In the past year, there is no new thing that can impact the design, art and technology industries more than NFT. At the beginning of 2022, the editors of Wikipedia discussed whether NFT works should be included in the item "works sold by living artists at the highest price". The focus of the debate was whether NFT works were works of art In march2021, an article in MIT Technology Review Magazine said that "NFT has become an unavoidable topic for anyone who lives on online creativity"
Reporter Xu Zhen
Editor zhangyunting
NFT refers to "non-homogeneous token", which uses the same blockchain technology as digital currencies including bitcoin, and can provide ownership of digital assets In theory, NFT can bind blockchain technology to all digital content, including images, videos, music, as well as a tweet or microblog
The overseas market is represented by the public chain - Ethereum - as the blockchain platform used by NFT. The Chinese market uses the so-called "alliance chain", which refers to the blockchain determined in advance by the participating nodes (referring to the storage units in the blockchain, which are responsible for storing data blocks), and is only open to internal members of the alliance. Alibaba, Tencent and other companies adopt alliance chains. Since the development mode of overseas NFT is not recognized by the regulatory authorities in China, the words "NFT" have been deleted from the platforms under Alibaba and Tencent. The renamed "digital collection" is priced in RMB and cannot be used for second-hand transactions. It only plays the function of NFT's digital product certification. These digital collections are largely represented by cultural and creative works.
In the design industry, because digital creative works are easy to copy, its value and authenticity are difficult to measure. However, in the context of NFT, digital creatives can provide proof of the uniqueness of their works for the first time, so as to sell at a high price
No wonder designers, illustrators and more digital creative people are flocking to this phenomenon. It makes some design or illustration practitioners who are not cared about realize the fairy tale of getting rich overnight. At the end of 2021, Trevor Jones, a 51 year old painter in Edinburgh, told the guardian: "I have changed from having to borrow money from my friends to pay bills to making $4million a day." Trevor Jones began to produce NFT in 2019. The Guardian reported that he was the most successful NFT artist in the UK.
However, some people are worried about this upsurge. Sun Shisheng, a 3D designer living in Singapore, had a poor impression of NFT in his early days: the popularity of digital currency indirectly increased the price of graphics cards, and the production of digital currency brought energy consumption.
Some people steal designer's creative works without permission and make profits by making them into NFT, and worry about the level of NFT works are part of the reasons why many designers resist NFT. Including Warren Spector, the designer of "biochemical Raiders" and Tim Morten, the former chief game producer of Blizzard, have publicly opposed NFT.
Sunshisheng changed his mind at the end of 2021. Including the purchase of NFT launched by Adidas originals, fanart (fan drawing) participating in NFT projects of other artists, etc. His work you are not alone was auctioned on the NFT trading platform superrare, and the final transaction price was 6.7 eth (the real-time price was 133591 yuan).
He realized that the underlying technology of NFT can help digital creative people build communities by selling NFT and gradually establish their own brands "NFT gives designers and creators a good tool. There is no need for galleries and brokers. You can directly connect with supporters and bring new value to their works. These airdrops can accurately locate them at a very low cost." Sunshisheng told yimagazine, "the project side can see who is the holder at present, and NFT can track it permanently."
NFT works of 3D Designer sunshisheng.
With the rapid growth of NFT market scale, the number of works related to design and collection is also very high According to NFT data company nonfungible According to the report of L'Atelier, a research company under BNP Paribas, NFT's sales in 2021 exceeded $17.6 billion, compared with the overall sales of $82million in 2020. Among them, collectibles and games are one of the main driving forces driving the growth of NFT market in 2021.
The former idol periphery (physical derivatives) is a common way in this trend, such as NBA top shot. This project, which was founded in 2018 by the blockchain startup dapper labs and the NBA, has successfully turned the storage of player game videos into a huge business. The current valuation of NBA top shot has reached $7.6 billion. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, GV, a venture capital company under alphabet, and other well-known investment institutions.
The NBA top shot, a cooperative project between dapper labs and NBA, has successfully turned the storage of player game videos into a huge business.
Star cards have been born in the United States since the 1880s. American sports fans collect star cards for a long time, mainly through eBay and other third-party e-commerce websites to complete second-hand transactions. NBA top shot has changed the original scattered and difficult to distinguish the authenticity of the star card collection market.
On the basis of physical star cards, NBA top shot launched NFT star cards, allowing direct transactions with credit cards. At the same time, it opened up new market segments on third-party platforms such as eBay. Since its launch in October, 2020, a single NFT star card of NBA top shot can be sold for up to US $208000.
