image description
(Figure 1. Everydays: The First 5000 Days, by Beeple)
As many artist friends have said frankly, compared to traditional art creators, Beeples resume is not outstanding. He has no education experience in prestigious schools and has been unknown. Therefore, when Beeple, the unknown person, suddenly appeared, with an electronic picture that does not exist in the real world, anyone can browse, download and save digital works, and the transaction was sold at a price of nearly 70 million U.S. dollars. , The impact on their cognition and imagination is huge.
secondary title
1. What are NFTs?
If you want to understand what NFT is, you need to understand the current development standards of several tokens in the blockchain industry. We all know that Ethereum can issue tokens (Token). From a technical point of view, these tokens can be divided into the following two types:
1) Fungible Token (FT): also known as interchangeable token, mainly produced by the ERC-20 standard, each token can be exchanged at will, split and integrated;
image description
Source: OKEx Research Institute
image description
(Figure 2. Screenshot of CryptoKitties official website)
Although NFT and FT are defined as non-homogeneous tokens and homogeneous tokens, it is more vivid to distinguish them with standardized and non-standardized.
secondary title
2. Who created the prosperity miracle of NFT?
With the complete exit of NFT at the beginning of 2021, the NFT market began to grow rapidly. Take the top five NFT platforms (NBA TOP Shot, OpenSea, CryPtoPunks, Raible, Sorare) as an example. Since January 2021, the number of daily active users of each major platform , and the average daily trading volume (USD) all exploded exponentially.
Many people are surprised by the sudden rise of NFT, thinking that behind its miracle of prosperity is nothing but hype of funds. Objectively speaking, the current NFT market has indeed seen obvious bubbles, but is this the whole story of the incident?
Before the advent of digital art, all artworks existed in physical form. Our ownership of a physical artwork means that we have the right to possess, use, benefit from and dispose of this artwork. We can hang it in the bedroom, exhibit it outside, or even sell it to others; This right is absolute, exclusive and perpetual.
However, in the era of digital economy, all this has changed: digital artwork does not exist in physical form, how do we reflect the exclusive possession of it? Anyone can copy and use it indiscriminately. How can we ensure that our rights to dispose and benefit from digital art are not violated?
So what can NFT bring to digital art? ---Perfect proof of title!
The modern property rights theory of new institutional economics tells us that for a market with efficient resource allocation, its property rights must be clear, exclusive, transferable, and operable. The NFT in the digital economy era just satisfies all the above characteristics: NFT provides a unique copyright certificate for the works of creators. Although it is still presented in electronic form, it is different from other copies. Owning NFT also owns The exclusive right of possession is guaranteed, which effectively guarantees the creators copyright; the convenient and fast circulation and transfer of NFT on the blockchain network is convenient for practical operation, and these works can be sold at the most suitable price, which stimulates the enthusiasm for creation.
Today, as the digital economy continues to deepen, instead of saying that the sudden outbreak of NFT is surprising, it is better to say why we have NFT to protect our digital property rights until today. So we can see that more and more artists are currently trying to create works in the form of NFT, and this day is too late.
Of course, we will also find that behind the rise of NFT, there are still many people in the currency circle. This is another major reason why NFT has staged the current boom miracle.
This time, the buyer of Beeple’s works was auctioned at a price of nearly 70 million U.S. dollars. Indian buyer Metakovan is the founder of the NFT fund Metapurse. For example, the buyer who took pictures of Beeples paintings may be more familiar to everyone -- Justin Sun, the founder of TRON.
Whats more interesting is that after a domestic self-media writer wrote an article about NFT, people in the currency circle collectively ran to watch, and their behavior was also very strange---do not leave a message, do not like, do not pay attention, click to appreciate Make a sum of money and turn around and leave. This made the self-media writer confused, and also bluntly said that I hope that the relevant personnel of the film company and the publishing house will find the gap between themselves and the people in the currency circle.
As mentioned above, NFT actually appeared as early as three years ago. The so-called NFT application is by no means as narrow as marking a picture or video. When outsiders are still full of curiosity and surprises about NFT, the so-called coin circles or blockchain practitioners are already thinking about how to use NFT in a wider field.
Then why are people in the currency circle willing to watch and even spend real money to promote the prosperity of this market?
In Maslows hierarchy of needs theory, human needs are divided into five levels: physiological needs, safety needs, belonging and love, esteem needs, and self-actualization; and needs are formed and satisfied step by step from low to high. Due to the continuous chaos of the currency circle itself, coupled with many objective factors, the currency circle has been repeatedly stigmatized in recent years. However, it is undeniable that after nearly ten years of development, the society has A group of newly rich people who started with encrypted digital currency have emerged. This is similar to the group of new wealthy people who started their careers on the Internet twenty years ago.
For many upstarts in the encrypted digital currency industry, the missing needs such as physiological needs and security needs have been met, but there is no demand for respect. Esteem needs include not only a personal sense of achievement or self-worth, but also recognition and respect from others.
Although blockchain technology has gradually attracted the attention of various countries in recent years, practitioners in the blockchain industry and currency circles have not really gained social recognition and respect. It can be said that in the past few years, coin circles and blockchain practitioners have been very frustrated. So when seeing NFT starting to go out of the circle and attracting the attention of the world, people in the currency circle are also willing to spend money to watch and cheer for it. This is a feeling of being recognized in the industry, which comes from the release after the need for respect is met.
Of course, there are also some currency circle people who want to use NFT hype for their own profit. Just like Metakovan who bought the Beeple painting above, he is also the issuer of the art index fund B.20. The operation mode of the B.20 index fund is to use 20 works of Beeple as the underlying assets, and then issue fund shares. The auction of Beep’s work directly raised the overall valuation of the B.20 Fund; this is just like Zhao Danyang, who bought Buffett’s lunch for $2 million more than ten years ago, and recommended his heavily held stocks to him during the lunch , directly making its book profit tens of millions of dollars.
Although NFT does bring new opportunities for digital artworks, at the same time, a large amount of funds began to pour into the NFT market, and NFT works also increased. A large number of inferior artworks began to appear and sell in the form of NFT. Beyond the imagination of artists, criticisms of digital art followed. Interestingly, Beeple, the current biggest beneficiary of NFT, immediately exchanged all Ethereum (ETH) for US dollars when he received the payment of Ethereum (ETH) after the auction; Not a pure cryptocurrencyist. I have been doing digital art for a long time, and if all these NFT things disappeared tomorrow, I would still be doing digital art.” This statement directly made many loyal fans of NF think that NFT was destroyed. To Beeples betrayal.
Did NFT accidentally hurt art, or did art accidentally hurt NFT?
