Oh, Francis! The Art World’s Discord membership exploded in the middle of the NFT bubble. Can it survive the crypto winter?

It’s social media for Web3. An NFT grifter’s outlet. Chat room for game-adjacent crypto-natives. Whatever the Discord social media app is, if you’re into digital art, you’re on it. And if you’re trying to reach those interested in digital art, it’s the place to go. From fashion brands like Gucci or Adidas, to art galleries like Pace, starting a Discord channel is an important part of integrating into web3’s decentralized ethos.

At least that was true when the NFT bubble started to inflate in 2021.

As NFTs grew in popularity, there was an equal increase in conversation about these so-called non-fungible tokens that live on the blockchain. Much of this chatter took place behind the scenes on Discord, a more multifaceted platform than Twitter or Instagram, both of which are more common in the traditional art world.

disagreement, which doubled in number of members during the pandemic, allows a group of users to build their own community “server”, which can be public (anyone can join) or private (invitation-only). Each server hosts its own unique spread of chaotic, always-on channels on various topics, like who’s going to Art Basel or the odd artist who separates his NFTs. Often it’s a meme channel (these days, filled with self-deprecating GIFs of crypto-apocalyptic losses). In the morning (depending on where you are), users greet each other daily. “Gm” (meaning “good morning”) is the universal Web3 greeting on Discord, where time zones are an irrelevant nuisance and friendly brevity is of the essence.

Zach Lieberman, A globe, a world, (2022.) Courtesy the artist and Unit London.

“It’s like 24/7 communication, it’s very fast,” said Joe Kennedy, founder of Mayfair art gallery Unit London, who made Discord part of his strategy in May 2021 to build a community “outside the traditional collecting spheres”. Now the gallery uses its server to announce artist collaborations and issue declarations of artist royalties. “It’s a good network effect,” he said. “We have met many new collectors we would not otherwise have had access to.” With its busy, unfamiliar interface, Discord appeals more to those who work in technology, he noted. “They’re in their 40s, and tend to be a little more open-minded,” he said. These collectors might not even use Instagram, he noted, and would be more comfortable on Reddit or Twitter.

This year the gallery has been focused on small, curated sales via their marketplace Unit London Web3; for Kennedy, Discord is most successful in working with large editions, which the gallery has in the pipeline next year.​ “It’s the perfect format for Discord,” he said. “It’s a much more beneficial platform if there are a lot of people investing in a project by crowdfunding.”

Caroline Busta, who co-founded the art-adjacent media project New Models well before crypto’s 2021 explosion, noted that the need for a Discord channel was initiated by their community in 2019, which was not satisfied with simply commenting on New Models content . “A lot of people were already in Discord and they were holding our hands,” she said. “We were like, ‘why not?'” Then, in the spring of 2021, the crypto boom happened, and people suddenly joined the Discord channeloften looking for trading tips.

But now that the NFT bubble has burst, and the crypto winter is showing signs of permafrost, stakeholders on the Discord servers are wondering if the app is worth fighting for.

Screenshot of the New Models website.

A new type of clubhouse

The old art world and the new digital art world are partly built on exclusivity. One advantage Discord has for the burgeoning cryptosphere (and the crypto-loving art world) is that it can provide a similarly gated space. With technology integrated into the app, some channels on certain servers are only open to those who own specific NFTs – think of it as a blockchain-enabled VIP card for Art Basel. The Discord server for Friends with Benefits, a cheekily named crypto-enabled community of artists, developers, and “cultural thinkers,” is only accessible to those with a certain number of crypto tokens in their wallets. Discord, meanwhile (the company declined to comment for this story) has at times signaled additional crypto integrations, as in a recent tweet by their founder Jason Citron (he walked back the comment two days later).

While the features aren’t very different from an app like the workplace messaging app Slack, the pace and insider knowledge required to participate in Discord conversations can be overwhelming. The brick-and-mortar art world has been slow to adopt it at all. Maybe it’s because the roots originate from the game world – as such, it has retained idiosyncratic elements such as badges and special roles that can be assigned to members, as well as a young demographic. Although the game-friendly design might alienating non-players, it is also a natural home for projects focused on web3, a version of the internet that is decentralized, blockchain-built and token-based.

“In the early days of Web3 and crypto, there was this nexus of people who were really into games,” said Malcolm Levy, an artist who runs a digital art festival platform called RefractionDAO, which also runs a Discord server. For those building culture and tools for digital art and NFTs, he said, Discord became the default app for both collaboration and socializing.

