disclaimer: \u00a0If anything, it\u2019s an invitation to remain critical, take your time, make your research and make your own opinion.<\/p>\n last march, I got pissed and vocal like I rarely do and it was about NFTs how it started: <\/span>Beeple\u2019s record crypto sale<\/span><\/a>. then BOOM!<\/span> would it have happened with regular money? very unlikely. Shortly after of course, the Beeple sale\u2019s <\/span>varnish started cracking<\/span><\/a> as we put it in french (the sale<\/span> appeared for what it was<\/span><\/i>: a <\/span>crypto-stunt<\/span><\/i>) but this was of no importance, a new paradigm was on its way.<\/span><\/p>\n My position on the subject of cryptocurrencies has not changed and is broadly aligned with <\/span>Stephen Diehl<\/span><\/a>\u2019s,\u00a0<\/span>here’s the podcast<\/a>\u00a0(and, yes, you should follow Tech won\u2019t save us<\/a>!) <\/span><\/p>\n The concept of cryptocurrencies (supranational deregulated money) goes against all my convictions, beyond their ecological impact, beyond the underlying techno-libertarian ideology willing to turn everything into a product and everyone into a company, they\u2019re \u201c<\/span>a solution in search of a problem<\/span><\/i>\u201d, they solve nothing that can\u2019t be solved otherwise in more effective ways.<\/span><\/p>\n They’re intrinsically broken ; the PoW gives power to the already powerful (entities with the biggest compute power take the cake and get rewarded), the PoS gives power to the wealthiest (the more Stakes you hold, the more likely you are to validate and get a split of the next transaction).<\/span><\/p>\n Crypto assets are a zero-sum game: in short, you need people to invest actual (fiat) money if you want to earn something. That’s why the crypto enthusiasts are so loud: they need other people to invest funds into the cryptocurrency to increase its value. You can think of it as a <\/span>pyramid scheme<\/span><\/a>, because it is one.<\/span><\/p>\n The fact that NFTs are backed by crypto assets plays on a positive bias that leads artists and buyers to believe they’ll gain more than they invest, it creates a form of addiction that is very comparable to gambling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Limited series and auctions act as a gambling mechanic (bets) which – associated with the impossibility to get the positive feedback produced by the compulsive buying of <\/span>something<\/span><\/i> – creates a strong Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).<\/span><\/p>\n FOMO is the mechanism that powers the Crypto\/Web3 economic model.<\/span> The phenomenon is made possible and reinforced by the fact that \u201cit\u2019s not <\/span>actual<\/span><\/i> money\u201d, once you\u2019ve converted some fiat money into a crypto currency, it becomes like trading <\/span>marbles <\/b>in a schoolyard. The value of a marble is not based on real economy (anyway,\u00a0 parents usually pay for it) but rather <\/span>agreed upon<\/span><\/i> within the schoolyard, often based on its <\/span>scarcity<\/span><\/i>.<\/span> Well known artists that played along are the main beneficiaries of this dynamic. If you don\u2019t already have a solid network of artists and potential buyers, <\/span>don\u2019t quit your day job<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n I think this caused a lot of harm amongst newcomers already but I witnessed fine people turning into <\/span>brands <\/span><\/i>or <\/span>media<\/span><\/i> (or what qualifies as <\/span>gurus<\/span><\/i>), the logical next step is to create Personal Tokens (it\u2019s <\/span>already a thing<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n The merchandisation of an artistic production pushes artists to be easily identifiable as \u201cthe person who does X\u201d and, should success happen, they tend to reproduce and develop the \u2018style\u2019 that worked or at least explore less and take less risks which – imho – impacts their overall creativity.<\/span><\/p>\n Creative coding is a <\/span>very broad topic<\/span><\/a>. When I started <\/span>Grow<\/span><\/a>, I wanted to show how rich the creative coding field was and invited people who use code to make art in all possible directions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As a (fine-arts) student, one of my teachers kept repeating \u201cthe most useful tool is the trash bin\u201d which translates to \u201cuncurated generator outcomes are trash\u201d. With this new <\/span>paradigm<\/span><\/i>, it is tempting for the community to reuse the same old tricks and create series, it\u2019s rarely interesting as the pieces are not meant to work as <\/span>series<\/span><\/i>. It\u2019s often openly aimed at selling or increasing the mediatic surface and always produces a lot of noise.<\/span><\/p>\n The collectors\u2019 side:<\/span><\/p>\n I got my hands on X from Y<\/span> If you’re an appreciative collector who supports artists, \u201csupporting artists\u201d is the payload. Spending money is not a skill, so toss your coin and be quiet about it.<\/span><\/p>\n The artists\u2019 side: copycats: usurp artists’ identity and <\/span>create<\/span><\/i> (mint) copies of their artworks in their stead. In most countries, there are ways to certify the intellectual property of a given item, even in its digital form. It’s tedious but if someone tries to steal your work, you can bring your case to court and win.<\/span><\/p>\n fun fact<\/span><\/i>: in France, it would cost me 15\u20ac and I\u2019d have to send 2 copies of the artwork, by mail, to the <\/span>SCAM<\/b> (I kid you not: <\/span>S<\/b>oci\u00e9t\u00e9 <\/span>C<\/b>ivile des <\/span>A<\/b>uteurs <\/span>M<\/b>ultim\u00e9dia)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The notion of intellectual property doesn\u2019t exists in the NFT world, yet again, <\/span>it is fundamentally broken and doesn\u2019t solve anything<\/span><\/a> (says the NFT inventor), and certainly not the ownership of a digital asset hence the – rather funny – \u201cright-click\u201d meme that makes some crypto bros & sis lose it. In a schoolyard, this is called pinky swear<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/span>so, in essence a NFT is <\/span>trading marbles for a pinky promise<\/b><\/p>\n [ I could go on and on and on ]<\/span><\/p>\n I was so appalled, so pissed, sad and even angry at some friends for not seeing things as I did\u2026 This is a house of cards and by no means a long term solution to… anything! <\/span> Then I got very busy with my work at the GAC lab and didn\u2019t have time to research further, everything I read made me physically sick anyway.