NFTs and art are two completely different things

Not to sound like a non-fungible naysayer, but NFTs are not actually art. That is the honest truth of the matter. While art is undoubtedly one of the most robust use cases for NFTs, there is a reason why legacy art institutions and even the powers that be at Wikipedia continue to disassociate NFTs from art.

I’m not saying that the common criticism of NFTs has any merit – we all know the “right-click-save” argument is bogus. But there is much more to understand about the burgeoning blockchain-based innovation happening in the NFT space than can be summed up in “crypto art.”

Creators of all types use NFTs to store, share and disseminate their unique intellectual property (IP). Beyond art, NFTs are used by researchers, healthcare professionals, game developers and many others. The distinction between NFTs as a type of technology, and art as a single use case of that technology, has never been more important. If we hope to expand the horizons of Web3 and onboard a more diverse range of people on the blockchain, this is something we need to talk about.

The difference between art and NFTs

As we understand it, art, PFP, photography, and the other various forms of visual NFTs all fall into the “art” category in the NFT space. It is no surprise that this is the most popular and profitable sector of the NFT market, as art continues to be the NFT use case gaining media attention through groundbreaking sales figures. Yet, as previously noted, art is only one use case for NFTs, and a misunderstood one at a fundamental level.

Regardless of whether an artist decides to stamp one of their pieces as an NFT or not, the art will always exist independent of that NFT. And if one day the art just disappeared completely – something that has happened before – the NFT would still remain intact and untouched, cozily tucked away in its block of origin.

So art and NFT are fundamentally different. Even in the case of digital art, there is a distinction between token and media. So let’s look at an NFT as the culmination of these two unique parts: a token and its media.

Simply put, an NFT is a blockchain token that is represented visually (or audibly) through a media file. This can be an image, GIF, video, song, PDF, whatever. That Bored Ape you missed buying back in summer 2021? It is a symbol and a picture of a cartoon monkey. In this way, a token appears mutually inclusive with the media, but in reality these two parts are very different entities.

An NFTs token is not combined with the media. While the token itself exists on the blockchain, the media resides elsewhere and, unlike the token, is quite vulnerable to degradation. This means that the media file can disappear, leaving only the token behind.

How an NFT works is, while the token is stored immutably on the blockchain, its digital image files are often stored via a distributed sorting system such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS for short). These types of systems were created to store and access files, websites, applications and data. Systems like IPFS exist somewhere between centralized file servers and peer-to-peer file sharing services, giving users easy access to digitally stored files.

2/ Here is a sneak peek 👇

48% of the top NFT pools on Ethereum by trading volume use IPFS for their metadata storage. Centralized servers are a close second at 39% pic.twitter.com/na4Y7D4Sjz

— Kofi (@0xKofi) 21 April 2022

But file storage isn’t free: if the user doesn’t pay for it, someone else will. And just as website administrators have to pay to have their sites and media stored on servers, NFT platforms have to pay to have JPEGs stored via IPFS. This means that when collectors buy an NFT, they rely on a marketplace to pay storage fees so that the media files don’t disappear.

All this to say that NFTs are fundamentally a symbol and a type of technology, while art – and the expression of human creativity – exists independently of that technology. The same case can be made for NFT games, music NFTs, literature NFTs and others. While blockchain technology is constantly increasing, the issue at the moment is that an NFT token and its media are two different things.

The meaning of the distinction

Some might argue that the difference between art and NFTs is just semantics, and that the storage method doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of crypto art. But in contrast to other forms of art, NFTs have a fatal flaw. While someone would be hard-pressed to destroy a famous painting or steal a prominent piece of digital art, NFT media could, through nothing more than negligence, cease to exist.

The need for change is obvious, as even those like the esteemed NFT writer and builder Jason Bailey have been outspoken about the problem while working to create solutions. For NFTs to be considered reliable as a technology, and perhaps for traditionalists to believe in their viability, they must live up to their claimed permanence in more ways than just a token ID.

We understand that the NFT ecosystem exists at the intersection of technology, finance and art, but it has become difficult to ignore the fact that these three sectors do not exist equally within the NFT microcosm. Rather, NFTs are a product of blockchain technology. And as blockchain-based assets, they are often represented through art (or games, movies, songs, etc.), and given value through their economic (and cultural) value.

The technical aspect of NFTs is often overlooked by many because the art and financial features of NFTs are much more appealing. But the technology is what allowed art powerhouses like Damian Hirst and Tom Sachs, as well as market dominators like XCOPY and Beeple, to really flourish.

Of course, NFTs are holistically about much more than just money, art and the other attributes and buzzwords that keep them in the mainstream media. But for blockchain-powered Web3 to continue to live up to its potential, misconceptions that conflate NFTs with art are worth correcting.