But here’s the secret: this isn’t actually death. It’s molt.

Think snakeskin or cicadas buried underground for seventeen years, clawing their way out into sunlight just to scream and breed and leave their shells behind. This is what it feels like right now -- not apocalypse, but metamorphosis. It is ugly as hell while it’s happening and beautiful only in hindsight.

The structures are collapsing.
Good. They were designed to collapse. Towers built on control and extraction can only rot from the inside. The scaffolding was always temporary but convinced itself it was eternal. And now you and I get the privilege, the curse.. the spark of standing in the middle as it buckles.

It hurts.

Of course it hurts. You’re supposed to feel the weight of it, because pressure is the forge. Hell, it's just as heavy on my shoulders. But without collapse there is no creation. Without endings, no beginnings. It’s the Tower card from the tarot, the lightning-struck structure that looks like a nightmare until you realize it clears the ground for new foundations.

The doom is real. But so is the beauty. Both are true at once. Horror and miracles compressed into the same scroll.

People keep asking if things are as bad as they seem. They are. And they aren’t. They’re exactly as bad as they are or should be. The fractures aren’t just cracks... they’re more like doorways. Every system breaking down is also a system opening up. The old skin peels away and leaves room for something stranger, freer, more terrifying, more ours.

That’s the stuff. You don’t survive the collapse. You dance in it.

You tag graffiti on its ruins.

You steal the embers and crown yourself in fire.

You learn to find the sacred in busted machines and abandoned forums and dying networks.

You make art from glitch, poetry from ash, culture from fracture. The world isn’t dying. It’s splitting to let in more light.

And this is where creativity comes in. Not the hollow kind sold back to us in branded packages, but raw creation: sketches, sounds, hacks, memes, songs, worlds built from nothing but imagination and refusal. Creativity is not a hobby here - it’s survival, and it’s rebellion. And it’s how we stitch new meaning out of the wreckage.

When systems fall apart, the act of creation is how we prove we’re still alive.

But here’s the razor edge though: our choices do matter more than ever. You are actively participating in the future, even if you think you do nothing. And with the changes happening and the massive shifts in our digital culture... well stuff is changing.

There's a lot of new stuff... like "AI". Luckily things like AI can be for everyone. It doesn’t have to calcify into another systemic power mechanism. The same tech that could become chains can also be chisels, tools for carving new culture outside the old walls. Technology and culture belong to all of us, and we should learn how to exist in this new cyberpunk world we're heading into by using chisels not owned by a feudal state. This is one of the wars we’re fighting in real time.

But what if we lose? I ain't worried. Even then, the digital natives will build their own world inside the cracks, and eventually that will become the norm, because the rule of cool always wins and digital nomads are the epitome of cool. Aren't you?

The point is, The Spark can’t be monopolized forever.

Unless, of course, the rapture happens in 2027. In which case: lol, lmao.

I used to think the job was to endure, to white-knuckle through the chaos until we got back to “normal.” But normal is gone. Thank God. Normal never existed. Normal was chains disguised as comfort. Normal was beige cubicles and corporate feudalism and algorithms teaching us to consume instead of create. If that’s gone, then let it stay gone. Burn the husk and step into the raw air.

This is not an invitation to despair. It’s a call to claim the spark.

Because while the old-world groans, new small worlds are blooming. Niche scenes, underground collectives, little weirdos carving entire realities out of nothing but art and stubbornness. The death of the mainstream is the birth of the manifold. You see it in subcultures that refuse to die, in pixel art zines stitched together in Discord servers, in decentralized networks built not for profit but for communion.

The collapse doesn’t bury us. The collapse builds us up.

And yeah, it’ll be rough. The molt always is. The cicada has to split its own back open to crawl into the sun (and that probably sucks tbh). There’s no way around it. But that pain is transformation. If you feel that static in your chest... It’s voltage. That buzzing in your skull? It’s the future trying to crack through.

So… here’s “the prophecy”:

"The pillars fall. The towers groan. The machine eats itself. But we are not ashes. We are the spark. We are the weirdos in the ruins. We are the chorus that screams through the molt. And when the husk finally crumbles, we’ll be there—dancing in the collapse, crowned in embers, building worlds from the light that leaks through the cracks. You only have to make that choice."

Not apocalypse. Metamorphosis. Not the end. The smolting.

Literal version, for those who skim:

Yes, things are bad: wars, climate, politics, tech gone sideways. But it’s not just collapse; it’s transformation. Old systems are breaking so new ones can emerge. This has happened over again in history. Creativity--making art, building communities, imagining futures… is the way through. Our choices about things like AI matter: it can empower everyone or lock us into new systems of control. Even if those in power win that battle, digital natives will still shape culture from the underground, and eventually that becomes the mainstream. Unless the rapture happens in 2027, in which case: we’re all fucked anyway.

*/The pillars crack,
/the towers howl.
/Stone remembers its builders and curses them in dust.
/This is not the end—this is the molt,
/the sacred violence of becoming. *

*/The husk splits,
/and through the wound bleeds voltage.
/The machine thrashes in its sleep,
/but the dream leaks out,
/and the spark escapes. *

*\We are not buried in ruins
we are anointed in ash,
\crowned in ember-dust,
\baptized by collapse. *

*\So dance in the furnace.
\Write scripture in graffiti.
\Turn glitch into gospel.
\Claim the crack as cathedral. *

\Because the next world is not waiting,
\it is already leaking through,
\spilled across the concrete-like oil-slick rainbows.
A future humming in the static,ours
\to seize,
\ours to set on fire,
/ours to love into being

-rwx

i know nothing but what i know, and your life is yours.

Unfortunately, I didn’t finish anything but the outline and if you’re plugged into the vast ecosystem of blockchain related things… well, you may have noticed that a few other things have happened that I think are speeding us toward a conclusion that I am not thrilled about. In fact, I am chilled.

This is not a post that offers any sort of financial advice. This is a post that suggests where the art-on-chain meta may shift as the frigid air of winter descends upon us. This post is primarily for 1/1 artists.

contents in order of appearance:

• where we are

• the value issue

• the parity problem

• some other brief thoughts

As usual, this is a word dump. I’m not doing an editing pass. Forgive mistakes and disjointed thoughts if you want. Feel free to chat with me after reading, as this tends to help me formulate how to expand incomplete thoughts found in these journals.

the obvious state of things

2022 is unlike anything I’ve ever seen since joining the blockchain space as a professional in the beginning of 2018 and since being an enthusiast before that. Greed has always been hyper-pervasive in crypto and there have been prior cases of exchanges and protocols going belly up. When this kind of event happens, it’s never good for anyone. To have so many explosive events in the same year is even worse. It’s truly phenomenal that so many organizations, individuals, and technology solutions just fucking blew up, especially coming out of the most prolific positive market action in the history of crypto. It especially behooves me that these organizations were so high off of their own success that they couldn’t even make the bare minimum effort to actually back their products with real, tangible assets.

This year has sent any progress made over the past 5 back and will 100% make the future worse for everyone around the globe. Regulators have been arguing for a long time. You see, banks (maybe you’ve heard of them), hate distributed finance. Most policy makers hate it as well. The current systems benefit the powers that be and distributed finance puts too much control in the hands of individuals.

In the USA specifically, 2016-2020 was huge for pushing pro-crypto policies forward. After the administration changed in 2020, the party in control (which is notoriously less enthusiastic about the promises of crypto -- ironic, considering the platforms they espouse) selected a handful of bureaucrats to run agencies that basically want to kill the entire ecosystem for reasons they claim will protect users from fraud and financial ruin. Even though the system had been stacked against pro-crypto regulation, there were still positive events occuring and allies in the US government, including the CFTC which was very pro-crypto in its stance. You may be familiar with the battle between the SEC and CFTC on who gets to control what. And now there are politicians and bureaucrats crawling out of the woodwork, frothing at the mouth to do as much damage as they can. And the points they make are beginning to sound fair to participants and onlookers.

https://twitter.com/senwarren/status/1590496981751058432

https://twitter.com/brendanpedersen/status/1590445473328156676

Well, none of this shit matters now because event after event has given everyone enough ammo to aggressively rush legislation through as undoubtedly people who have been recently impacted will seek justice and retribution. Years of hard policy work across competing blockchain-native organizations (and the philosophies are very different among the different lobbies) just wiped out. It’s a bad look when one of the “faces” of pro-regulation is probably directly involved with the mismanagement and sheer degeneracy of a cocky and insane strategy involving user funds.

So, yeah from a policy and regulatory front things aren’t looking great. And there are probably impacted individuals that were very much pro-crypto that will now be very vocally anti-crypto.

Individual users understand the drive of greed and 90% of them take responsibility for their own liquidations when they have overplayed their hands. Individual users do not like when a “trusted” xyz wipes out their entire net-worth in 3 days.

I have always had a severe distrust of people propped up as authority figures in crypto. Maybe this is because I am a contrarian, but in my professional experience - integrity is only found within a handful of organizations and leaders across crypto. As such, I’ve fortunately never touched one of these protocols or exchanges that have failed and I do not leave money on exchanges (one of the golden rules of crypto, you know). I know I shitpost a lot on the internet, but outside of my snarky veneer I’m sad for everyone and the promise of crypto. I am saddened because the past 2 years have been some of the best in my life, both in bear and bull.

https://twitter.com/robek_world/status/1590421396420669441

Where we are going will not be, at least for a time.

Value and values

https://rwx.mirror.xyz/vcJSTTWNbgI0dx0yrwvs8BPZVhkK3_bn3rPHTsZzkPk

In the above journal from last December, I wrote about the dilemma of a tiny collector pool and laid out a few bullets about value in a bear market - which we were only just entering at the time.

