This is based on a tweetstorm

Recently, @thisissethsblog posted about #NFTs, saying they are a "Dangerous Trap" His 4 arguments are reasonable-sounding surface concerns but they're all off the mark.

A point-by-point look at why we have to think more carefully about NFTs 👇

Argument #1: Art is silly too but it's ok for Real Art because we've done it that way for a long time.

This just doesn't make sense and seems backwardly purist.

Status conveyed by owning original editions of physical art doesn't just come from showing 3 ppl a week your wall, it's from making sure people know you own an original edition (art as flex, art as humble brag).

In the digital world there is tons of status to claim using mediums beyond that narrow view, which you see on Twitter everyday. So it's not just a different "wall" to hang, but a totally different environment for related status seeking.

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This post is based on a Tweetstorm

It's pretty clear that NFTs have broken into the mainstream and, predictably, are causing all sorts of consternation because they're still in the "we're trying shit" phase. But, whether an artist, developer, or other creator, don't write them off yet. Here's why.

First of all, the initial phase of any market is a combination of "toys that look like crap" h/t @cdixon) and "us attempting to copy our mental models from the old world into this one... very awkwardly." (remember early mobile apps?) Welcome to NFTs 2021.

The first cryptokitties in 2017 first broke digital scarcity into the semi-mainstream and they were nearly impossible to acquire for average people because you needed to buy tokens just to try. "Kitties" are just collectibles and collectables make no sense to most people, particularly in the digital world where we're used to infinite replication.

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Everyone can agree that blockchain has a UX problem. The top apps right now have literally dozens of users. And no small effort has been undertaken to try and fix all the leaks in the onboarding funnel. But what if this effort is just mopping the decks of the Titanic on most of these systems… totally meaningless in the context of a looming disaster?

How do we begin to untangle which systems will stick around for the long haul and which are doomed to be disrupted from the start?

UX Equilibrium

In crypto economic and consensus discussions, we spend a lot of time cozying up to the work of mathematician John Nash, whose famous Nash Equilibriumis generally considered to be the ideal state for a game theoretic system to achieve.

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It started as a weekend project. A VC friend had put me in touch with one of his portfolio founders with a “you two should connect, I think you’ll really get along.” Suddenly I’m back in middle school and my mom is setting me up on play dates.

Wanting to have a better understanding of what they were working on, I took a look through their website and rolled my eyes when the word “Blockchain” came up. Not another one.

I was several months past the acquisition of my previous company and, during the scale-out phase, had gotten deep into artificial intelligence research. At the time, I was closing in on some interesting opportunities in the space and had a lot of momentum going. The tech is interesting, the problems are big and the space is highly active. I didn’t see any reason why I wouldn’t continue down that path.

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