NFT: beyond the hype - Abena Asante - SheFi, DeFi Africa and Bankless Africa

[Applause] thank you so much can you all hear me great um I have to say I'm very nervous just to let you know um welcome and I'm very happy to be here to present my research which is very close to my heart and the topic is about nft beyond the hype how photography impacts creative entrepreneurship and just as disclaim I'm not here to Shield any nft project or whatsoever for me the topic I'm very fascinated which is why I dedicate my time to do an academic research about this to give the whole new phenomena a different aspect towards it this image here is the most expensive Board app sold for US dollar 3.4 million at solubis auction October 2021 and for me it was like how why and what I mean first of all who creates something like this but it's beautiful or not it's always in the eye of the beholder but why are people creating and another question that went to my mind was like um who's paying like this amount of some and as a curious person I am if I see something I always want to figure out more about it I want to do a research I want to dig into the topic because the media is just portraying the numbers and figures but I think it's more sub uh context towards it and I really I'm passionate about giving a little bit um context to the whole phenomenon this is basically the why I decided to do the study and it happened during my second master in computer science information system I started two years ago it was in summer 2021 when I did like summer school from University of turkey deep dive into blockchain I was very fascinated by the topic and I attended many hackathons and I read many papers about it the area of my research is more about token economy I mean blockchain space is very broad but I just focus on one aspect of it and the question I want to answer is how does this new phenomenon impact creative entrepreneurs and how do they harness token economy in their creative entrepreneurship because most researchers I've found was mainly focused on the technical aspect of the nft schema or the risk Etc but not really on those who are creating nfts I mean personal motivation is one aspect of it but I think in order to do from academic perspective the next question I ask myself is my topic relevant does it add any value has um are people living interested and I say I could answer the question yes because the research at the intersection of Technology create economy society and it links the creation between the a validate nft enables towards those who are creating nfds and I think since it's a new phenomenon not much research has been about this topic I mean I cannot go like there's a research of 20 years or 10 years which is why I think it's very original and new and the objective of my research is definitely purely from a creative perspective I want to gain the insights knowledge feelings what moves them what kind of impact does it has is it positive or negative so that's mainly in a nutshell the area of my research that um focus on the nft ecosystem is very broad um you have like two-sided Marketplace those who create nfts can be artists game developer producers painters um Etc and the other side are collectors and the collectors can be divided roughly in fans I consider myself as a fan I have deep emotion connection to my nfts the crypto cover that I have even though I have many people give a high bid price to buy it but it looks like me it has my um hair color that I'm currently wearing now for me it feels like um this is a twin that I have so for me I could not never sell it for no amount of money and the other aspect of collectors are the flippers those who are flipping jpegs left and right I think this is mainly people who are making a lot like profit and this is for portrait in the media and I think this is why maybe it nft can have like a negative how should I say negative feeling and people hear about it but I personally think there's more to it and that's why I just take a step back put the creators into focus and give them the space to share their Insight because this is it left out in the media and um before we can even grab or make a comment about it it's always good to to um to have like um holistic conceptual views of the whole ecosystem the first part of my review uh um study was like I had to Define what is creativity there's according to Scholars creativity can be defined as something that is novel something that is perceived that's useful and something that is also unique and then the next step was the creative entrepreneurs are considered individuals who are operating in the creative economy and new technologies like blockchain AI Etc this can enable those who are working a creative economy to create new digital offerings and new business ventures and creative economy is defined as anything that involves human creativity technology and ideas and it's heavily impacted by AI VR as well as blockchain technology the second aspect of my um research was like the technical aspect putting blockchain in anything in into context the first layer is like a blockchain layer and on top of it are a smart contracts and then token economy itself is it's a broad um brought a topic you can have voting token consensus token work token Equity token Etc and then asset token it's one aspect of it the nft is an application of the asset token um that's where my research focuses on so it's that's why it's very broad but I just want to narrow it down to people see that hey it's nft as a token and within this nft I only focus on the Creator's perspective now we have the why and now I say how how did I arrive to my findings how did that what was the procedure that I applied in order to answer the research question in research you can do like basically two strings you can do qualitative of quantitative I decided to do qualitative mainly of two reasons first of all it's a new phenomenon which means I do not have a massive amount of sample size that enables me to do a qualitative um review by in doing review of like maybe 2000 or um more sample size and also um it does not enable me to have a do research of many decades so many years which is why qualitative is suitable for something that is new especially something that I want to get insights feelings and knowledge of those who are involved the participant I conducted up to now 20 