The Art of Social Impact

Transcript

hi i'm so excited to be here um so may i introduce again graham de barra then we have obesity and newman khan so it's super exciting to meet you in person because we've been in touch on twitter and i've seen you around the space and obviousiness you have been like one of the first ever crypto artists from portugal so that's really really cool i i thank you for this compliment but i'm not one of the first first but certainly one of the earlier doctors and i think i'm also the first in portugal that's yeah for sure yeah for sure how did you get into nfts

how did i get here well um it's actually a convoluted route because i came to ethereum because of the the golem project you know golem project the super computer because i was looking into distributed computation that kind of projects and i came across golem i came across ethereum and then i came across crypto kitties and i realized i instantly realized the potential of nfts i was looking for this as an artist i was exploring new means of distribution and the royalties issues is a really important matter to me as an artist and i saw this as the perfect

vehicle to implement these rules automatically on one side but also as a the pure digitally native medium for people working in digital art of course nfts don't exclude physical artists but for me at least they are the perfect vehicle for digital artists because you know our art is made of bytes we display them on digital screens they look better this way then nfts provided a whole beautiful structure so we could display sell resell and all of that so this is how i got into it here in earlier in 2018 i joined non-origin hi guys and a few months later i joined super

rare back then i joined portion as well and you know rest is history things got going and admin and mint base now i i hopefully will be minting stuff on on new year protocol and will certainly be on on on mint base i've already done some work on peras but uh i'll be meeting sure on memphis as well let's talk with newman as well so how did you get here um i buy steak fell into it like i didn't have anything to do with crypto nothing crypto lane before literally seen a post on instagram and i've seen a rap group in the uk selling something as an nft you know looked up on twitter what is

what is an nft find out what's going on listed something a minute later you know sold for a few couple of weeks like it's just going on still getting my head around things not understanding what is happening here and um just understood the community and and figured out it's a community based thing for example i didn't know until later on down the line known origins basically down the road from my house i didn't i didn't know that at all um and for me it was one of them things where i kind of understood it and for a digital asset like i understand this like it's you know it's the way forward this is exactly what's going to happen um yeah um you also have some pieces upstairs exhibited yeah and uh so do you connect the digital to the physical

piece can you tell us a little bit more about that so with with what i'm doing at the moment at first i started doing collectibles um you know in february march and then it got to a point where there were quite a few you know 10 000 pfp projects just popping up every single day and for me it was one of them things where i need to give collectors more value for what they're paying so the way i work is i'll do a digital drop-off collectible and give away a free physical absolutely at no cost and with the piece of gold upstairs the whole idea behind it is that um it's based heavily on a new era like it's you know all the old traditional is now is done like it's time to move on now we're using cryptocurrency this how it's going

to work from now on moving forward and with that piece so the nft's live on foundation the nft is live once someone purchases the nft whether they're here or abroad i will then ship out the physical to them free of charge plus oh wow yeah very rare because mostly it's always digital so graham the badass i think i'm next am i yes sorry for the pronunciation no you got a perfect so i visited um the gallery earlier like upstairs we had a nice chat this morning we had a nice chat this morning so it's really fascinating what you do around nfts and uh drugs or like decremental

energies and drugs yeah so tell us a little bit more about your works and how it like comes together thanks carolyn for sharing this and uh yeah thanks everyone for listening in i know there's a lot of things going on right now uh yeah so i'm a human rights activist or campaigner for over a decade and uh there's an issue that steeped in my heart which is drug legalization and to understand this from a framework of human rights so coming at the nfts i saw the potential for protest nfts for the idea for someone well if they're going to put themselves out there whether it's an artist and i think artists and activists

have a lot in common because they put themselves out there they put their soul they put their emotion in their work and it often goes without any sort of credit or any sort of reimbursement for their time so we think of key figures through through history you know there's like key speeches that everybody knows almost off by heart i have a dream well imagine if people could own an nft of a contemporary activist or campaigner which could then be used to fund a movement and i think that's the power of nfts in the future for me is that it could be used to fund social good and uh have a social impact on the world and giving something back right that's uh yeah giving something back and um giving something back can be either true

you know the donation so that could be like used as a spit contract like newman and myself are doing the split contract right now on the foundation protocol and uh you know episode 50 is going to the artist 50 is going to a cause or a movement or an organization you know there's no fee here lisconn isn't taking any like cut there's no middleman really involved um so that's one way of course your action you know your action or your art can also be you know the thing that's giving back so whether that's you know you know a powerful movement or you know i often wonder like if occupy wall street was to happen today like would they be involved in crypto and nfts and d5 i don't know that's like it's kind of not really a question but

maybe for today we can start thinking like this and that's the power of cryptocurrency to me and what do you think um where will nfts be in five years from now are they moving more towards like the social component or like utility nfts or where do you see the future heading well for me um i i'm very interested in um in the provenance of things that we consume so when i think of drugs and the the the exhibition that i have upstairs and that i opened here in lisbon on the 19th of april to mark bicycle day it's been 50 years since the war on drugs was beginning in 1971 by richard nixon it was funny enough the same year that the

