Diving Head First into the World of Web3

Now, just for the record and before we begin, i'd like to point out that I don’t consider myself a technical expert in this field by any stretch of the imagination.

What I am, however, is most definitely a little bit obsessed (stick with me here).

Having spent the last 10 months or so immersing myself in the weird and wonderful world of NFTs & Web3, learning all I can and, quite frankly, boring the face off anyone willing to listen to me preach about this planet revolutionising technology, it's fair to say that it has become a fairly big part of my life.

Moreover, given the fact that my stumbling into this crazy space was undoubtably the catalyst which re-ignited the WTVR creative flame, I feel it's a pretty worthwhile topic to cover.

So here goes...

My Web3 Introduction

I'm pretty sure the first time I heard the term NFT (Non Fungible Token) was around Spring of 2021 when I heard Reggie Watts talking about them on a Joe Rogan podcast.

Now...I must admit, at that time, the whole thing was quite a bit over my head and I didn't really understand what the big deal was with these extremely expensive inedible mushrooms.

However, over the course of that Summer I seemed to keep seeing more and more posts and articles about these 'NFTs' popping up on social media and various other online media sources.

Crazy stories about 20 year olds making life-changing money selling JPEGs of monkeys and retiring off into the sunset.

I mean, that all sounds great but it just seemed a bit scammy to me and a little too good to be true - and we all know what they say about that.

I have friends who had done pretty well over the preceding year or two trading in crypto - so I suppose I knew it wasn't completely unbelievable - but yeah, it wasn't really on my radar enough to take all that seriously.

Perhaps this was because I understood crypto as volatile, risky and rife with rug pulls, scams and evil anonymous hackers who are coming to steal your granny's pension. But more likely, it was probably just because I was too busy, ignorant and lazy to learn.

When The Penny Dropped

Fast forward to the tail end of summer ’21 - some pieces of a puzzle started to click together.

A friend from the year above me at high school (shout out @Lukeabc), who is a really creative guy and someone i've always followed and respected the work of, posted something on Instagram about a piece of his own artwork he'd listed as an NFT.

I’d say we’ve always shared similar artistic interests over the years - so it was at that point where my ears perked up a bit.

I decided to give him a shout to get a bit more info on what this whole thing was all about.

He gave me a brief run down on how to get setup: Coinbase > Ethereum > Metamask > Opensea etc. etc. and I started to dip my toes in the water so to speak.

It all felt pretty daunting in the beginning - and for a good while thereafter as a matter of fact.

Being fresh out of the wrapper, it felt like there was A LOT to learn and well, there was - christ, there still is and probably always will be.

However, the further I went down that rabbit hole, listening to various podcasts, following knowledgable twitter accounts and making connections with others in various Web3 communities, the more interesting things seemed to become and the more obvious the future potential of this technology became apparent to me.

The dots had started to connect.

OK, so what?

Since 2013 I’ve been pretty actively creating art under my WTVR project and in 2015 I started to experiment with digital art.

Over this time I’ve created a fairly sizeable portfolio of digital artwork which I would often share on Instagram, much to the delight of all five of my devoted fans (Hi Mum!).

With that in the back of my mind, I guess seeing what Luke had done with his work initially had inspired me to see what could be done with my own.

I saw this as an interesting opportunity to start getting my artwork out to a wider audience, and who knows, maybe even make a pretty little penny in the process.

Little did I know, it wasn't all so simple as drawing a monkey and selling it for $150,000.

I joke - that wasn’t necessarily my aim, but at the end of the day, who doesn’t like money…or monkeys for that matter?

In all seriousness though, I wanted to share my art and my vision - but I will discuss all that in a bit more detail in time.

Anyway, as I was saying, the dots had started to connect…

Over the past 20 years or so, as a society we have been blessed (or cursed as some may say) to live through the digital revolution:

• Our music cassettes and vinyl records have turned into CD's, mp3s, iTunes and Spotify.

• Our movies and videos have fast forwarded from VCRs to DVDs to youtube and Netflix.

