Yesterday, I finished my first NFT collection and will be posting them up on Opensea. If you’re interested in looking at them here’s the link: opensea.io/SteveJHo
However, at the risk of shooting myself in the foot immediately, I wanted to share my thoughts and my journey on the new blockchain platform for buying and selling (specifically) art. Unfortunately, it’s rather pessimistic.
My intention to begin this journey was not to make money; I wanted to understand this space, and doing was the best way I could think of to learn. I had heard about NFTs back in 2019 and dismissed it as FOMO and a passing trend. Two years later, my opinion on this medium of selling and buying art is about the same, if not even more cynical.
I wanted to be able to let other artists know about my experience. As a side note, I am not an expert on this matter. I am just trying to tell you how the burger tastes, not how to run the franchise. Let me know if I could have done anything different or if you disagree with any of the points I’ve made.
IN THE BEGINNING
The journey began with the opening of 3 accounts;
1. Metamask Wallet
2. Binance account
3. Opensea account
Think of Metamask as your actual leather wallet. It holds your money. There is a 12-word passcode that you must remember as security.
The Binance account is for purchasing Ethereum (ETH) the most popular cryptocurrency in purchasing NFTs.
Opensea is an NFT marketplace.
I chose Opensea because it is currently the largest NFT market out there. It also primarily deals in ETH, which is the currency of choice for NFTs, for now. There are close seconds for NFT markets such as Rarible, SuperRare, NiftyGateway etc.
Creating these accounts and then posting your artwork online is the easy part.
The headache starts when you learn about gas prices, minting and lazy minting, about WETH and Polygon, about collections. Making transactions on the correct blockchain network and, at the end of the day, about how incredibly saturated the entire market is already, and the daunting task of carving out a space for yourself.
So I logged onto Binance, and after a series of security checks and sending them a copy of my passport, I bought some Ethereum.
I bought 0.1 ETH (US $420) from Binance, which had a 0.1% fee.
I then sent 0.06 ETH to my Metamask wallet, which had a 0.005 ETH fee;
I was then able to pay for the initial listing fee on Opensea to upload my collection onto their site.
And throughout this whole process, my palms were sweating... just checking and re-checking every drop down menu, copy and pasting 50 numeral link addresses from one tab to another, converting exchange rates from ETH to fiat on the fly etc. You see, getting any of these wrong can mean losing your entire transaction with no recourse whatsoever. It's like playing sudoku with acronyms and emojis, and if you get one wrong you get punched in the kidneys.
*NOTE* For more information about minting and gas fees, see end.
BORED APES YACHT CLUB Case Study
So I had these accounts open and got a bit of ETH. What should I sell?
My initial instinct was not to sell anything I was emotionally attached to, nor anything that was copyrighted. Since my previous Mash-Up series were both, I decided to create something new.
But what?
Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) is currently the leading ‘brand’ that is casting a shadow over the NFT art landscape.
I don’t claim to understand how A.I. generated art works, but simply put, BAYC is a series of 10,000 pictures of the same bored looking Ape. Each Ape has variations that make it unique, i.e. color, hat, sunglasses, shirt, teeth, etc. These 10,000 images are A.I. generated, as in each asset, i.e. a hat, or sunglasses are automatically generated on top of the base image of the same Bored Ape. If I'm totally honest, I really dig the Bored Ape artwork and design. Reminds me of a cleaner Jamie Hewlett.
At the time of writing, each Bored Ape is worth between 30 and 70 ETH, or about US $137,000–$300,000. The highest, at more than 700 ETH, which is almost US $3 million.
US $300,000. For a digital file. That is A.I. generated.
So why is it so sought after?
I can only equate owning one of these with being part of a club. It is membership. But there’s no gym at this club, just clout. The demand for these is community and celebrity-driven. As far as I can tell, there are no actual benefits to owning an Ape other than its insane selling price.
If you can shed any light, please let me know.
NFT art like ‘BAYC’ has spawned hundreds of copycats and created a new type of NFT, the "PFPNFT" (Profile Pic NFT). If you own one of these NFTs, then you’re part of this tribe. You can be identified by the rarity of its membership and its exorbitant price tag. And the cycle continues, the soaring price creates hunger, and that hunger feeds the hype, and those who were lucky enough to buy-in early are emboldened to value their Ape even higher.
If this sounds suspiciously like a Ponzi scheme to you, I couldn’t say otherwise. But by God, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
FICTION COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT
Collectibles were where NFT was heading, so I decided to model my collection on PFPNFT, but I didn’t know A.I. coding. I opted to just do what I knew and hand illustrate the collection instead. I didn’t want anything with copyright but I still wanted it to be recognisable. Halloween was around the corner, and drawing different monsters would be fun for me to research and put my own comedic twist on.
‘Fiction County Police Department’ was born.
I created 12 monsters, and 1 more for a friend who got me into NFTs. After uploading them to Opensea there was one more problem I had to overcome, and I can tell you now, I will not be able to summit this final mountain...
