Wallet address 0xE6E5Fba385776a7Bb3E5D9069cF9236E1f47770b
In March 2021, many discussed the big news: the American company Injective Protocol acquired an authorized copy of the work of the street artist Banksy and arranged for it to be burned live. After the burning, the digital version of the work was turned into an NFT, non-fungible token.
NFT is created using the same technology as digital money, cryptocurrency. The difference between them is that if one bitcoin can be replaced with another bitcoin, then one unique virtual object cannot be replaced with another unique virtual object.
I am a designer and an artist. Studied design at the Higher School of Economics, worked in large studios, now freelancing. I have been in the profession for eleven years, I often do computer graphics and multimedia. I learned about NFT from colleagues at the beginning of the year and immediately became interested in it. In the spring of 2021, when my friends and I were quarantined and we lacked communication, I suggested taking turns portraying the same character in different situations. It was a pigeon in a VR helmet.
I have been interested in the aesthetics of metamodernism for a long time and came up with a dove as a symbol of metamodernism. On the one hand, these birds are part of our daily routine, we see them all the time. On the other hand, the VR pigeon is so funny, technological, modern. It’s as if he exists simultaneously in two different worlds, and the contrast between these worlds allowed my idea to unfold.
The guys and I chipped in on the gas commission for making transactions in the Ethereum cryptocurrency. Then it was about $ 90, plus I had to spend the same amount to put the project up for auction. Foundation has become our platform. The entrance is closed there, by invitation, but the works that are exhibited look like a statement: artists sell their vision, concept and name. It seemed to me that our pigeons are worthy of this, although placement on Foundation is more expensive than on mass market sites. We set the starting price of the work ourselves - 0.2 ETH. When the auction started, it was scary, it seemed that no one would buy anything. In the morning before the end of trading, I was very worried. But the value of the lot eventually rose to 0.5 ETH — 1100 dollars at that time. The pigeons went to a resident of Japan, who offered this price. And we received six times more money from the sale than we invested.
Why did artists fall in love with NFT?
Thanks to NFT, designers and artists no longer need to focus on customer requirements. This is a very comfortable format, a breath of fresh air.
At the same time, it is still important to think about the future and not to rivet one-dayers, to build your personal brand in a new reality. I think NFT will stay with us forever in one form or another: technical details may change, but the opportunity to sell virtual art will remain. Therefore, artists need to take into account that their digital personalities also cost money. Like collectors in the “real” world of art, buyers of tokens bet on works that may “take off” in the future in order to resell them for more.
What will happen next
It seems to me that we are now moving towards the metaverse. “Ordinary” reality seems to be mixed with digital. Virtual art is unlikely to displace material art, but they will coexist in parallel or in symbiosis. I think very soon we will be able to draw something “in reality” first, then make art, for example, merch into NFT, and then translate NFT “back” into the material world. A variety of combinations are possible here.
Of course, I expect from the launch of the NFT function based on Layer2 to solve the problem of high gas prices, which now exceeds all reasonable limits in the Ethereum network. The second layer will help solve these problems by working in a parallel chain, having all the advantages of the reliability of the main blockchain. As I said, we had to spend quite a lot of money in order to create our own project. If we weren’t so tied up with spending on gas, the project could have been more successful, and my head would have been more occupied with creativity rather than solving financial issues.
Yes, by the way, if someone was not inspired by my story from zhini, perhaps the following news will motivate you - The creator of the popular Nyan Cat gif, Chris Torrence, got 590 thousand dollars for it.