• Our analogue photos have developed from Kodak film to digital cameras, jpegs, iPhones and Instagram.

• Our banking, home bills and tax returns have been exchanged for online banking and digital forms.

• Our close knit homegrown communities and friend groups have reached out into world wide connection via online social platforms.

The list - goes - on - and - on…

Ultimately, the high speed internet which the majority of us likely take for granted like water from a tap has formed an underlying infrastructure upon which this progression into a digital era became possible.

In an age in which physical, tangible, own-able, collectible ‘things’ ultimately morphed into digital compositions of 1s and 0s which live in an abstract world of broadband, electronic mail, digital files and bits of hard drive memory, the opportunity and exponential technological progress seems endless.

(Side note - we are now on the verge of a quantum leap in this process via the adoption of Web3 technology, AKA ‘blockchain’.)

All this digital progress has resulted in a situation where, increasingly, the things we appreciate and care about no longer tend to exist in physical form.

Our photos, music, art, relationships, online spending behaviours and data are exploited right in front of our eyes by global tech corporations for their own inordinate financial gain - taking value out of the pockets of creators.

So the question is this… how can one prove ownership of a digital asset? An item which can be ripped, burned, copied, right clicked and saved a thousand times over and transferred around the world in the blink of an eye.

Well, you can't. That is until one considers the use of blockchain technology.

'Blockchain'...by now is a word you've all heard - well, I mean, I just said it...

But seriously, it's a term I have increasingly heard more and more of over the past decade without really ever taking the time to educate myself.

I saw Bitcoin solely as a currency one could use on the Silk Road to get armed, buy narcotics and order a hit on an unsavoury neighbour - and if you hadn’t spent the spare change on pizza, then today you’d be a millionaire.

I honestly thought the ship had sailed…

So in my ignorance I’d probably resigned myself to not caring enough to learn about Crypto. That was until I was presented with a use case that made a whole lot of sense to me - NFTs in the form of digital art - a way for artists to create and sell digital pieces of their work to collectors, completely traceable throughout the entire lifecycle of the asset, with royalties built into the smart contract which go back to the creator upon each re-sale on the secondary market.

Now this is just one specific use case, the opportunities are truly limitless and this is barely scratching the surface.

Your house deeds, your car ownership documents, your passport, driving licence, concert tickets… the list is infinite. One day soon…they will all be NFTs, or some future variation of - watch this space…

To use a cliche - this is still very early.

Now, I’ll leave the deep technical explanation of blockchain technology to someone smarter than me, but in a nutshell it is a decentralised network upon which transactions can be made using cryptocurrency. Every transaction is visible on a public ledger for all other users of the network to view as they wish. This in turn gives rise to built in self-policing fundamentals at the core of the tech.

Where do NFTs fit into this puzzle?

Well, lets say you take a digital file and 'mint' it on the blockchain. This effectively links this asset to a unique, verifiable transaction on the blockchain which cannot be revoked, changed or forged - forever.

This file will be indelibly associated with a block (or part of a block to be more precise) on that blockchain. This cannot be replicated as each transaction takes place in a sequential manner and is verifiable by a vast number of independent hosts (or nodes) globally which exist and operate that specific blockchain protocol in a decentralised fashion.

Ownership, sale, purchase and transfer of each unique token can be tracked from time of conception by the creator to transfer from owner to owner to owner through the entirety of the asset's life cycle, all with the ability to build in royalties which go back to the original NFT creator at the point of each re-sale.

This brings immeasurable opportunity as mainstream adoption takes place and industry starts implementing this technology in their own specific fields of expertise - the global economy is going to change. It is changing. The snowball has already started rolling from the top of the mountain. And failing a pre-historic attitude towards regulation or a nuclear war as a result of disagreement between some real life South Park-esque character world leaders (also very possible) then there is no stopping it.

Anyway, I have rambled on for far too long. Get yourself a MetaMask wallet, buy yourself some ETH, get yourself on Crypto Twitter and start sponging all the info you can. (Not) financial advise.

*Disclaimer - read the first sentence of this post again - make of this what you will.

WTVR :) x