<\/span> At the end of 2021, 8 months later, things had <\/span>sunk in<\/span><\/i> a bit and I came back to the subject.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously the first step was to remove the filters from my twitter feed, the spring craze had vanished, it was easier to breeze, I found people more casual about the whole NFT thing.\u00a0<\/span>HEN (hic et nunc) had become the <\/span>de facto<\/span><\/i> platform for Artistic NFTs, they had pulled off something rather impressive, hundreds of thousands of artworks lived on the platform despite numerous shortcomings. As expected, It was Deviant Art with price tags but it worked.<\/span><\/p>\n Mid november 2021, the platform abruptly shut down for many reasons. Matt DesLauriers wrote an informed and balanced article about <\/span>the incident<\/span><\/i> (<\/span>Hicetnunc and the Merits of Web3<\/span><\/a>). The main point is that, unlike when a <\/span>web2<\/span><\/i> platform shuts down, alternative websites could make the contents accessible shortly after HEN went down, which somehow advocates favorably for Web3.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It still find the:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI do believe Rafael cared about the art and a social cause, but was constantly distracted and eventually worn out by people calling him names, belittling him, and harassing him to give up his website to the \u2018community.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n part of <\/span>Violet_Forest<\/span><\/a>\u2019s <\/span>statement<\/span><\/a>
\n<\/span>This article is by no means an invitation to use crypto assets.\u00a0<\/span>It explains the thought process I went through to make peace with this block of technology.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/barradeau.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/brave_MO38uWHLVg.png\")
<\/span>https:\/\/twitter.com\/nicoptere\/status\/1370472989930758157<\/span><\/a><\/p>\nwhy so pissed?<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n<\/span>Beeple is a flagship for the creative community, he consistently made art every day for over a decade which granted him the status of living legend amongst us mere mortals.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>overnight, every second person I followed on Twitter started talking almost exclusively about NFTs, where to buy their stuff, for how much, how they would \u2018drop\u2019, how we should be ready, reposting links to their collections etc.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>would the NFT expansion have happened anyway, it\u2019s reasonable to think so, a dynamic was on its way for a while (and for good reasons), there was this <\/span>tiny <\/span><\/i>ecological concern at first that found a reasonable compromise by replacing the blockchains using PoW (Bitcoin and Etherum) with a blockchain using PoS (Tezos).<\/span><\/p>\nWhere the attention economy meets the FOMO economy\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n<\/span>It takes the <\/span>attention economy<\/span><\/a> for granted as everything will happen in closed rooms (metaverse, app, social media\u2026), where everyone will know what others possess, thanks to the transparent ledger (the backbone of blockchains). Ultimately, everything (good and services) should become a FOMO-driven pay-to-play slot machine.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>For instance, as a kid, the <\/span>\u201cwater drop-galaxy-petroleum\u201d<\/span><\/i> marbles were extremely rare (I\u2019ve seen only a handful of them in my lifetime), you could trade them for basically anything, from large amounts of lesser valued marbles to bigger toys that had nothing to do with marbles.<\/span>
\n<\/span>This value is highly volatile and over the course of 3 weeks – a lifetime in a schoolyard – a given type of marble could skyrocket or crash down on the <\/span>market<\/span><\/i>, with no relation to their intrinsic value.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cthe winner takes it all\u201d (ABBA).<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u201cmilking the sacred cow\u201d (Dead Kenndys)<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u201cterritorial pissing\u201d (Nirvana)<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n<\/span>I\u2019m SO excited to have bought Z on secondary<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n<\/span>Some people I immensely respect unearthed decades old sketches to mint them as NFTs.<\/span>
\n<\/span>So what? you may wonder, well that\u2019s the closest we had to a <\/span>cultural heritage<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>
\n<\/span>when you saw a given piece of procedural \/ generative animation or artwork, you\u2019d <\/span>know <\/b>who did it and there was no way one could possibly claim the ownership without being debunked and frowned upon (at best). <\/span>
\n<\/span>This involves and favors a sense of community, liability, awareness, modesty and respect.<\/span>
\n<\/span>replacing this dynamic with a transparent, disembodied, trustless and merchant transaction makes me utterly sad.<\/span><\/p>\ncopycats & scalpers<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n<\/span>scalpers: bots that collect items on the <\/span>primary<\/span><\/i> market in order to resell them on the secondary market with a bonus (on fxHash, I saw a casual x 2000 for a piece by Casey Reas).<\/span>
\n<\/span>seriously, fuck these guys.<\/span><\/p>\npinky swear<\/span><\/h3>\n
\nOn a side note, <\/span>DRMs<\/span><\/a> address the ownership of digital items (if you\u2019re old enough to know what it is).
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>I was already aggressively blocking advertising (like \u201ccustom chrome extension on top of all possible ad-blockers\u201d aggressively) so I added a couple more keywords and my twitter fell almost silent and it felt good.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nComing to terms<\/span><\/h2>\n