To recap:

In a bull market, it is very easy to determine where demand is for a particular artist or their works. Last time I mentioned that art should probably be judged based on a piece by piece basis instead of “this was created by this artist and their floor is X eth so all their art is valued minimally at X”. In a bear market (which we’ve been in since October) the assigned value of pieces from popular artists tends to drop and the secondary action on most 1/1’s dries up completely.

If you’ve read my first collector journal, you know that I believe value is derived from the buyer. With that in mind, I want to expand on points I made in both journals. It won’t be inspirational. I’ll try to give some glimmer of hope towards the end of this post.

Native asset volatility ($ETH, $BTC, etc) means pieces will be sold at a lower price - both in ETH valuation and USD. There will be no secondary market for most 1/1 art.

This point is probably the most obvious to everyone. At the end of last year, I would have leaned slightly toward some retention of ETH value without an adjustment for USD. I feel pretty strongly that moving forward both valuations will be down.

In addition, the volume of sales are going to tank across the board for 1/1 artists. This is for a few reasons.

• Your collectors have no capital left in reserve as some idiot centralized exchange or broken DeFi protocol has robbed them of their wealth. That’s as straightforward as I can be about this. Likely a majority of the traders with any sort of interest in 1/1’s have been impacted by the FTX ordeal. Reserves wiped out, project war chests gone, savings and dust vanished into thin air. None of these people impacted by the recent bullshit are going to put new capital into the 1/1 art ecosystem right now. If they do, it will not be liquid - only speculative buys to sit on until a hypothetical upswing.

• Secondary sales (which are already rare for most participants) are going to evaporate. With a lack of secondary sales, speculators won’t throw money at pieces they may have been inclined to before. This is a cascading effect and even “popular blue-chip 1/1 artists” are going to see a massive drop in valuation for secondary sales as impacted collectors capitulate.

• Some collectors don’t understand art and only follow trends. If there are no trends, there are no speculative collectors. Many niches are going to dry up. Some will persist, maybe yours. But if you are collecting and you don’t actually “understand art” (which is a subjective thing anyways and I’m surprised at the number of people who claim they don’t get it) then the willingness to take a risk on small creators isn’t worth it for them. Influencers won’t move markets so dramatically as general trust in the influencer network has diminished - due to frequent rugpulls, marketing manipulation, and greed. This impacts new volume.

• The list price of most NFT art is hyper-inflated. This leads us to the parity problem. I’d like to mention that the hyper-inflated price of NFT art during 2021 isn’t a bad thing and it rewarded early adopters both on the collector side and the artist side because somewhere there were people passionate about the future of the space and not strictly here solely for gains.

The Parity Problem

Referencing back to my journals from last year, I presented a prediction as to what would happen if the NFT market hit mainstream saturation.

As many collectors entered from the coin-trading side of things, the quick flip and heavy focus on ROI is a pervasive part of the current NFT marketplace. This is a reality that we have to contend with. Long-term and as NFTs become more mainstream, the reality of the situation is that huge insane purchases will become less frequent as the economy shifts to become more accessible for more people (but we’re some ways away from this I think).

It appears now that I didn’t account for an apocalyptic insolvency metagame. This will have the same impact as adoption will.

A lot of the grift against NFTs outside of the nonsense environmental concerns came from what I feel are fans believing their favorite artist is selling out. There’s a handful of reasons why this may make them feel angry but I think it’s mostly because of being priced out of supporting. It’s no secret that a majority of people who “support small artists” don’t actually support them financially and at best just click a heart on social media. If you visit patreon pages or kofi pages or whatever for independent creators, the most people are willing to throw at an artist at a time is a buck or two a month. If you have enough followers this can add up into a nice monthly income but the reality is that none of these pledge based systems provide a stable living for a majority of creators. Commissions help offset the pledges but as commission market is highly competitive, artists are forced to undercut the market rate due to the sheer number of artists taking commissions. To make matters worse, people who commission art suffer from the same problem of not knowing what goes into the sauce. They are frequently entitled, grouchy, mean, or just not worth the time the artist puts into the commission.

Smaller artists don’t have the luxury of gallerists (a fine luxury of taking a 50% cut on your work for exposure and marketing) and at best commissions and donations give a little extra spending money but never enough to go full-time into producing work.

When I talk about parity, it is the expectation that the price of artwork will need to hit an equilibrium in valuation with these more traditional means of selling artwork online or at conventions. Consider the price of a print in an artist alley. That’s where I’m thinking and unfortunately it will be somewhat of a popularity contest, just like an artist alley.

For an NFT artist, you have a few paths forward to weather the storm.

• Reduce your prices. Increase your output.

  The difference between NFT art and trad digital art market is that in NFTs, you get to draw what you want to versus strictly relying on commissions. If you’ve had a piece sitting at .50ETH for 6 months and haven’t lowered the list price, it’s likely to continue to sit there. Reducing your pricing to reach parity with normal market rates may improve your ability to generate income and honestly may be the catalyst to start onboarding previous haters to NFT collecting.

  More collectors, contradicting myself here from last year, means more competition to collect works which may result in the ability to slowly return to high valuations. Remember: It doesn’t matter what kind of content you produce, consistent output is key. More output at lower prices may help offset the random monthly sale.

• Consider editions, think of them like prints

  Prints and merch fuel many creators and while 1/1’s are magical, low-priced editions may also result in some haters checking things out as well as a more affordable entry point for all of our friends who got wiped out.

• Use a commission platform like recomet.

  Yeah, I know I just said that one of the benefits of NFTs is drawing what you like - but by now you should have a pretty loyal crowd of collectors that are fans of your work. Leveraging a request platform may present new opportunities without the headache of dealing with traditional commission requests.

• Don’t change your strategy at all. I could be wrong about everything.

  Let’s say we wake up tomorrow and some lunatic has just saved the cryptomarket. Maybe I’m wrong about this strategy stuff. Maybe the bear season only lasts a few more weeks as to all of this will be null and void. I’m an artist - not some sort of financial genius. I’m not giving out financial advice here and I’m often very wrong.

https://twitter.com/JeyRamm/status/1590596095155240960?s=20&t=qTAYX-7iWevrShNLIRw_hQ

You may be wondering if you’re going to start rolling back to reach parity with what existed before what the point of sticking around is. Here’s a few bullets that I can think of.

• You own your accounts and since there’s not a centralized payment service, you can sell work to people around the world and not just be stuck with whatever is available in your local area. Also paypal and similar services suck.

• You have mindshare here. Assuming there’s a recovery, sticking through the bad times will present you with better opportunities during any future cycles. Recovery encompasses more than just finance, but to the general engagement between participants in the space. I may be speaking from a biased experience perspective but did you know I did NFT art in 2017? No one knew what the fuck NFTs were back then, we didn’t even call them that. I continued being involved in blockchain and when I got pulled back into digital collectibles the efforts I had made over several years seemed to be paid forward. I think there’s a lot of value in sticking it through, even if you decide to court both traditional income and NFTs at the same time.

• The haters still exist.

  They are a potential new audience but if you took the risk to enter the space, it’s still a point of contention to deal with. I personally would prefer never to have to deal with those people again and dabble in collecting and making with the passionate people I’ve met over the years.

To summarize: if we survive the regulatory hell that’s coming, maybe things get to go back up again. I think maybe they actually will! But during this winter, stay consistent and play the game if you can. It’ll be worth it should the gas come back.

I also want to say that while there are as many degenerates in NFTs as shitcoin trading, the difference between the two markets is that NFTs are the only mean to prove true ownership of a digital piece of art. This is tremendously transformative and I really don’t see this dynamic ever going away. Some people will continue collecting pieces at high prices and others will collect when they can simply because they believe in the promise of the space. NFTs may survive slightly better than shitcoins because in markets like this people shift more into fundamental trading. Collecting art because you love art is the fundamental, especially when there’s nothing else happening.

Some other thoughts

Outside of horrific market conditions, there’s a lot of other nonsense happening in NFTs. A lot of it created due to bear market conditions and traders wanting to scrape as much as they can from purchases they made in manic streaks. The worst of which is the attempt to destroy the promise of royalties. I’ll need to write about this in the future but the same mindset that brought people to the point of arguing about royalties, after it was used as a selling point to onboard new talent into the space, is creating a toxic and aggressive scene that just isn’t fun to a lot of people right now. There’s an incredible amount of unfounded FUD and people rejoicing in the failure of others. That’s pretty fucking stupid to participate in if you’re here for the promise of what could be.

Dig into your subcultures and niche’s during times like this and avoid some of the broader talking points. Change can be made simply because people are having fun. Don’t vanish and burn bridges with people you made true connections with. I think that’s important. People yammer on about BUIDL. It’s stale but often true. And when you’re building, you don’t actually need to be “building” some product. You can build connections, collaborate on work, and just stay engaged when you have the mental fortitude to (though take breaks if you’re taking psychic damage).

Lastly: please stop doing 10k projects. If you’re a small artist and you think a 10K project is your way to financial independence, I would urge you to talk to others that launched their own. It is a grueling line of work and in the current state of things, most of them tank immediately after reveal. These floor price drops lead to nothing but painful words from random anons that believe you are the reason for their misery. You will burn out.

Instead, consider limited runs. Collections are awesome but there’s not even 10,000 people actively speculating on PFPs right now. Limited collections leveraging any series of new platform functionality can still create a bit of income without the hell that comes leading a 10K derivative project. More on this and the broader speculative trader mindset another time.

Anyways, I hope that things improve quickly. I’m personally more concerned about regulation than I am worried about NFTs just disappearing. Be empathetic and kind to others, this is a hard period for everyone. You’ll be mostly remembered for how you present yourself in the coming years. You’ve taken the risk by entering the space so don’t throw away goodwill in pursuit of seeking engagement through negativity.

