During the global epidemic, Black Dave committed his craft to music, producing, mixing, mastering, and designing EP cover art. Including producing, mixing, and mastering over 400 beats every month. When we arrived in the NFT scene, his only ambitions were in music as a rapper and producer. That was until he minted his first NFT - an unused, and unreleased piece of cover art he had created. That was December 2020. Soon after he was selling art on Nifty Gateway and tapping into his passion for anime and even minting characters. His unique and diverse body of work incorporates a blend of wit and musical prowess.
One noun, every day, forever. The mantra of this colorful and charming collection is the epitome of generative art. An ideal that promises to persist through eternity and pave a path for digital art’s permanence. Nouns are 32x32 pixel images of people, places, and things, each with the iconic square glasses. An eclectic and diverse cornucopia of cows, strawberries, eggs, planets, crowns and more take on a life and character all their own. People dream it, do it, the world loves it. The goal is to cement Nouns as part of the culture so that everyone recognizes these varicolored, endearing characters. They begin to represent a cultural movement led by the people, instead of by a company or corporation. The characters are not at the mercy of any governing body, but by individuals who fell in love with the art and the mission of the project.
McLaren’s golden standard has been “combining performance, innovation, and craft to deliver the art of the impossible”. Building on this standard was its MSO Lab: the web3 brainchild of their Special Operations Division, created to explore the future of performance in a digital realm. McLaren will also be releasing its very first MSO LAB owner public airdrop, providing limited spots for an exclusive physical McLaren experience. No date has been communicated yet for this. However, with the success of the MSO Lab Genesis Collection, there is no denying that there is an exciting future ahead in the metaverse for the automobile company.
Conversely, concerns remain over how NFTs and the metaverse will unfold under the umbrella of Meta. Privacy and data issues are still at the forefront of many people’s minds. Furthermore, Meta may underperform against some Web3 innovations, when you consider that Meta has proposed a 47.5% cut on the sale of any creators’ NFTs in their metaverse. This is not to be confused with displaying NFT PFPs (profile pictures/proof of picture) on Facebook and Instagram. Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, has stated that it will be free to display your NFTs. It’s worth noting that twitter opted for a $3 charge to display your NFT on their platform.
Big names are a draw, but as we saw in Web2, focusing only on them leaves emerging artists and, if there is such a thing, middle class of the NFT world, waving from the back of the room for any attention at these events. The already rich get richer. The organizers of NFTNYC want to change that. They want to feature the artists, the small start-up founders who make up the majority of Web3.
NFTs are poised to change this dynamic. It’s no longer just about owning a piece of art, it's also about the ability to buy, trade, and sell it on different digital platforms. A critical shift that’s creating opportunities for monetization, creative control, and ownership, never before seen by this generation's artists. If a digital asset is an NFT, that means it’s unique—just like an original piece by Banksy or Jean Michel Basquiat. The main difference is that the creator has full control over its ownership and can sell it at any time on the blockchain—a ledger where all transactions are recorded publicly and immutably (i.e., forever).
For decades, the art world has consistently echoed a flagrant devaluation and marginalization of women's work, a defining notion that has made more women disinterested in expounding their art skills. The NFT world is barely 7 years old, but it seems to be already imitating this abnormality. With the way it proposes an unconstrained and more lucrative way to create and sell off artworks, hardly anyone would think that there are only 16% of women artists in NFTs. If you dig further, you'd find that only 5% of NFT sales were accrued by women in the past 21 months.
