NFTs growing the art world

An ever increasing number of artists, art critics and collectors are hearing about blockchain technology and the concept of non fungible tokens representing works of art. However, both blockchain and NFTs can be confusing to those new to the blockchain powered art scene — not to mention why and how it can bring value to the art world, or why it doesn’t have to destroy our planet in the process.

An art critic investigates

A famous art critic and Pulitzer prize winner recently reached out on Twitter and asked what blockchain and NFTs were. To help him along we shared one of our articles introducing Phantasma Smart NFTs with him.

Since his interest is genuine, he followed up with two more questions which deserve good and honest answers, as they are questions most people will have at some point.

Why would a pretty poor, pretty old art critic have any use for all this Bitcoin-type stuff?

The truth is that neither artists, art critics or collectors have any need for the Bitcoin type stuff. However, we all certainly need the underlying blockchain technology and the evolution of digital assets and ownership represented by Smart NFT artwork.

To put it bluntly, this is the paradigm shift empowering artists all over the world to create and share their art, giving them access to collectors and an audience they would otherwise never reach. It’s putting food on the table for artists who would otherwise never have found an audience due to various circumstances preventing them from capitalizing on their artistic skills.

Blockchain based non fungible tokens — such as Phantasma’s Smart NFTs — provide provenance. You can prove the creator and every single owner that came before you. It provides revenue for the artists for every subsequent sale of their work between collectors. And it opens up creative possibilities that never existed before.

And doesn’t it devour ginormous amounts of energy?

Bitcoin certainly devours ginormous amounts of energy to produce its blocks due to the extremely complex calculations required. Ethereum does too unfortunatly.

However, those are not the only platforms out there — there are other, environment friendly ones. We don’t like the enormous carbon footprint produced by these legacy so-called “proof of work” blockchains either. That is why we are using different algorithms to build our infinite chain of blocks. Our platform has the energy consumption of a couple of laptops — which we feel is quite eco friendly considering what we offer to the art community sharing their work on our platform.

To the Future of Art,

Your Phantasma Team