edition://0x972e96586B56B7d99e89e6e1838a8bF8D1e8ac70?editionId=0

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You likely fall into one of these categories:

• What’s an NFT?

• NFTs are bullshit.

• NFTs are a breakthrough technology.

Whichever it is, I hope to offer some perspective for you to further consider your position.

Let’s begin.

1/ Attribution

The world runs on social contracts.

The first mental building block for understanding this technology is to think of it as a digital signature of authenticity. An immutable record of something, stored on a global network that doesn’t have a single point of failure or authority.

The frequent response to this is that you can simply download the image misses most of the point. For digital art in particular, this is a feature, not a bug. The work can be copied infinitely, the difference now being the original creator can capture some of the equity they create.

A tangible example, I tweeted the artwork for “NFTs, explained.” on March 22, 2021.

18,078 likes, 3,269 retweets, and 4 million impressions (at the time of writing). Hundreds of right-click save reposts without attribution.

No different than the thousands of images I’d tweeted before. I’d given up trying to directly monetize my design work after failing to sell prints the year before, and used twitter to post work to generate interest in education products.

Then I minted it as an NFT.

43 bids with a final sale price of Ξ74, now listed on the secondary market at Ξ500.

ethereum://0x3B3ee1931Dc30C1957379FAc9aba94D1C48a5405/12012

2/ Money

Is the above example going to happen every day? No.

Is it indicative of a changing tide in how digital commerce will be conducted? I think so.

Pouring time and energy into making things when the only measure of cultural significance is the number of likes in a Twitter or Facebook database.

Have these technologies increased creatives’ access to opportunities? Absolutely.

Is the final iteration of the creator economy trying to get a tweet to go viral so you can get 2% commision on a drop shipped projector? I hope not.

ethereum://0x3B3ee1931Dc30C1957379FAc9aba94D1C48a5405/110325

3/ Power Laws

Technology massively distorts outcomes.

It would not be fair to write about these markets without addressing the advantages that consistently accrue to the winners.

The other side of that argument is that exponential outcomes mean you get many more rolls of the dice.

ethereum://0x3B3ee1931Dc30C1957379FAc9aba94D1C48a5405/94538

4/ Productivity

You’ve likely seen charts that illustrate the acceleration of trends that were here before COVID that have now gone parabolic.

Working from home, investing in digital assets, buying things online, etc.

As automation continues to shrink the requirement for people in the physical economy, the digital economy expands as a collective immune response.

We joke about getting paid to play video games, but that’s what a good portion of remote jobs already are (albeit excruciatingly boring gameplay).

ethereum://0x3B3ee1931Dc30C1957379FAc9aba94D1C48a5405/62499

5/ Network Effects

The last point, the internet is a coordination machine that doesn’t care where you live, what school you went to, or how your DNA manifests physically.

You are a node in a network. You’re rewarded for your ability to create, communicate and coordinate.

ethereum://0x3B3ee1931Dc30C1957379FAc9aba94D1C48a5405/20577

10,000 provably unique avatars.

0.08 ETH to mint on April 30th, 2021.

I bought Ape 5207 on May 2, 2021 for 2.5 ETH.

According to rarity tools, this is the 330th rarest token in the BAYC collection.

The cheapest comparable ape is now priced at 69 ETH (at time of writing).

BAYC represents a massive shift in creative IP, allowing holders to create and sell derivative works of the apes they own.

In their language:

iii. Commercial Use. Subject to your continued compliance with these Terms, Yuga Labs LLC grants you an unlimited, worldwide license to use, copy, and display the purchased Art for the purpose of creating derivative works based upon the Art (“Commercial Use”). Examples of such Commercial Use would e.g. be the use of the Art to produce and sell merchandise products (T-Shirts etc.) displaying copies of the Art.

So, here’s the experiment.

69 editions of a #5207 derivative, modified to ensure there’s no confusion, priced at the BAYC original mint price of 0.08 ETH.

↓

edition://0xaf89C5E115Ab3437fC965224D317d09faa66ee3E?editionId=290

Each edition of this NFT covers one family’s emergency needs for a month. (scroll down to buy 10 at a time)

Funds are routed directly to [care.org]

Funds Sent:

8/18/21 — 33.824 ETH / $103,992~ (view tx)

8/19/21 — 5.04 ETH / $16,238~ (view tx)

8/21/21 — 5.684 ETH / $18,079~ (view tx)

8/23/21 — 2.212 ETH / $6,891~ (view tx)

Funds sent directly to care.org.

edition://0xaf89C5E115Ab3437fC965224D317d09faa66ee3E?editionId=184

edition://0xaf89C5E115Ab3437fC965224D317d09faa66ee3E?editionId=186

Donate fiat here.

