NFTs Bring Diversification, The Most Distinctive Label of Our Era

If I were to choose one word to represent 2021, it would undoubtedly be NFT. This holds true within the crypto community without a doubt. For those outside the community, it is equally true. In the recently annual Collins Dictionary Word of the Year selection, NFT took the crown, defeating a series of candidates including hybrid work and metaverse, becoming the 2021 Word of the Year.

Under the halo of astronomical-priced artworks by numerous crypto artists like Beeple, Bak, Xcopy, Hackatao, and Fewocious, propelled by world's top auction houses like Super Rare, Nifty Gateway, and Foundation, endorsed by a host of traffic celebrities including Mark Cuban, Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Fallon, and Jack Patrick Dorsey, and supported by top projects like Crypto Punk, Axie Infinity, BoredApeYchat Club, NBA Top Shot, and Art Blocks, NFT-related projects reached a market capitalization of $7.1 billion, with total on-chain NFT sales surpassing $15 billion, both hitting record highs.

On one hand, NFTs have had a tremendous impact on art creation forms, and have also shown us the possibility of the crypto industry caring for low-income groups. NFTs have also brought diversification to this world. As the label word of this year, NFT is well-deserved!

1,NFT and Diversification

The diversification brought by NFTs includes bringing more people into art appreciation and starting to pay attention to and understand the community of artists, as well as making the entire crypto world more diverse. NFTs brought Cryptopunk, which represents "rebellious spirit," into the blockchain world, also made "draining the foundation of the trillion-dollar gaming world" possible, and further stripped the blockchain world from a "single world of financial settlement layer," making the monotonous blockchain world "brilliant and dazzling with cultural atmosphere."

This is the wonder of NFTs. We seem to hear the pure sound of money rushing, see the colorful and wonderful immortality of human civilization, and we are touching the real texture of the illusory crypto world.

Among these, the most praiseworthy is certainly the brilliant fireworks blooming from the collision of NFTs and artworks.

In March of this year, after Beeple's work "Everydays: the First 5000 Days" was auctioned for $69 million, crypto art quickly broke into the mainstream, attracting thousands of artists into the crypto art field, including artists who were not originally optimistic about crypto art. For example, American artist Anne Spalter initially did not think highly of NFTs, but later changed her mind. Spalter stated that this technology makes people who may never personally visit galleries interested in art.

Anne Spalter's view is not wrong.

For ordinary people, when we see Fewocious's colorful and strangely shaped artworks, even if we don't understand the precise meaning behind these works, or perhaps the artworks themselves don't have precise meaning, but when you learn about this artist's difficult growth experience and emotional journey, you might be able to have a "deep communication" with the creator through his artworks. His paintings seem to instantly transform into the author himself communicating face-to-face with you. This process is a challenge to aesthetics and a cleansing of the soul, and then generates empathy for the story behind the art—this may be the charm of art itself.

Fewocious's works

Art is "introduced" to the general public by NFTs in this way, and we thus begin to try to learn more stories related to art.

In March of this year, profile picture NFTs entered the mainstream world. This story was triggered by Crypto Punk, a total of 10,000 pixel profile pictures launched by Larva Labs in June 2017. It suddenly became popular in the crypto circle in July 2021 and led to a months-long crypto profile picture storm. Its cyberpunk design style allowed rebellious spirit and avant-garde culture to spread rapidly in the crypto circle.

Since then, the NFT market has seen generative crypto art represented by Art Blocks. Generative crypto art refers to the process where artists write programs, then add randomness to works through Seeds that trigger code changes, and then computer algorithms automatically generate artworks. In other words, generative art is the process of human brains and computer algorithms jointly generating random artworks.

In the process of continuous exploration, we will ask countless "Whys"? Why do computer-generated paintings worth big money? Why can images piled up from a few hundred pixels sell for millions?

But when we see the huge impact of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian's "Composition No. III" on modern architecture and spatial layout, we will understand the true meaning of these works valued at $15-25 million. And if we understand the punk culture that swept the Western world in the 1970s and 1980s, we will understand the status of individuality and trendiness in the hearts of this generation, and also be able to understand why Crypto Punk is invaluable.

NFTs have also brought diversification to major public chains.

In August of this year, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman proposed that if Ethereum can become a value settlement layer, it can also become a cultural settlement layer. Now it seems that Ethereum is moving in this direction. Public chains like BSC and Solana are also moving in this direction. According to the latest data, total NFT trading volume on Solana has surpassed $700 million, hitting a record high.

2,NFT and the Grassroots

Compared with DeFi, which has had a "wealthy temperament" since its inception, NFT's care for the grassroots is clearly more praiseworthy.

Axie Infinity's popularized "Play to Earn" model gave Filipinos who make a living on cross-border labor but are deeply affected by the pandemic a new way to fill their stomachs. Axie Infinity has driven over 150,000 people to participate in employment in the Philippines, Venezuela, and other regions. Around September, income was even higher than pre-pandemic levels.

