It’s only 2 months since I dived into the NFT rabbit hole, but my world is completely upside down.

At first, I couldn’t wrap my head around why an avatar photo can be worth the same price of a luxury mansion? After joining project discords and reading some NFT roadmaps, it became intuitive to me this should be the way it is, because creativity and community is priceless. Note NFT is not just about the art itself. When I’m talking about creativity, it involves everyone in the community. Whether it’s the developer who designed the contract so minting gas fee is optimized, or the discord member that spreads some love through fan art or voluntary community engagement. Just like buying stocks, it takes so many factors for a company to be successful and most importantly stay competitive for the foreseeable future. Thus, in the NFT world with only $22B market cap, it’s hard to not own a blue-chip project at all costs.

I started to criticize myself on who I was, and who I strive to become. I recalled those vague childhood memories when I hand-drew a whole pile of storybook, mimicking stories happening inside my family. Since when did I lose the ability to confidently create a story without fears that it may not be good enough? Or the first time I played Mole Manor, an online game where I adopted virtual pets and met virtual friends, only later learned the inevitable goal of gaming company is monetization. But now with NFT’s ownership attribute things have changed because buyers/players now can also share the fruit of community growth and brand name. This raises the bar of ownership because people mistakenly think as long as you have the money to buy ETH, NFT is in your hand. It’s not enough. You also need to contribute to the community through social media and give back your own creativity to make it stronger. I’ve seen a coffee shop owner offers to make NFT exclusive merchandises, I can feel the vibe when I saw different fan arts on Twitter. As a result, I redownloaded Procreate and decided to pick up digital drawing after a long time. After all, even doodles are better than nothing right? (Doodle owners no offense, you are doing great) Always keep in mind you don’t have to own it now, but you can contribute now.

NFT democratizes the rights to define the new “fine art”, a privilege once reserved only for the elites. While lowering the bar to participate, it’s still a highly competitive market. A holder needs to have strong conviction in order to survive in the bear market when floor price drops way below cost. An artist can no longer quietly sit in her room and only present the final piece. They need to put themselves out there in the digital world, make collaborative partnership with other artists, and reveals the creation process through social media. It is no easy work and needs the artists and the team to grind their way through, but it’s definitely worth it. If Van Gogh lives in a Web 3.0 world, he wouldn’t need to suicide. Whether it’s the artists themselves, or the subject they are portraying, every piece of treasure can find their true owners who fully appreciate. Fun fact, because I bought Glam Beckett’s Sad Cats NFT, I start to like Sphynx cat?! Can you imagine! I also realized how much bias people tend to hold firm before spending even 5 minutes research and learn about it, I bet you never experience this in the crypto world huh? (oh so many times) What’s sad to me is that many crypto natives still hold biases towards NFT, even though they themselves have grinded through all the suspicion and doubts, keep in mind in the Web 3.0 era, the market will reward those who are extremely open-minded.

On the brink of the world village collapse in physical world, NFT provides a temporary Utopia. You get to see different artists and people show appreciation and kindness to each other. National border is no limit in Web 3. NFT are great digital gifts if you want to onboard your friends and family and spread some love. With all the upcoming mints, reveals, plus roadmap execution, there are so much to look forward to that left no time for depression. One caveat is that keep in mind a thriving industry is very attractive to exploiters. My first day in the NFT world, I got scammed by a fake mint website. Exploiters not only target your wallet, but they also seek your most precious asset, your time. Spent all day retweeting and tagging for a giveaway or scrolling through every channel of the discord are not good for your mental health. After all, NFTs are not as liquid as other assets, patience is the key if you want to stay in the game. Pinning dev teams for updates daily are not reasonable and counter-productive, the best dev team I’ve seen are the ones who set up the stage and allow the community to self-run. Similarly asking why floor is down is the same as asking why stock price or bitcoin price is down, all the answers you could expect are hindsight and incomplete. If you ever feel overwhelmed to keep up with all the discord notifications, consider setting deep focus period every day to spend quality time, research about projects, and learn new skills.

In the next article I will talk about how I pick NFT projects and some of my selection criterias. Stay tuned and check out my twitter @withCocoa1.