Tezos has been gaining momentum within the NFT scene for a variety of reasons. I’ll explain why within this post, but I find the space as a whole fascinating, personally.

As we begin to traverse unprecedented times economically and socially, lots of innovation is beginning to spring up and offer new meaning to things we once thought to be true.

The recent attention on platforms such as objkt.com, hic et nunc, and Tezzardz auction are only enumerating the aforementioned.

What do I mean by this?

Allow me to explain.

Physical > Digital

You may not realize it immediately, but your life is drastically moving digitally. Social media was just the tipping point, things like money, art, real estate, and more are beginning to find new digital alternatives. In this transition, we’re beginning to develop new meaning and create value through quite simply, what we as a collective deem to have value.

Very short are the days of centralized authorities assigning value through words or decree. NFT’s (non-fungible tokens), e-sports, crypto currencies, STO’s (security token offering) and more are signaling a change in tides.

I wrote a bit more on this particular momentum shift here a little while back.

So, what is going on here?

A few things.

Marketplaces: NFT’s are creating a market for things that currently don’t necessarily have one. Those that do, they strengthen the relationship between collector/artist on a global scale, and improve liquidity (you can buy/sell it quicker than you would be able to do conventionally with fine art, trading cards, etc.).

Verifiable Ownership/Authenticity: With fraud so rampant in the art world, this is a unique and important characteristic. Being able to validate true ownership via blockchain without the need of an intermediary agency also cuts down on cost.

Guaranteed scarcity: NFT’s cannot be interchanged, they aren’t fungible, each piece is unique and cannot be reproduced. Artists can set how many editions there will be of a certain piece of art and once that is set, it will be final.

Digitization: Everything is moving to digital, it’s a part of a massive growing trend.

All of these characteristics fall into a macro scheme of momentum that we’re witnessing today. If we look at certain things that are hot such as digital collectibles, e-sports, and blockchain; they all fit into a major trend. That trend is taking these things that exist physically and digitizing them.

A whole lot has began to change since that time with the rise in the metaverse and trading volumes across the board. In fact, just yesterday OpenSea surpassed $3B monthly volume for August, an all-time record.

Say hello, fukrs

Probably one of the more lesser talked about aspects of NFT’s is the community they build and one’s attachment therein. I’m even more excited to see how tezzardz begin to create a real movement, which was just auctioned yesterday.

The auction sold out in an astonishing hour and forty-five minutes. Only 4200 tezzardz or “fukrs” were available for minting. At only 15 tez each, OMGiDRAWEDit auctioned the largest sale on Tezos to take place yet. What’s even better, this was the first generative avatar pfp project on their own FA2 smart contract on Tezos.

With the success we’ve seen so far from bulls, penguins, punks, and more I’m more optimistic in the way this will turn out. In order for something to truly succeed especially a generative avatar pfp project, it has to be completely unique and bind people in way that hasn’t been done before.

I think that’s been found with tezzardz. One quick step into their discord channel and you’ll see it’s a vibrant community that spawned from an already existing one on hic et nunc. One can say when we amalgamate genuine and creative ideas towards an already existing community formed on a popular NFT platform, compounding effects begin to build and ensue.

I have a feeling these will be quite large and amplify over time.

Why Tezos?

Contract calls on Tezos have eclipsed over the past few months. A lot of this on-chain activity can be drawn back to the increased popularity in NFT platforms and the fact that there is now an ability to use Tezos in a variety of ways.

This ability wasn’t there before and it should make sense that after several on-chain upgrades, the ability has came and is reflected in usage.

So, why would something like tezzards or anything else succeed on Tezos anyways? It’s totally not as sustainable as Ethereum which has a higher market share and first-mover advantage, right?

A few reasons why artists are beginning to flock towards Tezos.

• They don’t care about biases.
• They’re willing to try something new.
• Tezos’ economic and ecological footprint are far more sustainable than protocols such as Ethereum.
• These economic and ecological advantages are here today, not coming in a “year or two“.
• Communities and network effects within them are beginning to compound drastically.

On the first point, this has been something that’s been interesting to watch. Well-known artists like Jon Burgerman, Mario Klingemann, and many others have shown that a specific blockchain bias is not a factor.

It’s quite clear, artists don’t care about your bias.

Equally as important, the economic and ecological footprint within Tezos is much more sustainable than Proof of Work (PoW) based blockchains. Data has shown that on Tezos, the ecological footprint for minting an NFT is as small as making a tweet.

With drastically lower energy consumption, Tezos is different. The energy used annually by validators of the Tezos network (also known as “bakers” in the Tezos ecosystem) is in the range of 60MWh, a continuous draw of 7 kilowatts. Compared to Ethereum, these numbers differ by a factor of over two million, between six and seven orders of magnitude. Moreover, the low gas costs on Tezos provide for a seamless, congestion-free user experience that allows anyone to mint, host, and trade NFTs with minimal barriers to entry.

TQ Tezos

Looking Forward

With the growing amount of network effects formed within these smaller communities, I think we’re truly on the verge of witnessing something great. As these effects continue to compound and more creative projects like tezzardz begin to spring up, the landscape will begin to look much different from today.

Join the fukrs.