I’m here to stay. I hope you are too.

All artwork in this was generated using various stablediffusion models. AI video essay is coming out next. Thanks for reading. Opinions are my own.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This scene was written by OpenAI and a shitload of refreshing/iterating the prompt: “Rick and Morty argue about NFTs”. Obviously, you can’t generate this many tokens in a single output - so the editor (me), did take artistic liberty in the order of the scene outputs.

The images are generated from masterofallscience - I used screencaps to help illustrate it visually (forgive me that I pulled from a million different scenes, this took forever as it stands, which is a lot for something that will ultimately read as gigacringe).

If this argument sounds familiar - it’s because we’re living in a digital purgatorial hellscape. Nothing sums up the modern condition like an AI pulling context from “Rick & Morty” scripts and Reddit comments. Whether you’re “pro-NFT” or a hater, feel free to share this scene with people you’re arguing with on Twitter to save time since all of these arguments end up being the same.

Without further ado, here’s “Rick and Morty Argue About NFTs” by OpenAI’s davinci-002

The end

“What exactly do you need a cursed tome that smells like socks for? Anything good in it would have been taken away a long time ago.”

Not wrong. It’s more than that though. When I was small, I was working as a shoe shine in the upper kingdom. Honest work and pretty decent pay as most shoes are filthy. One customer still stands out in my mind to this day. He was a wizened, small fellow with a long scraggy beard and several disheveled robes hiding what I presumed was a frail, chocolate interior. He wore no shoes which seemed to be a bit of an issue considering my line of work.

“Young boy!” I recall the man saying (though I wasn’t exactly a boy at the time - more like a strapping and chiseled custodian of pristine shoes). “I would like your finest shoe shine!”

The old man chuckled to himself, obviously bemused by the joke he thought he’d made. He stood anxiously, likely awaiting some sort of response along the lines of “b-but sir, you have no shoes!”

I didn’t give him the satisfaction. After a quick ocular pat-down, I realized this scruffy grandpa had the same shoe size as myself. I told him to sit down on my bench and he did so, still with a ridiculous grin on his face. I gingerly removed my shoes from my own feet and placed them on the old mans. I probably shouldn’t have considered the extremely putrid state of his toes but had committed to the act.

The smile faded quickly and his face was replaced with a solemn melancholy. I performed a mighty dutiful shine, something I’ve never had the chance to do on my own shoes before.

When I was finished the man hopped off of the chair and exclaimed: “BEHOLD!” quickly dropping his garments on the dirty ground.

“Sir…” I began, before noticing what had been revealed before me. Huge binders of stamps scattered all around me. “There’s more where that came from!” the man said and ran off into the distance… with my shoes.

For years, I’ve devoted my efforts to solving the mystery of these stamp books and their origin. All signs pointing toward the haunted cabin.

Wow! How lucky it is to be a niche full of free-ish incentives. As the rest of the NFT space grows into a horrific nightmare creature full of random animal parts dripping off mutated exoskeletons and dysphoric traced women, the anime scene continues forward vibrant and mostly full of life. (Well, it was when I started this draft at least.)

Since that one article about collecting, the “stamp” game has ramped up and really become a strange force in the anime 1/1 scene. What does it mean? How can I leverage it for success and as a collector & artist what the fuck am I supposed to do with all of these stamps I’ve found myself dropping and receiving?

Sit tight little beans and beanettes, let’s talk about stamps from the traditional sense and explore some ways to spice up the metagame that has already added a lot of flavor to our corner of this environmentally destructive hobby.

Also heads up this is a REALLY long and disjointed blog. I didn’t edit it either so apologies. I’ll owe a real write up on rwx quest some day.

Quick, unedited intro to Stamps

If you’re unfamiliar with bid stamps, the basic zeitgeist is “Hey yo, if you bid on my piece while it’s in auction - you get a consolation prize. A limited edition NFT that commemorates the auction!”. This was first pioneered by Naoki Saito (as an offshoot of his Stamp Book collection) and has become a standard in the anime scene.

People love the stamps. But people also don’t love them. The basic complaints about “thank you stamps” are:

1. Creates false auction volume

2. Creates avenues for sybil attacks

3. Creates nothing of value

For #1, there’s really no guarantee that having a stamp attached to an auction increases the number of bids you’ll get. The popular artists will still get more bids. It may create higher bids faster but generally it’s usually not a game of bid hot potato where someone who only wants a stamp gets stuck with the piece. For less higher profile artists, the stamps printed are usually only 1 or 2.

For #2, there’s really no reason to bid with alts or attempt to farm these things. Maybe if you speculate an artist will become huge, you’ll want to accumulate more stamps but generally stamps have very little value on secondary markets and the cost of the bid is often more than the stamp will sell on secondary. Also, like 98% of these stamps are minted on polygon which makes them a huge pain in the ass to do anything with.

For #3, we need to consider what value is and what the point of stamps are. Stamps are a great tool for creating limited edition runs. The argument could also be… why not just mint a limited edition run. As a collector, I like the stamps because I like the art - it’s fun to have a little piece of memorabilia from pieces I was interested in and that’s the value in of itself. But most stamps don’t do anything. There’s no utility attached (which is totally fine) except for the occasional whitelist access to everyone’s inevitable 10k pfp project (why is it always 10k?).

thoughts on collecting round 2

So, without actually getting too deep into the stamp metagame and game theory - I’m going to talk about traditional collecting in this section.

Trading Cards, Coins, Stamps and Pasion

When I was a kid, I had a really gross addiction to cardboard crack, Magic the Gathering. I mean I was really hooked to this game and over the past 20 years I’ve developed Trading Card Game PTSD from all the poor decisions I’ve made surrounding my various collections over time. My first PTSD was giving all my Series 1 Pokemon cards away when I was in 6th grade (as an act of kindness to a friend). The second was having all my Yugioh cards stolen by some kid at church when I was in 8th grade. The third, ongoing one, is liquidating all my MTG cards every 5 years when I come into a capital crunch. The third one hits the hardest because I collected MTG because of the LORE.

I was obsessed with the Urza and Weatherlight arcs. I made sure to collect every crew member of the Weatherlight. I had my card binders sorted by story elements, not rarities. As a kid, I had to use a trade forum to blindly trust that someone would actually mail me the cards I needed to finish each one of these lore-based collections. It took an incredible amount of time and trust to complete and when I did - I was as giddy as a goose during a Ryan Gosling movie marathon.

My first liquidation when I was 19 was traumatic. All the effort going through school collecting these cards, consuming stories, and going on little quests trying to maximize my binder’s cool factor - gone. Well, all of it was lost except for the memory and the stories.

In present day - I’ve spent a little time rebuilding my lost treasures. It’s been a fun walk down a nostalgic road. But I’m not doing it as an investment. I’m doing it because something inside of me that I can’t explain is compelling it. So, what drives people to collect to begin with?

My grandfather gave me a stamp book when I was kid. I’m pretty sure I thought it was lame as shit. Stamps? Elvis stamps? Who cares. This massive binder of global stamps sits somewhere in a closet to this day. Perhaps this gift was meant to spark the joy of stamp collecting in me but my passions did not overlap with that of my grandfather’s gesture. My other grandfather gave me a shit ton of coins. Same thing - no spark. I failed both of them in carrying on the legacy of the thing they were into. Why was I compelled to collect cardboard, while they were compelled to collect coins and stamps.

I’m sure none of us were into our collections for the financial incentive. Likely the stamps were a physical journal of the correspondence my grandfather had - spurned by frequent letters to people around the world. Similarly, the coins may have been from travels around the world and ultimately both attached to stories created through the process.

When we look at the NFT environment, we do not have such a passion for story telling. There’s a lot of passion for getting rich quick or speculating on what life would be like if we had just managed to be included in the raffle for the shitty bird art with a celebrity name attached. But the primary driver does not begin with passion, it begins with dollar signs. Passion can be built through integrating oneself into a niche or a community. BAYC for example looks like shit and was spawned as a CryptoPunk derivative - with nothing particularly unique about it when it launched. However, I’m sure now there is storied lore and life experiences for those who integrated themselves into the culture its community built from the ground up.

There are some exceptions to the passion rule. But as I mentioned before in the last article about people saying the “don’t really understand art”, the space isn’t really at a place of maturity where the traditional incentive for collecting has become the norm here. Passion must be a forced function to enable the perception of growth for a project in the current environment. Growth in this case is at the very least, a consistent stable ‘floor’. But if we abstract away the financial incentive and focus on the story - maybe growth can mean something more personal.

Besides passion, why collect?

When I was in college, I owned every single gaming console. I owned too many Nintendo Powers. I owned a lot of baggage. This was another collection I built over a long period of time. The initial inception was built from playing NES with my uncle as a toddler. Yep, I’m a gamer and 10+ years ago - I was cringe. I collected whatever gaming and gaming accessory based thing I could. The reason for this was a bit different from my collecting Magic cards. I wanted to show off how pristine my gaming collection was. It wasn’t to actually play the games - I’d already played what I wanted.

When you are trying to show off, it’s about the immediate first impression. Probably has something to do with signaling to your tribes. This ranges from the brand of clothing you wear or the music you blare out your car window when pulling into the parking lot at school. I think the feeling produced by both of the above examples is probably the same. The difference is a CD costs like 20 bucks and a full on SUPREME outfit several hundred. The outcome is the same though - the small piece of self-satisfaction when someone says “Dude, is that [OBSCURE BAND NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF]!” or “Yo, your drip is fire!”. Is the cost differential worth it if the dopamine hit is the same?

Probably - since the tribal signals are different.

