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Comment by at_ | Hacker News Reader

I have always followed a lot of generative artists on Twitter. Never have I see so many creatives I follow prospering at once, mostly thanks to the Tezos ecosystem.

The buyers seem happy to support the artists. The artists seem happy to receive this support. For all the cries of it being a scam/ponzi, I'm not quite sure who the victim is meant to be here - at least within this rather specific niche.

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I think most of the ire towards NFTs and the greater cryptocurrency space in general is misattributed to the technology instead of the human behavior (specifically the audacious and immoral) that influences some of how it has been used. When people think about the cryptocurrency space, nobody actually cares about developers, they care about the scams and the insufferable cryptobros and their memes which dominate every headline and every large social space related cryptocurrencies.

The real headline most of these criticisms related to is probably closer to how deplorable people will act when they are capable of separating themselves from the costs and responsibilities of their actions.

Lovely for your friends but what about all the artists having their work stolen?

I was making copies of digital art long before NFTs were a thing

Were you selling those copies at a profit, too?

Sure, but you probably weren't trying to sell those copies to unsuspecting buyers, pretending you had the rights to do so, and giving nothing to the artist. That's the scummy part.

Lovely for you! What is your point in relation to mine?

I've yet to see that come up as an issue within this niche - it's mostly code based work, so a certain tolerance for forking/remixing is baked in. Unsurprisingly, highly derivative work doesn't raise much interest.

You and I follow different artists. I've seen artists saying it's becoming a full-time job trying to stop people from turning their work into NFTs.

I'm deep in the generative art NFT thing too, and I've seen it come up a couple of times.

In a couple of cases algorithms have been outright copied and used for new projects. Personally I believe that's wrong and people shouldn't do it. Definitely would not buy any such work.

There's also been a few cases where some code is clearly based on other code, and some artists get mad about that. For myself, this feels a lot less clear cut, and I might consider some such art if I felt it was novel enough.

Yes, as I said lovely for your friends.

I have always followed a lot of tulip growers. Never have I see so many gardeners I follow prospering at once, mostly thanks to the tulip ecosystem.

The buyers seem happy to support the growers. The growers seem happy to receive this support. For all the cries of it being a bubble, I'm not quite sure who the victim is meant to be here - at least within this rather specific niche.

Witty, but ignores the artist <-> artwork <-> fan relationship dynamic that is at play here. To me the scene feels closer to a platform like Bandcamp than it does the more speculative world of Opensea.

Sorry what's the difference between the "artist <-> artwork <-> fan relationship dynamic" and the "grower <-> tulip <-> enthusiast relationship dynamic"?

I mean, maybe the original tulip buyers were doing so as they got genuine satisfaction out of supporting the growers themselves (ie their primary reason for buying was patronage rather than speculation), but that would be quite an amendment to the standard narrative

People buy tulips for the sheer pleasure of having them around to this very day.

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