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Thats a cool JPEG but what is it worth?

Thats a cool JPEG but what is it worth?

NFTs are a big topic right now, but do they actually bear value?

Non Fungible Tokens have been around for quite some time and have been on the rise on ETH based platforms since 2017.

Some NFT projects that launched in the beginning gained enormous value over time. The original crypto punks for example trade for millions of $.

This is mind boggling and always was very secretive to me as I never understood why somebody would pay those amounts of actual money to own a pixelated picture.

I had no grip on the whole topic and put it in the back of my mind in the folder: “Don’t understand it, just a hype, nonsense.“

I am a big believer and supporter of the Dotsama (Polkadot and Kusama) ecosystem, A few weeks ago while browsing Dotsama and talking to fellow explorers I grouped up with along the way, I stumbled across Singular.

Singular is a Kusama based NFT platform.

So here I was being confronted with the topic of NFTs again. The knowledge I had was that NFTs are expensive to mint due to gas prices and that most of those NFTs just bear value because they are a hyped up topic.

Being narrow minded does not lead you anywhere in crypto so I decided to scrap what I knew about NFTs and give it a second chance. Here is my opinion and what I have learned after being in touch with NFTs and Singular / RMRK for about two months:

It is addictive ! ! !

I can relate to the 2017 craze very much as similar things are happening right now on the KSM based app.

A relatively small group of first movers, OGs and explorers are playing around with the app. Very different art-projects are launched on Singular and every project in itself has a different direction of where they want to take their art. It is a very gamified version of the traditional way of creating or dealing with “art“.

But isn’t it expensive to take part in this as minting an NFT is costly and you wouldn’t spend hundreds of $ to upload a JPEG to the app…

This is the key point where it all changed for me.

Minting an NFT (creating the NFT) on Singular costs as much as roughly 0.04$ worth of KSM.

This is a very low entry barrier and allows anyone to dip a toe into the topic and get a feel for themselves. Simply visit https://singular.rmrk.app/ and connect your polkadot.js wallet and you are all good to buy, mint or send NFTs.

Ok, so its cool, you can create stuff and it’s cheap to use on Singular… anyone can do it, so where is the value in anything minted as an NFT?

Why would I spend 0.01KSM or 1 KSM or 10 KSM for something, just to have it under the “owned“ section? Where is the value behind some pixels?

Which factors do I think are important for any .JPEG or .MP4 to bear value?

Well there are two sides to it in my opinion.

First you have the obvious art factor.

A already well known and respected artist publishes a line of NFTs. When, for example, Banksy would create a line of NFTs with a maximum of 20 artworks, would you ape in and try to get one? Most probably yes, depending on the price — right?

As of now there are very few known artists on Singular. There is cool art such as for example Kusam-ART https://singular.rmrk.app/collections/66f193bc935bfcda57-G5GVH

But no big names have released anything there as far as I know.

The other and more impressive side of NFTs is symbolic creations or creations with a value imbedded in the idea behind creating the line of NFTs.

As mentioned, Singular is running on Kusama. Thereby the Kusama bird as NFT can be a symbol of believing in Kusama and its success. As early mover you might want to own one of the Infinity Canary birds: https://singular.rmrk.app/collections/54bc17ab38241f8463-INFINIKU

Or at least check out the KU_collection which are already trading at respectable prices: https://singular.rmrk.app/space/EtF8MpQPXrqAtrwvuE6Ni4BvBMNPMXyxTug6WkzuV5utB1e?page=1&tab=created&creator=true

Owning an original canary from one of those two collections is symbolic and fun. As the community grows, many people would want to get such a symbolic badge too, which then increases the value of the badge itself.

And now there is the topic of why I decided to dive deeper into the whole topic and create a line of NFTs of my own.

It’s the ideology of creating a community with certain values. In the recent dull of the crypto market my hungriness stayed high and the activity on Twitter didn’t slow down for me.

I was doing research, I communicated with like-minded people and slowly got closer with a group of fellow apes who had likeminded ideologies as me. Doing research, gathering knowledge and sharing this knowledge within this circle. Just like the Canaries can be seen as a badge, the idea arose to create a more serious community within the Dotsama Twitter community.

There is a certain group of very knowledgeable people within the Dotsama ecosystem called the ChaosDAO. We are early movers and we care about fundamentals rather than hype. Its a tribe of people from all levels of knowledge and this is the exact reason why it is functioning so well. Narratives are being questioned, ideas are being ping-ponged and in the end everybody is a bit smarter. The idea of growing this great community lead me to creating the ChaosDAO apes.

https://twitter.com/ApesAndArt

Not just a .JPEG NFT, not a badge of believe but more like a membership of to bigger idea and ideology. In short: A collective of core Dotsama believers and developers.

Holding a ChaosDAO APE would not only show your deep conviction in Dotsama like a badge would, it would also grant you access to this well elaborated community.

Its sort of a fast pass to come to the right place to strengthen your believes and exchange knowledge without having to go through 5 different telegram groups to find a place you feel comfortable in. Or Twitter for example. Maybe you would never follow an account with only 30 followers, but what if this individual is a genius and could bring you ideas that you would never have gotten anywhere else? The vision behind the ChaosDAO APEs is to enable any holder access to knowledge and truly likeminded people. This bears value and makes a ChaosDAO APE not only nice to look at, but gives reason beyond aping around and having fun playing degen on twitter. We are constantly moving forward and there are new things to discover pretty much daily that barely make it onto twitter or any telegram groups.

This being said and having absolutely shilled the ChaosDAO (https://twitter.com/ChaosDAO) and the APEs, I come to this conclusion:

NFTs do bear value and are worth a certain amount.

When trying to figure out the value of a fresh NFT project, you want to look at it like looking at a startup from an investors POV.

-Do I like the product? -What is the vision? -Is the founder able to pull it off? And will he do this over a long period? -What value would it hold in the future?

If you made it this far in this write up, I would suggest you go visit Singular and look around. There is cool art in the „curated“ section. Obviously we will be more than happy to welcome you at https://twitter.com/ApesAndArt to stay updated about the DAO Apes and be updated about the next drop.

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