For a game collection, there’s a cost premium depending on your motivations for collecting the game.

• I want to play the game: Any copy of the game is good and I will opt for lowest cost option to fulfill this outcome.

• I want to signal long-time ownership: A box is required. Depending on the age, condition may be scuffed. Box signifies a bit more longevity when someone happens upon your collection. A box comes at a premium.

• I want to flex on poors: Near-mint/Mint in box. Comes at a huge premium. The benefit is your obvious superiority over your peers.

A conversation flow for the above.

“Hey dude, are you playing Tecmo Super Bowl!? I loved that game as a kid” ”yeah, me too! let’s play” ---- > *if there’s a box: “*yeah man, check it out” tosses box -------------→ if there’s a pristine box: “yeah i fucking love this game, even have it mint in box. look at this instruction manual. I miss when we got detail like this in games!” ---------------------→ if you have a full wall of boxes “yeah i’m larping as AVGN! motions to wall”

The depth of the conversation train grows depending on the collected piece. Anyways, I sold most of my game stuff - only keeping a few things that I had personal attachment/passion for. I did not feel the same negative feelings that I did when I lost my cards.

Collecting for social signaling is even a huge mechanism in modern video game monetization. Why does anyone spend the time to 100% achievements for a game, or grind for gear in an MMOROG? This drive to signal your cool factor or immerse yourself in a passionate hobby is so powerful - it helps dollars bleed from your bank accounts.

And really the tl;dr here is: we collect for personal passion or tribal signaling. or you collect to speculate with the goal of selling to passionate tribes.

Do stamps actually need to do anything?

No. They don’t need to. Art is art and if you’re passionate about collecting art, stamps = more art. Maybe some day, someone will be passionate about collecting all of the anime NFT stamps. I think though (and this isn’t just a stamp thing) the broader culture in NFT is missing the humanity of physical collecting. I talk about this a lot - bringing that card binder to school and showing it off. Inspecting the items, telling stories about them. Trading for other things, signifying importance.

There’s not really an incentive out there to trade stamps for any reason outside of speculation. This means most stamps just sit in bidder wallets and will likely end untouched/unmoved eventually leading to them being lost to time in abandoned wallets.

How sad.

the inception of rwx quest

In 2017, when I was making NFT art before it was called NFT art - I had a side project with a friend called Lexitoken. The website and whitepaper is long gone (lost to unpaid server bills) - but at its core we wanted to make the ICO ERC-20 tokens have actual use case by giving them properties. We called this mechanic ‘slotting’. Today, a similar mechanic exists called “wrapping”. Here’s the summary:

Lexitoken is a protocol for token standardization. When developing a token smart contract, there are many additional variables you can add to these tokens. Most are created to serve a specific purpose, and that’s cool. But what if I want to use my 1000 BasicAttentionTokens for purposes they weren’t meant for? That’s where Lexitoken comes in. By assigning additional stores of value to preexisting (and future) tokens — we can add value to these tokens and have them utilized across the network. Our main goal is cross dApp gamification, examples including: keys to rooms, weapon power-ups, hidden items, and access to private chats — but we’re sure you’ll be more creative.

As part of this project (and before I was aware of a project called Etheria), Moon and I decided it’d be fun to make a Multi-User Dungeon that leveraged token drops as loot. We named this thing Aetheria. It didn’t get very far. Just some spec’d screenshots and a MVP that is likely lost somewhere on a drive.

We’ve restarted this effort a few times over the years. The last interpretation being a discord engine Moon built to accompany our 10grans community server. Maybe some day, it’ll happen. But the challenge wasn’t the technology side of it - it was the substance of the thing. We were trying to jam a technical solution to a problem into something without knowing what the actual thing was supposed to be or how this solution solves its problem.

This is actually an issue across most of the NFT space. Promises of a game and metaverse at launch of a new PFP project. However, these PFP projects act basically as a kickstarter pledge and very few actually lead with just releasing a game first, that is at its core, fun. Most of these things are just made to scrape capital. When you want to tell a story, it’s probably best not to start by saying “This book will be a movie”. Know your medium and write something entertaining. Focus on the story.

And in gaming, most of the things that NFTs could provide utility for already exist (loot chests, characters, battle passes, etc.) A brave developer will one day release a game first that is fun. Until this happens, there’s a lot of maturity needed to see this space grow.

Inner Circles

The inner circle social club pass stuff is hilarious and ridiculous. I understand it from a psychological perspective. Community tokens like VeeFriends give owners the opportunity to rub elbows with someone they idolize and to connect with like minded folks. And some of these communities actually do well with it. I may not agree with GaryV’s personal taste but as far as what he promises with his community token, consensus is he delivers.

In practice though, most of these influencer-based assets are mostly meant to enrich the creator. 888’s inner circle and most of the other related properties confuse me greatly. In 2021, there was a handful of collectors that spent large amounts buying everything on platforms like Foundation and once they reached a critical mass of audience began to explain how they were going to change the game by transforming things for the creators! Most of this stuff is just fluff and either the platforms failed, the influencer wasn’t consistent with their portrayal of themselves, or they turned out to be Beanie. But what perks do these circles actually provide? Idk. I’m not in one.

BUT

I was definitely inspired by 888’s inner circle. The whole notion of it infuriated me to the point of wanting to riff on it. Combined with the ongoing stamp metagame narrative and a wallet full of ‘ty stamps’ - I decided to try something.

The RWX Quest, Quest Experiment

I have 10 goals that have been guiding this rwx quest thing.

1. I want to give people a reason to collect stamps

2. I want to give people a reason to trade stamps collected from any artist

3. I want to break the hoarding mentality of NFTs

4. I want to challenge the pre-defined meta for ‘thank you stamps’

5. I want to challenge the idea of closed-culture communities and inner circles

6. I want to sell as little as possible and provide as much as I can at no cost to the community

7. I want to draw (For example: I can’t draw without a reason - 2016-2019 the reason was art for articles I was writing)

8. I still want to make this game thing

9. I want to collaborate with everyone through shared culture

10. I want to have fun.

So, with these goals/rules, I did a vague cryptic tweet promising bidless stamps. In February, shortly after the 888 Inner Circle debacle, I dropped ‘bird site’ to everyone who responded to the tweet.

https://rarible.com/token/0xa57dd75b543d014528fd532b152083f29630c615:82364521558075965561629727594070716588746157286547111647522055773779597983745?tab=owners

ethereum://0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5/5.775543014528532e+106

I put an unlockable in it that directed to a website and a discord. Told no one and waited to see what would happen.

Without getting into it in this already way to wordy blog - a lot has happened and it’s been fun (for me at least!)

Right now, there’s multiple ways to combine, redeem, and upgrade the art in the collection. There’s several ways of redeeming rwxquest stamps for nfts out of my collection. There’s methods coming soon for exchange stamps from other artists for artwork in my collection. There’s methods for receiving bid stamps without needing to place bids (reducing the bid meta pileup that happens sometimes). There’s ways to commission artwork from me with the stamps. We have a wiki with leaderboards, halls of fame, and expanding universe stuff.

Stamps must flow.

Upgrades and combination isn’t a new principle. Projects like Ghxsts set a framework for it - but I’m hoping that the shared cultural aspects, ability to share work outside of the specific project, removal of the need to “buy or bid”, and similar can spark something deeply passionate in people.

I know tt’s all very cryptic and I apologize. “The Dark Souls of NFTs” if you will. Basically, if you like my art and like getting stuff airdropped on mainnet (which is what the eth returns on the few character auctions goes into supporting) then you can hold these drops for more things. If you hate my stuff, I want to encourage you to trade it for stamps or artwork you might like that someone else questing owns (or that’s in the vault). If you don’t wanna be assed, maybe someone else will give you magic internet coins for one of these stamps. Maybe it all goes to 0.

And the lore and the world is being built not by me alone. There’s a metagame in which the community tries to break my mechanics and then I try to fix them and we do this dance. The unknowns lead to new quests and new items and new characters. All of it is incentive for me to draw more stuff and experiment. rwx quest will likely stay very niche and that’s okay. With share-alike licenses, the assets and world belong to everyone who shares the passion for the culture that’s being built.

https://rwx.quest/creativecommons.PNG

I would like to make a video game out of it in the future and finish that M.U.D. but maybe someone else will beat me to making an rwx quest game - and that’s okay.

I’m eager to see how the rest of the stamp scene evolves. Maybe rwx quest will inspire a few people - but it’s okay if it doesn’t. Simultaneously, but potentially not in parallel, I’ve seen a few artists have started to provide similar game mechanics and utility for their stamps, creating things like redeemable store credits, lore, quests, and leveling. I Think That’s Cool. There’s a reason things are naturally evolving to this direction. If these fucking VC’s and grifters aren’t going to actually build anything that’s shared and innovative - then its up to the artists to own this, no matter how underground you are or may feel.

Let’s combine our ideas and art and worlds. Let’s bring the feelings of personal passion from traditional collectibles into our digital stamps and art. The metaverse doesn’t have to be a licensed brand shithole.

Let’s push everything forward even if it’s in secret and only for a handful of people.

The NFT Battle Pass

Battle passes (BP from here on) are the absolute worst monetization thing to exist since loot crates. They create FOMO for gamers and force them to sacrifice fun for completing agonizing challenges in exchange for experience points that level the pass up. Each pass usually has 100 different rewards and gives players an unlockable item each time they level up. They work on the premise of seasons so that means you’re never truly done grinding battle passes. You can pay money to skip levels in most models. After a few seasons, most gamers burn out on the game because grinding a battle pass sucks.

Let’s look at a few mechanics for an NFT based battlepass.