plus participants from all over the world from Summer Basin Europe Middle East South America African Asia time frame I started last August I submitted my thesis in November but I'm so fascinated as I said it's something close to my heart I'm doing on an ongoing basis I'm still collecting more and more interviews the duration of the interviews lasted like an hour then I just did the recorded time that I took um recorded speech that I need to transcribe and in our transcribed materials are like 20 pages of material that I went through read it and tried to Cluster it during the interview process I mean it was very funny but every time I thought I don't gain anything new someone always shared a new aspect brought me to a new angle some conversations were highly philosophical I could have go down and talked like maybe for three additional hours and most of the participants were how should I say at the beginning very hesitant but then as as the conversation goes on they were very open they share many of their feelings positive and negative ideas it was the technique that I used was um it's called semi-structured what does it mean it means that the questionnaire I had it with myself but I did not share it with the participant the reason why I didn't do this is when you share the question beforehand they usually just stick to the questions and they don't open up as much as they could but I just had it for myself as a guidance and when someone started talking about a and he ended up talking about a topic I mean for example I'm a football fan and when we talk about football but it's nice but it doesn't really add value to answer my research question then I had to nudge them back into to the to the question but other than that I just really let them talk freely some had took longer breaks answering questions Etc and I was really fascinated loved hearing their stories some of the participants were a little bit tightly but it was mainly because of a language barrier I did the interviews in English and some of them were not native speaking English so if you don't speak in your native language it limits you in expressing yourself freely and more um let me still share more less emotions but I had to do this because I have to transcribe it in the languages to be same in order to cross-validate them the interview material yes so many I mean what what I mean by storytelling is that for me it's important to answer research question that people are able to have like a drama turkey they start maybe maybe um like very formal but then they become like very emotional and then um I just I did not really want to put them into a box the questions they want to answer some answers the the structure of the question just let them decide sometimes when I realized that he was already talking about his procedure and what inspired him maybe I had it in the third section but I let let always let people freely talk and to capture as much and this beautiful story and telling as possible these are the findings um the journey the this image here describes pain mainly the Journey of a Creator I start with a purpose the purpose could be anything that led them in creating nft it could be just to enrich himself you can have economic purpose in doing something you could also be you were fast somewhere game developers before and creating NFTA gaming watches like a logical step towards that the path that they've already chosen so they were fascinated because of the technological trajectory others were fascinated because of the decentralized aspects so it it corresponds with the ideological uh being and others that may be fascinated because of enables them or the artistic um the artistic outcome of other nft creators sparked I mean doing nfts time and the category time relates anything about the frequency of doing something the frequency of selling nfts or creation process I have to mention that all the participants where creators before so it means that they have done artistic work before the nft came so it had impact on how they were able to express their creative identity for example if you do morals if you do painting if you do spraying on a wall it needs time to dry depending before you're able to exhibit but with this new technology it has changed the way they're able to express their creative identity and also like time related to when they do community engagement other people some creators do frequent engagement others maybe once off that's related to time space it's related to how does a technical space enables participants to do something are they Limited in the creative expression or is it something that gives them freedom to explore things which was within them but in the traditional artwork it was they were not exposed or didn't have them the the means to it because they were highly put into a box in in doing certain things because maybe a gallery told them how to do this or record label is doing this so that's related to space and space could also be for example economic space all aspects of the different nft platform for example non-orange in openc verb Etc these are all economic platform that also impacts how they can sell what kind of commission they need to um share what kind of other requirements are there in order for they didn't need to overcome in order to participate on these platforms on top of it you see the actors actors are other people either individuals or groups within the ecosystem you can mainly refer this actors as also maybe as some sort of Gatekeepers maybe it's also other influential people who can have control over how successful the nft project is going to be sell access could also be Community engagement and all the other creators Sometimes some creators were influenced or their success is also impacted by other creators and then events for example the last one is differs from time in the sense that was there any significant event that happened that impacted their creative entrepreneurship and some said that since they've been invited to speak at nft NYC it had a tremendous impact over their artistic um artistic life and compared to traditional um artwork that they were not exposed to it or for example I mean if our Basel is a very prestigious place where as any Creator if you want to exhibit your artwork there once you have been invited I think it sets you on a different pedestal or different environment