Before we begin, if you are a beginner to crypto and NFTs, I highly encourage you to start with my free four-part introductory series where you’ll get everything you need to know to get up and running. After that, be sure to continue with this article on your crypto-artist journey!
The artist’s existence is a lifelong endeavor to create; to express one’s self through art. While every artist’s dream is to make a living working on their own projects, most must make ends meet as freelance artists or by working a 9-5. Even those who work for themselves are often forced to take on commissions and be their own marketing team; both full-time jobs themselves. On top of that, artists in this digital age must rely on centralized platforms and intermediaries (like Facebook) - middlemen who often get an outsized portion of any revenue an artist generates, and even ownership rights of the work in some cases!
Enter NFTs
What if…
Artists had sovereign ownership of their work, independent of online platforms, where the same art could exist anywhere simultaneously and still be owned individually?
They could attain financial freedom by retaining more revenue from their work (including passive income streams), and devote more time to their craft and adding value to the art community, and less to stressing out about putting food on the table, budgeting paltry trickles of ad revenue, and catering their work for mass market appeal/social media algorithms.
Fans could directly support under-the-radar creatives early on and share in the upside success of their favorite artist(s)?
Artists could connect directly with supporters of their work, free of censorship and reliance on intermediary gatekeepers?
Until now, the ability to duplicate data has been cheap and infinite; artists are rarely able to realize the true value of their work in this digital age. By tokenizing their art as NFTs, artists are not only able to capture value on the primary sale, but thanks to on-chain smart contract royalties, often on secondary sales as well. NFTs have done so much to level the playing field for artists in such a short time, and we’re still so early!
It’s worth noting that though a lot of crypto-art platforms do take a cut of transactions like traditional intermediaries, it is often a much less significant percentage relative to the value they provide (keep in mind that eBay takes ~12%!). Most are very supportive of creators and should be adequately compensated so that they can continue to develop and improve their product. Some, like Rarible, are even governed by their communities, effectively making the users the owners as well (win-win!).
Artists tend to undervalue themselves and their contribution to society. I believe NFTs merely revealed the true market value of their work.
All Art Can Be Tokenized
Even though the majority of crypto-art/NFTs are natively digital (scarce digital assets are the breakthrough, after all), it’s important to note that an NFT is just a token of authenticity, and can be minted to represent any unique asset (including physical ones). NFTs on the blockchain are just the latest and greatest tech tool we have that enables verifiable, persistent proof of ownership of assets, like artwork.
Consider this: even if a perfect reproduction of a piece were to exist (remember the duct-taped banana?), it’s the ownership and authenticity of the original that we value.
Pascal Boyart’s “Underground Sistine Chapel” (above) is a prime example a tokenized physical piece of art. Of course, if something were to happen to the physical art that an NFT represents 🔥, all you’d be left with is permanent evidence of its existence on the blockchain (which might still retain some historical value, but hopefully you took some extra pictures 😅).
Monetization
Internet monetization models today tend to neglect
With effective marketing, NFTs can be a key component for an artist to strengthen their ties to the community and their ability to monetize 💭
value propositions for a platform’s users and content creators in favor of the interests of company shareholders. NFTs can and should be one of the tools these centralized platforms integrate moving forward to democratize control of user content, and put more wealth in the hands of the creators of the value itself. The stereotype of an artist needing to starve and suffer through life in order to create great work is preposterous!
"Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."
-Andy Warhol
Royalties for Creators
I really want to emphasize the significant value that passive income such as royalty streams can provide. It’s so crucial to understand the benefits that NFTs can create for artists who embrace what this technology enables. With an exceptional minority, most artists are forced to live somewhat hand to mouth, paid in one-time lump sums for service work and primary sales, leaving perpetual revenue from secondary sales, royalties, and licensing on the table.
“Oh my goodness, you mean…I can take a digital file, mint it, turn it into an NFT, and earn royalties and earn income post first sale?”
Thanks to blockchain technology, the artist doesn’t even need to wait for royalty checks to arrive in the mail - once a transaction is made, the royalty payment is made instantaneously and credited directly to the artist’s wallet! Though royalties in NFTs are still new and experimental, we should expect them to be standardized soon (for a technical overview, see EIP-2981 🤓).
That said, it’s important to note that not all NFTs are created equal (obviously; I mean at the smart contract level 😅). Many are programmed without royalties, and those that are might allocate a different percentage, use a different cryptocurrency, and/or distribute funds to more than one address. Unfortunately, until the NFT royalty model gets standardized, it’s very hard to find details on an NFT’s royalty structure without reading the smart contract code itself, so we must really on documentation provided on a per-platform basis (some of which we will cover below).
Pre-Funding and Patronage Models
Crowdfunding and patronage platforms like Kickstarter and Patreon, respectively, offer alternative ways for creators to get their projects funded. While such platforms offer a valuable service (though Patreon can take as much as 12% of gross revenue), I view them more as temporary solutions in our transition to something much better: a direct connection between creators and audiences enabled by NFTs.