Model 1: The Season Pass NFT

In this model, gamers purchase a battle pass (BP) like usual. This BP is an NFT and is sent to the player’s wallet. When the player levels the pass, the NFT evolves as well. The items unlocked from the BP are not individual or unique NFTs. The unlocks are tied specifically to the BP NFT level.

Unique mechanisms:

An NFT battle pass will allow users to sell or trade their battle pass. Why is this good for publishers?

1. Allows players that burnout to exchange their work for currency or other assets they value more.

2. Publishers can add a royalty to sales and collect additional profit from the sale or transfer of the battle pass.

3. Players that miss a season can purchase older season battle passes and get access to cosmetics they didn’t earn.

4. Publishers don’t have to rerelease items which is good because when they do this it demoralizes gamers who spent the time grinding the battle pass to begin with. It is considerably easier to just purchase an item to save 40 hours than to grind out challenges. Reward players who grind and protect developer goodwill by not reissuing older seasonal items.

5. Royalties from battle pass sales can go directly into server costs, extending game server shelf life and creating a deep playerbase which is rewarded for both playing the game and participating in the economy behind it.

6. Players who purchase levels on their battle pass will treat it like an investment and be able to enjoy playing the actual game without worrying that their purchase will disappear once the game dies.

7. As the BP isn’t stored in the game database but is instead attached to a player’s wallet, the BP shelf life can extend beyond the game’s shelf life. For example, the battle pass can be imported into future sequels for unique rewards or into other games released by the same publisher.

8. Licensed cosmetics (like Marvel skins) can get a split from secondary sales without the publisher needing to worry about lengthy contractual commitments.

Model 2: The Itemized BP

In this model, the BP is an NFT. The rewards are also NFTs. The BP itself acts as a badge of achievement, while the drops from it are individual assets that are sent to the player’s wallet. The publisher can make the BP non-transferrable to incentivize players to purchase it while making the actual item drops tradeable.

Unique Mechanisms:

1. Items dropped can be traded or sold by players on a secondary market. This means that players can offload cosmetics they don’t like, while keeping ones they do like. Higher leveled items become more rare as less people complete the full battle pass and reward players who have grinded it out by creating a naturally weighted economy.

2. Players who don’t purchase the battle pass can still have an opportunity to buy or trade for an item they really want.

3. Each item can have a royalty associated with it and the publisher can receive dividends for players’ economic activity.

4. Items dropped can be leveraged in future games or across partner games. Strong battle pass rewards will keep players farming your game and smart leveraging of assets from competitors games can create interesting opportunities to vampire attack (or steal players) from your competition.Example: A level 100 Fortnite Assault rifle asset is held in a player’s wallet. Microsoft decides to allow anyone holding this asset to import it into Halo Infinite. In Halo Infinite this asset is represented as a SPNKR rocket launcher that shoots glitter and confetti and says “HOW BOUT THEM APPLES” every time a player is killed.

5. Licensed cosmetics (like Marvel skins) can get a split from secondary sales without the publisher needing to worry about lengthy contractual commitments.

Make a good game, players will stick around. Create a vibrant economy and players will stick around even longer.

The NFT Digital Game

We’re all used to purchasing our digital games through various online marketplaces such as Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store, Playstation Store… whatever. In the past, these games exist as long as the platform hosts the data in their server. Over time, as consoles phase out many of these games are lost to time. NFT’s can’t really solve that server hosting longevity model but what a game that’s purchased as an NFT can do is allow some interesting mechanics that fix problems publishers have with second-hand resellers like GameStop. Pesky physical copies can be sold used without the publisher receiving any sort of returns. To publishers, they don’t like it! That’s why we’re stuck with so much goddamn DLC and loot crate mechanics these days because just selling a game for $60 bucks isn’t enough to cover the cost of development. Let’s look at what a NFT game cart can do.

The NFT Cartridge Model Mechanics

An NFT Cartridge would basically act as a form of DRM. The player can download and play the game as long as the NFT cartridge is held in their wallet. No pesky CD keys required, no database of user accounts needed, no tricky password recovery. A player can login to the game by signing in with their web3 wallet and developers can leverage systems like ENS (Ethereum Name Service) to allow players to have a shared name across all their games - just like a username on steam.

Mechanics

1. The NFT game cart should be allowed to be transferrable and sold on secondary markets. “Why would we allow someone to resell a digital game?” the publisher may ask. Well Mr. or Mrs. Publisher, if you allow for second-hand sales through NFTs, you now can get a cut of each ‘used’ game sale. Program a royalty into your NFT game cart and hell make that royalty up to 50% of the sale. Suddenly, you’re not losing money to GameStop (unless they figure out they can bypass your marketplace by doing an over-the-counter sale… but you’ve already figured that one out by making your game NFT only tradeable and sellable through your centralized NFT platform and other platforms that support your monetization models).

2. You have the opportunity to generate goodwill to the players that bought and held your game. Let’s say the XBOX 17866 becomes antiquated and all my games tied to it are just sitting in my wallet… waiting. When you release the XBOX 299999, you can scrub player wallets for game carts and give them access to their old games once they have been properly ported to your new console. While it may seem like this could kill the profit from selling the same game twice - you’ll quickly realize that because the actual number of game NFTs issued are capped at the shelf life of the old console, the only means to purchase one of these old games would be through secondary markets. Secondary markets that allow you to take a cut of the secondary sales. Suddenly you have an opportunity to recreate ancient antique game collecting in a digital space and rarity of games will be based on how popular they were at the time of release. It’s actually very cool, publishers, and gamers will be very happy to have the chance at owning a piece of history.

3. You can start thinking of cool designs and instruction books again. Cartridge design will be a huge flex for people who hold them. NFT unlockables means you can toss a whole bunch of neat shit like instruction manuals into the game NFTs. You could even do different versions of the game like you do now with deluxe versions holding access to art books or rare in-game items that transfer when someone trades it.

NFTs give digital assets the same properties as real-world items, allowing people to actually own a digital item and exchange it in the same way you can any physical item. Exploring this with NFT game cartridges would be huge. Platforms like Steam already have a community marketplace and adding actual games to these marketplaces would be easy-ish and a little better than the DRM systems we have now.

The Character NFT

Since the very beginning of MMORPGs, there has been a black market for selling characters that have hit max level. Publishers and developers do backflips trying to disincentivize this economy but smart publishers will lean into it.

Issuing player characters as NFTs may create many interesting mechanics.

Mechanics:

1. When a player gets bored they can sell their character. When a player gets bored of their class they can trade their character for another. Burnout is going to happen to most players at some point but creating a character that is owned by the player can reward that player for the time investment by giving them a chance to sell it to players who are looking for the opportunity to harvest time they didn’t earn. Like all of the above, character sales can have built in royalties that go to the publisher.

2. When modern technology makes your game feel old, NFT characters can be used to import into the next iteration of your MMORPG. Need a graphics overhaul? Need to build a new engine to support THOUGHT CONTROLLERS? Want to get your playerbase to try out your other MMO that is a space one and not a fantasy one? Just scrape your players wallet and carry their character’s legend over into the other game. Simple metadata can go a long way.

3. Record character achievements to the NFT. Let’s say a player has played your game for 10 years. There’s a large amount of experiences they may have had! When a new game comes out, they start from 0. Their legend is expired. By supporting character NFTs - you can record player achievements directly to their character and if you allow importing that character into a new game, it can share some of the player’s alternate-life history with others, revealing how dedicated they are. I’ll talk more about conventional achievements in the next section.

4. Fuse multiple character NFTs into new classes or characters. Let’s say your game has incentivized the need for multiple characters. If you have a class-based system, you can build quests into the game that change both the character NFT and player class by completing certain actions. The old NFT evolves. Some players may choose to not undergo these quests in order to keep the benefits of their old class, while others may farm multiple characters to give other players a way to change classes and properties without overwriting their own character. I don’t know exactly how this will go but you have smart game developers working for you. You figure it out.

Achievements as NFTs

Achievements have been around since at least the XBOX360? I think that was where they were introduced. Anyways, achievements are cool for flexing but they don’t really DO much outside of just show you sunk a ton of time into a game. Let’s add some utility to achievements.

1. Unlocked achievements are tied to a user’s wallet. That means that no matter the console or platform, people can see ALL of a players achievements in one place.

2. Achievements can be used to access hidden content or unlock items in games. If I completed all of the achievements in Donkey Kong, perhaps I can secure a rare Donkey Kong car in the next iteration of Mario Kart. Perhaps 10 years down the road, I can get a crown for DK in Donkey Kong Country 47. Perhaps my Quake achievements can unlock levels in Doom Everlasting.

3. Burn achievements for in-game currency to make other purchases, level my battle pass, or prestige to get a more rare version of previously unlocked achievements. Since we’re flexing with these things, why not make them upgradeable or redeemable. Steam badges have various levels that require multiple cards to level them up to show even more blingy-ness. There’s a myriad of ways to incorporate similar mechanics with way more utility into an NFT version of achievements.

4. I guess you could sell them to people who don’t want to do the work to earn them but I’m still on the fence about whether achievements should be transferrable.

A few other considerations:

1. NFTs can be used as an incentive to play unpopular games. Example: If you play 2 hours of “Shitty Unpopular Game”, you can earn an NFT AWP in Counter Strike.

2. NFTs issued in one game as a gun can be represented as literally anything else in another game. My AWP I earned for playing “Shitty Unpopular Game” can be leveraged in the Fortnite Metaverse as a fancy car with super boost. Cross-game economics is not a bad thing and I think it will have a reverberating effect for game shelf-life.

3. NFTs in wallets of in-game assets can act as an advertising vehicle for the game. If a player has a huge stash of Warcraft weapons in their wallet, it may incentivize their followers to pick the game up.