In the traditional art creation world, artists often need recognition and promotion from renowned auction houses or exhibition halls before they can make a name for themselves. Before this, artists often need to go through extremely difficult transformations, and countless artists perish in the process.

In director Felix Chong's film "Project Gutenberg," the "Painter" Li Wen played by Aaron Kwok turns to counterfeiting currency not because Li Wen was evil from the start. On the contrary, he is a highly talented and caring painter whose works are not recognized by the mainstream. In this situation, either Li Wen is willing to fall to the bottom and remain an obscure painter like Van Gogh who is only recognized after death, or after extreme suffering, join an international counterfeiting gang and become a real criminal.

The painter's plight would not hold in the decentralized crypto world.

In March of this year, Bitcoin dynamic listed the 9 most popular crypto artists in Brazil. According to the total auction amount at the time, their rankings were: Etiene Craus ($326,000), Rafael Grassetti ($275,000), Rafaël Rozendaal ($216,000), Lucas Camargo ($66,000), Fesq ($19,000), Rede Globo ($6,000), Victor ($4,000), Pedro Victor Brandão ($1,700), Gustavo Vorinaldi ($365).

Now, more than half a year later, several artists' values are also growing rapidly. Among them, Etiene Craus's work sales volume is 69 pieces, totaling $898,000, ranked 187 globally; Rafael Grassetti's work sales volume is 298 pieces, totaling $3.87 million, ranked 40 globally; Rafaël Rozendaal's work sales volume is 11 pieces, totaling $1.86 million, ranked 92 globally; Lucas Camargo's work sales volume is 21 pieces, totaling $816,000, ranked 203 globally; Fesq's work sales volume is 13 pieces, totaling $80,000, ranked 1322 globally.

Among them,Rafael Grassetti's value rose14 times,Rafaël Rozendaal's value rose9 times**…**In the traditional art market, such miracles would be absolutely impossible.

NFTs democratize art, and such cases are numerous.

InAugustof this year, the popularNFTseriesWeird Whalesemoji pack was created by British12-year-old boy Benyamin Ahmed, with a total of3,350whales of various shapes and colors. After the entire series went on sale in July, they were all sold out in less than 9 hours. Benyamin earned 80ETH(Ethereum). At current ETH prices, Benyamin's returns exceed $320,000.

Weird Whales series NFT works

The reason why even elementary school students can participate in the NFT wave is that the existence of numerous NFT trading platforms has greatly lowered the barrier to entry for creators. The barrier to participation is almost zero. Creators no longer need to worry about sales channels. Opensea does not set thresholds for any creator. The emergence of NFTs allows all creators who want to "make their mark" to fully exert their subjective initiative.

In the foreseeable future, NFTs will lower the barrier to art with greater force, not only lowering the appreciation barrier but also the creation barrier.

3,NFT and the Future

At the end of September this year, William Quigley, co-founder of stablecoin USDT, said in an interview that in current video games, virtual item sales revenue is about $175 billion, while the metaverse will be several orders of magnitude of this data. It will be everything, not just games.

William Quigley also believes that when the real world can be digitized, it will bring huge changes to business models because our method of interacting with the entire world will undergo tremendous changes. When themetaverse(Metaverse) truly arrives, you will see an unimaginable world. In this world, I bet NFTs will be the main revenue method.

In Quigley's view, NFTs could become the main revenue method for the Metaverse. A research report released by Morgan Stanley last week believes that by 2030, the NFT market will grow to about $300 billion, which also indicates that NFTs will play an important role in the Metaverse.

In short, NFTs will not only be the most distinctive label of this era but also an important symbol of future social development.

As for themetaverse, will it become a booster of social progress as people hope?

In Liu Cixin's 2016 short story "The Incompatible Festival," there is such a passage:

"The virtual world of the future is indeed heaven. Inside it, everyone is indeed God, and its beauty is beyond any imagination. I just want to imagine the real world at that time. At first, there will be fewer and fewer people in reality. The virtual heaven is so good, who would still be willing to stay in the miserable reality? Everyone will compete to upload themselves. Earth will gradually become a sparsely populated place. Finally, there will be no one left in reality. The world will return to its state before the appearance of humans, with forests and vegetation covering everything, and large groups of wild animals roaming and flying freely... Only in some corner of some continent, there is a deep basement, in which a large computer runs, living hundreds of billions of virtual humans."

In "Time Migration," Liu Cixin also stated that people of this era are gradually turning to the invisible world. Now the number of people living in the invisible world has exceeded that of the visible world. Although one can have a copy of their brain in both worlds, life in the invisible world is like a drug. Once you experience that life, no one can return to the visible world. Our world full of troubles is like hell to them. Now, the invisible world has mastered legislative power and is gradually controlling the entire world.

So, will the future world be like "The Matrix"? What position should NFTs find? We wait and see.

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