but not many artists are able to Showcase their their artwork that are puzzle but for example but if you have opportunity to attend nft NYC or nft loan Etc that also opens up doors and this is um the category event is related to anything that significantly happened throughout the whole um craters um entrepreneurship now I've this is the first finding the first one I can share is like collaborative economy what do I mean by this it's it has a change in the way creators can monetize the artwork they have control of it it's like more a participative collaborate economy it's more a togetherness rather than Superior inferior like a gallery is dictating you as a Creator what you what you should paint and where you can exhibit it has definitely increased efficiency in monetizing the artwork and especially for underrepresented creators it has increased the opportunity to be part of it it if all of a sudden it's like you sit Because the Internet is borderless wherever you sit wherever you are as long as you have access to it it enables you to participate and and being part of a of of economy which in the traditional World they have been left out before the second finding that I definitely have is there's a shift in artistic value creation shift in control over promotion of the artwork and also freedom in exploring driven Revenue models you're not just bound to One Source you can have the opportunity of have many sources and the interesting thing is even after the pandemic I think the pandemic also let them be um like had influence of selling your artwork online but even after the pandemic where they were able to go back to the traditional artwork almost all participants said that they were still being in the space being an nft Creator and it just enables them not put all the eggs in one basketball to spread the risk of on having different Revenue stream and that sets gives them a little bit more freedom of not always hustling that hey you need to sell at this place and and yeah it just gives them it's a paradigma shift in how they they want to um they can create artistic value the third finding that I can share is the creation process really most all participants said that they have the freedom in exploring in in expressing themselves and the freedom it they cannot compare as before it's just like they are not limited to the medium that they have they're not limited to Gatekeepers and they were even especially those who were musicians before they said that because of like a music Nifty you can create like a simple set of maybe 100 or 500 sets and they were able to experiment music genre which I think they wouldn't have done it if it was stick like if if the record label was promoting and telling them what they have to do and it also gives them freedom to to it it has awakened um an artistic side a creation process a creativity that didn't know they even had it before and NFC is like it's an interactive media where you can have audio and visual elements so to something that they find it very fascinating and yes the creation process really has some impact and shifted a lot the fourth finding is that it really comes to community engagement and this is something funny that it was decentralization comes with freedom but this Freedom has also a cause freedom in sense of it has it changed artist's life before which is creating and then someone did the promotion someone sell it but now all of a sudden they had to do the whole value chain of creating promoting doing engagement and those creators who are more on the introvert side they were completely overwhelmed like what is this God like what did Twitter say they were really really um overwhelmed and like they were afraid of doing it but I think the pandemic helped them to adjust because all of a sudden they were forced to engage with people online and I don't they I only said that they were funny that I the pandemic helped them they didn't know that if they would have had such an online presence if it wasn't for the pandemic so it is something that it's like it was just forced into it was really funny to hear that story others really embraced they said that oh even though I have to do the only Community engagement but I can decide when I want to do engagement I can decide on the medium some only do engagement on Instagram others on Discord and this gives them also freedom in doing the engagement when and how and and in which medium that's what also they cherish most about it it also gives increased transparency on the sale proceeds how it's going to be used some creators said that I think 75 of the proceeds is going to the community the community can decide how they want to invest the money in doing education for other creators or helping other musicians um on their own on becoming creators itself so did something that they really cherish about it and also gives like it's for some sort of um community members that participating co-creation um maybe it's like a Creator said that hey which nfts do you like and they also take source and of of inspiration from the community engagement in what kind of new nfts you want to create so it's a collaborative um participative creation and the fifth findings is definitely it's challenging if you're technology some creators are purely artistic human being I mean they struggle in even writing an email I was it was so challenging I could figure out those who are Tech novice also struggled in like correspond to my emails when I or even stick to the to the the zoom call that that the the the time that we have scheduled I think there's a high correlation if you're a little bit purely artistic dreaming in your own world versus um and and those who are not Tech novice but I would say Tech expert and this is was this was also related to the whole minting process this was a huge Challenge and it was a huge Awakening call if if you never dealt with anything um Tech stack aspect about it but however it was challenging for them they really um yeah they just learn and embrace it and some have been scammed but this I think it's part of the learning process um challenge another challenge that they said that it really impacted the artist's life to a way it was not foreseeable they couldn't have imagined it and it also leads to I mean it's a new phenomenon it's it's everything is new the documentation is not very good and to some us like um