NFTs blur the line between social and financial capital and dismissing them is akin to missing the importance of status while analyzing social networks
Analyzing NFTs as Social Networks Using the Status-as-a-Service Framework — The DEAD followed me across Twitter all weekend. Tweets: @zoescaman , @jihoz_axie , and @jessewldn Tweets: Zoe Scaman / @zoescaman : ‘This is the power of NFTs: they are high in social capital, high in utility & are moving higher in entertainment. They hit the ‘status-as-a-service’ trifecta’ ‘NFTs have the right ingredients to build a new form of social network - a Superverse.’ https://www.notboring.co/... @jihoz_axie : It's all about social capital. Social capital is worth more than money. It gives us a sense of belonging and identity. Axies are tickets into our club, our nation. There are 1 million members of this special society. https://twitter.com/... Jesse Walden / @jessewldn : Some NFTs will prove faddish, while others become powerful social networks. Internet communities that *own* their outcomes will likely be much better at reinventing “cool” time and again vs. incumbent cos with little incentive to do so. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece extends the Status-as-a-Service framework from 2019 — which read social platforms as engines of scarce social capital — onto NFTs, arguing they fuse that capital with financial value in one asset. The related voices make the case concrete: Zoe Scaman calls NFTs high-status, high-utility entertainment primitives capable of forming a 'Superverse' network, while jihoz_axie describes Axies as membership tickets for a one-million-member community where social capital is worth more than money.
Jesse Walden supplies the falsifiable version of the thesis: most NFTs will be fads, but communities that own their outcomes can repeatedly reinvent 'cool'. That sets up the tension the later coverage resolves unevenly — The Atlantic frames NFTs as an early glimpse of life becoming collateralized and securitized, while SXSW reporting found crypto's biggest boosters generating interest but little social utility.
First-order effects
- Axie's one-million-member community now treats its NFTs as membership credentials rather than pure speculative holdings, making holder status and floor price move together.
- Twitter becomes the venue where NFT social capital is priced and performed in real time — the DEAD following accounts across the platform shows collections acting as follow-graphs, not just assets.
Second-order effects
- If Walden is right that owner-communities can keep reinventing cool, incumbent platforms like Twitter face competition from social graphs whose members own their outcomes rather than rent them from an operator.
- The blurring of status and finance pushes valuation frameworks built either for consumer apps or for securities into territory neither handles well — the gap The Atlantic's securitization argument and VICE's SXSW skepticism are both circling.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the durable layer of social networking shifts from platform-controlled feeds to portable, ownable status assets — but the counter-evidence from SXSW suggests the social-utility half of the trifecta remains unproven at scale, so the outcome likely bifurcates between faddish collections and genuine networks rather than sweeping either way.
The trend: Consumer crypto is testing whether social networks can be rebuilt around ownable status assets, merging social and financial capital into a single tradeable credential.