I'm selling myself as an NFT…
A deep dive on how minting & selling NFT actually works. Join the creator economy revolution, get rid of centralized gatekeepers, and build the digital "metaverse" future with us...
Today’s email is about NFTs. My friend Wendi Yan is a sophomore at Princeton and a talented young artist who recently sold her first NFT. In this post, she writes about her experience minting and selling NFTs, and I ask her about the future of digital art, creator economy, and the metaverse. This email is part 1 of a multi-part series.
Yes, I’m trying to sell myself, but this is not the NFT Wendi sold. Her story is more legit and interesting – you’ll find out below.
What is an NFT?
An NFT (“Non-Fungible Token”) is a unique digital asset with a certain set of predetermined properties that can't be changed since it is engraved on the blockchain (a public ledger that is unchangeable and tamper-proof). Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain and can be traded with a variety of Ethereum tokens/cryptocurrencies.
Artists can put their digitally on a blockchain through a number of tools & platforms (a process called “minting”), so that when people buy that work, they engrave their name on the blockchain as an owner of that work. This certificate of ownership is supposed to be protected on the blockchain forever given blockchain’s non-fungible properties.
Why is NFT emerging?
I see NFT as being in the intersection of two rising trends: “creator economy” and “crypto/digital economy.”
Creator economy is basically envisioning the flourishment of individual potential.
Journalists can write on Substack without needing to be published by outlets.
Comedians can host their podcasts on Patreon and tell non-PC jokes without the fear of being canceled or feeling the need to be booked by comedy clubs.
Entrepreneurs can go on Clubhouse anytime to discuss ideas.
Musicians can publish YouTube videos.
Dancers can make TikToks.
…
We’re headed towards an economy where creators are not bounded by centralized, establishment institutions that decide whether their works are valuable and whether they can be presented to the world. The creators connect with the audience directly and only appeal to them. This makes people less dependent on the system, more anti-fragile, more creative, etc. etc.
This is what is fueling these apps to be valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. This is the new buzzword in Silicon Valley.
Then, there is the rise of crypto. Bitcoin is the digital gold and the new store of value. Ethereum is the new digital currency. Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a new transaction mechanism without central counterparties (DeFi is another revolutionary tech that I personally think has a bright future and will write about later). “Metaverse” is the virtual reality in which new narratives and collective communities can be formed. And then on top of all this is art and NFTs…
So here’s the ultimate vision: artists can sell their artworks as NFTs to “the people.” You don’t need auction houses like Christie’s or Sotheby’s to verify your value; nor do you need curators to put your works in galleries or museums to validate their worth…
The gatekeepers are gone. Centralized exchanges and intermediaries are gone. DECENTRALIZED. See? You just need to sell your art to whomever that wants to buy it, and the technical properties of the blockchain will ensure that the contract is enforceable and non-fungible down the road. Both the buyer and seller can have their peace of mind.
Wendi’s experience selling her first NFT
The first NFT I minted was an image I made in Substance Alchemist (a software for making materials for virtual productions). I imagined our ecological future scenarios through the expression of a speculative material, and I made several more of those materials in the next two weeks. I call it my practice of “digital alchemy.”
The process of minting varies by platform and could take as little as a few minutes. I use this platform called hic et nunc (HeN). The whole process is very straightforward and cheap (~$0.07 cost for minting each NFT):
Set up my wallets (which are called Kukai and Tempe wallets)
Upload the art (which can be a variety of digital files)
Fill out the necessary information like “how many copies do you want to sell”
Done
The above image shows my first collector!
NFT allows the fractionalization of ownership, meaning that you can own like 1/100th of a piece of artwork. An artist can decide to make only a certain number of copies for a piece of digital art, say 100 copies, and by owning 1 copy you de facto own 1/100th of the right to the artwork.
I only minted one edition (copy) for my first NFT. People usually mint multiple editions, so that more people can purchase the same NFT and thus have a “fraction of the ownership.”
On HeN, instead of the bidding system, minters list a specific price for their NFTs. I listed my first NFT for 15 tez, which at the time corresponded to roughly $60.
When I woke up the next day, I thought 15 tez was too much to ask for an NFT from a nobody like me and decided to change the price to something like 8 tez. But I went on HeN only to discover that my first NFT had already been purchased by a collector. I clicked on the link and saw that he connected his Twitter and Instagram accounts to his HeN profile, and that he had a robust NFT collection on the platform.
Are NFTs empowering young artists?
As soon as I minted my first NFT, without even knowing if anyone would buy it, I already noticed a mentality shift in me: now I could view my small digital tinkerings as art.
While before I would only consider a big project I do for a class/program/residency as art, now I could see myself making collections of smaller works as valuable art, too! I could start making “legit” art at any point and sell them to whomever that values them.
Though this sense of legitimacy is quite irrational if you really dig deeper, it is what is preventing a lot of artists from putting more of their “smaller” side projects online or on various platforms. From the artist’s perspective, being able to have a marketplace where you can display your artworks and possibly have people pay for them is a pretty big leap forward.
NFT’s promise to the art community
There is actually a lot of value that NFTs are contributing. Digital art used to not have any monetary value. If you weren’t an animator in an animation studio, or a coder-artist working on commercial projects, or at a similar “job” – you couldn’t really earn money with your digital art. Now anyone could mint their art and sell it. The threshold for selling your digital art has become way lower after the emergence of NFT.
Sure, some digital artists had previously already been posting a lot of creative “sketches” on Instagram as a way to build their platform/influence/audience, but there wasn’t really a formal outlet for them to get their work out there and be rewarded.
Perhaps a better way to put it is: there just was nothing like NFTs before, and now there is, and that’s better than nothing. Big name artists used to be able to earn from physical derivatives of their digital art (like prints, posters, T-shirts, merch, copyrights etc.), but not anything remotely close to selling a fraction of ownership directly to a consumer! And for those who are doing digital art for big productions, NFTs give them a space to share their independent creative voices outside of their formal occupations and contracts.
Some good intro-level readings on NFT that I find interesting:
Tim Ferriss Podcast #504: Vitalik Buterin, Creator of Ethereum, on Understanding Ethereum, ETH vs. BTC, ETH2, Scaling Plans and Timelines, NFTs, Future Considerations, Life Extension, and More (Featuring Naval Ravikant)
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Fantastic post. I love the deep dive into NFTs and how they're revolutionizing the creator economy. It's inspiring to hear experience as a young artist navigating this new landscape. The potential for artists to directly connect with their audience and sell their work without traditional gatekeepers is truly groundbreaking. Looking forward to reading more in this series and exploring how NFTs will shape the future of digital art and the metaverse. Keep up the great work!
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