SHILLING
The market is flooded. There is no way that your collection will be noticed organically, and therefore, there is no way you will sell anything, especially on Opensea. It’s a good analogy too. If you’re a tiny boat in the ocean, no one is going to find you unless you have some kind of homing beacon, or you’re a massive tanker or a battlecruiser. Your social media presence determines your ability to survive in open waters.
Otherwise, selling your NFTs hinges on a constant social media presence. From constant updates to free giveaways, you’ll have to hustle, you’ll have to be shameless, and you’ll need a talented team as thirsty for it as you. You’ll need a collection with thousands of variations, but not too many that it just becomes oversaturated.
If you’re not already a huge artist or know someone who’ll get the ball rolling for you, you’ll most likely be stuck at this step.
This leads me to my next point:
WHO BUYS THIS STUFF?
Certainly not me, and not any artists that I know. What it really feels like is that NFTs were dressed up as a new platform for unknown artists to sell their work and engage with art lovers and collectors.
But it can’t possibly be. New artists in the world probably number in the millions. You’re telling me there’s some method to being heard when everyone can shout as loud as they can? Without social media clout or some sort of marketability, it’s hard to stand out. Not to mention the very high barriers to entry into the NFT market. It’s expensive, it’s complicated, highly intimidating and it’s difficult to find someone to walk you through it in layman's terms.
And what kind of art lover or collector is buying digital files anyway? In fact, an NFT isn’t even really a digital file; it’s the record of the transaction. If the server your NFT file is stored on is destroyed, your picture is destroyed too. You’re only left with the trail that it once existed. "Decentralized metadata" is not something I’m going to go into because I am completely ignorant of it. Again, if you can explain it to me, please do.
Finally, the recurring theme I keep encountering with NFT is "investment". It’s the speculative movement of certain collections and the sudden magnetic demand for a collection when it seems to be selling fast or someone like Steph Curry or Justin Bieber owns one.
This is the core of my thesis: NFTs skip the pretense of art appreciation completely and goes right into the investment side of it. In the old days, billionaires had to buy a "Picasso" or a "Monet". Now, you don’t even need to hang it on a wall, let alone have any inkling of its context, its beauty, who made it, or its reason for existing.
I think the Venn diagram for crypto enthusiasts and artists are far between. Meaning, there really are no experts in the field of NFT at the moment. That’s not to say NFT creators are not artistic or creative, but that I believe their priority is not artistic creation — it’s money. The market is built on shifting tectonic plates, propped up on success stories like Beeple’s $69 million NFT, or that 12 year old boy behind ‘Pixel Whales’, the strategic creation of Bored Apes Yacht Club, and Cryptopunks. Those who have shaped the zeitgeist. And now we are seeing the Metaverse blooming in its infancy.
I do not believe NFTs to be a bad thing, nor a waste of money or time. I don’t want to disparage anyone who is looking to buy, or make, or trade NFTs. And while I do think the value of NFTs are subjective and ultimately artificial, tell me what in the world isn’t. The intention of the technology is in the right place, and the applications mindbogglingly inventive. A cursory glance at how gaming has changed with NFT tokens or how the introduction of a metaverse and digital land, will make you feel like an old man asking his grandkids about the DVD player.
I don't reckon NFT is a place for art, and it’s apparently not a place for me. I feel strangely left behind, but I think that’s alright. An artist never truly feels part of the place they’re in anyway, and their art will reflect that. If you feel it’s not for you too, I think that's alright.
The final thing I'd say about this is, while I may have complaints about the respectability of NFTs in regards to the artist, its high barriers to entry for new creators, and the blade-in-a-field-of-grass feeling when it comes to showing your collection on Opensea, it's not like it was any better before the boom of NFT art. My gripe may be closer to the 'promised alternative' that NFTs presented itself as; that it would be easy and accessible. That perhaps the artwork you painstakingly carved from your own soul could be seen by those who want to see it. I'd hate for the final few words to make me sound salty about not selling NFTs, I hope that's not what ends up sticking in between your teeth. I feel artists are a misunderstood lot who like to say they enjoy being on the fringe of social conformity, but really, harness bitterness at the disco lights shining out from the frosted windows. This is for you, I went through it so I could tell you about it, and my conclusion is that if you want it, go for it, if you don't, then that's cool too; let's do something else for us.
*Note* To create an NFT on Opensea you must ‘mint’ your artwork, which is the act of adding the artwork to the blockchain so that people can buy it. Every time you interact with the blockchain, there is a fee, which is called "Gas". Think of it as paying the people who are managing the blockchain and mining Ethereum.
Gas is measured in units. So minting a simple NFT could require 1,000 Gas, while a complex one could require 1,000,000. Each unit of Gas has a price called the "Gas Price" or "Gwei".
1,000,000,000 Gwei = 1 ETH.
Lazy minting on Opensea means you are not required to pay any Gas Fees from minting your artwork. The Gas Fee is paid by the Buyer when they purchase your NFT. However, you will still need to pay an initial listing fee, which is a one-time payment.
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