Small piece about speculation and NFT adoption.
The crowd outside of crypto often point out how NFTs are just milking artists and crypto founders take most of the profits to themselves and pay a few thousands bucks to artists via fiverr or another platform for that matters. They are sometimes right and speculation brings its load of soulless collection hyped up by speculation where artists are paid sheckels while founders cash out millions without delivering anything (remember the infamous make a movie/a game roadmaps). While I still believe in high supply generated NFTs, I also think it is time crypto users look into another economic model.
I’ll take the example of @hudcheuu, full disclosure, I have owned a few and am currently owning one but my goal is not here to pump my bags but to encourage artists, NFT investors, and art enjoyers to look into this model. Hudcheuu is a talented artist and I first came across their art on French Crypto Twitter. I was instantly hooked and loved the art, so I looked into it. It appeared their work was gathered in one collection of 1/1 NFTs. Detailled manga-style art with references to pop culture and dinstinct touc made them perfect for PFPs and these PFP users were dithyrambic about the art and kind of promoting it but not aggressively, no utility is pushed but it felt like an exclusive club.
I joined the Discord of the artist, being used to huge supply PFP projects, I only found around 50 online users and was really pleased of the mood there, intimate and faithful to what real discussions would look like. If you ever experienced the dreadful feel of trying to have a conversation with a fellow human on hyped NFT projects, trust me, it feels nice.
Now, let’s talk about the economic model. Hudcheuu has three collections, Side Show, Side Show specials, and Monster x Hunter.
Side show specials differs because it is composed of collabs with other projects and special requests from the community of 1/1. Every time Hudcheuu draws art that is poised to become a NFT, they decide weather to go for one of two things:
Private and public raffle
Auction
The raffle allows you to buy the NFT for 0.085 $ETH, which is, considering the floor, a great investment and allows you to support the artist directly and to get access to great art. I mentionned a public and a private one, for each raffle, there is a public one and one reserved for Side Show/Monster x Hunter owners. This option is chosen often when there are two pieces that share traits or are in the same vibe as show below:
The auction usually lasts 1 or 2 days and often means the art is more refined or took longer to make, the prices often reach 0.5 $ETH and goes to the artist directly.
Obviously, a tax is also applied on secondary market transactions and that makes for additional revenue. I don’t want to assess the artist revenue here but I think it is a great way to generate money while drawing what you like and not just making traits for a collection. I’m aware this may be an exception as the community is really particular and the communication relies on the members but they don’t actively want to pump their bags.
If you are an artist or if you know one, show them this way of generating revenue doing what you love, I would love more projects like this one in the space. If you know artists against NFTs because they think they are not given enough recognition, talk to them about this model and the way NFTs allow thousands of people to support small artists Here is Hudcheuu’s linktree, check their work, it’s really good and consider joining their Discord.