Blockchain, Crypto, Web3: An Ideal Space for Creatives to Learn New Tech Skills.
As an artist who has often been on the ‘other’ side of technology over the years (meaning a software consumer), I’ve found that acquiring more advanced digital skills can give you increased options — even in the art world.
Making Sense of Now
It’s easy to shrug off the current craze around web3 as an overhyped anomaly and something not really worth paying close attention to.
After all, haven’t we been doing just fine with basic, low-maintenance, and progressively more robust web services for almost two decades, most of them free (if of course, you don’t care about data harvesting or privacy)?
But if we were to evaluate, as creatives, the present moment from a different perspective — that of a “1997” mindset — we might want to immediately reassess, lest our artistic futures be defined by stagnation, lack of innovation, and decreased income.
How many times have you, as a photographer, video artist, or musician, wanted a greater say in the underlying platform specifications to better show, distribute and build community around your work?
Often we tell ourselves “just use what’s already out there — there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.” And admittedly, there are some great established platforms (Behance, Patreon, Bandcamp, even YouTube) that we can use for some of these purposes.
However, what if you could dream up your own platform, with decentralized royalty systems, community voting, immersive virtual galleries / concert halls, a native token, equitable social graphs, unbiased analytics, and distributed consensus?
Seize The Present Opportunity
With some of the latest developments in blockchain protocol design, these things are finally within future reach of creatives who want to dig deeper into the actual systems that might power the next iteration of the web.
For example — the Polkadot and Cosmos ecosystems both offer a modular approach to blockchain engineering, whereby with some enhanced coding knowledge, you can actually design a unique blockchain to suit your particular use case without relying on a pre-configured, one-size-fits-all approach.
In the case of Polkadot’s own Substrate framework, many common protocol-level requirements around authentication, accounts, tokens, runtime, on-chain analytics, and smart contract execution can be freely combined through pre-configured Rust pallets (Substrate’s version of crates) into your own custom solution.
In addition, even the Near Protocol (hands-down one of the best Layer 1 smart contract chains for artists out there right now, due to its ease-of-use and active developer community; also in Rust!), is now partnering with Octopus Network to encourage design of dApp-specific “app-chains.”
These dedicated Layer-2 “mini-blockchains” will allow creators already using Substrate to more cheaply, easily and quickly get a proof of concept chain up and running directly on top of Near’s Layer 1 without the substantial economic and security considerations commonly associated with Polkadot’s Parachain auctions.
On the Cosmos side of things, Samsung just recently partnered with Ignite (formerly Tendermint) to offer a similar approach to blockchain customization for media creators through their Saga (Sagan) project. This will really inspire those already developing in Go and looking to have more flexibility in platform configuration through Cosmos-SDK modules — resulting in enhanced, easy-to-implement functionality in “chainlets” dedicated to metaverse applications, blockchain streaming, cross-chain communications and NFT gaming applications.
The Bigger Picture
So what is the point of all this and how does it relate to 1997? Well, speaking as someone who was there, and observed first-hand the dot-com boom and bust three years after, I would argue that in market downturns the power dynamic is still fluid enough to allow for substantial innovation before the next great consolidation in the industry.
In other words, now is the perfect time to dig in, learn to code and start building what you actually want to see and use.
The reason: there might not be another, similar time in history with abundant technical support, inexpensive or free blockchain infrastructure, accessible developer tooling, fairly loose regulation and an enthusiastic community before the next “great consolidation” occurs.
When this consolidation does happen, the blockchain landscape may indeed look much like web2 today — mostly huge established players, draconian regulations worldwide, majority publicly-traded companies, paid subscription infrastructure, conflicting shareholder interests — and not a lot of experimentation going around.
If we could now look back on how many left the tech industry for good between 2001 and 2010, we might also be able to learn the number who regretted not staying in the game longer to better influence our future online destiny (the one we live in today).
Because as I alluded to in the beginning of this article, if you’re “outside” technology and hope it will just “blow over” in 5–10 years, you may find yourself increasingly powerless and left behind, even as an established artist under the current web2 regime.
A Related Story To Illustrate
A great anecdote — recently I visited a virtual exhibition on Solana. I’m not sure which physical space it was the “metaverse” version of, but I think it was a Hong Kong contemporary art museum. In any case, you could navigate this space with your cursor and “approach” works that truly looked like they were “on the wall,” hyper-realistic textures, gallery lighting and all.
For years many major contemporary galleries have invested heavily in their “virtual spaces,” notably for prestigious international fairs such as Frieze or ArtBasel, so I know that’s not necessarily anything new.
What is new is that this particular metaverse space runs entirely on Solana, with the future ability to incorporate the Phantom or SolFlare wallets and buy the works directly as NFT editions (right off the gallery wall). You could even chat with other avatar gallery patrons about the work in real time, vote on pieces / artists you like, make new friends, hang out in the lounge, offer to curate new shows, etc. All of these interactions become possible once the worlds of AR, AI and gaming coincide with web3, NFT’s, tokenomics, and distributed consensus.
If you’re a Rust programmer you’re probably already aware of Bevy and similar gaming engines used today for (non-metaverse) 2D and 3D interactive applications. With Rust being one of the core smart contract and blockchain protocol design languages out there (powering Solana, Near, and Polkadot among others), it’s only a matter of time before we start to integrate the current gaming landscape with corresponding web3 or hybrid (traditional backend + blockchain node) iterations.
All of this is in addition to the large-scale cross-chain integration work going on right now toward inter-protocol bridges (primarily to and from Ethereum, and between other protocols), and the many efforts to encourage greater fusion and collaboration within the overall industry.
Keep It In Perspective
The above was just one example out of many— and I know we have a lot of work to do (especially in the user experience / UI area, as well as scalability) to make web3 a reality and live up to its promise.
And I also admit that many of the present criticisms about misdirected blockchain use cases, terrible UI, and over-marketing around crypto are absolutely legitimate. Also equally valid is the current fixation on today’s substantive technical limitations — they do indeed hold back and/or threaten the probability that any of these dreams see the functional light of day in the foreseeable future (let alone mass adoption).
But if we take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture again, those who have advocated for continuing investment and innovation in this space are correct to do so. Parallels to 1997 are actually a good thing, because now is the time when experimental approaches can yield truly revolutionary results.
As an artist / developer eager to up-skill and learn new approaches to solving distribution, payment, identity, rights management and social networking challenges moving forward with what is already emerging as a promising successor to today’s “top-down” web landscape, I’m excited to see where all these developments are headed.
So let’s stop second-guessing all of it — and get back to work.
Mentions and References:
Polkadot:
Substrate:
Near Protocol:
Octopus Network:
Ignite (formerly Tendermint):
Cosmos SDK:
Solana:
Rust Resources:
Thanks for reading, and see you next time!
— Panasthetik.
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