Are we all gonna make it? Probably not—and some Web3 proponents don’t even want people using the term “NFTs” anymore.
At a Tuesday panel on the “Future of NFTs” at SALT New York, speakers offered takes ranging from jaded and blunt to hopeful on the impact of the Ethereum merge on NFTs and what the future of NFTs might look like.
The panel featured TIME President Keith Grossman, Emily Yang (aka Pplpleasr) of pleasrDAO, Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot and UnicornDAO, John Caldwell of Wave Financial and UnicornDAO, and writer and NFT trader Andrew Wang. The session was moderated by Rembrandt Flores, founder of blockchain marketing agency 8Commas.
When it comes to the impact of the merge—where the Ethereum network will move to proof-of-stake—Caldwell doubts it will have much of an impact on the NFT market.
While Caldwell said “anything on Ethereum” would be considered “ESG-compliant” (environmental, social, and corporate governance) in a post-merge world, he implied that ESG is essentially a corporate talking point. In his view, “artists and creators” are the ones who actually care about the environmental impact of cryptocurrency.
“I don’t know if financial institutions really care, except for this ESG rating, which they kind of have to do,” he said of Ethereum and its NFTs moving to proof-of-stake.
“But, you know, financial institutions have done great off of things that are horrible for the environment forever,” Caldwell noted. “I don’t think this is an exception.”
What the Ethereum Merge Means for NFTs
We’re days away from Ethereum’s long-awaited merge, in which the leading network for dapps and NFTs will shift to a more energy-efficient system. It’s years in the making, but as the mid-September target draws near, many users are wondering what could go wrong—and whether anything will change with their owned assets. That’s especially true when it comes to NFTs, with tens of millions of profile pictures, collectibles, and pieces of artwork now running on Ethereum—some of which have commanded eye...
“I hate that this might make me look bad, but the fun I had with NFTs and the people I was meeting always made the environmental costs a kind of afterthought,” Wang said of trading Ethereum NFTs.
“A lot of people hated me for fucking with NFTs,” Tolokonnikova added. She hopes the merge will make people hate her “a little bit less.”
But what about the ongoing crypto bear market’s impact on NFTs?
Caldwell said that in this bear market, people might “give up on” NFTs completely.
“If you remember [20]18 and [20]19, people gave up on crypto completely, and they will give up on NFTs again,” he argued.
‘Stranger Things’ Netflix NFTs Face Fan Backlash
NFT platform Candy Digital has released another “Stranger Things” minigame for Netflix, where players must solve riddles to earn NFTs of the stars of the show. But some fans aren’t happy. The “Stranger Things” NFTs are 11,111 unique tokens on Candy Digital’s Palm blockchain—an Ethereum layer 2 sidechain—that signify ownership of one of five digital posters. Image: Composite from netflix.candy.com Back in April, Netflix quietly teased the NFT partnership with hidden messages in the Season 4 trail...
Wang shared a similar sentiment—mainly, that the NFT boom of 2021 and early 2022 is very much over.
“I don’t know if you would call this an extended bear market, [but] it’s definitely at the point where even I no longer believe in WAGMI, unfortunately,” Wang said.
But this crypto winter isn’t all doom and gloom.
“Obviously, prices are down from all-time highs. But there are still people in the audience here at the panel for NFTs. Like [in] a true, just horrible bear market, no one’s gonna care,” Caldwell said.
While NFT trading volume might be staggeringly low now compared to just a few months ago, Caldwell does think NFTs will make a comeback.
Starbucks Taps Ethereum Scaling Network Polygon for NFT Rewards
Would you like an NFT with your latte? Starbucks today announced that it plans to offer its customers NFT rewards through Polygon, an Ethereum scaling network. The NFTs will unlock access to things like merchandise and events. The Starbucks Odyssey program, which will launch later this year, will let both customers and employees in the United States earn digital stamps as rewards, as well as purchase and trade limited edition digital stamps. Each stamp will be minted as an NFT, or a blockchain t...
“You won’t even know you’re using NFTs, but they’ll be back,” he said of the next bull cycle.
“Hopefully by this time next year, people are not even really using the term anymore,” Pplpleasr said of NFTs.
Grossman offered a similar prediction about where NFT technology will be in the future.
“Slowly but surely, we’re gonna move from what’s a spec state—where people are talking about the tech—to an experience state, where people talk about, like, ‘Oh, I went to Starbucks and I got XYZ.’”
