NFTs (Non-fungible token), that is, non-homogeneous tokens are currently token-based, unique digital assets on the blockchain. Before 2017, everyone traded Fungible Token, that is, FT (Fungible Token), such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

In 2017, a programmer from Vancouver, Mike Flavel, created the ERC-721 standard, which is the origin of NFT. This standard marks the unique identity of each item, allowing items to have true ownership. They can be representatives of art, digital collectibles, games, or even real-world items, all inclusive. The content of this article only focuses on the discussion around encrypted artwork.

I am very grateful to Alen, Brother Xiao Mao, and Kay's family army for their support and inspiration.

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Encrypted art has only been developed for four short years. From the beginning, no one cares about it to the current "out of the circle" effect, it is full of countless doubts. Digital artworks have been transformed into encrypted artworks due to NFT. The original trading mode of copying to U disks and CDs in the gallery has also been transferred to the chain. When the transaction process becomes open and transparent, technological innovations such as AI have also begun to join the digital artworks. Create the world.

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Technology and art seem to be two opposite worlds, but the logic behind them is surprisingly consistent. Technology seeks truth, art seeks beauty, both are driven by curiosity and imagination, and both require tireless research and creation. When talking about encrypted art, we have to mention digital art, technology changes life, and we are in the vortex of the times, and the expression of art is also constantly improving. Digital art is not limited to materials and forms, and provides unlimited possibilities for creation.

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Gucci Ghost Yellow Aqua

Traditional non-digital art (such as painting, sculpture, etc.) uses material materials as the medium, so the material properties of materials have an important impact on the expression form of art works and the form of artistic language. In digital art, creators create through digital technology and no longer use specific material materials as the medium. In comparison, the dimension of time is downplayed or absent in digital art.

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A screenshot of the auction on the NFT trading platform OpenSea

And with the birth of a digital artwork, it will be interpreted and commented repeatedly over time, thus becoming a source of meaning production, which constitutes its history. However, the difference between this and a work of art with a substance is that all of these are not inscribed on its "body", but exist outside of it. is "about" it, not itself. This problem has not only stayed in the field of art, but has also penetrated into the existence of contemporary human beings. The root cause is that the impact of the rise of digital technology has spread to all aspects of society. As far as this specific issue is concerned, it is essentially related to the transformation of the relationship between "things" and the subject, as well as the position of "things" in artistic creation and human society, as a result of digital technology.

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Gombrich believes that art is the self-expression of the artist's concept and feeling when it is specific to the artwork, and when it is enlarged to the extent that each era always has its own artistic characteristics, these characteristics express the great artists of that era. It is hard to imagine the Renaissance without Shakespeare and Da Vinci; Impressionism without Monet and Renoir; modern art without Matisse and Picasso. Rather than seeing the spiritual portrait of the era through the painting, it is better to say that what the artist has overcome the entire era with the brush on himself.

Many artists, such as Van Gogh and Schubert, were impoverished and not recognized by people. The artistic value of their works was not recognized until after their death.

Taking Van Gogh as an example, the mainstream painting school in his era was the academic school. If the Impressionism was one step ahead, then the Post-Impressionism represented by Van Gogh was two steps ahead. For a new art form, the stronger the opposition of traditionalists, the easier it is to promote the thinking of artists.

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Van Gogh & "Daisies and Poppies"

Art collections are a kind of "false receipt" that will not be diluted and deteriorated, and NFTs have achieved subversive optimized delivery.

Painters always become famous after death, which is actually an economic issue. The paintings of dead painters cannot be copied or added. The essence of currency is a "false receipt". For example, Wang Zhongjun, the founder of Huayi Brothers, loves to collect calligraphy and paintings of celebrities. Apart from his love for art, buying paintings with money means that he will exist in the form of "national currency". The wealth of the wealth has been exchanged for the wealth that exists in the form of paintings. Wang Zhongjun once bought Van Gogh's oil painting "Daisy and Poppies" for about 377 million yuan. It depreciates due to time and geographical changes. On the contrary, the more inflation there is, the more the value of this certificate will increase. At the same time, Van Gogh's paintings also have financial attributes and can be mortgaged. In this respect, Van Gogh's paintings have become financial products similar to "false receipts".

Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" was sold for US$69.35 million, which is also in line with the above statement that it cannot be copied or increased. Since 2006, Beeple has spent two hours a day creating a painting, which is a commemoration and explanation of the past 15 years.

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Beeple "On the Chain"

The "decentralization" attribute of the blockchain allows each artist to sell their works on the chain, bypassing traditional intermediaries, and selling their works without being represented by others. The voice of the artist is in the community It is magnified, and collectors can communicate directly with artists face to face.

According to Belsky, encrypted art has many benefits: it cannot be counterfeited, it is transparent and scarce, it is portable, and it provides artistic opportunities. Clark from The Verge agrees. NFTs may well be the greatest liberating opportunity for an artist in over 100 years. This is not a suboptimal or fringe version of the real world art economy, but a vastly improved version, NFTs provide a new monetization channel for digital media without restricting development by putting content behind paywalls. It also revives business models that used to be profitable in the print age but lost in the digital age.

Encryption art is the cry of the new generation under the special environment of technological development and epidemic situation.

