This is just factually incorrect. I don't know why there's so much confusion here... it's the creator of the NFT that controls where the money goes, not the creator of the artwork. I don't know why people think that it's the artist that gets the money--that doesn't make any logical sense--how would a system like that even work?
If it's minted by an agency that helps creators do marketing, and the agency gets the creator to say "Yes, this is a legitimate NFT created on my behalf by this agency, which has been very helpful to me in understanding NFTs, I don't understand these fancy computer things," why would the value be zero?
(This exact scenario plays out all the time in the real world. People bought "Taylor Swift's" album Fearless, which was authorized by her and contained her actual voice and songwriting and paid profits to her and was in all senses legitimate, and paid well over zero dollars for it. And then over a decade later she tells her fans that she doesn't control it and she's recording her own version of the album actually owned by her.)
See https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/cover-story/7348551/... for more.
The question is how you prove that provenance if a niche artist has created an NFT on a niche piece of art. (And, honestly, most of the people who would want to create NFTs are going to be in this category.)
Now imagine an agency whose job was simply to create a digital signature on a work that indicated what they had done to prove a particular piece of art really was produced by the artist who then goes on to sign the NFT. If the agency has an established reputation, then that signed NFT has much more solidly established provenance than an unsigned NFT. Of course that agency has non-zero costs to establish provenance. And adds a non-zero amount to the value of the NFT.
What then, can said agency reasonably charge the artist for this service?
An NFT has no more value than a JPG.
I'll longbets anyone that says otherwise.
Is this because you don't have interest in it, or do you have a true justification of this?
I'm willing to take this bet. Just like art, 99% can be bought for $1 at a garage sale, but there will be the 1% that has value to someone.
You are betting against the generation who spends massive amounts on video games costumes, and puts more value into their online image (instagram) than real life image, not finding value in a form of digital scarcity & status. I find that hard to believe.
If you wanted to support the artist, wouldn't it be faster, easier, cheaper, and more reliable to support them directly, through Patreon or something similar?
I personally think NFT's are silly, but there's zero argument to be made that they aren't supporting the artist. The artist minted them in the first place.
That's completely false. Anyone can mint an NFT. Artists have minted some of them, and other NFTs are created without the artists' permission.
I don't get why people are saying this when it's so obviously false, like, it does not pass the smell test for basic credibility.
Counterfeits isn't relevant to the discussion here. It's like complaining that tipping a server doesn't work because the cash might be counterfeit. It has nothing to do with the main point.
And yet plenty of middlemen exist for podcasts, too - Earwolf, Stitcher, yadda yadda. Sure, barriers to entry trend toward zero, but that doesn't mean everyone's going to see what you're selling. Many people will need to partner with someone who can help get their shit in front of people who want it, and those partners are going to want a cut.
Record labels, Instagrams and Etsys will show up to the NFT party in spades.
The good thing, compared to traditional markets, is that this is something that can be (loosely) enforced with smart contracts, the % rate is flexible, and the current NFT royalties are typically far better for the artists (eg: 10% NFT platform fee instead of 50% gallery fee).
But with galleries in the real world (where artists are “represented” - and the model that NFT marketplaces are emulating), the artist will receive royalties on sales.[1]
[1] - https://www.dacs.org.uk/for-artists/artists-resale-right/in-...
There's nothing weird or misleading about it, and it's got zero to do with renting.
It's simply like a real estate broker commission, gallery commission, or whatever.
The concept of a commission has existed for a long, long, long time.
Except that its not at all like that. You pay a commission to someone who helped you sell something - they did work to help you sell it and you compensate them. Paying an automatic comission fee to the artist upon sale makes no sense. What are they doing to earn that commission? You already paid for their art. It makes no sense to pay again. What this is cannot be called a "comission".
I can see a situation where the artist is paid in total a very small fraction of the total price the art was sold for. Eg in the situation someone brought up where an artist sells a painting for $10,000 and then a few years later its sold for $1 million, I can see the artist maybe getting 10% of the margin between those sales (eg 0.1*(1 million - 10,000)). But even that is dubious to me, since a sale already took place. It just seems really weird to me and I think it has to be justified further than just "this is good for artists" or "artists need more money". Certainly calling it a commission is not at all accurate.
That still doesn't make it weird or misleading or "renting". It's straightforward and clear and ownership.
You're correct in that it's not exactly the same as previous models. It's a somewhat new innovation. And isn't it great to try new things?
Perhaps you'd prefer to think of it as more like a transaction tax, which exists in many localities when you sell real estate. E.g. NYC has a 1% transaction tax on sales over $1MM. But here the tax goes to the creator rather than the government.
Transaction fees for the Topps MLB cards on WAX, for example, are only taken during the sale when the sale occurs on a secondary Atomic Asset marketplace. There are no royalties to trade or transfer between accounts.