New Web3 platforms like Minty.Art are attempting to disrupt the current model by connecting artists with collectors and patrons in a global community, via NFTs. Artists can create online shops and secure funding through presales of future creative works. Like Patreon, artists can also create tiers of commitment for collectors who wish to offer perpetual support for their favorite creators.
Changing the Lives of Artists
Artists with existing, established followings such as Beeple (a.k.a. Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist), Trevor Jones (a comic artist), and Benjamin Gentilli (founder of the Robert Alice project), have found new audiences and exponential success by minting their work as NFTs. Artists who were practically unknown before they dabbled in the early days of NFT-art (well, we’re still pretty early now, so when I say early, I mean just a year ago), like Fewocious and Pak, are now recognizable names.
By the way, do you think any of these artists wrote a single line of code? 🙃
Christie's, one of the world’s leading fine art and jewelry auction houses, in a collaboration with Makerspace, entered the blockchain art auctions in October 2020. The now historic NFT auction of "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" by Beeple in early 2021 fetched a bid of $69.4 million dollars. Sotheby’s, a reputable (and even older) auction house in New York, followed suit a week later with plans to hold NFT auctions of their own, starting with pseudonymous artist, Pak.
Value for the Audience Too!
NFTs are a way for fans to develop deep, meaningful connections with their favorite artists and gain exclusive access to things like limited art collections. It also lets them support creators directly, which ensures that more money goes to the creator(s) themselves. The artists can then focus on more valuable things like connecting with their communities and creating more/better art.
Each piece minted by the artist is essentially a digitally signed piece, thanks to the digital scarcity, ownability, and authenticity inherent in NFTs. As NFT data on the blockchain cannot be altered or copied, buyers are protected from counterfeiting and fraud, which have always been a major problems historically in art. These benefits are especially appreciated by younger generations (i.e. the ones in crypto who grew up with technology); the placement of value on purely digital goods (which are often preferable over equivalent physical goods for their convenience and utility) is a strong trend that shows no signs of slowing down.
Generative Art x NFTs:
Generative art (a.k.a. algorithmic/synthetic art) is created by artists who use programming and automation as their canvas, with digital tools such as data-driven algorithms as their brush. 🤖🎨 In an age where we have more data available than human experience, I truly appreciate the profundity of living in these early, experimental days of a modern art Renaissance. I believe it is likely that the art that emerges today, be it from the hand of humans, machine, or a combination, will be treasured by future generations. Whether a piece is created completely through code, or by a hybrid combination of manual techniques and non-human tools, it’s really up to the artist and the audience to decide whether to call it generative - it is art, after all, and inherently subjective. Or is it binary, like computer code? 🤔
To be clear, generative art emerged long before crypto-art, but the merger of art and technology shared by both has brought about great innovation. One of the core tenets that has emerged in generative crypto-art is for everything that composes a piece to exist on-chain. That means that unlike most other crypto-art pieces where visuals (i.e. gifs and jpegs) are stored in off-chain storage and potentially vulnerable to going offline, on-chain crypto-art is truer to the decentralized and antifragile ideals of public blockchains.
Case Study: “Ringers”
Dmitri Cherniak created the “Ringers” project on ArtBlocks using a JavaScript web design script he developed himself. The code translates unique data from each NFT in the collection into one-of-a-kind visuals.
Most generative crypto-art like Ringers are composed from on-chain data
Interested in learning more about generative crypto-art? You can read more about the process at Art Blocks.
Where to Create and Sell Your Crypto-Art
Thankfully, there are a plethora of services available for artists to mint their own NFTs without needing to write a single line of code. Several available platforms are covered in The Beginner’s Guide to NFTs, Part 4, but let’s focus on the ones that have features specifically for crypto-artists, and the fee/royalty structures they have:
Art Blocks: A semi-curated generative crypto-art platform. Fees: 10% on minting. Royalties: 10% on primary sale. 10% + optional additional % to specified addresses on secondary sales (set by the creator).
Async Art: A curated platform for easy-to-create programmable NFT art. Very cool layer-master composite NFT structure. Learn more here. Fees: 10-30% on primary sales; 1% on secondary sales. Royalties: 10% on secondary sales.
Cargo: A public NFT marketplace and minting platform. Great support for minting batches of NFTs at lower costs. Some technical knowledge required, with substantial customizability available through JavaScript. Fees: Unspecified. Royalties: Maximum up to 15% on secondary sales (set by the creator(s)).
Ephimera: A platform aimed at lens-based artists (a.k.a. photographers). Fees: 10% on primary sales; 5% on secondary sales. Royalties: 10% on secondary sales.
Foundation: An NFT-art platform for community-curated crypto-artists. Fees: 15% on primary sales. Royalties: 10% on secondary sales.
InfiNFT: A new NFT minting platform (in beta as of March 2021) that looks very open, customizable, and worth keeping an eye on (and I have no clue how to pronounce their name either 😅). Fees: 0.1 ETH on minting. Royalties: Unspecified.