Tara Donovan, QWERTY, (2022). © Pace Verso

Enter Noobs

As voice chat apps became more popular during the shutdowns of the early pandemic, Discord recently gained traction. “I think Clubhouse led to Discord,” said Justin Aversano, a photographer who works with NFTs and runs the Discord server Quantum, a server with over 14,000 members who announce drops from his curated NFT platform. Clubhouse, it fleeting buzzing app in the art world, was where someone suggested he set up a Discord server for his collectors so he could keep them updated on his work while they chatted with each other.

More traditional industry players followed the wave of creatives like Aversano there.

When König Galerie set up its digital marketplace Misa.art, now renamed Expanded Art, they ran a Discord server alongside it. (Despite the reshuffle, Misa.art’s official Discord server remains online as of December 14; a representative for Expanded Art declined to comment, though online posts suggest that Discord will remain under the new brand. There is a new community manager in place, and the channel promises to “bring discord back to life.”)

Screenshot of Unit London’s Web3 platform.

Pace Verso, the web3 arm of blue-chip gallery Pace, launched its Discord in March of this year, with the intention of “connecting directly with the segment of the NFT community outside of Pace’s orbit,” according to Amelia Redgrift, Pace’s head of marketing and communications . .

“It quickly became clear that creating a Discord server had to be one of our first steps in growing an audience for Pace Verso,” she said. The platform is used for sales announcements and programming, but also, increasingly, for conversations, she noted, adding that one of the most notable differences from other platforms is its “casual nature of Discord and the potential for two-way engagement.” The Pace spokesperson said that Discord had been “remarkably successful” – in fact, they are creating a new communications role at Pace Verso that will be largely dedicated to managing and strategizing the platform.

Random International and Danil Krivoruchko, Life in our minds, (2022). © Pace Verso

A changing tide

But is Pace moving in the opposite direction from the rest of the market? As yet another crypto winter – which saw a sharp decline in the value of tokens, a devaluation of NFTs, as well as the merger of major web3 company FTX – draws in, Discord followers have noticed a drop in participation levels.

In September 2021, there were several “gm”s every day on Unit Gallery’s Discord server, for example – now they appear once or twice a week. “A lot of people have just stopped using [Discord]probably to do things in the real world,” said photographer Aversano. “All the mania in 2021 has stopped.” These days, his works are mostly sold to NFT funds or DAOs, he said, so his Discord isn’t as important as a sales conversion pipeline.“There’s really no conversation when the art ends up in the final place for it to be,” he said.

Levy, of RefractionDAO, said he felt artists in particular were being “burned out” on the platform. Meanwhile, there’s no sign that traditional collectors are joining the conversation: “If you profile a traditional art collector who buys paintings and sculptures, to them, it’s seen as tiring and exhausting,” Kennedy said.

Discord’s fortunes haven’t been helped by its susceptibility to hackers. Pace Verso has a section of its Discord server dedicated to scam warnings, and joining most NFT-related Discord servers results in an influx of spam messages promising get-rich-quick schemes. In fact, in three separate incidents between April and June this year, hackers have successfully used phishing links on Discord to steal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars of NFTs from Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) owners this year. After the third, BAYC co-founder Gordon Goner wrote in a chirping: “Discord does not work for web3 communities. We need a better platform that puts safety first.”

Bored Ape Yacht Club gathering in OpenSea shown on a phone screen. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In an email to Artnet News, BAYC co-founder Greg Solano (aka Garga) said, “Scam is an unfortunate part of the crypto world right now, and trusting a platform we don’t control can be a little nerve-wracking.” BAYC has now created a bespoke security verification system for posting announcements on its own website.

Levy said they have started hosting “Town Hall” meetings on Twitter instead. Friends with Benefits has developed an app (soft-launched in Miami in early December during Art Basel Miami Beach) to play the role of Discord for their members. Even the CryptoPunks Discord channel, which is where Justin Aversano was convinced of the platform’s community utility, has now broken. That conversation is now happening on a Telegram group started by members of the community, he said.

While crypto was high, there was a financial incentive to learn about some of the cumbersome user interface required to use Discord’s token-gated mechanisms, said Busta, of New Models. “At this point. I don’t see that happening,” she says.

Although some have proposed Discord as a replacement for an imploding Twitter, she noted that the platform encouraged sloppy communities that don’t communicate with each other: it doesn’t provide a public, open space. “I think web3 may hold the answer to this public square question, but Discord alone cannot yet solve it,” she said.

What is certain is that this community of tech-savvy art lovers will continue to look for new ways to connect. “This industry is not only volatile in that the coins change, but also in how communities are formed — it’s very fast,” Aversano said. “It literally changes from week to week.” Watch this space.

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