My thoughts on NFTs

Hello! As you guys are here because you support me I'd like be transparent about my view. The entire topic is relatively complicated and requires a bit of research and technical knowledge to fully understand. There's been over-simplifications floating all over that don't do it justice because it recently became mainstream. I'm not going to try explain it all here, but I will explain my thoughts on it and why. This is my response to some discourse on twitter if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I have researched and spent many hours reading through articles of different viewpoints and science journals because I think its an important topic for the art community. I've been looking into cryptocurrency casually since last year. I'm not an expert but have tried my best to understand.

For the technology itself, there's a lot to go into beyond just digital money which I personally like the idea of but I will keep this art-related. I am for the concept of NFTs. It creates a new avenue of income for digital artists and I think that should be celebrated. A place for art that doesn't fit into the commercial industry or fine arts. Finally an opportunity for digital artists to pursue their own ideas while supporting themselves at the same time. You can believe that all the buyers are just investors or people who don't care about art but people have collected art throughout time just because they can and want to. It will also gain a wider audience once more art is introduced.

NFTs use a huge amount of energy to exist right now, but are a small part of one cryptocurrency which one a whole, still produces miniscule amounts of CO2 compared to our other pollutants. I don't think that is a reason to NOT criticize its environmental impact but the scale is important to keep in mind when there is such a huge upset over it right now.

Ethereum has always been working towards becoming greener since its conception as there's high incentive to do so (it won't survive the competition otherwise). It has plans on moving from POW to POS in two years which will reduce energy use significantly and if it doesn't, or they never change, we should hold them to it. Mining is what uses energy but the location of the mining is more important (determining whether the energy is renewable) than how much energy is consumed. The majority of locations are coal-powered which rightfully creates concern. The author of the original article bringing up these points estimated the numbers himself to create conversation on this issue because it was rarely mentioned previously. 

We do need to encourage markets to care about climate change but businesses are always going to look for profit so its important to make responsibility profitable for them and hold them accountable. Not talking about it and shutting down any discussion of it will not aid this. People should be encouraged to learn about it, what cryptocurrency brings to society and also where its lacking. We should definitely work to reduce its impact on the environment because it's not going to go away.

I also do not believe that any of this gives people the right to attack individual artists, especially those who were involved before the talk about the environment was brought up. This does nothing to counter the issues behind cryptocurrency, nor climate change. Furthermore, no one is perfect and its impossible to know all the factors to another person's life. If you choose to not support me and other artists because of interest or participation in NFTs that's fine but I hope its after looking into all the facts and not because people are shouting on twitter.

There are legitimately many scams within cryptocurrency (pump and dumps etc for quick money) but NFTs are not a pyramid scheme because people who join are not promised anything. You can put a product up for sale and no one will buy it because its a competitive market. Attracting more artists just increases the competition. There are very likely speculative investors who want NFT interest to rise so that they can make quick money from the value of ETH but there are also people interested in the technology and people who are legitimately interested in an artist's work and want to invest in their future potential through their NFT offerings. Regarding the transaction fees, its actually a result of the gas fees from high usage. ETH is rolling out layer 2 scaling to increase speeds by 100x which should fix this, and make the marketplace more fair for artists who cannot afford the current fees.

As for laundering, art theft... These things happen already elsewhere, online and offline. Its unfortunate it happens with NFTs but its also not what defines it. Again, there is much to be rightfully criticized and worked upon but angrily tossing stones does nothing.

If you want to be cautious about new technology, that's smart too. Learning and observing will also help shape its future. In the end I do eat meat, drive a car and have bought clothes from fast fashion stores. I'd like to improve myself in these areas when it makes sense to financially but for now I do what I can... Despite all this, I still care about environment and where the world is headed which is why I want to learn about new technology along with all its impacts. I'm not really good at writing but thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts. 

This is all coming from someone who has not and does not currently sell anything on the NFT market.

http://sterlingcrispin.blogspot.com/2021/02/crypto-art-sky-is-not-falling.html
https://macil.tech/2021/03/03/cryptoart-and-the-environment/
https://memoakten.medium.com/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart-2221d3eb2053
https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3
https://blog.makerdao.com/how-ethereum-2-0-will-address-gas-issues-and-enable-dai-and-defi-to-scale/
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/37365412/MARTYNOV-DOCUMENT-2020.pdf?sequence=1
https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/ethereum-plans-to-cut-its-absurd-energy-consumption-by-99-percent
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435119302557
https://joanielemercier.com/the-problem-of-cryptoart/

--

EDIT: People are taking a public discussion I had on my discord server which is connected to this patreon, labelling it as private and making it out this post to be some two-faced PR conspiracy. Not every individual sentence I say perfectly represents my point of view at all times, especially when conversing with friends. I prepared this post so I could organise my thoughts and share my reasoning. The said messages admit the faults of NFTs, along with my overall view on NFTs but taken out of context to make it look like I'm preaching about how its bad for the environment, good for successful artists and I'm okay with with that. In reality I was admitting both the good and bad qualities of NFTs and none of that conflicts with what I've said here.