Right-Click, Save The Bored Apes
NFTs and the Forging of Future Societies in the Guise of Art — Part IV
From CryptoPunks, Beeple’s record breaking NFT to BoredApeYatchClub and the dramatic merging of the Punks and Apes under the stewardship of Yuga Labs in 2022, this essay is a 5 part series exploring how NFTs are not merely a value creating tool, but a vehicle for building future societies in the guise of art.
Part I: Origins of Crypto Culture — Transition into The Age of Value
Part II: CryptoPunks — Why NFTs Are Not the Same as JPEGs
Part III: Beeple — Community is Culture; Community is Currency; Community is King
Part IV: In light of the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club launching their own native currency, ‘ApeCoin’, and subsequently their metaverse, ’Otherside’, earlier this year, I explore how NFTs have the potential to reshape the fabric of digital societies, throwing art and creativity right into the heart of the digital revolution.
IV
An Expanded Concept of Art — NFTs as a Future Society Tool
There have been many movements in the history of art that have attempted to influence our world beyond the gallery walls. None however have been in possession of a medium that cuts through the very fabric of society like NFTs, distributing the power of art beyond artists and into the hands of everyone. As we saw in part III, the collaboration between Beeple and the B.20 project shows us that you don’t even need to be a creator to make use of this feature. You can simply buy into the artist’s community and use that as a base to further your own cause.
Of course the role of art in injecting trust is not a new trend. Countless brands, institutions and even countries have consistently leveraged artists and culturally significant personalities in the past, but the difference here is that it is not large teams of centralised actors with access to legacy finance making astute marketing decisions to sell an obvious product or agenda. Its two technologists and an artist harnessing the potential for decentralisation in the hope of redistributing wealth and competing with institutions such as the MoMA — at least this was their vision of intent.
We are entering a new era of art as ‘social sculpture’. This was a theory developed by the influential German artist, Joseph Beuys in the 1970’s, based on a simple idea that everything is art and everyone has the potential to be an artist [1]. He believed that life is a social sculpture that everyone helps to shape and therefore saw art as a potential medium that brought together an aesthetic practice along with views of an idealistic utopian society. While he spent his lifetime experimenting with this idea, given the technological restraints of his time, there was no medium that would enable the public to participate en masse in such a practice. Today however, things are different. The Internet has allowed for mass coordination of activities for social and political change and now with the evolution of NFTs it has brought his notion of “everyone is an artist” to a literal sense.
An example of someone who intuitively grasped this would be Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur and a social media guru, who would not be considered an artist in any traditional sense, but makes use of NFTs to bring value to his existing 11 Million strong social community in a way that could not be done in the past.
In 2021, he launched VeeFriends, which is a collection of 10,255 NFTs based on one of 268 hand drawn characters by Vaynerchuk. Its main value derives not from artistic merit, but from the NFTs having different levels of rarity, collectability and benefits that come associated with it. For example, some NFTs are valuable simply because they are limited in quantity within the collection, while others create value by granting access to real life experiences and even personal one-on-one access to Gary Vaynercuk himself. To date, the initial VeeFriends collection has generated around 50,000 ETH in volume traded, which means that nearly $160 million of real value has exchanged hands in less than a year. This may seem like a lot, but most of the biggest NFT collections that follow a similar framework such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, WorldofWomen and CryptoKitties, all show equal or greater levels of economic activity.
What we are seeing now is the birth of an expanded concept of art taking shape with NFTs acting like the monetary bridge between culture, art and society.
If in the future any of these NFT collections, individuals like Gary Vaynerchuk, or anyone who has amassed a sizeable community for that matter, issues a token similar to BTC or ETH, then what we would have are essentially mini economies with their own currency, natural resources (NFTs, virtual land, etc) and citizens mirroring nation-states of the real world and therefore in direct competition with them. This is why Facebook’s attempt to create their own digital currency — Libra — was blocked by the US State because that would have made Facebook the largest country in the world with 2.8 billion people already connected to the network. Just for context, this is roughly the equivalent of India and China’s population combined.
Traditional state institutions have so far been able to govern these structures acting as gatekeepers of nation building but what the age of value is offering is a digital alternative to geographically bound nation-states. Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor, entrepreneur and former the CTO of Coinbase, calls this next frontier “The Network State”. In this scenario, there is a fundamental shift in human organization from geography to beliefs which usually begins with communities forming online and eventually growing large enough to facilitate collective bargaining with existing governments in the real world [2].