The design process usually takes several days. "We did a lot of preliminary sketching, put them together, and then built it in Cinema 4D because it has the most beautiful polishing, lighting and effects we can add." In April, 2021, Courtney McNeil, design director of dapper labs, told the American computer magazine personal computer magazine, "subsequently, we introduced it into the game development platform unity to set a set of visual benchmarks. Subsequently, we tried to match this set of visual Benchmarks (all works). In these attempts, we sometimes encountered challenges when we used holographic effects." NBA top shot also cooperates with infinite objects, a "video print" photo frame company. Users can purchase the frames made by the latter to display his NBA top shot collection.
Correspondingly, this transformation also takes place in the toy industry. Mattel, mga, Funko and start-ups all see NFT as a new growth market. The difference is that users' expectation cycle for NFT appreciation space has also become shorter.
Guoyulian, China Marketing Director of mighty Jaxx, a Singapore trend toy company, told yimagazine, "in the field of NFT, consumers' buying mentality is different from that of physical products, which will accelerate the incubation of emerging artists, and consumers are more willing to understand products and artists to help purchase. The educational link of physical products will be longer. The mentality of domestic digital collection consumers will be different."
At present, mighty Jaxx has set up a meta team in the Singapore headquarters to be responsible for the production of NFT and NFT related virtual and real experience products. The team size is about 30 people. In the middle of 2021, mighty Jaxx entered the Chinese market and plans to combine NFT with the trend toys in the Chinese market to become the attraction of differentiation.
NFT toys launched by mighty Jaxx, a Singapore trend toy company.
At the same time, mighty Jaxx plans to try NFT as a new consumer experience outside of physical toys, including user community, interaction with toys or more offline experiences.
Mighty Jaxx launched the beauty of rebellio.
Indeed, nft provides design practitioners with an opportunity to bypass traditional gatekeepers, help them sell their works independently, and directly contact the objects who collect their works It seems that NFT, a new medium, has promoted a larger trading market for creative works, lowered the threshold for design practitioners to gain fame and money, and also provided a new development path for newcomers.
However, what many people ignore is that the digital creatives who have gained fame on NFT are often veterans with many years of work experience. For example, beeple, the author of NFT's "every day: the first 5000 days", which was auctioned at Christie's for $69million, did not receive art training, but in 2018 he got the opportunity to cooperate with luxury brand Louis Vuitton, and also participated in the Super Bowl midfield show of the "American Spring Festival Gala" in 2020.
Beeple's NFT work "every day - the first 5000 days" sold at Christie's for $69million.
Behind the popularity of NFT market, there are still commercial cooperation endorsements. Qizhenzhen, a member of the art and research group zzyw, told yimagazine: "There are some non-traditional art collectors and new artists in the NFT market. However, most of the artists who sell high priced works in the NFT market have relevant records in the traditional art market. In other words, his works have been collected, exhibited or reported by influential private or institutions in the traditional art market. The time of industry practice is far longer than his time of participating in the NFT market."
The art group zzyw was founded in 2017 and its name is taken from the names of two members. They are members of new Inc, a cultural and technological incubator of the new art museum in New York, as well as resident artists of technology at pioneer works of Brooklyn art and innovation center in New York, and resident artists of babycastles, an independent game agency in New York. Their works have appeared in the National Museum of China, Shanghai Museum of contemporary art and other institutions.
Wang Yang, another member, believes that NFT will benefit some digital creators directly, But not everyone gets a bonus: "I think NFT will benefit a specific group of people. First, his personal art practice has a certain reputation. He may have exhibited works in medium-sized and above art galleries, or have well-known Gallery agents. Second, the media he uses is digital media, which is directly connected with NFT's media language. The media determines the content to a certain extent, and a lot of content will be lost in the process of 'translating' traditional paintings and sculptures into NFT."
What worries art intellectuals more may be the blurring of the boundary between art and goods The guardian pointed out sharply in 2021 that with NFT, the difference between art and assets seems to disappear. Instead of planning the exhibition, the auction website; The symbol of the market has penetrated into the aesthetic language of art itself. Prices, not ideas, dominate - if the traditional standard for measuring art is no longer important, how can you tell whether you are buying financial products or works of art?
NFT also seems to have brought controversy to the design industry as it did when bitcoin was born. It has brought new tools and media to the design, art and technology industries, partially avoiding the chaos of the digital art market itself, but it has also brought new chaos, impacting the traditional rules of the art trading market.