NFT’s: Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Behodler?

A little while ago Artur Sychov – founder and CEO of Somnium Space – joined a discussion about what’s bad about NFT’s on The Defiant, the popular DeFi news channel. A must watch for everyone who is interested in and cares about the NFT space.

The at times juicy and slightly heated (yet friendly) discussion was hosted by Robin Schmidt (Head of Video & Multimedia). He was joined by the following guests: Artur Sychov (founder and CEO of Somnium Space), NFT enthusiast @Zeneca_33, Abby (Co-owner & artist TopDogBeachClub), and JCrypto (Founder of CryptoDads).

There was consensus that utility is required for sustainable projects. Artur advocates NFT’s with intrinsic, built-in utility that allows the creative community to expand upon in order to create their own projects, over time generating a self-sustainable flywheel of innovation. While he definitely is in favor of creativity and experimentation and loves the NFT space, he is also very conscious of the current proliferation within the space.

The weight of the NFT projects is going to the scammier side… creativity is amazing and people should experiment. But if people truly believe in what they do they should probably experiment without directly linking the monetary value to it.
Artur Sychov

The market is immature, that’s true….it is not regulated, that’s true. In the crypto world we always say we hate regulators, regulation is bad, centralization is bad. And you know, it’s true, but then we as the NFT industry – and I am talking to everybody including myself….we have to be the ones that are responsible, we have to show the way. If we are responsible projects – if you are a responsible project….show the way, try to be that responsible project. If we as the industry close our eyes…and we pretend not to see bad things happening…regulation will come. You bet it will come. It will come faster if we do bad things and it will come slower if we do good things.
Artur Sychov

If you are super fortunate enough to raise millions of dollars with your project, then hire people, create real jobs…bring real utility, give back with real products to the people. Real things so that people can actually enjoy them for the next 10, 20, 50 years.
Artur Sychov

The other guests, including host Robin, raised some interesting viewpoints as well. For instance, the notion that sense of community, belonging and identity in and of itself are utility. Utility that can be build upon in the form of various initiatives, benefits, etc. This is exactly what both Abby (Co-owner & artist TopDogBeachClub), and JCrypto (Founder of CryptoDads) were hinting at in connection to their respective projects.

It’s an interesting way to look at it. In a way there is nothing new under the sun, people have always wanted to belong and have created communities ever since they started roaming our planet. Long before NFT’s came about, people paid to get access to clubs that provided a platform for networking, just to give an example. And where people come together, interesting things can start to happen.

The question is how sustainable and resilient communities that center around NFT collectible ownership are. Just owning and flexing your collectible may be cool in the short term and may give you the feeling of belonging to some sort of ‘exclusive club’, but unless backed up with some real, longer term benefits, NFT collectible communities may disintegrate as quickly as they started.

Some communities may thrive and TopDogBeachClub and CryptoDads may very well be among them as these projects appear to take their community building efforts very serious. Others will wither however. Why? Because it was never about community. It was about feeding off people’s natural desire for belonging. And fear of missing out. To earn cold crypto. Fast.