The power of Silicon Valley and the persistence of the crypto movement is a testament to this framework, since Facebook, Twitter, Bitcoin and Ethereum all essentially started of as small online communities, whose ideas, technology and size now directly threaten the status quo. The interesting thing is that while the direct threat to the current centralized world order is more obvious when it comes from large tech companies and ideologies, it’s less so when they begin as NFTs.
The cartoonish, pixelated and gamified nature of NFTs are like the ‘cookies’ of the Internet — their innocence distorts their true nature.
What we have to remember is that at the heart of all of these NFTs are clusters of individuals who have already opted into their respective ecosystems by owning the native digital asset — think of them as the founding members of a society.
Now imagine going back to the time when your country was formed. What brought the first wave of people together was a shared vision to build a future, usually in revolution of what preceded it or as an evolution of an existing way of life. Instead of NFTs, it was natural resources of the real world such as land and other scarce assets that attracted them. Those in control of these native assets, end up in control of the society — call them the founding fathers of a nation.
To seal their legitimacy all they now need is a flag. Not to worry, NFTs are like flags too. Instead of having one flag to represent all its citizens, there are multiple flags that represent a single community, usually identifiable by a unified aesthetic that ties a collection together. The nature of the art often reflects the ideology of the community, perhaps more accurately than a traditional flag ever will. As you can see by the gallery of Crypto Citizens (below), you can almost imagine who the inhabitants of this society are.
Finally, unlike legacy flags, which have no inherent value, NFTs are themselves programmable assets, which means they are also your insurance card, ID card, passport, driving licence all wrapped into one. I don’t think even Joseph Beuys could have imagined how closely linked art and society would become when he first conceptualised life as a social sculpture.
If we are to expand our view beyond art, the current NFT landscape is more like an ongoing experiment on how to form societies around a certain set of beliefs and generate economic value in the digital world using fundamental features of any productive society in the real world — a set ideology, trust, and the economics of demand and supply. This is why I believe we may see NFTs slip under the radar, eventually emerging as even stronger catalysts for the creation of network states. To explore this further, we need to turn our attention to yet another set of pseudonymous characters in the crypto world — Gargamel, Gordon Goner, Emperor Tomato Ketchup and No Sass. They are the founders of Yuga Labs and creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a NFT collection whose spiritual lineage, like many others, can be traced back to CryptoPunks.
In April 2021, Yuga Labs released 10,000 Bored Apes, each with its own unique characteristics, which also doubled up as a membership pass to the Bored Ape Yacht Club. What most creators have realised since the birth of NFTs in 2014 is the inescapable link between community and value, and Yuga Labs became masters of community building. Within a year the Apes became the most valuable NFT collection in circulation, surpassing the OG CryptoPunks themselves. One reason for this is, unlike the Punks, which became an unintentional form of digital identity, Yuga Labs designed the Apes to function like one. Where the owners of CryptoPunks can only metaphorically take on their digital avatars, with limited intellectual property rights ingrained into the NFT, the Apes can embody their avatar in any way imaginable as each NFT comes with the full IP rights for the owner to do whatever they want with it. This hints at the difference in objectives and maturity of the NFT market, with the former being closer to the traditional art world and the latter a forerunner in the expanded concept of art we are heading towards.
On March 11th 2022, in a dramatic turn of events, Yuga Labs acquired the full IP rights from Larva Labs for their historic CryptoPunks and Meetbits collections. Shortly after, on March 16th, they launched their own token ‘ApeCoin’, and finally on April 30th 2022, they released their own metaverse,’Otherside’, to tie their whole ecosystem together. Yuga Labs are now at the helm of some of the most valued digital assets and arguably the strongest communities in crypto. The goal as laid out by them is for ApeCoin to power all aspects of their BAYC ecosystem going forward functioning as a governance and utility token where holders can not only use it to vote on policy changes through the creation of a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), but also use it to purchase items both in the digital realm and real world [3].
What started of as unique pieces of art that grants you exclusive access to experiences has now morphed into the development of a kind of ‘network state’ with its own system of decentralized governance (ApeCoin DAO), currency (ApeCoin), natural resources (Virtual Land — Otherdeed), native digital assets (BoredApes, CryptoPunks and other NFTs) and a virtual world for their citizens to inhabit. For now, Otherside, which is still under development, is essentially a multiplayer role-playing game where players can own land, transform their NFTs into playable characters and interact with over 10,000 players in real time; however, what if in the future the BAYC community votes for their world to be more than just a gamified metaverse? What if they want it to be a true mirror world to our reality in all its social, economic, political and monetary forms?
