NFTs have recently blown up in internet culture and among crypto fans. Non-fungible tokens have fully captured the attention of artists, art lovers, tech-savvies, and investors. In the first half of 2021 alone, NFT sales surged to $2.5 billion in value, encouraging more enthusiasts to join, converting anything and everything into NFTs, from artwork by a famous artist, to even a simple tweet.
The crypto universe revolves around decentralized communities, and this gang of enthusiasts have powered NFT hype from the very start. The attention of the community is an essential part of the value of NFTs.
NFTs are still a young technology, but some cases have already made history. The Internet was moved by “Rare Pepe” meme images built on the bitcoin blockchain. These frog memes gathered a tremendous fan base and became tradable assets.
Then came Cryptopunks, 10,000 unique characters and one of the first NFTs built on the Ethereum platform, and anyone with an Ethereum wallet could claim a character for free. They were all claimed instantly and began circulating in the secondary market as assets.
The hype around Cryptokitties was also powered by the community of enthusiasts who lost their minds over the digital cats. The virtual game captured the world’s attention, as it was found to be slowing down transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, and users were making huge profits from trading the images of crypto kittens.
What’s next for NFT communities? In an exclusive interview with DailyCoin, Gaurang Torvekar, co-founder and CEO at Indorse, shared his thoughts on building NFT communities.
Bringing NFT Enthusiasts Together
Indorse is a coding assessment platform, based on the Ethereum blockchain, which aims to build, grow, and sustain software engineering teams. The all-in-one platform focuses on tech & coding skills, and is built on a community of industry experts around the globe.
Apart from helping upscale company workforces, the Indorse team is also keen on organizing blockchain hackathons to bring the crypto community together.
This gave rise to a one of a kind hackathon called “NFT Vision Hack,” and is dedicated to NFTs. This global online hackathon, which takes place between July 3rd and August 30th, brings engineers and creatives together to break the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of NFTs. Torvekar feels optimistic about this initiative that seeks to help build the NFT community:
"We think that the NFT market is really thriving and especially on the developers’ side and the artists’ side, people love this phenomenon, people really love the space, and that's why we are doing the NFT hackathon." Hackathon participants are invited to choose from the spheres that they are the most interested in. Some will work on creating innovative applications on the Rarible Protocol, or build innovative solutions around gaming & NFTs.
Others will dedicate themselves to improving payment solutions, making NFTs accessible to a broader audience, or to creating a concept for a scalable NFT art project that will become the next Cryptopunks.
The hackathon is inclusive to everyone, even those without coding skills. Creatives with great ideas for NFT projects are encouraged to join the community, team up with developers, and implement their ideas. For that reason, Indorse has formed a broad online community on Discord, and Torvekar is convinced that crypto and NFTs are for more than only tech professionals:
"Yes, developers are a really important part of this, but it's also about artists, it's also about collectors and all these people coming together, that's what makes this space so awesome."
Professional Support & the Importance of Community
Participating in the NFT market might be overwhelming, and has proven too much for many. Torvekar asserts that a brilliant idea may not be enough to succeed without a professional support structure:
"We are trying to connect artists with developers who don't have a team yet, and then we'll help them. We can help them launch this project as well. We can guide them on the process, how to do marketing, how tokenomics works, how to build the community, all these things." Participants of the hackathon will receive professional support from mentors coming from the tech and NFT industries, such as Rarible, Circle, Filecoin, IPFS, and USDC, who will guide participants right from the start all the way up to the final product.
Torvekar notes that communities are an essential environment for creative ideas to flourish and for artists to succeed, as getting one’s work sold has historically proven difficult.
This is why many young artists are called “struggling artists.” Torvekar has a sense of growing optimism though, because the NFT space is finally instigating change to this archetypical struggle of artists:
"As an artist, you get an avenue to sell your art to all your followers and make some really good money out of it." Torvekar does lament that NFT marketplaces are still not accessible to every artist. NFT behemoths such as Nifty Gateway, SupeRare, and other platforms, are highly curated marketplaces, typically accepting only those artists that already have an established community of followers.
Creating a community around one’s art is an excellent starting point on the way to success in the NFT space. Torvekar suggests that artists be present and share their artwork on different platforms, like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, to be noticed by the big NFT platforms.
"Look at Beeple, the way he had done art every day, and then he got noticed in one day and made 70 million dollars, right? People say it was a one-night success, but that's not the case. He has been working on that for multiple years before that." Hackathons that connect developers, artists, and the market together are essential mediums in helping people with their goals of finding their very own gang of like-minded fellows, and a place in the market.
On The Flipside
- Even without coding skills, in order to generate NFTs a basic technical background is a requirement. There is still a long way to go for tech driven art to become mainstream for artists and collectors alike.
- Not every artist is going to be as tech-savvy as to be able to put their artwork on the market as an NFT.
- Building a community around the art of particular artists requires a lot of resources.
Why You Should Care?
- NFT Art and its platforms create new opportunities for artists and art collectors alike.
- Succeeding in the NFT market is still not an easy task, so support from professionals and the community is empowering.
- NFTs are not simply a technical and financial innovation, but are also shifting the mindsets and understandings of how art and the digital world should be understood.
You can watch the full interview here:
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