What are NFTs? for artists

NFTs are art in digital. Each one is a memorable art piece stored in the Internet, namely in the blockchain. NFTs are bought with cryptocurrencies, mostly in Ethereum, because of its smart contracts. This is a rough description, but enough to give you and idea.

NFTs have many advantages:

  • they are immutable – no one can change or alter them. They doesn’t decay with time.
  • they are authentic – digitally signed by the author.
  • belong to one person – its address is stored in the blockchain as any transaction.
  • can be easily transferred from an owner to the next – so it can be digitally traded forever.

To own an NFT, is to hold something valuable. As with regular artworks, their price can raise when the artist passes away (not being possible for him to do more art). Holding and NFT is a guarantee that your artwork is authentic, and that will prevail with time.

There is plenty of information out there about NFTs. Even when I dislike being amazed by high sales, I share this video:

After this post, I was introduced to the side effects cryptocurrencies can have to the environment. After some research I found articles stating that carbon emissions are not the best for these technologies. However there are solutions to this obstacle. My blind beginning was in the Ethereum blockchain, which is the most common, but turned out to be inefficient. And there are white alternatives other than Ethereum, like Polkadot or even Polygon. My preferred one is the Algorand Blockchain, founded by MIT professor Silvio Micali, which uses a Pure Proof of Stake algorithm. In this ecosystem, Gas Fees aren’t as extreme, so a regular artist could register many artworks at a decent price. More importantly, its Pure Proof of Stake algorithm make it more efficient, white label and friendly to the environment.

I am still in the process of uploading my NFTs, I have done a few of them, available at algogems.io in the @jampaintings profile:

And this is the only one I had already frozen in Ethereum at opensea.io

View at opensea.io

https://JAMPaintings.redbubble.com I get 30% commission

What Are NFTs, Anyway? One Just Sold for $69 Million.
“Nonfungible tokens” and blockchain technology are taking the mainstream art world by storm, fetching huge prices. We explain, or try to.
By Josie Thaddeus-Johns, The New York Times, March 11, 2021