There’s a strange disconnect in the NFT space where everyone still seems to agree on their cultural value (or at least general enjoyment), yet the vertical hasn’t come close to reclaiming its former momentum. 

Why?

Yeah this is extremely unironically true. 

Also feel like the primary platforms optimized for the wrong things generally.

I think most participants don’t find them as enjoyable or culturally valuable if they aren’t making money on them

The art literally looks better when the prices are higher

exploring new frontiers in tech, ai, states, farcaster DAU since 2023, product background /basedstudio

I sometimes feel like NFTs were actually ahead of their time. A generation of onchain native folks may one day prefer to collect items this way. 

We just aren’t there yet.

I think nfts were exploratory, cool new tech attracted folks but everyone knew it's just a picture onchain (in most cases not even stored onchain) and folks realized it crushing the value

without solid utility/perks or insane marketing flywheel I doubt we'll see these heights again

unless we get an insane bull run which will improve the probability

Pendulum Swings too far towards builders (that only care about tech) and too far towards speculators (that only care about short term profits).

Never the right mix of stakeholders so far that like long-term wealth via (collaborative, sustainable) growth and tech/innovation

The problem is that the focus was always on speculation and not the actual technology

It‘s dumb to speculate again on an illiquid NFT Collection with 100-300 other holders if there are no new buyers

Hacker founder using ai to coordinate onchain economies /tenfold, nounish channel client /comint

More: rubinovitz.com

Yeah the turbo scamming in NFTs rekt it for the people who were genuinely interested in building a new paradigm for creators. 

Same thing has happened with this cycle’s version (memes, creator coins, whatever you want to brand them). 

PF enabled the most egregious value extraction since ICOs (probably worse but I don’t have the data). 

At some point we need to stop the rotations and build something useful. 

Hurts watching things like AI develop instantly accessible use cases while crypto continues to relive the same cycle.

I also think crypto metas as just schelling points for gambling.

This cycle the schelling points were memecoins and ai.

I don’t know enough about short term trading to know why you need to rotate through schelling points. Maybe to make people feel early?

We aren’t locked in our houses delirious from COVID and needing something to gamble on.

But also I think any game where 99% of people lose eventually exhausts that 99% of people who aren’t addicts.

main reason why NFTs have taken a back seat is because crime is legal 

simple as lol

people don’t care about technical stuff nor cultural stuff until they falling down the rabbit hole. 

I think we are a very rare species that we care

Or are we blind?

that’s a great question. I don’t know honestly, my gut instinct is that their cultural value and potential got superseded by ongoing cultural wars and broader stagnation stateside, and in general there isn’t a lot of impetus for new cultural artifacts like NFTs as we work that out of our system… perhaps a bit ahead of their time, I do think ultimately their value will be realized as we move on from our cultural stagnation/crisis