platforms and Etc and this also impacted in the whole being and yes this has made how to say the challenges that um they need to overcome and I think it would be interesting to see if I'm doing this research like maybe in two years now because it's the first nft wave maybe in the second nft wave would be interested to see even if I do the same participant interviewing the same participant or others what kind if the challenges that are here now if they have changed or new challenges will come this is something that I personally find it interesting to see in two or three years from now okay and these are the findings I show I now I want to show how did I arrive to the findings when I talk about coding I'm not software coding like writing a python code but it's more about coding as assigning is looking at the text and assigning a team a cluster towards it and this is a very highly tedious work that you have to go back and forth when I mean I didn't do I did it without AI so so I did myself that I transcribed the text and then I read through it and I said okay what how does it come what kind of codes um classes can I form and I like did three interviews and then I started to do like preliminary coding and then I did that additional interviews and then it's like like I did like a zigzag back and forth procedure and to arrived to the final coding um it looks like this on the left side I have the raw data this is like a quote from the participant then I assigned a preliminary code for example I would say that's related to purpose or mechanism and then the final code um as mentioned before the purpose can Define granola divided into oh what's the identification with the technological trajectory or mechanism but what does it mean it's a creation process mechanism or the selling mechanism there's mainly the process that I applied to arrive and the coding category and these are the six coding category I mentioned before purpose time space procedures accessing events and the subcategories that I have applied to the whole interview material yes so that's mainly how it is for me is like I probably think it's it's more than technology it's Finance governance collaboration it's culture it's it's such an immersive environment sometimes very philosophical political and to me very very much enriching I hope you enjoyed listening that's it [Applause] thank you thank you for an amazing dog uh if we have any questions in the audience for abna feel free to raise your hand and we'll forward the microphone to you microphone here please hey that was a great presentation thank you um I'm curious like one thing I I saw when you know nfts kind of exploded is the kind of increase competition right there's a lot more actors involved how do you feel that uh discussion went did anyone have this feeling of like oh maybe it's a little bit more difficult to achieve a higher you know quality in the art World in nft whereas if they kept doing what they were more comfortable with that they feel that they've already kind of had this traction right and did you get any kind of feeling like that from your interviews so I didn't hear you from acoustic Point sorry can you try try standing here yeah acoustics okay can you hear me yes maybe that's better okay so I'm interested in like you know the nft when nfts kind of exploded there was lots of people trying to get into the space right and a lot of artists uh were kind of competing and I'm wondering like in your conversations you had is if you got a sense of that like were people feeling that it was very difficult space to break into um and were they you know a little hesitant to do that because of that competition thank you um interesting question it it the competition was I could definitely feel it and especially because I think it's it's a it's it's the first wave of nft and sometimes the quality of the nfts were not really successful nft purchase does not mean high quality and this is something that throughout all the inter-participant They said that yet it is um they could fail and at some NF like some um the ecosystem I think it can be very brutal in the in the sense of um Gatekeepers are left out but influences are like the hidden how should the king makers or cream makers and they have um it is a it is a competitive market and to break it in to be recognized it is challenging but I think if it goes hand in hand art World itself is challenging to be recognized because artists I think it's not something that you can measure like quantify in in numbers and anything that you cannot confine numbers it is very subjective and not and and especially something that's beautiful and I think it the technology itself did not erase this problem it has just weaken the problem but but it the challenges of the artwork itself it remains but I think you have the chance in being increased visibility by doing community engagement this is something that nobody can take it away from you so the entry barrier it's there but the barrier has lowered definitely I hope that answers your question does it answer your questions sorry yes another question over there thanks for the chat then um uh so my question is it's louder now oh sorry so I find your perception on nfts very fascinating and insightful I wonder if there's a nft project that you have in mind that you admire and why good question I think crypto coven um it's a it's a project that I admire for two reasons first of all it was a birthday gift that I received a couple of um like two years ago and the other aspect that's why it's very person the other aspect I admire is it is a pfp project and being as a black woman I had it was a huge variety of different covenants and someone coven looked like me so it's a sense of inclusivity and and belonging that I did not experience with other projects and also like on like um in in the fashion [Music] um World Etc so that's why I really admire the thought of representation someone is thinking about hey there are people who look like this have a skin color and and when you see a digital twin of yourself that you can carry along with it's it um yeah that's that's really close to my heart I think that's why I really love crypto coven for that aspect of um yeah thinking a step ahead and creating a space where you find your digital twin once again abna thank you so much for coming to Belgrade thanks for having me [Applause]