Token #3384

Memes are stuff. Mimetic desire is movement.

On January 25, 2021, $GME looked like 4 meaningless characters on a screen.

On January 26, 2021: a movement of 92.71%.

$GME meant something.

It represented the desires of thousands, then millions. Behind the stock ticker were people looking to other people, wanting what other people wanted.

Desires aren’t static; they’re mimetic. They rise and fall on the strength of others’ desires.

The memes are just along for the ride. The memes are code—short-hand—for the desires.

The price of memes are a signal. And the signal that they’re sending is this: people want what other people want.

Down to the nth circle of hell, or to the moon.

We’re wanting.

Token #3385

The Identity Flippening is happening: identities are being shaped more online than offline.

Because we’re mimetic, each of us is a mirror to other people just as they are for us. We see ourselves in relationships. Including digital ones. 0’s and 1’s.

In this ethereal, Ethereum-fueled new space, the mirrors look differently than they did in school.

They’re digital and they’re dark.

We can look through this glass, darkly, and see whatever we want to see; whatever the wanted wants us to see; whatever the wanter wants us to be.

That’s a threat. It’s also an opportunity.

Let the digital modeling of desire begin.

Token #3386

Value isn’t in the eye of the beholder; it’s in the eyes of the other beholders beholding me beholding, and wondering why.

Value isn’t subjective; it’s inter-subjective. It’s generated in the space between people.

It’s me looking at you looking at me looking at a $12 million stuffed shark and wondering why not 13.

The scene-setting that Sotheby’s and Christie’s do—the valet service, black ties and mimetic martinis—only work through the organ of the eyes.

There’s an inner eye, though, that works in our new digital auction houses. It sees everything. It feels everything. It has no need for bright lights or the sound of the gavel.

It might seem unclear who the auctioneer is in this space, but I’ll tell you who, or what, it is: mimetic desire.

Lots of charts that looked like this:

Screen time, through the roof:

Remote work. Ecommerce orders. Zoom minutes. Retail trading volume. Digital art sales.

The list goes on.

All accelerations of trends, nothing particularly surprising given the circumstances.

What is difficult to plot on a chart is the proportion in which our identities are shifting from offline-first to online-first.

Physical status symbols are of no utility if you aren't going outside.

If the internet is where you get your culture and build your relationships, it's also where you signal your status.

Video game designers have been printing money off this insight for much longer than it's been in the covid-induced zeitgeist.

Fortnite was making $2M a day via in-game purchases on the app store when it launched in 2018, selling infinitely replicable lines of code that changed the appearance of an avatar.

Add non-fungibility to the equation, supply drops and demand rockets.

On Monday, Larva Labs (creators of now infamous Cryptopunks) sold ~$72,976,613 of their project Meebits, 20,000 unique 3D avatars with various degrees of rarity (with secondary market sales of single tokens already reaching 420 ETH ~$1.3m at time of writing).

Let the non-fungible status signaling begin.

"A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." — James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)

Infinite games. Long-term games. Positive-sum games.

Not too long ago, if you'd have asked me to explain what any of the above meant, I'd have no idea what you were talking about.

Now, I play them every day.

“No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others." — James P. Carse

I can't claim deep technical understanding of Web 3.0, decentralized finance, or what a smart contract can and can't do, but the people who can are building things that are changing the way the world works, and redefining opportunity for us all in the process.

From platforms that are creating new markets for creative work and new mediums for creators, to the ground up redesign of every component of global financial infrastructure — the transition to open, trustless, and permissionless networks will turn us all into players of infinite games.

The ability to build social and economic connections by participating in markets of our own design is only increasing (thank you, Mirror).

To encapsulate this historic transition, I minted a single edition Visualize Value piece:

In the spirit of infinite games, the proceeds of the auction will be redistributed evenly among the ETH addresses that have supported my work to date. Thank you all.

Token #3039

I hope you enjoy this piece, and more importantly — experience what it represents for yourself.

To infinite games.