Why do we spend time on things with no apparent utility, such as art?

Why do people spend thousands of dollars to buy a digital image they could download for free?

Question My Being by Jeanna Ghirghi - collected by me on Foundation

Hello, my friends. My name is Duarte, and I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and discussing the possible answers to those questions.

I have an engineering background, and worked as a software engineer for more than 8 years. I was introduced to cryptocurrencies in early 2017, and I’ve been working primarily with that ever since.

NFTs didn’t click for me right away. I was already doing crypto full-time when CryptoPunks were released or when XCOPY minted his first artwork on Ethereum, but I missed them. Only at the end of 2020, when there was already some hype, that I started to pay attention.

I joined the NFT space trying to make some quick money and, because of that, I made a lot of mistakes and bought some PFPs I didn’t really like that had their prices reduced to zero.

Grifter #179 by XCOPY - not ALL my pfps are worth zero, I still like useless, art-focused, pfps

However, I’ve always had a lot of interest in all kinds of art, especially painting and music. When I started to explore virtual galleries and some big collections of 1/1 art minted as NFTs, that’s when I really got hooked and things began to make sense to me.

Today, my conviction is so strong that I’ve collected over 800 1/1 artworks on Ethereum alone, not to mention other platforms such as Tezos and Solana and thousands of other kinds of NFTs.

I’ve been thinking about starting a personal blog for a while, to share some thoughts and try to answer those questions together with friends I made in this space. I recently decided that it’s always better to build something together with others instead of alone, so instead of releasing a personal website or blog with my name on it, Useless was born.

We are initially a team of two, me and my life partner Ludmila. But Useless can grow to become much more, a collaborative platform focused on pure art, with no utility. The aim of Useless is not to impose the vision of a small group of people on an audience, but to discuss and learn together as we witness a revolution in how digital art is monetized and distributed.

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Before deciding to create a blog, I was spending a lot of time discussing with artists through direct messages. I realized that I was writing a lot of duplicate stuff for different people constantly, then I started to lose control of my DMs and completely stopped answering my friends. I love to develop connections with artists and collectors and I want to resume answering in private, but I will use this space to share thoughts that I believe can be useful for more than one person, and we hopefully can engage in meaningful discussions with the community.

I'm not an art expert, but have been studying a lot. I've been reading about art history, curating, creativity, communication, and personal growth, and I've also been practicing a lot of drawing and painting in analog and digital media. We will not only write about NFTs in Useless but, instead, we will share anything that we believe could be useful for the space: blockchain and tech stuff, research, opportunities, discuss some news, and anything that we deem useful to move towards our vision of contributing to spread more art in the world.

Thales, commonly known as omentejovem, is an amazing example of a young artist from Brazil who found success through NFTs. There are thousands of other artists waiting for similar opportunities.

Still about our vision, to help put more art in the world, we believe there are obviously many ways of doing that, not restricted to digital art or NFTs and blockchain. However, we will focus initially on the connection between the traditional art world, Web3 and blockchain platforms. We plan on moving towards that goal by helping artists with no programming or technological background to survive in this space, avoid scams and get useful tips, while also discussing art that is intrinsically digital and related to the Web3 culture. We won’t limit ourselves at this moment, feedback and contributions will shape Useless and define what it is and what it’s not, everything in this article is just to describe our starting point.

In the best spirit of Web3, not only we’re launching Useless on a decentralized platform like Mirror, but also I would love to show some love to our first supporters! As any other entry on Mirror, this post right here is an NFT and, instead of “likes”, Mirror allows you to “collect” your favorite posts.

There are 30 editions available of this entry and, for everyone that collects it, I’ll airdrop a special art that I’m making especially for this launch! So go ahead, it’s free (gas only)!

💡 Mirror works on Optimism, so gas fees are super cheap. But the art I’ll give you is on Ethereum Mainnet =)

*If you have read this far, thank you and welcome! We look forward to receiving your comments, and feedback, so please reach out to us if you feel like being part of this!

• 🐦 Twitter: @theuselessart

• 📷 Instagram: @theuselessart