Finally, I’m just going to remind publishers that all I want is to be able to trade a Fortnite skin for a CSGO knife and that if you don’t restrict how these things are transferred it’s probably actually a good thing. I know it seems counter-intuitive but NFTs don’t excel because they are a form of DRM or because they restrict visibility into something. NFTs are more likely to excel with the more social sharing they have.

You have the power to transform your industry to empower your players. Nut up and do it because someone is going to do it before you.

Have a battle pass on me. It’ll give you access to all the great content I’ll probably write in the future which will also be available to read without the battle pass because it’s a joke.

edition://0xDF5b5ee15CC96ba7d0CB6BD9b2c0fc4417ab6445?editionId=2991

*Game cartridge template borrowed from here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nesclassicmods/comments/5pfqb8/nes_black_box_photoshop_template/

Shinjurou, have you ever heard the tragedy of DickButt_Futax69? I thought not, it’s not a story the influencers would tell you. It’s a shitposter’s legend. DickButt_Futax69 was a verified collector on Twitter, so powerful and so rich he could use a tweet to influence the artists to mint meme art on Foundation… He had such a knowledge of memeology & market cycles that he could even pump or dump NFTs he’d never even touched.

The blue checkmark of the Influencer is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his engagement, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught the artists everything he knew, then his followers cancelled him in his sleep.

Ironic. He could save others from poverty, but not himself.

I mentioned in my last article I wanted to host a panel called “no one knows shit about anything”. So, we’ll continue the theme here because I have the privilege of being able to preach from a self-determined position of knowing nothing while being forced to contend with the obvious ego that comes from spitting out 3,000 words that comes with delivering a sermon.

Ego is a giant pain in the ass. It creeps into everything the larger it grows. It may make me a bit more irritable when sitting in traffic or leave me completely flabbergasted by a pundit’s ranting on a talk show. It’s hard to remove yourself from it. Social media only serves to validate your ego’s desire and each time that little number ticks up on your follower account, it’s easy to feel emboldened and declare yourself an expert in whatever thing you’re currently on a tear about.

An ego can drive artists to ask why a collector has listed a piece of their work incredibly low or drive a collector to validate their decision by creating a ‘new rule’ in a space where rules are clearly ill-defined. Let’s talk about this because when we are making up rules on the fly, there are going to be a lot of confused people who mean well that may adopt the wrong protocols for themselves that will inflict massive psychic damage on them over time.

The Tragedy of the Collector Hot Tub

Shinjurou, there once was a party held for the many collectors that exist within the metaverse. A large pool was rented out by the king of the metaverse. The king wanted to see it filled with a large volume of liquid assets and hoped to tax the invited collectors through the platform he offered them to display their wealth and wisdom. The king invited artists from around the realm to watch this party take place and spent months constructing an elaborate stadium around the pool from which the artists could watch the collectors share their insight.

However, the day before the party, only 25 collectors arrived. Furious, the king asked where the rest of the collectors were and demanded their presence lest they forfeit their lives.

“More collectors?” DickButt_Futax69 calmly replied. “This is all of us.”

After considering things for a moment, the king relented. It must be true. These 25 collectors are the only ones he could recall having ever been present during his travels and so a hasty solution was constructed. Instead of using the large pool, the king put all the collectors in the hot tub.

This seemed to be a decent solution. The stadium seats were very quickly pushed back several miles and when the artists arrived to witness the party, they could see the silhouettes of the collectors completely filling what appeared to be the promised large pool. In truth, it was the hot tub and being pressed so tightly together, the collectors became very heated.

“By the king’s decree, what is it the collectors demand to see!”, the royal social media manager tweeted through their megaphone.

“Draw a frog!”, one said.

“Draw a cube”, said another.

“A waifu, a waifu! We demand a waifu”, replied a handsome, red-haired vagabond.

“I would like to see more 3D rendered bald spacemen staring off into an infinite abyss from a space station”, the Irish one pronounced.

After each reply the crowd would burst into a round of applause. The collectors who received the loudest applause felt emboldened and a few promised large returns to those who immediately acted upon their requests.

The crowd quickly dispersed to accommodate the famed collectors and what remained were only a few, semi-bored artists drawing cats who weren’t paying attention to begin with and were only there because the king said they had to be.

As the artists got to work, presenting their work to the collectors - a few of them saw massive financial rewards. However, after a short time - the only returns others saw were “looks great”. As the final hour approached, a mysterious stranger entered the hot tub.

“I have 400eth and am looking to buy cats”. And so they bought all the cats from the artists doodling them in the nosebleed bleachers while everyone else was left with their rendered bald spacemen and frogs.

I’m afraid the cat markets will be fully operational when the other collectors arrive.

Do you know what happened next, Shinjurou?

A lot of confusion.

The moral of this story is that there is a small number of collectors dictating the direction of the space and the entrance of a new collector can force a complete reversal of the expected rules.

Droll December

December is a joyful season. A season which forces people to liquidate all their speculative assets in the pursuit of gift-giving and tax harvesting. A season of vibrant shades of red and green -- but mostly red candles. The season the Christmas bear comes down your chimney and beats the shit out of your portfolio because you’ve been a very naughty child flipping shitcoins and jpegs on the internet.

When you’ve been crabbing through the holidays, emotions can flare up hotter than a Joe Pesci Yule-log.

What do you want for the holidays? Perhaps a beautiful Adidas ad in your wallet or maybe a nice derivative of a Nike-acquired product that definitely wasn’t planned to be acquired by Nike from before the very announcement of the product line. But dang, you’ve spent the past 6 months slamming that high gas tx button that your liquidity is running lower than a carton of eggnog someone shoved to the back of your refrigerator in December 2017. How do you squeeze out enough magical internet money to make sure you aren’t missing out on this seasons holiday offerings?

If you’re a popular artist, you get busy. Your supply comes from you and if you can grind for a few days, you can offer some nice holiday sales on a higher volume of pieces created specifically for the collector looking for some last minute holiday presents.

If you’re a prolific collector, you min-list 75% of your collection at prices 500% below floor in the hope that some less financially depressed collector comes in to relieve you of your tax burden and speculative artwork that you weren’t even sure why you collected since you “don’t really understand art” to begin with.

What happens when this collector brings this holiday cheer to this popular artist? We get to witness the beginning of a festive celebration of ego!

The floor is imaginary. - shiomu.eth probably

The reality is that most artists that are participating in NFT space aren’t pulling in a massive amount of capital from sales. A majority (if they have even made a sale) are pulling in a modest amount from small collectors that focus on a niche they like or who are copy trading high-profile collectors hoping to resell a piece they’ve collected to that whale.

In my last piece, I wrote about how 1ETH=1ETH is probably a terrible rule to practice for new entrants to this space. People should work to become crypto-native over time but to demand an artist list each new piece at a higher and higher price will usually cause a stagnation in sales. 1ETH = 1ETH is one of those things that collectors like to push because it helps secure the value of their investment. There are a lot of things artists should consider when releasing work. I previously argued that consistency is more important than laddering and I still stand by this argument. However, an artist with a high volume of mints over time is likely to inflate their supply on the primary market and will make it difficult for a collector to sell on secondary for more than primary list price if there is a sea of unsold primary listings (with more coming every day). Consistency allows collectors to account for release frequency when viewing an artists profile and make a decision based off of all available transparent information. A shift in consistency creates new unknowns that can burn previous collectors.

That being said, the longevity of this space and the value of these assets are still a major unknown. A whale selling to a whale isn’t always done in a vacuum and a large sale gives the perception of an increase in value and can cause a mad dash from small collectors to scoop the floor on an artist who recently had a big sale. If that floor is majority held by one of the whales involved in the sale then they can make up for the purchase on either side. If the artist hasn’t lowered their floor prices, it makes it more lucrative for the collectors during one of these events.

So, as we’ve had months of collectors making certain demands on pricing towards artists - it’s no surprise that high profile artists may hold high profile collectors to a similar set of standards. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.

edition://0xDF5b5ee15CC96ba7d0CB6BD9b2c0fc4417ab6445?editionId=2969

“We have ways of making you talk”

Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that you’re a collector that has just listed a piece of art on secondary markets for below the floor price of the available primary pieces. Let’s say that the piece of art you listed was from a semi-popular artist. Let’s say the artist DMs you saying you listed it too low. For sure, you own it so you can do what you want with it. Do you choose to:

• Ignore the artist and just do your thing

• Try to work a deal out with the artist in private

• Start a crusade on Twitter

• Some of the above

The high-profile crusade that has been cruising around the past few days is a very specific situation and is a unique, intimate situation between a collector and an artist. Because of the number of people jumping in with their own commentary and pushing the crusade forward, it may seem like this is a recurring problem. I want to talk about some of the commentary I’ve seen and then pause for a moment to share what other artists and collectors should consider as takeaways.

“If the art was worth what you’ve listed it at - someone would have already bought it”.

This is a somewhat valid criticism. In a bull market, it is very easy to determine where demand is for a particular artist or their works. Last time I mentioned that art should probably be judged based on a piece by piece basis instead of “this was created by this artist and their floor is X eth so all their art is valued minimally at X”. In a bear market (which we’ve been in since October) the assigned value of pieces from popular artists tends to drop and the secondary action on most 1/1’s dries up completely. A bear market presents a decent opportunity for collectors to secure pieces they find have value at optimal price points. If they are collecting to hold forever, that’s great. If they are collecting as a speculative investment - it is a gamble that could pay off if/when the bull market returns and if the artist they’ve collected continues to participate in the space.

As we are in December, I’m not convinced that ‘true value’ will be possible for a majority of secondary listings. Remember: value is derived from the buyer - but when there are 0 buyers, it is difficult to discern value.

