NFT and CryptoArts
CryptoArt refers to the form of artwork creation through blockchain technology, including the using of blockchain data, smart contracts, ideology and financial characteristic based on Bitcoin, Ethereum and other public blockchains. Meanwhile NFT is a non-fungible token standard on Ethereum, the common implementation are ERC721 and ERC1155 tokens.
NFT can be used as domain names, tickets, game cards, virtual lands and other application scenarios and CryptoArt is just a branch of NFT collections.
In general, the overlap between CryptoArt and NFT is the current mainstream acceptance form of the crypto community. It is closer to traditional art, and it is easier for new collectors to understand it. However it is far from good enough when CryptoArts are limited to the NFTs.
Take CryptoZR’s Small Goal (SG) as an example, which is a artwork that reflects the relationship between price and market value in the financial market (ENS: smallgoal.cryptozr.eth). The artist has modified the transfer function of ERC20 standard. A switch has been added. When the restriction on transfer function is enabled, any transfer by the SG holder will result in burnt all of their SG token.
At the same time, the artist restricts the function of transferFrom. When the switch is turned on, the contract’s transfer function will be reverted, thus locking the price on Uniswap
The artist then established a SG/ETH trading pair through Uniswap and completed the first transaction, setting its price to 1 ETH = 1000 SG, and then airdropped to the crypto community
Because there is a market price of 1ETH = 1000SG, the market value of 100M SG is 100,000 ETH. When the users open their wallets, they will see their assets have increased by the equivalent of 100,000 ETH, thus reaching a “small goal”. Interestingly, after the trading pair was created, a Uniswap trading bot immediately purchased a large proportion of SG in the pool, raising its price to 3.89 USD/SG
In this way, the artist aroused the viewers to think about: Is price × quantity the true value of an asset? In the process of bubbles in the capital market, what are the real valuable assets, and which assets are just bubbles? When you want to exchange these air assets into money, do they still exist?
“Red and Blue” is a work released by CryptoZR in October 2019. It uses red and blue as the background colors at the opposite ends of the diagonal, and the middle color block is generated by linear smoothing, a total of 10×10 = 100 NFTs. And then open a year-long auction on OpenSea.
On October 18th, 2020 the bidding ended. The collector with ID GeoffreyX bid 2.5588 ETH for the blue block and 2.3162 ETH for the red block on both ends of the diagonal, and 13 collectors successfully bid for other colors.
The artist did not inform the meaning behind the artwork when she created it, and technically used the detachability and combinability of the NFT to disassemble a complete pattern into 100 independent NFTs. The collector GeoffreyX discovered the value of this artwork during bidding process and assigned meaning to the target colors.
Unlike ordinary NFTs, the bidding process of collectors affects the meaning of the artwork, which is a new paradigm created by collectors and artist together. Similar concepts have once appeared on “PixelMaster” and Reddit’s “r/Place” board.
If you delve into the implementation details of NFT, you will think about whether the metadata of NFT can be changed. Although the NFT itself cannot be changed as a token, the content it carries can exist in the server. Can this feature be used for creation?
CryptoZR’s new work “CryptoAds” uses this feature. The artist hopes that everyone can own her work for a period of time, rather than the collectors to own her artworks forever. This is a new concept. The artist conducted a round of airdrops to the cryptoart community (a total of 2,050 pieces), you can also get one by sending 0 ETH with gaslimit 200,000 to ads.cryptozr.eth.
However, after the airdrop was over, something interesting happened. The two main NFT platforms, OpenSea and Rarible, blocked the artwork contract, and users who received the NFT could not see its content on the platform and also the wallet which using the their SDK.
This brings us the following questions below:
- In order to ensure the immutability of works, many NFTs use IPFS to store metadata. However, when buyers and users interact with the blockchain, they still need a medium such as the frontend of the platform to achieve this. Does the frontend shielding of the platform conform to the spirit of crypto?
2. Who decides which content is legit or not? Is there a governance process? Especially for community based projects such as Rarible, the delisting of NFT does not follow a formal process. It only requires frontend developers to directly block it. So what is the role of its governance token?
3. Crypto artists’ ideas and creation will not be limited to simple forms of NFT+images/videos. When using the underlying functions of the blockchain to create artworks, it may exceed the understanding of the platform. Will the platform use its power to block these artworks?
4. As crypto assets, NFT users should have their rights to decide how to handle assets in their wallets. Does the platform have the right to make NFT disappear from the platform and the user’s wallet without the notice of the users?
5. For users, the frontend of the platform (and the wallet using its SDK) blocked your NFT. Does it mean that the NFT you own has disappeared? What exactly is crypto assets?
6. For artists, have you ever considered that your work will disappear in the crypto space due to platform censorship? So what is the value and significance of blockchain for art?
The artist CryptoZR redefines her work in a better way. She redirects the name, details, links and images of the NFT’s metadata to the content displayed on the OpenSea 404 page, making it “Not Found Tokens(NFT)”. However, as the concept of Web3 (Decentralized Internet) gains popularity and the growth of decentralized media services, these NFTs that have been blocked will be seen someday in the future. At that time, everyone will find the “NFT” in their wallet and reflect on the essence of the crypto culture.
Personally, I believe that a community-based NFT trading platform with crypto spirit needs to meet the following conditions:
- Governance tokens are effectively distributed, and the power of artists, developers, and collectors forms a balance. The distribution of token should be based on the value contributed to the platform. For example, the distribution mechanism of UNI is a fair and effective distribution plan
2. Dev fund should be created, and the DAO can vote to adjust the dividend percentage. In this way, the platform can bring value to the dev fund continually and encourage more developers to join the community
3. The platform should have a proper NFT listing/removal voting process, and the DAO should vote to decide whether to display them. We can learn from Uniswap’s risk reminders for unverified tokens: It only prompts risks and not to decide whether list or delist these tokens. The power of decision is handed over to the community members, which is more in line with the crypto spirit
4. The frontend needs to be open sourced, and everyone can interact with client by running the light node built-in . Even if the NFT is not displayed on the website , you still have the right to display content through a customized client, and decide on you own how to handle each NFT asset.
