NFT beyond the hype - How token economy impacts creative entrepreneurship / Abena Asante

Transcript

hear me can you hear me okay hi everyone thanks for having me um I'm super excited to be to present my research a topic close to my heart first I'm here in Prague first time at East Park overall sorry indicates nft beyond the hype how token economy impacts creative entrepreneurship as a disclaimer I'm not here to Shield any nft projects or whatsoever I'm here to present I want to analyze this topic from a purely academic perspective this image is the most expensive board day sold for whooping 3.4 million US

dollar in October 2021. this was basic mainly the why I mean so many questions went to my mind I asked myself who does that why is someone creating this image and why is even a person spending so much money on this um on this on this image on this picture my personal motivation of doing this research is mainly rooted during my second master which I couldn't started in summer 2021 I was just fascinated by the technology and its impact on what um what what does it impact on the

creative entrepreneurship level the area of my research is token economy and the research that I couldn't find many research which focus on Creative entrepreneurship level the most research is focused on technical aspect of it the questions I want to answer is how creative entrepreneur harness token economy in decorative entrepreneurship and how this new phenomenon impact artists designers and creators overall I mean personal motivation is one aspect of it but I personally think that my research is important because it's at the intersection of Technology create

economy and society and it tries to link the value and nft enables on the individual creative entrepreneurship level and I purely focus on create a specific gain insights feeling no knowledge and emotions from their perspective nft ecosystem is can be divided into two-sided Marketplace we are on one side we have the collectors and this can be divided into people who are fan I personally consider myself as a fan because I have deeply emotional connections to all of my nfts I rarely sell any of them and then we have those flippers flippers

are considered those basically who are flipping jpegs left and right and on former investment perspective but in order to buy there are people who are creating and this creators come artists game developers and designers musicians Etc and my research mainly mainly focus on creators and I put them into perspective and I want to put them a little bit on The Pedestrian because the crypto Twitter as well as social media is mainly portraying flippers and those who are fans but unless those who are creating nfts the first part of the my research was

mainly focused on the literature review starting with what is creativity what are creative entrepreneurs as well as what is a creative economy creativity can be defined anything that is useful unique as well as new and creative entrepreneurs are individual operating at the intersection of um creative economy mainly sharing like it involves human creativity technology and ideas and new technologies for example AI virtual reality as well as blockchain are deeply shaping their creative economy and this can also enable that those who are

working in this sector Advance workers extend enabler whereas generating new business models nft the second part of the literature review was mainly focused on the technical aspect of it starting with the blockchain because this blockchain network smart contract token economy anything that can has economic value such as art music real estate Etc can be can be tokenized and as a token it's one aspect of the token economy and nft is an application of the asset token and my for research

focused mainly on nft application of it here comes the how how did I came to my conclusion and my findings well in academic perspective you can do like mainly have two strings one is a qualitative research and quantitative quantitative research I decided to do qualitative many of two reasons because qualitative is more suitable if you want to get if you want to analyze a new phenomenon nft as well as gain perspective for my creators from a greatest point of view and also it's quite um suitable especially if you

don't have like large sample size for example my sample size are like rather small it's not like I have two thousand five thousand creators interviews which is why qualitative inductive approach is the most suitable for answering my research question foreign so far I have analyzed 20 plus creators from all over the world I saw the last August in the meantime I have submitted my thesis but as mentioned in the beginning I really fascinated about this topic which is why I'm doing these features on an ongoing basis but um so far I've interviewed 20 participants from all over the world

the average of the interview lasted like 60 Minutes like roughly an hour only transcribe material this is roughly 20 Pages 84 pages of material that I have transcribed and after finding clusters encoded and I did this pre AI so I haven't used any artificial AI to analyze the data and I have conducted the interview a semi-structured what does it mean it's mainly that I have to interview questions with me but I haven't handed out any of the questions to any participant the reason why I didn't do this is it scientifically proven that when you don't hand out the question

before the participants share more of the insights than rather than stick into the questions and answering them it was more of like a storytelling that I started like questions like how did you get into the nft ecosystem what does nft mean to you on a personal side how do you get your inspiration what motivates you what drives you what is the technique compared to um expressing your artwork compared to before nfts these are the questions that I ask and usually like I just let them talk did storytelling without interrupting them and most of them were really freely to open share many insights also very raw

