NFTs & the Future of Digital Art
The blockchain, or the blockchain protocol, is a catalyst in the world of money and contracts which is now the frontrunner for claiming superior intersectionality with digital commerce. It’s decentralized, transparent, and allows information to be dispersed peer-to-peer without a centralized intermediary. The Ethereum blockchain (ETH) and Binance blockchain (BSC) store smart contracts and NFTs.
Born out of the concept known as decentralization, the blockchain is an emerging opportunity for innovation stemming from cryptography and computer science; the blockchain, which operates on a decentralized network, is essentially a trustless environment independent of a centralized server, meaning that it is without a single point of failure. In short, decentralized exchanges are highly secure for ownership and can never be lost. So, how exactly does this affect the business of art and commerce?
The blockchain, or the blockchain protocol, is a catalyst in the world of money and contracts which is now the frontrunner for claiming superior intersectionality with digital commerce. It’s decentralized, transparent, and allows information to be dispersed peer-to-peer without a centralized intermediary. The Ethereum blockchain (ETH) and Binance blockchain (BSC) store smart contracts and NFTs.
NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are pieces of digital information that take on the form of really anything the maker wants it to be; the current mania around using that technology is to create art and add digitally compressed information to the blockchain protocol. NFTs are quite complex in their nature, philosophically they’re a capitalistic nightmare which indicates the entrenchment of private ownership all the way down to the bits and strings of code generated by a computer — crazy stuff. On the other hand, they present to us an opportunity for a complete redefinition of asymmetric, nonlinear art forms that could actually broaden the criterion for creative achievement. However, as it stands, NFTs aren’t quite ripe and have yet to reach their full potential.
The buying market for NFTs is extremely volatile since it inherently depends on the pricing market for crypto-currencies. Such volatility means that the price for one NFT can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a whopping $69 million. There are, however, a few winners and losers. Since NFTs are decentralized and part of the blockchain, ownership is extremely exclusive (and expensive). Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith has plans to release his latest project as an NFT, meaning that whoever wins the auction not only owns the NFT itself, but also “the rights to exhibit, distribute, and stream the project wherever they see fit”.
In a way, NFTs show promise in the sense that artists can reimagine a new way to connect with their audience in a post-pandemic world. With the COVID-19 shutdown, many artists have had to pivot, subsequently finding new methods of making an income. Luckily, the technology behind NFTs is nothing short of amazing — as blockchain technology continues to make its stamp on numerous business sectors, the inevitable transfer to non-fungible-tokens is simply a matter of when, and not how.
Surely, everything takes time, and change does not happen right away. Skeptics will remain critical of how we progress through the information age as we continue to upload virtually everything into some computational database. With machines continuing to learn, the real discussion worth having now is how will we, as an artistically enlightened society, push our craft forward? Will we continue down the establishment route, or will creatives break-off into the world of NFTs and blockchain?