In terms of a traditional nation state, ‘Otherside’ can be thought of as comprising of highly competent set of leaders or statesman (YugaLabs), a loyal, powerful and highly incentivised set of founding members (Original BAYC NFT holders), an asset rich ecosystem, and a growing community of citizens (ApeCoin holders) belonging to a programmable digital universe. If over time their ecosystem with newly aligned interests flourishes by creating genuine monetary and social value combined with an appreciating currency, it is likely they will soon be competing with real world nations and perhaps eventually garner enough bargaining power to declare themselves an independent society. Arguably one of the most challenging aspects of any new venture, whether its building a brand or a city, is convincing people to adopt your vision of the future and in this sense, NFTs seem like the perfect blueprint to bring people together with similar beliefs. All of this, in the guise of art.
Of course, this is a big IF, but if this kind of experiment ends up being successful, there isn’t much governments can do to stop these decentralized communities from forming since theoretically no single person controls it. They can ban their citizens from participating but cannot ban the ecosystem itself. In this case, would these ‘mirror worlds’ exist within our current centralised system or would they stay true to their decentralised ideology and seek out jurisdictions that allow them to independently exist in parallel?
We could be heading towards a world where we choose our citizenship on entirely new concepts driven by culture rather than traditional factors such as ideology, geography and religion.
In stark contrast to the way our digital landscape operates today, where its the owners of the networks like google and Facebook who primarily profit from the ecosystem, all citizens within this Web 3.0 community would be part owners of their world and therefore share the rewards of all economic activity that takes place within it. Perhaps a tempting alternative for many citizens even today whose nations are imploding as we speak, let alone the next generation who would not know a world without crypto.
Moreover, if the metaverse or some form of it becomes an expanded version of our already pseudo-digital lives, just think about who is building it. It’s not your structural engineers and politicians who are in charge of the infrastructure and ideology anymore, it’s a new hybrid breed of technologists, digital creatives and communities envisioning what the future may look like. It’s not money that’s the sole driver of economic value, it’s a whole host of digital assets traded and exchanged on the open decentralized market that will have an equal place in the system. It’s not concrete and steel that reinforce urban societies, its technologies like blockchain and others to come that are going to shape the new world.
If all of this seems far-fetched, remember this digital landscape is not being designed for baby boomers, millennials and to a certain extent not even for Gen-Z; its first native inhabitants are going to be Generation Alpha. Value is a shifting proposition and it is the needs and desires of this generation and beyond that are going to drive the evolution of NFTs and its place in our world. Mainstream collaborations between BAYC and Adidas as well as other large organisations scrambling to get into the game before they become the next Blackberry, suggests that the new world is already upon us. It is only a matter of time before our favourite sports team, brand, politician, country, and DJ begin tokenising their ecosystem and build their own metaverse to form communities of their own.
While it’s uncertain how this story will unfold, what is fascinating for me in this version of the future is that art and culture will become fundamental to the economic, social, and political magnets that attract people into various communities. In any other earlier iteration of art, its nature would be limited to the extent of its old world features (Part II). NFTs being programmable digital assets, add an expanded layer of possibilities on top of the artwork that allow us to design a whole world around creativity.
Who could have predicted, the fate of human societies could rest on NFTs?
In the next and last of the 5 part essay, I take a macro perspective to bring everything I have explored so far together and leave you with some final thoughts on NFTs and its place in our world.
Read: Part V
References & Further Reading
[1] Joseph Beuys, Social Sculpture, Tate Museum
[2] Balaji S. Srinivasan: The Network State, Foresight Institute Interview
[3] Andrey Sergeenkov, What’s the Story Behind Bored Ape Yacht Club Creator Yuga Labs?, CoinDesk | Langston Thomas, Otherside: Everything to Know About the New BAYC NFT Project, NftNow
Harsha Biswajit is a new media visual artist currently living and working in Berlin. With a background in economics and digital fine art, his work primarily explores the changing nature of reality brought about by technological advancements in our society. This theme has run throughout his career and most recently manifested itself in experimenting with and writing about NFTs and Blockchain in general to understand how this new technology is going to shape our future. His works have been exhibited in USA, India, France, Spain and Hong Kong, amongst others.
