Beam Foundation (@BeamFDN): Myth busting #2 - Riding the wild NFT rollercoaster

Myth busting #2 - Riding the wild NFT rollercoaster Welcome to “Myth busting,” where we examine some of the most inflated claims in the web3 space with a needle — hoping that silencing the rumble would help the ecosystem realign its focus and accelerate sustainable growth. The hype surrounding the NFT phenomenon is so dazzling, it’s hard to see past it to the thing itself: the un-catchily named little ‘non-fungible token’, just sitting there, inert, non-fungible but also non-harmful, simply waiting for someone to put it to use. But perhaps it’s because the NFT is such a blank slate-type thing on the one hand and (behind the scenes) an incredibly complex, hard-to-understand entity on the other, that it has become anything the hype merchants want it to be. Our poor wee NFT has been so unfairly used by bad actors, so awkwardly jumped on by certain brands, and so maligned by everyone from the web3 skeptical to victims of NFT project rug pulls, it is forlornly devoid of real identity. 🖼️ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gh5y_n0WYAA7WLU.jpg The NFT hype explosion Indeed, since NFTs first came onto the scene in the early 2010s, they’ve been cited as the answer to everything from event ticket fraud to the financial woes of the world’s musical artists. Evangelists even see NFTs fixing the real estate, insurance and financial loan markets (https://money.britannica.com/money/nft-use-cases). Some of these operations already exist – e.g. – RealT (https://realt.co/) and OPEN (https://onopen.xyz/) – but take-up is slow, so it’s hard for the public to buy into all this when nothing substantial has really happened yet – unless you call the odd tweet being sold (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/14/twitter-nft-jack-dorsey-sina-estavi) substantial. The inmates really got let out of the non-fungible asylum, though, when it came to the intersection of NFTs and art. For believers, the idea goes a little like this: an NFT is a unique entity – the first time it has been possible to call a digital entity unique – so if that entity happens to have artistic value, then an NFT can be a proper work of art, with as much ‘reality’ as something painted on canvas. Which is sort of fair enough on the face of it, as an intellectual argument, but most of us have to set aside our instinct about digital ‘stuff’: that it is of an entirely different order to physical ‘stuff’ we can touch, which a human hand forged and a human hand holds. A non-digital artwork was painted, sculpted, molded in physical space. A digital artwork doesn’t have that tactility or reality. However, perhaps a big contributor to this instinct is the fact that, historically, a digital entity’s digital nature has meant it can, theoretically, be reproduced infinitely – and isn’t the thing about NFTs that they cannot? What is ownership anyway? 🖼️ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gh5zESZXoAAIEdx.jpg Swinging back into the ‘Down with NFTs!’ lane, the idea that an NFT artwork (or NFT anything else) literally is that artwork (or anything else) has been poopooed by some major thinkers in the digital realm. They say the NFT is a record of ownership of a digital thing (as renowned web3 naysayer Molly Wright expounds in this Wired article) (https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-dont-work-the-way-you-think-they-do/). It is not the thing itself. So it’s like having a certificate saying ‘I own the Mona Lisa’, without ever having the Mona Lisa in your possession. Still other commentators say that NFTs simply aren’t as unique as their fans say they are. But whichever way you spin the NFT legitimacy debate, and even if you’re a fan, it’s hard not to be gobsmacked by some of the activity in the NFT art market. The golden period – if you’re that way inclined – was 2021–2022, when tens of millions of dollars were spent on single NFT artworks (https://www.webopedia.com/crypto/learn/top-10-most-expensive-nfts-ever-sold/). The ultimate statement of this hypey meltdown has to be from your good man Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, who has spent and earned millions upon millions trading in NFT art. His take? “I’m confident it’s not a hype thing. It’s the catalyst for a generation.” Our take on the NFT phenomenon Our NFT, then: is it or is it not a hype thing? Is it the catalyst for anything? A dear friend of Beam urges a reframing of the whole phenomenon, pointing to community-building as one moderate success of NFTs. “Some communities do actually offer value. Bored Ape Yacht club and the CryptoPunks, but also Ethlizards and Neo Tokyo Citizens – they have community chats that are only available for NFT holders. Here, people have been able to build a network with high net worth individuals or industry builders they would otherwise never have been in touch with.” So are NFTs just a neat new way to make money? Not exactly. Our NFT realist is also optimistic about what NFTs can bring to gaming. “Their value theoretically is about functional game design and in-app taxation, but up to now that is all theoretical. It should be more efficient – and cheaper – to create your own marketplace with NFTs instead of setting up and governing your own, like CS:GO and Roblox.” At our reckoning, around 2–2.5K games currently exist that employ NFTs in some way, and it’s only a matter of time before one game, or a few – then a trickle and a flood – do it well. True digital ownership (https://medium.com/@onbeam/why-true-digital-ownership-will-change-gaming-bae3d35ad7cb) is not to be taken lightly. Proof of ownership like never before 🖼️ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gh5zK6PXMAAVcpQ.jpg This value that NFTs can potentially bring to the gaming industry is about their unsexy side. The side of them that has nothing to do with their ability to actually be the Mona Lisa and everything to do with their capacity to act as a certificate proving you own the Mona Lisa. The strength of NFTs to prove ownership is unparalleled. When something is inscribed on the blockchain, it stays incorruptibly and indelibly on the blockchain forever. If you have an NFT in your wallet that says you own something, nobody can claim otherwise. That has huge consequences for the future of gaming assets, ushering in the potential for exponentially more secure ownership and fluid trade. So NFTs may not be about to change art by being art themselves, but they might well change the art world, by doing important work behind the scenes, proving ownership and provenance, skewering the dastardly plots of fraudsters across the globe. This sort of behind-the-scenes role sounds right to us anyway: it’s called a non-fungible token, for chrissakes. It can hardly be the star of the show. So let’s hear it for our little guy, the NFT: an innocent, innovative little digital invention that’s causing no mischief, simply trying to find its role in life like the rest of us. Rumors abounded for a while that NFTs are dead (https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/majority-nfts-dead-report-1234716174/). But we’re right now we’re riding a surge of positivity in the crypto world that’s changing some people’s minds about the RIP NFT pronouncement — and anyway, didn’t everyone say the same about Kevin? Want to learn more about Beam? Twitter: https://twitter.com/BuildOnBeam Twitter: https://twitter.com/https://twitter.com/BuildOnBeameam.com/ Bhttps://twitter.com/BeamFDN.com/ Docuhttp://www.onbeam.com/s.onbeam.cohttps://hub.onbeam.com/tps://gov.onbeamhttps://docs.onbeam.com/tcircle.io/)Snapshohttps://gov.onbeam.com/com/ Telegrhttps://vote.onbeam.com///t.me/buildonbeam_ahttps://x.com/onbeamtps://t.me/buildonbeam_ann Medium: https://medium.com/@onbeam Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, financial or tax advice. 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