personal information majority of them I mean I did not really had to stop the conversation unless it went really to a topic where it didn't relate to my research question but um the most majority of the participants were really open talked a lot some of them were a little bit hesitant in speaking but I think it was mainly because of the language barrier and not because of the questions that I asked I asked the interview was conducted in English and some of the participants the first language was not English which was a little bit barrier for them to um to speak openly and freely yes and this image okay now we come to

the findings that led to my um research question this visual illustrates mainly the Journey of um NFC creator for example you start here on the left side with the purpose purpose could be anything that led them in doing nfts it could be economic purpose because they want to have a new um revenue streams it could also be purpose because um they were fascinated by the technology it could also be purpose for example another Creator influenced them in becoming NFD Creator could purpose could be the community that they are involved that let them do an nfts procedure is anything related to the

mechanism in creating the artwork as well as procedure and selling it could be for example that this new phenomenon uh technology in like opens up new ways in EX in expressing their creative identity compared to not um compared to previously it could also be that the selling procedure for example it's faster than because you if you paint you do a painting you don't have to wait under the painting it's dry you don't have to put the painting into a gallery to sell them so this is all related to the procedure space is related to anything that they they um

they're in the different spaces for example economic space means the platform the nft platform that they're selling the artwork could impact their creative entrepreneurship another aspect of the space could be the technology the smart contact for example if you're not very Tech I'll describe it say Tech novice it also has an impact on how you're able to create nfts also impacted them in a more in a negative way compared to not using nfts time along the timeline is anything related to speed and frequency while they're doing something for example

speed of um Community engagement some of the creators to like on a community mission on a weekly basis other on a monthly basis creating nfts um time could also related to how often they create nfts compared to the previous medium that they used before an important aspect is all of the participants that have interviewed were artists before nft came up so it they could really feel the difference between doing nft like expressing their artwork Now versus compared to before nft came into place and which is why I think it was very interesting to see the differences this was not a requirement

that I that I mentioned that you need to be an artist before I just said that you need to identify yourself as an nft Creator irrespective of how long you're doing an nft and also irrespective of the age and how long you have been an artist in overall um actors or um above here are for example other people it could be either individuals other creators they have an impact on on their creators itself other influential people for example especially in the um crypto Art nft Space in an nft influences have a detrimental impact overall their the success of the

nft project it could also be actors and actors could also be community community that they engage with people who support them other their fan base Etc this all have an impact on their creative entrepreneurship we can now come to the findings the first finding that I want to share is it's a collaborative economy what does it mean it means that this new phenomenon in enables a togetherness in the sense that there's no middleman there's no rigid um like Superior inferior

business model structure as a Creator you have you have control and access over your artwork which enables you to efficiently monetize your creativity it also enables um especially for underrepresented artists that you have means and tools to participate in the overall creative Creator economy let me share okay the second aspect is a definite paradigma shift in artistic value creation doesn't mean enables new possibilities for exploring different Revenue models and even after the pandemic many of the artists said that

they did not switch completely they did not give up the nft completely but they have embedded nft as a as a as a study and as a reliable source of income compared to their traditional art world and now with it nowadays it's like they're trying to not migrate but they're trying to convince their fan base from the traditional artwork in the nft outward and have a hybrid form of um fan base as well as business Revenue and it definitely empowers um as I mentioned before underrepresented artists who have an independent way of creating

um artistic value for their for their artwork the third finding is definitely creation process what do I mean by that is many participants explain that they are not limited to their galleries um opinion when and how they want to create the artwork they can freely share and they can also decide and and and and and and shape the creation process and it's a it's a it's a freedom they have never experienced before and also musicians those who are NF create nft music express that finally they were able to experiment music genre they wouldn't have done it before nft did not exist

because mainly purely purely because they were now bound to the record label and there were also more freely in expressing and and and and and and diving into into um music genre that did they wanted to do a long time before but they didn't have the courage in doing this and they also said that nft enables like an interactive media which enables audio and visual elements that leads to a more diverse artwork the fourth finding I personally think it's um one of the most interesting it's the community engagement it's