To test this theory, I made a series of secondary listings on previously high demand artists. I’ll do a separate write-up on these experiments but my key takeaways from these experiments seemed to solidify a few things.

1. Collectors will not likely be able to sell anything on secondary while primary listings are sitting unsold

2. Secondary min-listing may trigger bids but the odds of hitting your desired sale price is going to be pretty low

3. Eth volatility will result in lower primary final sales totals during bear cycles

4. Don’t min-list if you don’t want to be approached by both artists and their collectors

5. I have a suspicion that secondary sales of 1/1’s on platforms like Foundation are going to be difficult in general because collectors aren’t fans of giving other collectors more ETH. I’d urge platforms to allow collectors to set a royalty split on secondary listings higher than the minimum threshold.

In short, it is true that if there is demand then someone would have bought it. But we are a small hot tub of collectors and if we’re all semi-cognizant that there is a ton of uncertainty on when coin markets will “go back up”, a low probability of a short-term flip, and a chance we’re short on liquidity then it’s unlikely we’ll purchase on secondary unless the piece is insanely low priced.

“Just buy it back”

In the totally hypothetical situation outlined above, we are looking at a popular artist and a popular collector. As someone who has bought back pieces I’ve sold both on primary and secondary, I understand the value add of ‘just buying it back’. But I don’t think this should become one of the commandments of participation. Most people in NFTs aren’t high profile but instead are smaller creators doing their best to stand out.

Let’s say you are a small artist and have only sold a few pieces. Right off the bat, you have not made enough ETH from your sale to even buy the piece at the price you originally listed it at. After commission fees and mint costs, you are not breaking even on a sale.

On Foundation, the average mint + list cost the past month has been between .02 and .08. Let’s just say it’s the best case scenario where it costs only around .0125 for a mint cost and list cost. You list a piece at .45 and it sells. After sale you receive .385 after fees. After applying the costs to mint/list - you’ve made .35ETH.

While it’s unlikely one of these small creators would even so brazenly call out a collector that lists “under value” - we have to consider that most influencers are followed primarily by these small creators.

Let’s consider the notion that no one knows anything (including me) about how things will play out in this space long-term. This likely means that everything anyone says is mostly irrelevant to anyone else reading it. Things are not so black and white. Dealing in absolutes is great for engagement but not so great for longevity.

What should we consider?

There’s nothing wrong with having these conversations about the etiquette behind things like listing pieces or flipping them. At the end of the day, the assets are the owners to do what they will with.

But I think we should consider how we approach these conversations. Snowballing a minor criticism into a major witch hunt seems a bit scary to onlookers.

For artists:

Finding a community and niche is important. Talked about this before. But you can’t really choose who ends up owning your artwork and that should be something you come into the space recognizing. The more popular you are the more critical lenses will be shined on how you interact with those around you. It’s okay to feel burned by someone but usually the best approach would be - try to engage and then if it doesn’t work out the way you want, just end the conversation. It’s not worth the dramatics that come with engaging with others of equal ego. When we talk about consistency, that isn’t just in pricing, it also means in the way you interact. You don’t have to be afraid of tarnishing your image if the way you’ve interacted is consistent. Like I’ve said before, act authentically and you’ll find others you resonate with. Remember, the only thing you are left with after the money is gone is your reputation - and that’s not something that can be solved with economics.

For collectors:

You’ve spent your money and you can do what you want because of it. However, this is a space that is ever-changing and the methods that work for you will not work for everyone. I don’t think everyone needs to hold hands and skip along in peace and harmony but consider for a moment the implication of burning an artist at the stake over a trivial interaction through DMs. We’re all in this tiny hot tub together and all it takes is one new collector to throw around a shitload of ETH to change what we think is the norm. If we want to eventually grow large enough to enter the king’s pool, we should consider there’s a lot to learn from egos outside of our own. Remember, the only thing you are left with after the money is gone is your reputation - and that’s not something that can be solved with economics.

NFTs are not just one group of collectors or artists. There is no one rule that works for every subculture within the NFT space. Just like the internet, there are various groups with different interests and different values. Those values are reflected based on the pieces bought and sold but they are also cemented in the interactions we have with each other. Remember, the only thing we are all left with after the money is gone is our reputation - and that’s not something that can be solved with economics.

Shin, don’t forget the tragedy of DickButt_Futax69. Though he could influence markets and rally people, after the goodwill was gone - he was left with nothing. A legacy squandered for the sake of cheap engagement during boring bear cycles. Also Shin, do you wanna buy some deathsticks?

I’d like to thank Shiomu.eth, Morello.eth, KaijuKing779.eth, abdulaziz.eth, and ligaratus.eth for their perspectives. I’ve borrowed some of their thoughts they’ve shared as framing in this piece, though they may or may not agree with the way I’ve interpreted them. I’m appreciative of the ongoing conversations.

I’d like to thank shinjurou.eth for the Featured Image artwork and being an ever-engaged apprentice of the dark side. 50% of the proceeds from this article will go to Shin.

Hi, you may know me or you may not. My name is robek and I’m an artist and collector of NFTs. As the former most important collector on Foundation (I was recently displaced by a man who likes to fish in real life and not just metaphorically like me), I thought I’d finally write out some of the thoughts I share often in chats around the web.

I’m not qualified to write this and my view of the NFT marketplace is very different from people who are here collecting to get rich or make speculative investments. I spoke at a panel during NFT.NYC in the beginning of November (2021) and while the panel was not the topic I asked for, the sentiment of my original panel idea will exist here. Originally, I wanted to speak on this topic: “Nobody knows shit about anything”.

I definitely don’t know shit. But if you need a quick intro to me, I guess watch the five minutes above.

With that out of the way, I’ll remind you that the following smattering of ill-defined thoughts are not financial advice or therapy or really anything of substance or value so please leave if you’re expecting a roadmap for any of that. Though, that was mostly posturing so read on.

The Artist:

I didn’t mean to start collecting NFTs. When I re-entered the NFT space in 2021, I expected to participate for a month and then disappear. You can read those original thoughts below. The basic gist is “Artists are guinea pigs for web3. I can’t collect all art. I will support the artists I collected for as long as I can. Thank you for participating in this experiment.”

https://twitter.com/robek_world/status/1384582115509948416

Things change. I’m stuck here now forever because I’ve had a really great time actually getting to connect with artists and builders from all over the world. I still think that artists go through a lot by participating in this great experiment. It takes a lot of risk to enter the space. Toxic greed may kill it before the glory days of digital spa’s and metaverse dive bars - but I’m hopeful we’ll get there.

My focus is on artist exposure and growth. My mindset on how to achieve this has changed pretty dramatically from March.

The original flavor for pricing

If you are an artist and you’ve connected with me early on, I talked a lot about two things:

1. Laddering

2. Community

Community is really still quite important. Most discovery is either going to come from artists and collectors connecting via social channels or discords or wherever and having conversations, while sharing work and process. For the artists that don’t get discovered through this -- there are collector networks that share art discovered through this method and this expands reach for an artist. The most valuable thing an artist can do for discoverability is to engage authentically with the people participating in the space. Be yourself. You’re going to find others who vibe with you if you present as yourself.

There’s two ways to grow. Top-down or bottom-up. People think that a blue-tick on Twitter or someone with a billion followers are the people they need to attract. This isn’t correct. You can spend your entire life trying to create works to appeal to a specific collector or speculative investor and never be seen. It’s incredibly difficult to approach this space from a “Top-down” approach. In reality, bottom-up is going to work out 99% of the time. Meet people that share your principles and vision, collaborate with them, join their circles, and grow upwards together. You can set the trends through the power of friendship.

Laddering is a different story.

The ladder approach is basically, “I list a piece for .10 eth. It sells for .20. I list my next piece for .15. It sells for .25. Rinse and repeat.” I used to be a huge fan of this approach because in a bull market it seems to work. It signals to collectors that there’s some growth and competition required to secure a piece and if you’re getting frequent sales, sure it looks great on your profile.

But as we’ve shifted into multiple bearish NFT cycles and as I’ve connected and met many more insightful collectors than myself, I’ve come to realize that the ladder approach is more likely to cause long-term stagnation for an artist than growth.

Let’s break this down a bit.

Value as a metric

Money isn’t real. The USD is just a piece of paper and cotton. It is assigned value because a large amount of people believe that it has it. This is basically all markets. The more people that see ‘value’ in an asset, the more the hivemind simulation solidifies what that value is in the reality we experience.

But NFT markets are young. Value fluctuates. Let’s say you entered during the Beeple saga. Some insane marketing collector decides to drop 100 ETH on your piece. AMAZING! Congratulations on your sale. So now is your “floor” 100 ETH? No. It’s not because your next piece just sold for 3 ETH to some speculator hoping to sell it for 100 ETH. The first buyer just launched a music business or an NFT platform and they aren’t in the market to actually buy more NFTs. They’re in the market now to sell you what they own or sell you on their product.

Keep in mind, I’m talking primarily about auction mechanics here. Though you can apply some of these principles to set price listings.

I’m going to continue… but first I want to say what I say to all artists before moving forward. Never list something for less than you believe the time you spent creating it took. Undervaluing yourself is possible. But as the price of ETH continues to go up we need to have a serious conversation about 1 ETH = 1 ETH (which we’ll do in the following section).

The ladder approach seems to only work for artists that have had significant volume of sales. This isn’t the majority of new participants. Even the ‘popular’ artists still set a consistent listing price after they’ve hit a solid floor.

Reminder: The floor isn’t real. The floor is not the value of an asset. Value is derived from the buyer.

