Ryuu-Van-Draco

Hey there

As there is currently going some turmoil through artist communities regarding some stuff called Cryptoart/NFT art, I want to throw a couple words of mine into that topic.

First explaining really short what this stuff actually is all about and what the actual problems are.

I hope I understood the basics correct, I'm kinda sure I did (Feel free to correct me on something). I can not explain the complete details of that as it's kinda hard to understand for me as I also just learned about it.

So, what is NFT/Crytoart, what does it do?

- People upload art to a NFT (Non Fungible Token) art trade platform.

- It gets associated with a thing called NFT, which is a unique identifier for that piece and is basically equal to a certificate to a real life painting. Also equal to a text file you got with a digital piece of art you bought or anything that proofs $artist made it, $buyer owns it/a legit copy.

- To participate in this stuff (sell/buy/bid in auctions) people need a crypto currency. It's mostly Ethereum when it comes to NFT stuff right now.

- A system called blockchain is in charge of all these actions, assuring everything works properly and can't be altered in any way

- This system does not prevent art from being stolen or abused. It does not mean you own any copyright. It does not mean you own a unique copy of something. It basically doesn't differ from any other art sale. All you get is a token (certificate) associated with a digital artwork that you can call yours. You can also sell it again.

And which problems does this system have?

- In fact, art thievery and sale get boosted to a new all time hight as bots crawl through peoples galleries and sell their work. Even screenshots of tweets or any media content in them are being thrown onto the NFT platforms.

- Many NFT and probably all big cryto currency platforms like Ethereum or Bitcoing rely onto the Proof-of-Work prortocol to ensure everything recorded on their blockchain is as it should be.

- PoW requires a ridiculous amount of processing power and with it energy, causing an even highter CO2 pollution. Hence why there are mining farms worldwide, good graphic cards are unavailable and whatnot. They are needed for this whole system to work.

- Using PoW relying platform, the process of creating NFTs and minting your art this way, getting bids in auctions, having sales and any other action is causing environmental damage.

- On some estimates, a single crypto tranaction may eat as much energy as an average US household does in a single day. Creating 6 NFTs more than some people manage to use in a year.

- Regarding Ethereum relying platforms, people who upload stuff need to pay a gas fee which directly goes the Ethereum miners.

- On a positive note, Ethereum plans to replace Proof-of-Work with Proof-of-Stake which is energy efficient to a level of making mining farms obsolete. It's technically more difficult than PoW and still in its early stages. Eventually other Crypto platforms may follows once its proven being just as good. There also are already some less known networks existing relying on PoS.

My opinion?

The fact that it makes art thievery worse than it already is, is reason enough to not support it.

I don't know how well these platforms are moderated and if DMCA strikes are somehow possible. Even if, they may care as little as ebay and Amazon do which are already a pain in the ass. Or as devArt, to name another dumb example when it comes to handling art thievery at its worst.

Also people can just steal stuff again, just as it's already happening. Just that everything becomes even easier since it's all about digital files on huge platforms. Means setting up a bot could be the only thing some people do. How well that works do we see when looking at all these scalpers.

And yeah, that this crypto bs mostly is a waste of energy and hardware riight now, is another reason why I can't support it. It may change, but not soon. If hardware becomes afforabale again? Who knows. Greed is limitless.

At the end, a warning:

I mentioned already that even Twitter content gets stolen and sold. People do that by commenting with a Text that contains @Botname and something like 0x0123456789ABCDEF and probably also Blah.eth.

You should instantly block this person and that bot. Apparently these bots may have pages where you can undo that grab, but I have no idea how well that works. At best, ban these bots and people before they can even grab your stuff.

https://twitter.com/NighteStudios/status/1369238001138737160

Blocklists:

https://twitter.com/ZiggyVertigo/status/1369414612760854530.

https://twitter.com/imbitchespetme/status/1369811474294730756

Keep an eye on: #NFTBlocklist

This system of grabbing stuff on peoples request and adding it into a NFT platform can basically work on any page. Be it FA, devArt, Inkbunny, etc. Just the way it's made work is different.

Hope I could give you a non complicated look into this.

It may be a good idea for those only releasing their art there, and it's basically these people who highly defend it (besides botters...), but the consequences of it is overshadowing that.