After a sketchy year of lockdowns, face masks and handwashing, I decided to shift focus for the academic year and take some time off. A year of video games, lounging around and completing Netflix seemed tempting… but I chose to develop myself in someway.
Firstly, I promised myself I would write more after neglecting my website for way too long, posting the odd BMX video was never my intention. The next part was to find what to write about, and so began a period on pondering and deliberation. My conclusion, I’ll write about a project I’ve been contemplating for a while, NFT’s.
Non-fungible token, NFT, a token that is unique. Essentially, it’s like getting a foil or ‘shiny’ Panini football sticker and your mates wanting to trade with you on the playground at lunch. But even then, Panini would release more than one, just unlikely you’d come across a shiny one too often. An NFT offers an opportunity to own a unique item, which can be anything from an image, gif, music or in game content. Basically, anything can be sold as an NFT.
NFT’s are part of the blockchain, a digital ledger of transactions for a particular crypto currency. I know that is likely not clear to all or some, but every transaction belongs to a blockchain and NFT’s, just like Bitcoin or Dogecoin transactions are a part of this process. For most, this is a bit of a mind melter. The vast majority of NFT’s are a part of the Ethereum blockchain, but more blockchains are getting involved.
So… Why NFT’s? Well, they can sell for ludicrous sums of money, that is a draw. But realistically I’m not going to sell my work for millions, and I may actually not sell anything. The draw was focus on improving my skills, and that skill was to expand my programming languages. I chose JavaScript as it’s an ever in demand language and used by some of the top tech companies in the world. I’d done the basics with Javascript before, but never found the time or something I wanted to develop and this seemed like a good excuse.
With numerous tutorials, guides and stack overflow, I set out on a journey to create a masterpiece. I say masterpiece, I wanted to create many using a generative process following a simple set of rules. Using rectangles and transparent colours, I aimed to create abstract images that are unique and still follow a theme.
Ironically, the programming part wasn’t the most difficult part, but minting and pricing was a tedious task. I used opensea.io to list my NFT’s, and while selling one would be a piece of cake, 1001 is a long task. Without the option to mass upload, set prices or anything at all, delays the process by having to do one at a time. Currently I have minted and preleased the first hundred, and plan to release them in blocks of a hundred. There are solutions though, automated mouse clicking and scripts, maybe I’ll implement one of those for the remainder of the collection.
Finally, pricing… This is a tricky thing, an unknown in the art/NFT world can’t be demanding significant numbers of Ethereum, or can I? I compared my work with others and their pricing. I chose to sell at 0.079 Ethereum, but I am open to offers! Have I sold any yet? nope… But that was never sole purpose of this task. I’ve learned some new skills, been creative and found drive expand beyond them. I’m already planning my next collection I’m going to drop!
To see my collection visit https://opensea.io/collection/leonforster-collection
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