I think one of the most important wake-up moments for me was Naoki Saito’s entry into the space. I believe he’s transformed the Japanese NFT scene and I think his approach to NFTs will continue to be a bit of a roadmap for JP artists entering (as well as many others across the East). Saito-sensei has a very realistic perspective of both the marketing requirements involved with NFTs and the reward/game mechanics. In my circles, the term “Stamp” has become a very huge incentive for participating in an auction. A stamp is a reward to participants in an auction and it has changed how I think about laddering. Not because the reward mechanism exists but because of the price action it creates at the beginning of an auction.

Saito-sensei also closes an auction very differently than Western artists. I believe he has a very solid grasp on “value” as a concept. Instead of saying “Thank you to the winner, the piece has sold at XYZ eth!” he says “Sold! This work has been given a value of XYZ by ABC!”

https://twitter.com/_NaokiSaito/status/1462286125611978758

This is a significant difference in mindset.

First of all, Saito-sensei lists each piece at .10 ETH. He is a popular illustrator and teacher but the cult of personality does not impact the price of the reserve. As a bonus, he airdrops “Thank you” stamps to all bidders. This creates a new game mechanic on top of just the regular auction. Bidders have the chance to collect a piece simply by participating or they can try to create scarcity by very quickly increasing the bid from .10 to something much higher (like 4.2069). So, not only does this create Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) on the piece being auctioned. It also creates FOMO for the reward stamp.

Stamps aside, setting the minimum or low reserve is the best way to see a realistic perspective of your real floor value. If you’ve listed a piece months ago using the ladder approach and it hasn’t sold, you’ll either never sell it or you won’t sell it unless future sales volume increases to a point where your old listings are seen as a bargain. Both of these outcomes can be incredibly demoralizing.

Reminder 2: not selling within a few days of listing is not failure. Art shouldn’t be treated like trading cards. This isn’t a race. Burning unsold works usually only works as a FOMO mechanism but doesn’t often result in a sale. Front page mindset is engrained in us but as a lot of discovery happens through social channels and networking - it shouldn’t impact artists too much. On some other networks maybe it makes sense to refresh mints to ‘boost’ front page discovery - but on Ethereum I don’t think it’s worth the cost.

I am NOT advocating for every artist to list at minimum reserve (.10) or even need to add incentive mechanisms like stamps. I’m advocating for consistency. Here’s a short case study on an artist that’s recently come onto the scene in the end of October. Their name is Benangbaja. I’m a big fan of their style and consistency in work. I’m also a huge fan in their consistency of reserve prices.

They’ve listed a large number of pieces in a relatively short time frame. Some collectors will argue this devalues work. I don’t think that’s the case if you remain realistic about expectations. Benangabaja’s not a unique case in this practice and there are others that follow this strategy - but I’ll focus on them because it’s fresh on my mind. They’ve listed each of their static pieces at .30 ETH. As of now there is currently one piece available in their inventory which is animated and listed at .50 ETH. The reserve price point is fairly accessible for many people already participating in Ethereum NFT markets. When you take a look at the DATA - you can see some interesting things happening.

• Out of their 20 sold pieces, only 6 sold at the reserve.

• The average value across all the pieces lands at .48652 ETH

• They’ve sold every piece.

When you start to pull back and look at total sales/volume it becomes a bit more granular on where “value” is defined. An artist’s value is not the average sales point - the idea of a floor price for an artist is a bit wonky. Each piece is assigned its own value by the collectors. Overtime these valuations will go up and down depending on artist output, volume of collectors, and volatility of ETH markets. Defining one’s true value is probably an exercise in driving yourself crazy.

There’s an added bonus to lower reserve listings in that more bids can benefit things like “front page” discoverability. Many trending algorithms are based on number of bids. If you set a high reserve and don’t usually have bid wars - discoverability is most likely going to only happen through social promotion.

The final point I want to make here is that if your goal is to sell - selling more often for “less” seems to be more effective than selling less often for more (at least in the scheme of growth visibility. I know many collector’s tend to like to see a lot of sales on a profile).

1 ETH = 1 ETH

It doesn’t.

There’s a heavy weight on the shoulders of artists participating in NFTs that is put on them by the diverse pools of collectors that exist in the space. In general, I’d advise against trying to accommodate a majority of collector’s complaints. Some insight may be useful for strategy but the artist should never feel obligated to appease some lunatic on a tear. I’m going to define a few of the collector archetypes but know that I’m probably missing some here.

1. The speculator - Sometimes “understands” art, often doesn’t. Buys art intending to resell it later. May copy trade, compulsively lists if flip doesn’t happen fast enough.

2. The investor - Buys art for long-term hold. Similar to the speculator but much more patient and considered in how/when they list.

3. The supporter - Buys art from artists they like. May list later or sell to fans of the artist in a considered way.

4. The fan - Fan of artist. May not always have the same level of capital available. Usually buys lower listings or editions. Needs accessibility to participate.

5. The marketer - Buys a lot of art very quickly to boost social profile. Does not consider implications of purchase. Stops buying after a few weeks/months and begins to try to sell their new audience something.

6. The psycho - Buys a lot of art and no one knows what the fuck is going on.

7. The agent - Buys art directly from artist to resell to any of the above at a premium.

8. The artist - you know what you do.

As many collectors entered from the coin-trading side of things, the quick flip and heavy focus on ROI is a pervasive part of the current NFT marketplace. This is a reality that we have to contend with. Long-term and as NFTs become more mainstream, the reality of the situation is that huge insane purchases will become less frequent as the economy shifts to become more accessible for more people (but we’re some ways away from this I think). Because so many have come from a trading background, there’s a lot of expectation for a ROI on an artist’s work. This is why you see things like:

• “artist’s roadmap” Yeah… you probably don’t need one. just be visible and engaged in the space. SEE: COMMUNITY

• “1eth = 1eth” This is great for the speculative collector who doesn’t really understand that the floor isn’t a real thing but it really doesn’t make much sense as ETH continues to go up. It especially doesn’t make sense to non-ethereum natives who are just entering the space. I’d recommend for new artists to grow to the point where they can comfortably create work and work on becoming ‘crypto-native’ during this phase

• “burn all but 1 of your editions! you shouldn’t do editions!!” This doesn’t’ really make sense to me. The person who bought your 1 edition asking you to burn the rest isn’t going to buy out the rest so why would you burn them? Collectibles (think baseball cards, toys, stamps) like profile pictures or “everydays” are often priced lower on primary market. Collectibles are a good way to allow people with less capital to still collect work from an artist they like. Editions work similarly to collectibles though they will typically have a smaller supply (10/10’s - much more akin to fine art prints sold at a comic convention or art show). As you grow in visibility, it may not hurt to consider editions.

• “721 is optimal PROTOCOL” It’s not - it’s just one of many standards. These people are insane.

• “XYZ IS THE BEST MARKETPLACE - YOU HAVE TO BE THERE”. This is nuts as well. I think most people obviously have their favorite platform and there’s obviously niches that perform well on some of them - but discoverability isn’t going to improve just because you’re suddenly on some platform that someone else says is amazing. There’s a marketing problem in the space. Most artists aren’t marketers (which is why it’s so important to connect with a community, because that doesn’t require you to be writing pitch decks) and to be honest there’s a major collector shortage as it stands. If you aren’t selling on one platform, you probably aren’t going to sell on another.

  Also, FND, MP, KO, SR all have a 15% primary commission fee on sold work. I see a lot of complaints about Foundation specifically having the 15% but it’s there on all of them. Perhaps capitalism and competition will eventually force them to change this % - but for as long as people tout one or another as the place to be, they’ll keep this power. The gas cost to mint on platforms differs based on contract complexity. I’m more forgiving of the contract costs. Without naming names, a few of these contracts are really robust and can help artists out of jams if shit hits the fan.

• “Don’t reduce price on listings”. There’s not really an issue with this if you haven’t sold and are looking to. Where it becomes a problem is if you have a habit of lowering reserves over time on most pieces. Collectors are savvy. They’ll wait until you’re desperate and have reduced. Provenance looks a bit better when cleaner. Sometimes by not reducing price, it may increase the psychological value of it. It’s a mixed bag, man. Remember, as I’ve repeated, consistency is really important!

A poor conclusion

The current pool of collectors is still quite small. For artists participating, patience and engagement are important tools. Don’t fear the popular illustrators and artists entering the space. With them come new collectors. Don’t fear the collectors in the space - some are insane but there’s a growing number of people collecting that care about the artist. I’m not an authority - a lot of what I’ve said here I’ve learned over time from actively listening to collectors and artists.

To wrap up, I think this has focused a lot on auctions but I believe similar principles apply to static listings. Just because a piece has sold on secondary for 100eth doesn’t mean you can’t list new work at .50 ETH. Consider themes across editions, collectibles, and 1/1’s if you choose to explore these. Markets are fluid. Cycles exist in asset markets and trends exist in fads and fashion. There is very likely artist cycles as well. Sometimes things slow down and we can learn from these periods by trying new things. Mechanics are fun sometimes but don’t overextend what you can do. You’re the best person to understand your own limitations. NFTs should be an opportunity to explore the work you want to make and experiment with and not just another Artist Alley at a comic convention where everyone is selling prints of Spider-Man.

okay. i’ll do another one of these maybe some time. ily.

other collectors with more nuanced and intentional perspective than me (not a comprehensive list - there are many more):shiomu, palis, kaijuking779, justaziz, morello, kiwi, omar, impostor. I’ve learned a lot from them.

if you want to learn more about me, my friend JL Maxcy wrote an amazing article through curating my collection:

https://mirror.xyz/jlmaxcy.eth/AfG89SPhq_Mw0WxDiM3VdFRFd_9RRIjDcexArUNUhcA

My friend Adam McBride interviewed me early in the year about my participation in 2017 and now:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1uX7STLEeQmt7rm2NRVpHL