creating a unique experience in the sense of digital offerings and I think nfts digital art existed before and nft is just an extension of digital art because it enables um enables access to Community Access to utility and a Creator can use this to this utility to create a community and I think I personally think this is the most fascinating um finding that I want to share it's not most often we forget that digital art existed before but the way that you as a Creator can foster community and engagement and experience and a and and and a togetherness I think this was something that

basically all participants agree that it was one of the profound impact in the all um creative entrepreneurship and being a Creator itself and something that the highly value and cherish in a way that they couldn't imagine that this technology will open up doors for them and also has an increased transparency in in the sense of if you buy an nft you can also influence the shape and how the sale proceeds are going to be used whether it's for other community engagement or whether you want to support other creators and the fifth finding is definitely

something that I find it um interesting I have to smile is I underestimated that if you're a little bit like more on a techno this side I think you're also struggling creating nfts and this is something it was Awakening call for many many participants and I was interested to find out that those participants that I struggled to find the interview because they they forgot I mean writing an email was already a challenge for them or how like speaking of like using an Excel sheet it was very challenging for them because I think they're very purely artists and those who have like um technical less experience also those that I struggle to

find interviews and also those that the interview went a little bit anyhow like I have to always Notch them into hey onto my research questions so I had them I could figure out whether I could easily sense out if someone was a tech expert or Tech novice by the way the communication and the interview process was set up so this was um interesting way to experience and another challenge was definitely it has changed your artist's life what does it mean what do I mean by this is before an artist just created artwork and someone was doing the work for him to promote artwork and make sure the artwork gets to those who wants to buy it now it is a change in his own way of

being an artist by doing sales by doing promotion by doing um marketing also Community engagement and this was a great challenge for many artists that they had to learn skill set and and and aspect of being a creator that they were not exposed before and I think decentralization of the whole ecosystem comes with accountability and this is something that I think they were not used before they cherish it very much now but um something they had to learn this is a small snippet how I derive to the findings basically it's a coding by

coding not in sense of python code but more coding in the sense of using a software that brings me um that I can derive teams and clusters which I have applied to them um categories this is a small snippet after raw data that I assigned a preliminary code and then a final code that's how the I have um the methodology applied to findings um thank you so much for listening to my presentation sorry the next step is oh that's been switched off okay

um I wanted to have like a next step in case you know any nft creators Etc I'm very interested to do more research about it my goal is to have like 50 60 70 creators to have more um data and yes if you know anyone just let me know I'll be very happy to conduct further research and I hope you enjoy my presentation [Applause] thank you so much for the presentation any questions any questions yeah yes okay go ahead hey thank you for a speech first no uh

which ways which ways do you see like for involving and engaging uh an artist to like nft business okay so is this okay yeah no it's better sorry sure so uh uh how do you see ways of uh involving and engaging like new artists like the directly artists from classical art to like digital business which ways okay interesting question so if I understand it correctly

you you want to know how classical artists can be motivated or brought into doing and creating nfts yeah because they could be like because they could be not uh because because they could be not interested in it because they are like could be an artist and it's good for them so and the US and like a businessman like do you doing business in nft in crypto you've seen in potential in them to doing business with them you know I think people need to you have you need to be personally motivated I

mean if someone is not fascinated by this technology or by this new phenomenon I think it's very difficult to convince them unless you say okay you can do like um like economic purpose um get more like have an additional income stream being less dependent on them on the traditional artwork this could be um a factor that you can definitely present and say hey look if you jump on the NF like if you come to the ecosystem you're less you don't put all the eggs in one basket by just being reliable um depending on one income stream and just open up this opportunity definitely this might be um

motivation you can also motivate by saying that hey that you have more control over how and when you want to do your artwork you have ownership and control this is I think I would I would motivate um yeah I would maybe provide these two solutions but the end the person needs to leads to yeah he needs to do this on a voluntary basis well thank you so much we don't have time for more questions at first okay yeah but you can ask questions later on I'm around [Applause] [Music]