What exactly is an NFT Roadmap for and what makes a great one?

Earlier this week Noob2NFTs Twitter posted a poll asking our followers which quality was the most important for a great NFT project and the number one response was “making good on their Roadmap,” but what exactly is an NFT Roadmap? In Noob2NFTs Glossary of NFT Terms a Roadmap is defined as “a project’s plan of action. A good roadmap tells prospective NFT owners what utilities their NFT will provide and (after minting) continue to inform owners of what the project is moving towards next,” but let’s expand on that a little bit. For the developers of a project, the ultimate goal of providing a Roadmap is to strategically lay out a plan that best illustrates their vision. Oftentimes the Roadmap is conceptualized before the collection has even minted, this is the outline, the blueprint, for how they envision the trajectory that their project will take. While it’s not imperative to never change the Roadmap, or to even have one in the first place for a project to be successful, but following through on the majority of promises made on the initial Roadmap is what most NFT investors are banking their involvement in the community on.

So, what does an NFT Roadmap usually have in it? Most Roadmaps start with the basics, like when they are minting their project, and then once they are sold out, they lay out what steps they plan to take next with their newly acquired influx of funding (from minting). What direction a project goes in is totally up to the developer’s imagination. Some plan to set their NFTs up as video game characters or avatars in the Metaverse. Other projects plan to open an IRL merch store. Some tokenize their NFTs by staking them in order to give their owners a form of passive income that can be used for auctions, whitelisting other projects, upgrading their NFTs, etc. Some offer “breeding” their NFTs to create new collections. Others build software tools for their owners to use exclusively. Some donate to charities and causes they believe in, while other projects take portions of their secondary sales and return those gains to their hodlers. As you can see from the many options listed above, the direction and possibilities that a project can go in is truly limitless.

Most people ape into a project because they believe in what their mission is, so the most important thing for a project to do is to work towards these goals. It keeps the devs engaged with their community and gives the NFT owners something to hold their project leaders accountable for. If you set your aspirations too high on your Roadmap and fail to achieve them then the community you built up on those promises will most likely be upset and you could potentially see many abandon the project or, worse, attacking the project and creating FUD in their Discord and/or on Twitter. Now, sometimes when projects change directions on their Roadmap it doesn’t always spell disaster. Projects can fall under new management who have new ideas on what the project can accomplish or maybe their goals were too lofty and they need to adjust them or update them. Meerkat Millionaire’s Country Club is a great example of a project that transitioned to a DAO and updated their Roadmap:

Another cool thing about NFT Roadmaps is the creativity that many of the projects bring to creating them as they oftentimes become pieces of art and expression themselves. Here are a few really awesome examples!
Roaring Leaders and Casino Cubs:

ETH NFT project Not Your Bro utilizes a website Roadmap:

https://notyourbro.co/roadmap/

and SOL NFT project Nōryoz has what they call “The Scroll:”

https://rb.gy/fofquk

Lastly, a fun project that claims “There are no Roadmaps where we’re going” is Trippin’ Ape Tribe. They’re a new project just recently launched on Solana and, while they don’t exactly have a Roadmap, they’ve released what they call “Chorles’s Journal.”

Ultimately though, does a project have to have a Roadmap?  No, having a Roadmap isn’t necessary for a project to be successful so long as they don’t rugpull and do deliver on their promises to their community.

Now that you’ve seen several examples of different Roadmaps, you hopefully have a better understanding of what they are and what makes a great one, so be on the lookout for your favorite project’s Roadmaps and enjoy the journey, Noobs!