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Block beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats)

Block beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats)

How popular are NFTs? Now, even NFT trading platforms are starting to compete.

From SuperRare, KnownOrigin, and MakersPlace, the three major encrypted art platforms, to the sudden emergence of Nifty Gateway, and recently, the emergence of Foundation immediately attracted the attention of artists.

According to data from Cryptoart.io, since its birth in February, the monthly turnover of Foundation has soared from US$1.9421 million to US$12.1098 million in March (as of March 24), an increase of nearly 6 times in just one month. . At present, Foundation's monthly turnover is second only to "hype master" Nifty Gateway and "veteran powerhouse" SuperRare.

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Data source: cryptoart.io

The premise of platform competition is that there are more users, and the users of encrypted art platforms are those artists.

The total market value of the encrypted art NFT created by Beeple has reached 111 million US dollars, and the highest transaction price of the work is as high as 69.34 million US dollars. Beeple, which has been listed on Christie's auction house, is the ceiling of today's encrypted art world. The unattainable "God Statue". But the encryption artists behind Beeple are the targets of countless newcomers.

The highest transaction price of FEWOCiOUS's works was US$550,000, the highest transaction price of Trevor Jones' works was US$485,000, and the highest transaction price of Pak's works was US$785,000...New artists looked at these high but seemingly "reachable" figures, and He looked at his empty wallet.

These so-called encrypted art predecessors have explored the way for a large number of artists, so the latter began to flock to publish their works on various NFT platforms.

Faced with the soaring transaction volume of Foundation, countless "underappreciated" artists have new goals. They hope to save their art careers through Foundation in one fell swoop, having failed in Opensea and Rarible. They racked their brains and uploaded their works to the Foundation,

You must not imagine that the word "FOMO" is actually associated with artists who "have no desires and desires"; you must not imagine that there are so many "artists" today.

Why a new platform can trigger massive Fomo among artists?

Foundation's invitation mechanism

Simply understood, Foundation is an audit-free encrypted art platform.

Theoretically, anyone can publish their own encrypted works of art on Foundation, but the premise is to get an invitation code from an artist who has already entered the Foundation platform, and the invitation code is very scarce.

Just because of the existence of the invitation code, like Clubhouse a few months ago, Foundation triggered a Fomo in the circle of artists.

Each artist can get 2 invitation codes when he sells his first work, and 2 invitation codes when the artist he invites sells his first work. Waiting for the official random distribution.

From this perspective, Foundation is a platform with extremely strict review standards.

The extreme scarcity of invitation codes has further promoted the FOMO sentiment of artists. Whenever an artist tweets that he has obtained an invitation code, or just released his newly uploaded works, countless "artists" will flock to it. Occupy the comment area and private messages, and ask for invitation codes while promoting your own works.

It is undeniable that these artists have caused great trouble to other artists while seeking opportunities for themselves. Encrypted artist Daniel Savage even cast an NFT for this purpose. I hope that artists who have not received the invitation code will not come again bother him.

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Image credit: Foundation

Some people took advantage of the fire and started a business of selling invitation codes. One invitation code can be sold for 800 US dollars, which is a lot of money for most artists who have no income.

Fortunately, the Foundation has strictly controlled this kind of behavior, and artists who violated the rules of buying and selling invitation codes will be permanently deprived of their qualifications to settle in. This is how the farce gradually subsided.

sales mechanism

Foundation's popularity is not only due to its review/invitation mechanism, its sales mechanism is also interesting.

Countless artists are immersed in this fairy tale, thinking that after joining the Foundation, their works will definitely be sold. However, they waited and waited for dozens of days, and those that could not be sold still could not be sold.

Data Sources:https://fnd.info/

According to the Foundation data terminal, a total of 4,049 NFTs were minted in the past 7 days, but only 1,449 NFTs were successfully sold, accounting for about one-third. In this way, this fairy tale does not seem to be a good one.

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Data Sources:

The work will enter the auction state after someone bids. As time goes by, the encrypted artwork that is nearing the end will be displayed on the homepage of the website. This function will help artists get higher exposure. Chance to get a higher offer.

Artists started FOMO too?

The explosion of NFT has far exceeded people's expectations. Beeple's nearly $70 million auction at Christie's has made countless artists outside the encrypted field begin to spy on encrypted art. Artists and designers from all over the world chose to join the encrypted art field, hoping to change their lives, and they were still full of confidence at that time.

Their self-confidence is not unreasonable. The popularity of NFT has attracted a large number of funds to invest in the market. It is not difficult to see from the statistical charts that the field of encrypted art will usher in a big explosion in 2021. The total transaction volume has increased from just over 1 million in January , close to 10 million US dollars in February, and more than 15 million US dollars in March (as of March 24), countless artists believe that more people will be willing to buy their works.

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Data source: cryptoart.io

But is that really the case?

Among the total market value of encrypted artworks of USD 400 million, the total market value of the works of the top ten artists reached USD 217 million, accounting for as high as 54%. The number of artists in the Cryptoart.io statistics is as high as 4104. Artists who got the Foundation invitation code and failed to pass the review of SuperRare, KnownOrigin, MakersPlace, AsyncArt, and Nifty Gateway were not counted.

Obviously, the large capital influx with the explosion of NFT did not "favor" those encryption artists at the waist or even at the end, and the development of the entire encryption art field is extremely uneven.

If you follow a large number of encrypted artists at the waist and tail on Twitter, then you will definitely be swiped by similar tweets these days.

The simple "I will buy NFT" has attracted the attention, comments, and likes of countless encrypted artists. Unsatisfactory encrypted artists have gradually realized that uploading their works to the Foundation does not make their works easy to sell. Not to mention that there are still a large number of artists who have not yet received the invitation code. They are afraid of missing the opportunity for collectors to buy their works. After all, they have confidently hoped to change their lives with encrypted art.

However, the reality is much darker than expected. Some people have taken the FOMO sentiment of these yet-to-be-known crypto artists and started to play them in their hands. They have declared that they will spend some ETH to buy encrypted art NFT, but artists must follow, comment, like, and retweet to be eligible to be selected. Artists who used to show their personalities as "high and arrogant" were driven by FOMO emotions Putting down their figure, they followed, commented, liked, and retweeted, begging to be chosen.

The darker thing is that the amount of ETH in the wallets of these waist and tail artists has not changed, but the number of fans of their accounts that follow, comment, like, and retweet has increased exponentially.

Prosperity hides crisis

True, some newcomers are getting some attention and starting to make their way, but many more are struggling. And as the gap between the head artist and the tail artist is getting wider and wider, encryption art hides a fault crisis under the appearance of prosperity.

Such an imbalance is not a good thing for the entire ecology. NFT originally hoped that every content creator could get income, but a large amount of money was injected into the top artist circle, and the tail artist circle was left unattended, which would cause great harm to the entire NFT ecology.

Rich people are vying for the works of Beeple, Pak, FEWOCiOUS, etc., but the works of XX are still not sold at a price of 0.01ETH. This sounds like a traditional art circle.

In the traditional art circle, the works of famous artists can fetch hundreds of millions of dollars at auction houses, while some students who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts set up painting stalls on the side of the road, and no one is willing to pay for a painting that only sells for 10 yuan.