We most often talk about whether a thing is valuable, and we often discuss the external material value (the continuation of Marxism), but the value is intangible. Going back to the origin of value, it is actually an extension of human values. "Value" is real because it is created by human beings. It is a fiction maintained by a collectively shared social class.

The "first principle" (actually "decoupling") that is often mentioned in physics is to reduce things to their essential essence. Then we should think about it. Value is basically for people. Maybe Compared with traditional art, encrypted art cannot touch the "real object", nor can it become a decoration around it like traditional works of art. But the value of NFT does not come from basic materials, but from rarity, aesthetics and creators. The assets cherished by human beings are determined by our values. The market value of our financial assets comes from the value created by the moral concepts we follow. Collective beliefs may also trump the "fundamentals". Changes have come .

In 2020, when the epidemic is sweeping the world, what we do not want to admit but cannot ignore is that society is in a state of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness, a feeling of powerlessness resulting from a traumatic event or persistent failure, is thought to be one of the underlying causes of depression. Positive beliefs about the future among young people are at an all-time low. Under the epidemic, people cannot move freely as in the past, the unemployment rate has skyrocketed, distrust of institutions has risen unprecedentedly, wealth inequality, inflation, etc. are all the swords of Damocles that have been hanging over many people for 20 years. We don't know when the epidemic will end, we don't know when the suppressed new cases will come back again, the way we used to vent our emotions doesn't seem to work because we can't go out.

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Since Bitcoin's first block was mined in 2009, the number of people and capital entering this new space has continued to grow. Slowly, people started migrating to this new digital realm and started setting up camp. One of the first communities to settle in the Crypto world were libertarian gold diggers who saw potential in Bitcoin. Each of the different applications of Crypto attracted its own different users to migrate, and after the ultra-libertarian gold diggers and early cypherpunks came a more general population, all interested in the particular flavor that crypto had to offer.

In the summer of 2020, Defi broke out. Many people saw the myth of getting rich quickly, but they ignored the fact that many projects that have sprung up suddenly reached their peak after a long period of silence. The 2018-19 bear market saw a massive exodus from the crypto space, be it people or capital. However, there are some communities that have managed to hold on, such as AAVE, SNX, and LINK.

These neighborhoods experienced a significant decline in asset values, then they experienced two years of sideways growth, and then things started to improve. The Discord community is where they stand firm, and the culture is created through these shared experiences. They created their own meme in the bear market, and they insisted on each other until the end.

Assets create communities, and communities create assets.

The real power behind the cryptocurrency revolution is its ability to bridge the gap between human values ​​and human values. With Crypto, humans have the tools to align more closely with our expectations. The end result of Crypto is a new cultural expression carrier that enables human beings to faithfully express their own values.

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Due to the strong power of institutions, class solidification is becoming more and more serious, and the younger generation has spawned YOLO culture. Some time ago, WSB led retail investors to start the Robinhood short-squeeze movement. It did not take long for Dogecoin to undertake this movement. Dogecoin is regarded as the core MEME of the community, and the demands of individual investors have extended to the blockchain industry, and the investment logic of community-attributed currencies is changing.

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(The MEME mentioned above is "meme", and the MEME token mentioned here)

Jordan Lyall, head of DeFi products at ConsenSys, released a spoof project "One-click DeFi generation" to mock the overheated status of DeFi projects. The good guys quickly created the MEME token based on the joke.

The main logic of MEME tokens in the early stage is: mining points, raising points, and exchanging points for cards. With the development of half a year, MEME has also opened some artist pools and cooperative Defi project pools. It is worth noting that the total number of MEME is 28,000, of which 26,000 come from the initial community airdrop without threshold. The increase in the price of MEME currency has brought eye-catching wealth to the 73 people who received the airdrop. The story of making wealth has accelerated the growth of MEME. spread.

In addition to the myth of getting rich, the stories about MEME are actually more worth mentioning. For example, Auroraxxxx, the community administrator of MEME, was unemployed due to the epidemic and had no income at home. After participating in the early governance of MEME, he began to earn income. elements of the artist's paintings are integrated to create new paintings"The Meme Mob”, successfully auctioned and earned nearly 200,000 US dollars. (It is worth mentioning that every auction on MEME will use 10% for charitable donations)

FEWOCiOUS, a 17-year-old artist who collaborates with MEME, is from Las Vegas. Her evaluation of herself is: "Surreal pop art, the work is the expression of self-perception." She completed the creation for MEME on 12.29. In addition to being a dynamic NFT, she also added sound elements. The painting + music mode is a complete video NFT, where you can hear the sound of heart beating and crying.

This is an investment movement driven by interest, a special social phenomenon, and an artistic innovation.

When the market enthusiasm is high, the value of NFT is more reasonable in any way. When the bubble bursts, people will rethink the future value of NFT and think about whether NFT can endow more value attributes. Like DEFI, NFT has an infinitely bright future . For collectors, this is the era of true digital ownership, mastering your digital assets through private keys.

One of the most important innovations of the blockchain to art is the creation of digital goods that can prove the uniqueness of the version. Even after the bubble passed, many projects fell apart, but the law of objective development of everything is like this. There are dross in any field, but the spiritual value and stories conveyed by NFT, the works of artists will not disappear with time.

Reach out for the stars, even if you get nothing, your hands will not be full of dirt.