/r/PixelArt has banned NFTs 😮
As a subscriber to this subreddit, this mod post kind of caught me by surprise. I believe it does speak towards the normie's perception of NFTs and do believe it tends to be negative at present.
It reminds me of the ICO boom during the 2017-2018 bull run which, due to the proliferation of pump and dump schemes and rug pulls, had given the general public a bad taste in their mouth about Initial Coin Offerings which become often associated with scammy behavior which, at the time, would seem to be a fair assessment.
Anyways, here is the quoted post. I'll leave my thoughts below and encourage you to do the same in the form of a comment. The more the merrier! 🎅
Due to popular demand, all NFT related posts are now banned from /r/pixelart.
This includes posting art made for NFTs and asking to hire people to make NFTs.
Why?
- it's bad for the environment, without having any justification aside from making money
- it's a pyramid scheme that can hurt artists who attempt to join
- its a speculative investment that will most likely go the way of the beanie baby
- they're often low effort, high quantity pieces that aren't interesting to view
- far too much art theft for the purpose of minting nfts
- pretty much everyone hates them and they never get upvoted anyway
As a separate reminder:
- Promotion of other pixel-art related products is still allowed, and does not constitute spam (unless it's done too frequently)
- Be civil, even if you don't like what people post. If it breaks the rules, nicely inform them of that, and then report the post/comment.
On the first point about the environment, that is clearly false and we know this having NFTs on Hive which is not based on proof-of-work. Even with the critique against PoW, you don't hear too much about how much energy traditional banking systems use across the globe.
If I recall, it was roughly 269 terawatt hours per year. This is more than the cost of the Bitcoin network; however, I am not sure we can say the same for all PoW networks collectively so maybe it's a fair point not considering the decentralization perks vs centralized banking.
As for the rest of the points, feel free to weigh in but I think this just about sums it up.
Remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the same can be said for perceived value. One can make an argument that the value of NFTs relate to their novelty which makes sense. Another source of value is holding the copyright and being able to monetize them.
Recently, I purchased my first Ethereum based NFT from Flurks by StoneToss collection
Made a modified version. Can you guess the movie this one is paying homage to???
As shared in a recent post of mine, the political cartoonist known as StoneToss told us that of we wanted to say print and sell our Flurk on tshirts that they would have no problem.
Indeed, the ability to purchase intellectual property rights and monetize them is a selling point that the Pixel Art subreddit community may have not been aware.
The caveat is I am not sure there is yet a legal precedent established for the digital transfer of a copyright that has been upheld in court. If you are aware of any such case, please share for our knowledge. Even so, I think it would be reasonable that such a precedent will eventually be established... But I am not a lawyer so DYOR as always.
That's pretty much all I have to say on this one. Where do you think the ire and disdain for NFTs is coming from? Sure, we can admit that, like any space in which money is involved, there will be scammers but that doesn't mean there isn't legitimate use cases.
Some people just need to step back and see the big picture and consider how NFTs can empower artists to share and profit from their work in unique ways that were previously not possible.