gold standard ended but that's that's just a coincidence um for me like putting those uh substances up on a wall that i that i purchased and uh here in lisbon on the streets it became very obvious through that documentation that these were not real you know they sell heroin cocaine none of this is actually the substance that the consumer wants to purchase so the idea of introducing a provenance protocol on top of a blockchain using something like an nft that would track using a standard of operating procedures from the beginning that is substance it can be food it can be uh coffee that we drink that we have in the giveaway bag how do we know that something is fair trade when that's

actually just a brand that henry nestle came out with we do not need to trust brands anymore we just need to trust the chain and if it's not unchained in my opinion it's just so that leads me to the next question what do you think about different chains other than ethereum because i know you guys are mostly like ethereum focused right and bitcoin oh sorry no that's a min base for example we also started on ethereum and the gas fee became you know like super crazy last year so we we built everything on the near protocol which is a blockchain on rust and it's a shadow chain pos cheap transactions and

we did that because we really want to see those nfts being used in like the real world hence like redeeming beer nfts for beer or wine nfts in lisbon at the moment by the way if you want a free wine or burrito come over nate is just sitting there he's giving out burrito and beer nfts but anyway sorry um so yeah what do you think about other chains have you tried other chains like what would you recommend new people joining the space first of all um i think my core belief is in blockchain i came to ethereum um because ethereum developed smart contracts and made nfts possible i i didn't came

to the blockchain for the finance aspect i came as an artist and ethereum presented a whole new set of tools that said uh right now i'm also minting on on near protocol through karaz id and also working on tesla's blockchain and i firmly believe that part of the future of nfts goes through interoperability um either or oracle's aggregating data and making it easier to share the the info or bridges and l2 solutions whatever it takes so we can all talk together because i think right now and especially after

2020 it became really obvious that nft is a force to be reckoned with it's a really powerful tool um it started out and it's still starting out it's still um i i know i've been talking with a few artists mostly and sometimes they feel they they miss the train or something that they're too late but we're just really starting and we're just now setting the the basic stones for foundations so i think the future will be interoperability um the future of nfts can be whatever we decided to be because i think right now we made a

point we proved that the technology works is useful um that's the beauty of transparency and the chain of verification and this is a really important aspect for me as an artist of course but i think for everyone involved in nft is this transparency and the chain of verification is really important as grammar was saying you you can apply this to whichever product you you choose um so right now i think the future of nfts is right you know i don't know what they'll look like i i i wouldn't imagine it to be here

in 2019 uh i would never imagine that nfts would grow so fast so exponentially so you know so global like a wildfire in the plane but it happened um and now we're bringing more people into the space more nft creators of all sorts and now we've been seeing a boom in collectibles but it it will you know normalize and it will be available and accessible to whatever product you choose i think i really believe it sorry personally for me i think um at the moment what we see is art and nft does not have to be out you know people don't understand non-fungible token you know it could be anything at what point is when music comes in events is

happening at the moment where poe-ups you know it's going to get to a point where physical tickets are exit you know they're extinct it's going to be literal digital assets you're getting instead of a physical ticket to go to an event so once fashion gets involved music all of that kind of that's when you know at the moment it's like 10 only been touched because it's just art that we're seeing there's still 90 which is still you know left and um for me again slowly this is what eventually going to happen next year or so i feel like there's going to be music concerts you're going to be going to you're getting an nft instead of a actual physical ticket you're buying um and yeah that's that's what's gonna happen in terms of uh different blockchains again i'm on tesla

as well i'm i'm not gonna lie i'm not really a fan of it but i've had a lot of problems but you know there's going to be everyone's going to be it's just a race to see who's going to be the most efficient and best platform that's all it is it's literally a race that's all it is yeah so nfts on different chains are the future they're eating the world but yeah it's one day at a time it's happening fast graham yes well certainly when an artist or a collector comes to you know make a purchase uh and make a use of an nft yeah like it probably won't be fully like immersed in the tech side as much as everybody here

is um and as newman says we are only about 10 you know maybe even that's a stretch i'd say probably even one or two percent you know probably it's like a dribble compared to this you know what this tap can can unleash uh and i'm just excited to be kind of part of it you know but for me it kind of goes back to basics we see a lot being built on bitcoin and bitcoin liquid side chain and bitcoin lightning network um for me any chain that can prove that is both a store of value um and that store of value has to be something strong so something new needs to prove itself for a decade or more in my opinion before it can really be like uh have that kind of like you know malleability um or kind of you

know strength but um but i think it's very certainly interesting that we're going to be going through a lot of use cases and skipping a lot of the you know it doesn't have to be bitcoin security it doesn't have to have like the community of ethereum it doesn't have to be that big so we could easily see some some new chains like in the space and and it's very exciting i think to be to be part of that and who knows like again like official says like we really have no idea what tomorrow brings like nothing so to say to make an absolute position now would just be you know i wouldn't be prudent you know yeah and even even uh for example theo who's on earlier uh he's talking about bunchie like you know using

