Answer: they don’t
When all else is said and done, an NFT is basically only a ‘cataloguing gimmick’, a digital ticket or catalogue card, listing (or associated with), an artwork (or other object) — but not even remotely offering a solution to the problems of marketing, authenticity or ownership.
(Basics: what is an NFT ? NFT stands for ‘non-fungible token’, which is a piece of cataloguing data stored in a blockchain (and linked to cryptocurrencies like Ethereum) and which, once recorded, cannot be altered. It amounts to something like a unique digital listing in a digital sales ledger which, underpinned by an open-access blockchain, is theoretically incorruptible. The digital listing points to — or is associated with — a quite separate object in the digital or physical world. All this is just a very complicated way of saying that an NFT amounts to a digital ticket linked to an item housed elsewhere in a ‘gigantic open-access left luggage storage facility’.)
This short article assumes that you might have been misled — as I was — into thinking that NFTs are going to revolutionise the marketing of artworks on the internet, specifically by offering them for sale, supposedly seamlessly and efficiently, in some sort of transparent new ‘digital arena’, and in the process somehow bypassing the usual gatekeepers (ie galleries, salespeople and other pesky intermediaries).
Unfortunately, this is not remotely the case, and the whole NFT frenzy (as currently playing itself out) is really just a fad, and of very little interest to serious artists and creators (or collectors). This does not mean that vast sums of money will not change hands because of the sale of NFTs, or that the blockchain concept is itself of no value, but simply that it makes no difference to the unavoidable necessity — that all artists will always have to face — of having to find ways to promote their own work in an increasingly competitive marketplace. All the usual gatekeepers — despite the arrival of NFTs — are still in their accustomed places and are not going anywhere, anytime soon. NFTs no more facilitate the promotion of an artist’s oeuvre than does setting up a website or uploading a video to YouTube: you still have to find a way to alert people to the existence of your product in the first place.
Let’s suppose you’ve created a cute little digital animation. How do you monetise it? You’ll need to put it up for sale somewhere, and the most sensible option would be to list it in a digital marketplace that has substantial traffic. But every other digital creator will already be doing the same thing, so you’ll start off as just another unknown item in a sea of listings. There will be ways to advertise (ie get noticed), but they will involve proportionate expenditure, and deliver no more certainty than advertising on Google or Facebook. This is exactly the same basic problem you encounter trying to promote yourself in any of the more traditional art marketplaces, whether on the internet or in a physical space.
The other mythical idea surrounding NFTs concerns their supposed ‘uniqueness’. Yes, each individual token in the blockchain is unique, but it cannot of itself establish the uniqueness of the object it is linked to. As was said before, an NFT is only a digital ticket in a universal left luggage warehouse, and it only points to something else — it can’t incorporate the ‘something else’ into itself; at least, not to the level where replication of the object in question becomes impossible. Even an NFT associated with (and pointing to) the Mona Lisa or Salvator Mundi can’t prevent a variety of disputes about the authenticity of the objects themselves (or even who their legitimate owners are!).
You might insert the code for your ‘cute animation’ into the blockchain itself — though this would be an additional cost — but someone else could still come along and copy your work, replicate it infinitely, and even claim to have created the original. Proof of originality would then involve the same tortuous difficulties as encountered in any legal dispute, and your apparently unique NFT would be of no decisive use in establishing provenance, authenticity or ownership.
(There is however a rather nice plus to workaday, non-contentious NFT resales, in that the original artist gets a percentage of every NFT resale in perpetuity, so no need to feel cheated if the price skyrockets. But how much reselling of NFTs is likely to go on is a separate question.)
So what does an NFT boil down to, in artistic terms? At this time of writing, only to an ever-diminishing opportunity to market some digital knickknacks on the few sites which specialise in such things: opensea.io, rarible.com, nifty gateway and others. How long the current gold rush will last is anyone’s guess, but it’s likely to be faddish, and most who invest in trying to sell there will be sure to lose their money.
As of today, an NFT is really only a ‘digital ticketing gimmick’, attempting to resolve logistical problems which are probably irresolvable. A digital sales leger can’t dispense with the need to promote and advertise; nor can it prevent disputes about the objects it catalogues.
Ben Zotto James Surowiecki Nic Carter Allen Gannett
Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://medium.com/illumination/nfts-how-do-they-improve-the-marketing-of-artworks-96bb58d718a2?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency
