Video Art Tokenization in 2023

Karolina

24 Aug 2023
Video Art Tokenization in 2023

The vast domain of the artistic sphere features video art as a relatively recent addition, yet one that has established its unique place. As 2023 began, video art gained greater attention and proved to be more than a mere fad. Foundational exhibitions and focused critiques merely touched upon the growth of this art form. However, an interesting metamorphosis was unfolding amidst the praise and curiosity, fueled by the digital era's defining feature: blockchain technology. This led to the emergence of 'video art tokenization', an innovative blend of artistry and tech that could transform the principles and value perception of video art, possibly addressing long-standing issues related to its collectability.

Video Art's Development and Importance

Starting as an avant-garde genre, video art was often regarded as the defiant counterpart to traditional artistic forms. It challenged established norms by providing artists with a vibrant platform where motion replaced stillness, and audio-visual stories held sway. By early 2023, organizations like MoMA underscored its international importance through groundbreaking exhibitions such as "Signals: How Video Transformed the World."

Nevertheless, its inherent qualities presented singular problems. Unlike the physical limitations of paintings or sculptures, video art's digital nature enabled infinite replication. Every copy maintained the original's legitimacy, democratizing the art form while simultaneously detracting from its perceived value based on conventional market standards. In a realm where an artwork's rarity frequently dictated its market worth, video art presented a dilemma. Collectors struggled to comprehend notions of originality and valuation. Why acquire an original if indistinguishable duplicates possessed equal artistic merit?

Video art's incompatibility with traditional art market principles – where scarcity is highly valued – poses not only economic but also philosophical challenges. It urges us to reconsider our understanding of worth, authenticity, and the core essence of art in today's digital age. The importance of video art thus goes beyond its visual allure, placing it at the crossroads of artistic expression, technological innovation, and market dynamics.

The Emergence of NFTs and Video Art Tokenization in the Artistic Sphere

Blockchain technology's inception, followed by the art world's introduction to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), has sparked a transformative revolution. Essentially, an NFT is a distinct digital certificate of authenticity, securely stored on a decentralized digital ledger that confirms the originality of a digital asset. As the digital domain increasingly intertwines with our physical existence, NFTs have made their mark, particularly in supporting the value of digital artwork.

NFTs started as quiet murmurs within specialized digital art circles but quickly gained traction, drawing the interest of artists, galleries, and investors. They provided an answer to the longstanding problem of digital reproduction without devaluation, tackling a central issue for the art community – how to authenticate and appraise digital art when duplication is effortless.

Traditionally, artists did not directly profit from secondary sales of their works; however, NFTs offered newfound empowerment. Artists could now secure royalties from resales through "smart contracts" embedded in NFTs, establishing a viable financial framework that had been previously unattainable.

Moreover, video art tokenization through NFTs revitalized the dynamics of the art market. Auction houses initially expressed skepticism but later adopted this trending wave as record-breaking sales of digital artworks converted to NFTs made headlines. Motivated by the integration of technology and artistry, collectors started to view NFTs as more than mere curiosities – they became genuine investment prospects, signifying a shift in how art is evaluated and exchanged.

Nevertheless, NFTs' true brilliance in the artistic world extends beyond economics; it broadens artistic expression's horizons. Digital artists who were once marginalized within the broader artistic journey moved to center stage as leaders in an era where art transcends visual or auditory limitations and becomes a dynamic, interactive experience.

Examining Tokenized Video Art Collections

The fusion of video art and blockchain technology gives rise to an intriguing world of tokenized video art collections, challenging conventional standards and presenting groundbreaking opportunities for both artists and collectors.

Origins and Development

Tokenized video art collections stem from the unique characteristics of video art, which is dynamic, replicable, and inherently digital, as well as the revolutionary potential of NFTs. When artists started tokenizing their video works, a specific genre of collections emerged that pushed the limits of both video art and the NFT domain.

Prominent Collections and Innovators

The Akeroyd Collection, Shane Akeroyd's online media library, serves as a powerful example of what can be accomplished by blending traditional video art with tokenization's avant-garde features. Housing creations from influential artists like Cory Arcangel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Theaster Gates, this collection demonstrates an exceptional fusion of classical video art and cutting-edge tokenization.

Artwrld is another noteworthy platform that showcases tokenized video collections from celebrated artists such as Shirin Neshat and Paul Pfeiffer. This platform has become a guiding light for digital video artists who want to capitalize on blockchain benefits and engage with a broader and more appreciative audience.

Distinctive Characteristics and Advantages

Enhanced transparency and traceability stand out among the most transformative aspects of tokenized video art collections. Unique digital records of provenance accompany each tokenized piece, adding layers of trust and authenticity while empowering potential buyers to examine the artwork's background, ownership changes, and previous valuations. This shift marks a significant departure from traditional art sales plagued with ambiguous provenance.

Furthermore, tokenizing video art addresses its inherent reproducibility by attaching value to once-easily replicated works. Tokenizing a piece includes a unique digital certificate signifying its originality and market worth.

Potential and Obstacles Ahead

Although tokenized video art collections have undoubtedly had a significant impact, they still face challenges, including concerns about copyrights, exhibition rights, and the broader legal framework governing digital ownership. However, as artists and platforms persist in experimenting, innovating, and stretching boundaries, the possibility for video art tokenization to revolutionize the essence of art collecting is tangible.

In conclusion, the melding of video art with NFTs takes us to the verge of a new epoch. A time when the intangible gains value, duplication transforms into uniqueness, and video art earns its place among highly coveted collectibles.

Tackling Obstacles and Envisioning the Future

The combination of video art and NFT ecosystem has created many opportunities for artists, collectors, and platforms; however, it also involves several complexities. This marriage of art and technology is innovative but comes with a series of issues that must be addressed for enduring success.

Legal Uncertainties and Intellectual Property

A major concern with video art tokenization is the unclear legal rights. How do exhibition rights adapt in a decentralized digital realm? What specific rights are granted to collectors when they obtain a tokenized video artwork, particularly regarding public displays or reproductions?

Traditional Market Ideals and Comprehension

The conventional art market, with its roots in physical art appreciation dating back centuries, may require time to grasp and welcome the intricacies of video art tokenization. The notion that a digitally reproducible piece can hold substantial value might defy long-established market perceptions. It becomes essential to educate traditional galleries and collectors about the inherent worth and possibilities offered by tokenized video art.

Looking Forward: A Hopeful Tomorrow

In spite of these challenges, a bright future awaits. Advancements in blockchain technology will likely reduce technical obstacles by becoming more accessible and user-friendly. As legal structures adapt to the rapid advancements of digital innovations, transparent guidelines pertaining to ownership and rights will develop.

Efforts such as educational initiatives, workshops, and partnerships between art institutions and tech professionals can help bridge the gap, expanding the understanding of video art tokenization's potential to broader audiences.

Conclusion

The joining of video art and NFTs represents more than just a momentary craze; it marks an evolutionary leap in the world of art, unifying innovation with tradition. As artists experience newfound liberation and collectors delve into uncharted territories, the challenges that surface are simply growing pains of a sector on the cusp of transformation. Reflecting on the impact of technology and creativity, it's clear that we stand at a critical turning point. A vast landscape of potential lays ahead, ready to be adorned with the vivid hues of innovation, collaboration, and forward-thinking vision.

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Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Kajetan Olas

22 Nov 2024
Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Authors of the contents are not affiliated to the reviewed project in any way and none of the information presented should be taken as financial advice.

In this article we analyze tokenomics of Aethir - a project providing on-demand cloud compute resources for the AI, Gaming, and virtualized compute sectors.
Aethir aims to aggregate enterprise-grade GPUs from multiple providers into a DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network). Its competitive edge comes from utlizing the GPUs for very specific use-cases, such as low-latency rendering for online games.
Due to decentralized nature of its infrastructure Aethir can meet the demands of online-gaming in any region. This is especially important for some gamer-abundant regions in Asia with underdeveloped cloud infrastructure that causes high latency ("lags").
We will analyze Aethir's tokenomics, give our opinion on what was done well, and provide specific recommendations on how to improve it.

Evaluation Summary

Aethir Tokenomics Structure

The total supply of ATH tokens is capped at 42 billion ATH. This fixed cap provides a predictable supply environment, and the complete emissions schedule is listed here. As of November 2024 there are approximately 5.2 Billion ATH in circulation. In a year from now (November 2025), the circulating supply will almost triple, and will amount to approximately 15 Billion ATH. By November 2028, today's circulating supply will be diluted by around 86%.

From an investor standpoint the rational decision would be to stake their tokens and hope for rewards that will balance the inflation. Currently the estimated APR for 3-year staking is 195% and for 4-year staking APR is 261%. The rewards are paid out weekly. Furthermore, stakers can expect to get additional rewards from partnered AI projects.

Staking Incentives

Rewards are calculated based on the staking duration and staked amount. These factors are equally important and they linearly influence weekly rewards. This means that someone who stakes 100 ATH for 2 weeks will have the same weekly rewards as someone who stakes 200 ATH for 1 week. This mechanism greatly emphasizes long-term holding. That's because holding a token makes sense only if you go for long-term staking. E.g. a whale staking $200k with 1 week lockup. will have the same weekly rewards as person staking $1k with 4 year lockup. Furthermore the ATH staking rewards are fixed and divided among stakers. Therefore Increase of user base is likely to come with decrease in rewards.
We believe the main weak-point of Aethirs staking is the lack of equivalency between rewards paid out to the users and value generated for the protocol as a result of staking.

Token Distribution

The token distribution of $ATH is well designed and comes with long vesting time-frames. 18-month cliff and 36-moths subsequent linear vesting is applied to team's allocation. This is higher than industry standard and is a sign of long-term commitment.

  • Checkers and Compute Providers: 50%
  • Ecosystem: 15%
  • Team: 12.5%
  • Investors: 11.5%
  • Airdrop: 6%
  • Advisors: 5%

Aethir's airdrop is divided into 3 phases to ensure that only loyal users get rewarded. This mechanism is very-well thought and we rate it highly. It fosters high community engagement within the first months of the project and sets the ground for potentially giving more-control to the DAO.

Governance and Community-Led Development

Aethir’s governance model promotes community-led decision-making in a very practical way. Instead of rushing with creation of a DAO for PR and marketing purposes Aethir is trying to make it the right way. They support projects building on their infrastructure and regularly share updates with their community in the most professional manner.

We believe Aethir would benefit from implementing reputation boosted voting. An example of such system is described here. The core assumption is to abandon the simplistic: 1 token = 1 vote and go towards: Votes = tokens * reputation_based_multiplication_factor.

In the attached example, reputation_based_multiplication_factor rises exponentially with the number of standard deviations above norm, with regard to user's rating. For compute compute providers at Aethir, user's rating could be replaced by provider's uptime.

Perspectives for the future

While it's important to analyze aspects such as supply-side tokenomics, or governance, we must keep in mind that 95% of project's success depends on demand-side. In this regard the outlook for Aethir may be very bright. The project declares $36M annual reccuring revenue. Revenue like this is very rare in the web3 space. Many projects are not able to generate any revenue after succesfull ICO event, due to lack fo product-market-fit.

If you're looking to create a robust tokenomics model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure your project’s resilience in the long term.

Quadratic Voting in Web3

Kajetan Olas

04 Dec 2024
Quadratic Voting in Web3

Decentralized systems are reshaping how we interact, conduct transactions, and govern online communities. As Web3 continues to advance, the necessity for effective and fair voting mechanisms becomes apparent. Traditional voting systems, such as the one-token-one-vote model, often fall short in capturing the intensity of individual preferences, which can result in centralization. Quadratic Voting (QV) addresses this challenge by enabling individuals to express not only their choices but also the strength of their preferences.