nfts as collateral takeout alone like you're literally using a jpeg a jpeg as a like collateral for low this is how insane this year it's like it's just mental okay so i think we need to wrap up this conversation um you guys i have a last question for you so um for people joining the space and wanting to get into nfts as creatives it's kind of a hurdle at the beginning and i know you guys already have strong communities but what would you recommend new people um in like a few sentences like where to start i want to sell my um my nfts or my songs or my art

what would you recommend new people in the space well there's a lot to begin with and and people coming to the nft space will find technical hurdles mostly i think getting a wallet and getting that over that specific hurdles so um my honest advice is do research you know take your time to to read check the platforms check the places like openc see what they're doing because the all of these at least the major platforms they have facts and they they go through the the basic steps

so my honest advice is take it easy i know there's a lot of excitement with nfts now that everybody wants to be a part of it but i'm also having this um feeling that a lot of people in being involved in the space now really are missing some important steps in security terms and the specifics the technical specifics of what what it means to work on blockchains but so i i advise them to you know thread lightly get your bearings understand the technology you don't have to understand solidity but you have to understand what a blockchain is and how it works

not only to be safe but also to fully realize what you can do with it you have to understand the mechanics so how can you use them because everybody can make an nft now but does it have to be an nft to start with are this is this seems obvious to many of us doing nf these four years but people a lot of people now are doing nfts in there you know they want to be a part of it but they don't quite understand it so take your time to understand it take your time check the platforms check you know there's dozens of interesting projects dozens of interesting protocols side chains whatever it's it's a huge complex world

but if you take a couple of weeks to read it you'll be you know more comfortable with it so my advice is chill guys take it easy read some stuff my advice would be community get involved in conversations with people attend events like this you know and community have conversations by art you know don't just think because you might have a certain amount of followers think you're going to sell immediately it's not going to happen like you need to be having conversations with people you need to like me i reached out to graham where was it last week or two weeks ago to say this is what i've been doing and now i'm here talking on the panel like you know you'd be having conversations with people attending a lot of events and again by not like you can't just take

everything out and not put back in that's not how the community works you see a lot of celebrities with millions of followers doing pfp projects or you know thinking they're going to sell it doesn't happen like you know the community it's very community based this whole thing everyone's very helpful friendly like you can have a conversation with anyone um so my approach is except the tech side of things just get involved in community and you know go to events and go out there and meet people i think i think for me it's it's three three things uh three three things which is uh just to sum up i think it's kind of already even said education i think that's like the most important uh you know andreas antonopoulos is understanding bitcoin and understanding

ethereum and now understanding lightning network i think that's like probably where it starts conceptually uh a couple of weeks like i mean i know i'm almost ten years and i'm still like learning like the fundamentals of like of like of like cryptography you know um we are still learning and once once you begin to think differently i think then the second thing is understand that you're not selling for dollars or euro or fiat you're selling for the future of internet money whether that's ethereum or uh near or whether that's bitcoin or whatever don't think of it in dollar terms and don't think of it that you need to sell this once you understand through your education you've read andreas antonopoulos now you understand this is digital gold or it's internet money you need to keep this not for you but for

your children's children because it's going to be mine for the next you know 100 years or so it's not our lifetime that we'll see the benefit of of bitcoin it's still very unequal right now and uh the third thing which actually i learned from newman uh which i thought was really nice is give back so when you you know you make some sales well you know this new internet money who will benefit from this new internet money other artists any charities that's accepting it there's very few right now one or two percent maybe in the world but understand that it's up to you now to become philanthropic and allow new people in um actually um for people interested in donating to charities with crypto you you should check the giving block the giving walk

aggregates a few dozen charities all over the world since from human and social causes to wildlife preservation and all of that so and and this is the thing that graham said sorry i'm extending a bit but this last bit graham said um giving back um this is a really important aspect because there's a lot of talk about community and it's mostly it's not community it's it's marketing strategy so you get twitter engagement so you get more followers and all of that but as an artist who started in 2018 i can tell you it was all about community uh we had close relations with the

platforms we work we have close relations with the artists we all know each other and it's not because it's a small world it's because we care and we want to get involved with each other and we all uh most of the artists i know from back then they all have collections they all bought a lot of art from other artists they they were all involved in donating a lot of money to a lot of interesting projects or supporting emerging pro emerging projects and all of that so giving back i think it's the the fundamental advice maybe um be good be good be good to each other you know it's as simple as that yeah and like peer-to-peer as much as possible if you're going to give directly to an artist or directly to someone or do

something locally in your community it's even better than charity it's even better but you had a lot of options there i think pleasure wow super nice thank you so much so please check out the exhibition upstairs if you have more questions for those three um reach out to them on twitter or just here in person i guess any questions you know all the answers you know all the answers yeah you know it already you don't need to thank you thank you carolyn really appreciate thank you so much thank you guys thank you thank you