In 1422, Charles VI, the Mad King of France, died from insanity, leaving a weakened France to its English enemy. Shortly, Charles VII ascended the throne. At the old king’s funeral, a chant echoed — “The King is dead, long live the King!”
The seemingly contradictory phrase simultaneously announces the death of the previous monarch and celebrates the advent of a new one.
The divine transfer of power was completed with the proclamation, after which Charles VII lived up to the expectations of his people by turning the tide and expelling the English from the country, ending the Hundred Years’ War.
Today, 600 years later, we chanted — NFT is dead, long live NFT!
About time NFT is dead!
Within a complex and dangerous atmosphere where the ghosts of war, COVID-19, recessions and cyclical financial crises haunting, the NFT market has no way to throw off the shackles of the larger trend, so the false boom and bubble is disillusioning.
This May is a dramatic month for NFTs, to say the least.
The chaotic offering of Otherdeeds for Otherside drained the market of its last drop of blood. UST was then withdrawn from Anchor and consequently, BTC and ETH began to plumet. The market went into a downward spiral with the Fed’s expected rate. Blue-chip NFTs were collapsed on impact, NFT whales were disillusioned one after another, scandals frequent.
NFT is dead!
The old king is dead and the one-year long NFT summer is over.
This wave of the NFT bubble started with NBA TopShots, after which the ancient-found CryptoPunks regained their popularity. In last April Beeple’s piece was auctioned off at a jaw-dropping price of $69 million, and it sent Art Blocks marketplace sky-rocketed and made many crypto-riches become Arts NFT collectors. But Art seemed boring for a tech bubble, so the market soon turned to its main narrative: the pfp 10k stories represented by Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). And of course, Metaverse lent wings of imagination to these stories.
“I’ve heard that there was a kind of bird with no legs. It could fly and fly only… This kind of bird could land only once. That was the time it died.”
Most of the current pfp 10k stories are such legless birds. For the “legless bird project”, “fly and fly only” is a curse, and “never landing” has become a ridiculous truth.
As you know, most popular stories end with a commercial movie. Framing imagination with a template kill the possibilities. It’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in our life.
Yet, there is greater risks for NFTs — most 10k pfp projects fall short of a good story.
The real content thing that audiences indulge in has to be a fantasy world they create for themselves, whether that dream is aesthetics, metaverse or sudden wealth.
An eagle hovering in the sky looks pretty. But what would you do when it falls to your side and you find out that it is actually a scavenging vulture?
Run! Crash! NFT is dead!
However,
I still want to celebrate:
Long live NFT!
When speculators left, builders stayed. With bubbles bursting, we can finally work in peace. “Charles the Mad” is dead, now it’s time for Charles VII to be in the center of the stage.
The transaction of power in the NFT world was completed within the moment of bursting, companied followed by the chant — “Long live NFT”.
10k pfp NFT projects may die and tokens become worthless. But after this wave of bubbles, NFT, a solid blockchain infrastructure, will surely survive thrive again.
But first, think about why NFT is here?
NFT was born for the creators!
Before NFT, digital content was a simple format for content distribution.
“Right Click and Save” limited digital a creator’s capability to take belongs to her.
“Even today, creators to capture value with their works still call for conversion into more complex media forms. We are heavily invested in areas such as ads, games, and films that are very prone to failure, just like gamblers in a no-win game. Continued success in the creative industry is awfully difficult, due primarily to the top-down push for unknown content until it is officially released.”
With NFT, digitized content finally can become a commercial currency at birth and can be accumulated as an asset.
Creators of images, voxels, video, audio and text now have a “magic wand” at their disposal: to create tangible wealth on the value of storytelling, aesthetic pleasure, auditory enjoyment. An important way to turn mind wealth directly into material — the layers upon layers of media packaging is no longer needed.
NFT is here to empower creators, who creat a strong creator’s economy. They are the cornerstone of Web3.
Indeed, the 10k pfp bubble kicked off the creator’s economy, although most of the fruits are taken by dominant founders, speculators, and VC capitals. Creators were honored guests invited to the party but were just that. Guess who sketched all the BAYCs?
As usual, most founders and VCs took the “top-down” approach to run a project, so much with the “decentralized economy”. Worse, some of them rugged and called the experience “learning process”. NFTs has too much easy money and many “serial entrepreneurs” took advantage of that. “Charles the Mad” is still alive!
For the NFT wave, creators need to take the throne for real as what Charles VII did.
How?
Long live NFT!
There are too many great designers, artists, writers, developers who are eager to join web3. There are also too many bule-chip NFT holders are in need for a service to make new stories for the NFTs they are holding.
It is necessary for the creators and holders to join hands to create new stuffs. This could be the next paradigm within NFT space. Whoever matches the supply and demand in scale will kick off the next NFT boom.
“Ask not what your BAYC can do for you, ask what you can do for your BAYC.”
The great era of NFT speculation is over. Soon, we will witness greater value difference within NFT collections, and it’s not because of “rarity”. This new added value come from the holders’ re-creation of their own NFTs. This is a paradigm shift within the NFT. With the tide of re-creation, could an entire creator’s economy emerge within a single NFT collection? Much possible.
Think 10k pfp NFT collections as a form of IP value distribution, then BAYC, had built up a $1 billion IP within a year, and distribute it to its holders.
If you read Yuga Labs’ plans for the future carefully, you’ll see that the Otherside is more of an “appStore” than another Gamefi. In Otherside, the mere ownership of an Ape don’t ensure airdrops anymore. You actually need to create to “earn” it.
After all, you don’t grow BAYC from $1 billion to $10 billion just because it has the best “community” or somebody’s willingness to pay $1 billion for a ‘rare ape’. That era is over. The rarity of a certain “ape” never meant anything to anyone outside of the “community”. But new creations based on BAYC will. Some of the BAYC holders may create huge economic values based off the IP power she’s waging. That’s the way BAYC could go to $10 billion valuation. The logic applies to all the “blue-chips”.
Look at this Bored Ape burger shop. The ape the owner owns is not “rare”, but I’m sure it’s much more expensive than many of the “rare apes”.
And look at his ape Li-Ning bought at floor price. I won’t say the recreation is anywhere near perfection, or even good… But Li-Ning probably already covered the cost of purchase just selling t-shirts.
Actually, if you look closer, it’s hard to distinguish from ape to ape some times, especially on the floor.
If you own an ape, and you are interested in opening a restaurant, releasing a new album, or just use it as your metaverse avatar, wouldn’t you consider to do something to make your ape more stand-out? Like tailoring a suit, purchasing an ape motorcycle, adopt a pet, or even creating an entirely new story for your ape.
What they need? They need service from creators, maybe hundreds of them. How can we bridge them and make it efficient and at scale? It could be a billion dollar question.
There exists great untapped value in those blue-chip NFTs!
The first wave of NFT enabled the creator’s economy to go from 0 to 1, presenting us with a piece of blank paper. The next step is for us web3 advocates to create something.
The metaverse is not about getting something for nothing, but about giving everyone a chance to do something.
The metaverse encourages diversity, not exclusivity.
The web2 features a top-down centralized success, different from the bottom-up and decentralized web3.
It is not enough to define the creator’s economy based only on first-time creation. What supports the creator’s economy is the second, third and even more times of all-round creation.
In short,
“What can your Ape do for you, no, what can you do for your Ape.”
Glory to all endeavors and tribute to all creators!
“NFT is dead,
Long live NFT!”
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