In QV, voters are allocated a budget of credits that they can spend to cast votes on various issues. The cost of casting multiple votes on a single issue increases quadratically, meaning that each additional vote costs more than the last. This system allows for a more precise expression of preferences, as individuals can invest more heavily in issues they care deeply about while conserving credits on matters of lesser importance.

Understanding Quadratic Voting

Quadratic Voting (QV) is a voting system designed to capture not only the choices of individuals but also the strength of their preferences. In most DAO voting mechanisms, each person typically has one vote per token, which limits the ability to express how strongly they feel about a particular matter. Furthermore, QV limits the power of whales and founding team who typically have large token allocations. These problems are adressed by making the cost of each additional vote increase quadratically.

In QV, each voter is given a budget of credits or tokens that they can spend to cast votes on various issues. The key principle is that the cost to cast n votes on a single issue is proportional to the square of n. This quadratic cost function ensures that while voters can express stronger preferences, doing so requires a disproportionately higher expenditure of their voting credits. This mechanism discourages voters from concentrating all their influence on a single issue unless they feel very strongly about it. In the context of DAOs, it means that large holders will have a hard-time pushing through with a proposal if they'll try to do it on their own.

Practical Example

Consider a voter who has been allocated 25 voting credits to spend on several proposals. The voter has varying degrees of interest in three proposals: Proposal A, Proposal B, and Proposal C.

  • Proposal A: High interest.
  • Proposal B: Moderate interest.
  • Proposal C: Low interest.

The voter might allocate their credits as follows:

Proposal A:

  • Votes cast: 3
  • Cost: 9 delegated tokens

Proposal B:

  • Votes cast: 2
  • Cost: 4 delegated tokens

Proposal C:

  • Votes cast: 1
  • Cost: 1 delegated token

Total delegated tokens: 14
Remaining tokens: 11

With the remaining tokens, the voter can choose to allocate additional votes to the proposals based on their preferences or save for future proposals. If they feel particularly strong about Proposal A, they might decide to cast one more vote:

Additional vote on Proposal A:

  • New total votes: 4
  • New cost: 16 delegated tokens
  • Additional cost: 16−9 = 7 delegated tokens

Updated total delegated tokens: 14+7 = 21

Updated remaining tokens: 25−21 = 425 - 21 = 4

This additional vote on Proposal A costs 7 credits, significantly more than the previous vote, illustrating how the quadratic cost discourages excessive influence on a single issue without strong conviction.

Benefits of Implementing Quadratic Voting

Key Characteristics of the Quadratic Cost Function

  • Marginal Cost Increases Linearly: The marginal cost of each additional vote increases linearly. The cost difference between casting n and n−1 votes is 2n−1.
  • Total Cost Increases Quadratically: The total cost to cast multiple votes rises steeply, discouraging voters from concentrating too many votes on a single issue without significant reason.
  • Promotes Egalitarian Voting: Small voters are encouraged to participate, because relatively they have a much higher impact.

Advantages Over Traditional Voting Systems

Quadratic Voting offers several benefits compared to traditional one-person-one-vote systems:

  • Captures Preference Intensity: By allowing voters to express how strongly they feel about an issue, QV leads to outcomes that better reflect the collective welfare.
  • Reduces Majority Domination: The quadratic cost makes it costly for majority groups to overpower minority interests on every issue.
  • Encourages Honest Voting: Voters are incentivized to allocate votes in proportion to their true preferences, reducing manipulation.

By understanding the foundation of Quadratic Voting, stakeholders in Web3 communities can appreciate how this system supports more representative governance.

Conclusion

Quadratic voting is a novel voting system that may be used within DAOs to foster decentralization. The key idea is to make the cost of voting on a certain issue increase quadratically. The leading player that makes use of this mechanism is Optimism. If you're pondering about the design of your DAO, we highly recommend taking a look at their research on quadratic funding.

If you're looking to create a robust governance model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure that your DAO will stand out as a beacon of innovation and resilience in the long term.