Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by neonbones 1721 days ago
I like to think about NFT as an easy method of buying art from artists. There are many platforms for this with classical purchase mechanics, but as an artist myself, I love the idea of an auction-based platform for this era of digital art.

Right now, there are no mechanism for extraordinary digital artists to make their art expensive like IRL art. The best thing is you can do commissions for people, but it's hard for them to maintain their rights (both for artist and customer).

Maybe NFT will be more prominent with some "data registry" between platforms to make it global to check your rights on items, and great artists can sell their art for a more reasonable price. For now, IRL art is like a "club for friends," and digital artists are not taken as seriously as they, even when digital one draw some almost masterpieces and spent 3-6 months on every item.

2 comments

But you don't own the art. You own the receipt for the purchase of a hash of the specific digital format the art is stored in.

Note that there are definitely currently ways for digital artists to make expensive art, and that's in the form of commissions. If you really want to support an artist, find one you really like, and pay for a commission from them. You may also be able to pay more for forms of copyright (like reproduction).

NFTs are the worst possible way for artists to make money from digital art.

Many artists do not want to do commissions. In fact, you could argue that people who want commissions are very selfish. Not only do they want to force artists to work on their thing, often driven by vanity, they even want to own the copyrights to the work!

NFT buyers are clearly more respectful of an artists craft: They buy the work the artist really wanted to create, and they respect the fact that they cannot be the owner of the work in a moral sense.

Not so; many (but not the majority) NFTs (like Board Ape Yacht Club) come with very liberal licenses that afford the owner of the NFT the ability to do a lot with them.
It doesn't seem very easy right now, it's complex and expensive for the seller and/or buyer compared to existing services for commissioning art