT ticketing and decentralized apps), and the implications for theory, practice, and policy.