Starting this month I’m going to be releasing my new art as NFTs. It’s an exciting new step for me but understanding it requires a bit of a mental leap, so let’s go through this together.
https://makersplace.com/angelarium
What’s an NFT?
Non-Fungible Tokens are kinda like Bitcoins if you were able to cybernetically jack into the matrix and paint a little picture on the side of them. NFTs are digital assets that live on the blockchain just the same as any cryptocurrency except they include additional information that makes the tokens unique and special. In this case, they represent ownership of a digital painting. Since blockchain assets can’t be copied or forged, NFTs hold the power of irreplaceability like an oil painting. In fact, they are being bought and sold for similar amounts of money to their traditional counterparts right now.
Many of the NFTs I will release are effectively going to be “digital originals”. These tokens will be a fully singular form of ownership that comes with the same privileges as traditional painting ownership. Whenever I release a painting as an edition of one, it will remain one of kind indefinitely.
Ownership
For the last 20 years, I’ve been hearing people speculate about the idea of digital originals but all their ideas have been dumb. Trying to put the last copy of your source files on a USB stick is not art, it’s just bad data management.
Keeping the ownership of digital creations in their native format not only makes sense, but it is also beautiful. These paintings are born into a digital ecosystem where they live eternally on a distributed network. The pixels are passed hand to hand in perfect synchrony, with the chain of ownership forever etched in a massive communal ledger.
Resale
We all know the other reason why people buy art. My plan is to make collectible runs of NFTs that will be easy for people to buy and resell. The first big drop I’m doing is going to have a run of 100 copies at only $10 per edition. Buying one of these in 2020 means owning it to resell when the value of my creations rise in the future.
I’m selling my NFTs through Makers Place in part because they have a wonderful feature that pays artists a royalty on all secondary sales. That’s huge! The traditional fine art world is notorious for scamming the most successful artists out of their due. Not only does this system support creators long-term, but it also incentivizes us to work to build the value of the collection.
Anyone who resells an NFT of mine at a huge profit will not only earn my digitally expressed admiration, I will also promise to share a physical high-five (circumstances permitting).
The Future
For the foreseeable future, I plan on releasing all my new art as NFTs. I’m rarely an early mover on anything, but I believe in this technology. I originally signed up for Makers Place in 2018 but I’ve waited until I was certain about its future before I started putting my own weight behind it.
Angelarium has been a digital art project existing primarily on the Internet since its inception. It’s only fitting that it should live on through the glory of the blockchain.