Known Origin: A curated crypto-art platform. Fees: 15% on primary sales; 2.5% on secondary sales. Royalties: 12.5% on secondary sales.
MakersPlace: A crypto-art marketplace that supports credit card purchases and features regular art drops. Artist positions are currently by invite only (must join their Discord server). Fees: 15% on primary sales. 2.5% on secondary sales. Royalties: 10% on secondary sales.
Mintable: A public NFT marketplace and minting platform. I found the fee structure options to be fairly confusing. 😕 Fees: 2.5-10% on all sales (depending on the type of item). Royalties: 5% on secondary sales.
Mintbase: A public NFT marketplace and minting platform. Straight-forward fee structure, and customizable contracts via their API. Fees: 2% on all sales. Royalties: No details, but appear to be customizable through code.
Nifty Gateway: A reputable curated crypto-art marketplace that made the term “art drops” famous. Artists are required to apply to join. Fees: 5% on all sales. Royalties: 10% on secondary sales.
Open Sea: The largest public NFT marketplace and minting platform. Reasonable fees, friendly UI, and high sales volume. Fees: 2.5% on all sales (seller). Royalties: Custom % on secondary sales (set by the creator).
Pixelchain: A pixel-art creation platform with on-chain NFT minting features. Each NFT includes a name, graphics, and the creator’s wallet ID. Visuals can be decoded with an open-source decoder built exclusively for the project. Fees: 0.008 ETH on minting. Royalties: Unspecified.
Rarible: A public NFT marketplace and minting platform similar to Open Sea. Fees: 2.5% on all sales (seller). Royalties: 10% on secondary sales.
SuperRare: A curated crypto-art platform - likely considered to be he most reputable one at present. Fees: 15% on primary sales; 3% on secondary sales. Royalties: 10% on secondary sales.
Zora: A public crypto-art marketplace and minting platform Fees: None! Royalties: A.k.a. “The Creator’s Share.” Custom % on secondary sales on Zora (set by the creator).
Important!
The fees above only denote those charged by the platform; they do not include any network (Ethereum gas) fees, so be mindful that you will likely also need to pay for approval fees, smart contract deployment fees, and transaction fees, unless the platform states otherwise.
Some NFTs minted on one platform will not generate revenue for the creator on secondary sales if sold on a different platform, so it’s a good idea to make sure that the NFTs you plan to mint support on-chain royalties (in other words, royalty payments coded in the smart contract; not distributed by the platform).
Several of these platforms support image, video, and audio files. I will also have a separate article dedicated to audio/music NFTs, so if you’re a musician, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you!
Best Practices for Success
Minting your art as NFTs is by no means the fast-track to fame and fortune. In fact, those looking to cash in on the hype (a.k.a. opportunistic sell-outs) will probably burn more in fees than they’ll be able to recoup in sales. Beeple created a new piece every day for 13 years before he became an “overnight” success - there is no substitute to hard work and consistency. The following is a succinct list of pointers from conversations and talks from some successful artists I thought were worth sharing:
Be consistent and social Discoverability on marketplaces is as difficult/useless; stay active on your preferred social media outlets where your audience(s) are, and show your support for the community. It’s worth noting that most collectors of crypto-art are on Twitter and BitClout (a social media blockchain).
Reward and support your audience Listen to your fans - they will tell you what they want, especially if they see a piece that isn’t available. Community tokens and utility NFTs that unlock perks for your audience could be worth exploring.
Go in without expectations This is all one giant experiment, and it could all blow up tomorrow. Get involved in creative ways, but don’t rely on one platform or expect one NFT sale to change your life.
Don’t mint and sell everything you make There is a lot of the so-called “crypto-art” out there isn’t worth the blockspace it occupies. Use the inherent scarcity of NFTs and quality of your work to generate true demand for your crypto-art.
Read the fine print Always be mindful of the agreements between you and the NFT platform you use, especially when it comes ownership, fees, and revenue generated by your work.
As I attempt to rediscover my own muse and experiment with NFT art and code, I’ll try to keep these pointers in mind. Hopefully they serve (us) well. 🙏
Crypto-Art for Crypto’s Sake is an Empty Phrase…
“The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use—do the work you want to see done."
-Austin Kleon, "Steal Like an Artist"
As NFTs and crypto-art draw in more artists and mainstream attention, I see the line between traditional and digital art blurring further, ideally to the point where silly tribal attitudes towards either are just an underpainting in the canvas of history. Soon, I can see all art expected to be created and distributed as an NFT; where the term “crypto-art” is dropped altogether, and is just called “Art.” A future where smaller, independent creators have access to the same reward models as the powerful intermediary platforms they are forced to rely on today. Until then…
“Make good art.”
-Neil Gaiman, Philadelphia's University of the Arts, 2012
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⚠ Disclaimer ⚠
Cryptocurrencies and NFTs are a speculative asset class. Be aware of the risks involved and know that you could lose money. Everything I share references an opinion and is for information and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Please consult a licensed professional before making any investment decision.
