Digital art is nothing new for VonMash, which describes its mix of painting, video and sound as “Afro-delic” – a psychedelic twist on Afrofuturism. But when the South African started thinking about selling his work as crypto-art on the blockchain, he hesitated. “I’m totally not into it because it consumes energy,” he explained. Selling art as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, uses technology similar to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. The buyer receives a verified digital token, which proves that the artwork is an original. The boon for artists is that if their work is priced up and resold, they get a share of every future sale.
“If someone else buys my NFTs, I automatically get a share of it,” VonMash said. With traditional art, if a buyer pays $100, and then “sells it for $100,000, I won’t get a cent.”
computer warehouse
What worries VonMash and other artists is how those digital tokens are verified.
The mastery of the artwork is substantiated through complex mathematical puzzles – so complex that the calculations required warehouses of computers.
Companies that solve puzzles are rewarded with new tokens, and their solutions add a “block” to the chain of authentication.
Number-crunching requires large amounts of energy, often produced by coal-fired power plants.
Most NFTs are currently traded on a platform called Ethereum. Tech watchdog Digiconomist estimates that Ethereum uses the electricity of the entire Netherlands, which has a carbon footprint comparable to Singapore’s.
“The energy it takes to produce a proof of certification of an artwork is enormous,” Vonmash said.
He has reason to worry.
Climate concerns have sparked a backlash against the NFT.
K-pop fans in South Korea last year staged a brutal campaign against plans by popular groups, including BTS and ACE, to sell crypto-art.
“Essentially NFTs are a giant eco-destroying pyramid scheme,” read a widely retweeted comment from @ChoicewithACE specific comments that prompted the group to cancel its offering.
BTS’ music label Hybe decided to postpone its launch in search of a greener alternative.
In South Africa, environmentalism is an undeniable article of faith among many artists.
A collective called The Tree created a platform for artists to sell NFTs, and then collaborated with a Cape Town charity called Greenpop to plant trees to offset the carbon emitted from crypto-art sales.
Developing world
Fatuwani Mukheli said that the system made him feel confident about the two NFT sales he had already done.
“The world is constantly evolving,” he said. “If I only know what I know, that’s just going to miss me.”
For VonMash, the solution was not to sell on Ethereum, but to put its art on a platform called Cardano, which uses a different authentication system.
Cardano uses a mechanism called “proof of stake” instead of constantly solving difficult puzzles by companies.
Instead of earning new tokens by solving puzzles – and consuming electricity – users can simply juggle the tokens they already have.
Essentially, they are using their money in the form of crypto-currency to verify the authenticity of a digital artwork.
If someone tries to sabotage the system, or simply makes a mistake, they can lose their financial stake in the network.
The underlying technology can be confusing, but the short story is, there are fewer environmentally hazardous alternatives to NFTs, said social impact consultant Candida Haynes.
“Ultimately, blockchain developers will also have to engage with sustainability and help inform less technical people, including artists, about the state of environmental sustainability in blockchain,” she said.
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