What Role Might NFTs Play In Future Communities?
Moving beyond punks and bored apes, NFTs have the potential to play a transformational role in future communities.
On this episode of the Cohere podcast, we (Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas) discuss one of the hottest, potentially most overhyped topics right now: NFTs.
For the uninitiated, NFT’s (Non Fungible Tokens) are unique, digital, verifiable (blockchain-based) digital asset that records an exchange of value. In turn, the NFT itself (which records an exchange) can be exchanged. Said another way, NFTs are a “deed of ownership to a digital item”.
Much of the discussion from the past 2 years has focused on NFTs related to digital art - Crypto Punks, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Beeple are notable examples, but just scratch the surface of the massive volume of activity. The NFT market represented a staggering $23 billion in 2021.
The core of our discussion in this episode focuses on moving beyond financial speculation, what role might NFTs play in future communities and digital networks?
From an organizational perspective, there are many questions: Do organizations have the digital competence and skills to distinguish between a short-term trend (that might turn out to be a scam) and a long-term iteration of its digital activities?
In this episode, we discuss why NFTs are a phenomenon, and the information and questions community builders may want to consider, including:
NFTs are all the rage - what is the source of this phenomenon?
What do we need to KNOW about NFTs?
What issues do NFTs solve?
How might NFTs be understood, used, managed, and/or created in an online community setting?
What questions remain about NFTs?
Punk It!" auction from Feb 23, 2022. (Sotheby's)
Key Quotes:
“We’re in a discovery mode right now with NFTs and what is possible. And that’s always both a really exciting, but also challenging time for makers, creators, and those trying to make sense of the underlying structures that need to support this development.”
“The securitization of things like mortgages and repackaging, and rebundling led to the 2008 financial crisis where the securities themselves were thought to have some kind of intrinsic value or at least purported to have some type of intrinsic value. And so if you really start to separate the intrinsic value of a work from the record of exchange for that work.
That's where things start to get really weird for me.” - Bill
”However, what I do think it (tokenization) does is, it does put some skin in the game for community members, to maybe have a bit more rigor behind what is being contributed.
I think specifically of communities of practice, who are trying to build and refine and document what they are doing, why they are doing it, how they might combine these various skills expertise, experience and new and different ways to further the practice.”
- Lauren
”The creator use case and digital art, artifacts from digital paintings to video, to audio, and 3d models, that sort of thing. I mean, you can think about any kind of content that's exchanged within a community. Having tokens against that creation.
I helped develop AREA for Autodesk, which is a community for 3d artists in the film and games industries. There was all this amazing, rich content being shared every day from 3d models of movie scenes to video, to the actual workflows within the product. So any of that could be tokenized, right?” - Bill
“What are we doing to address the problems, not just recreate that experience right. How is it different than the systems that we have today?
I think that there's this element X that we can't quite put our finger on right now. We know it's exciting. We know that there's opportunity there. We know that this is something that is going to fundamentally change the game, but to what degree, in what aspect? I don't think we've quite gotten there yet.” - Lauren
Resources from this episode:
‘Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing’ by Jacob Goldstein
NFTs, explained - Mitchell Clark / The Verge [Article]
The Missing Link Between Web2 and Web3: Custody - Mahesh Vellanki / Future [Article]
Here are the top NFTs with Utility - Supplain [Article]
THE CLIMATE CONTROVERSY SWIRLING AROUND NFTS - Justine Calma / The Verge [Article]
Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs - Dan Olson [Video]
NFTs: Key U.S. Legal Considerations for an Emerging Asset Class - Jones Day [Article]
$1.7 million in NFTs stolen in apparent phishing attack on OpenSea users - Russell Brandom / The Verge [Article]
WAVELENGTH AN ONCHAIN GENERATIVE ART PROJECT OF 1111 PIECES / Wavelength NFT - Kaleb Johnston
NFT platform certified by the British Museum - La Collection [Article]
Digital Art, NFTs, & the Metaverse - Rex Woodbury [Blog]
Metaverse Working Group
During the show, we mentioned convening a small workgroup for discussion, learning and sensemaking. If you would be interested in participating, please fill out the short form here to be considered.
