NOTE: This was originally published on Mirror August 8th, 2023. This version is slightly edited and revised.
Do you make art, mint it and sell it on a blockchain?
Do you self-market your art on a social platform?
Have you noticed a recent uptick in folks asking incessant questions for engagement on social platforms?
OK for real though— crypto art historically kept open channels on Twitter, and from there one could access the depths of any art on blockchain rabbit-hole they desired. Back in 2018, Twitter was the common gathering point for us.
Now it’s called X, sucks a rusty railroad spike and has a range of potential competitors.
As an artist who seeks to connect with others and share your work, you should be aware of the available social protocol or platform choices in 2023.
Here is a quick and dirty readout of 8 different systems on which the future of crypto art might or might not be taking place near you.
You should understand and distinguish between 2 important concepts used throughout this article:
A protocol is a standard on which devs can build, not an app or service you use
A platform is an app or service which people can use that uses the protocol
The protocols and platforms appear listed here alphabetically, because why not?
NONE OF THIS IS ADVICE OF ANY KIND
Blueksy
Bluesky is a platform that’ss quite similar to X, but running on the open AT Protocol. It’s in beta and is still invite-only as of this writing. Upon being invited to Bluesky, one makes an account and can choose from canned to-follow accounts and other onboarding crap like what you’d expect from the old Twitter onboarding experience.
After some time, you’ll realize that a sizable part of the Bluesky crowd consists of people who despise X, and the dude who was forced to honor his troll and buy it.
There’s an inordinate amount of what’s going on over there on that site? type posts and other content that borders on the obsessive. I suspect this will soon cool as folks truly move on from X instead of gawking at it like the dumpster fire it has become.
Perhaps I’m not the best connected, but the crypto art scene on Bluesky feels thin to non-existent. I’ve seen posts by some vocal anti-NFT people here, though.
Farcaster
Farcaster is sufficiently decentralized and quite nerdy, but could be the most exciting of them all.
Is it infested with VCs, VC-worshipping fan-folk and feeling like everyone’s destined for Sand Hill Road?
Maybe…
Does it have the most 2018-2020 era crypto art vibes with all kinds of crypto-native stuff built around it and is it the most crypto native a social protocol I’ve ever seen thus far?
Certainly.
Will it be totally irresistible for you to call it Fartcaster?
Undoubtedly.
If you accept Farcaster at face value and use it via numerous clients like Warpcast, you’ll quickly learn that this shit is slick, it’s happening quick and it feels like the future.
Communication happens. You can make sales on your art here. You can learn here.
It’s currently in beta mode and also invite-only with invitations being pretty hard to come by at the moment. It has the concept of channels, and there are already channels for popular blockchains, NFTs, and more.
Nerds: check out the developer resources for Farcaster.
I’m going to be putting much of my own art sharing effort here going forward, and you can follow me on Warpcast.
Most of us are just completely over the whole algorithmic
treadmill already, fuckface.
Wake up, anon. 2017 called and wants you to keep on posting.
This is not decentralized.
This benefits them more than it benefits you, and their algorithms control you whenever you’re using it.
This is not the way.
I’ve been previously and outright banned from Instagram, most likely for posting the logo shown here, so I can personally value decentralization and having more control of my own data.
Lens
Another decentralized darling protocol, Lens is great and has a more grassroots vibe overall than most other solutions. Adoption here seems lowest of most protocols or platforms to me right now, but the ecosystem is growing at a good pace.
At first glance, it seems well suited to crypto art and sharing token based art in general. Unlike most other blockchain-centric solutions which use L1 chains, Lens also uses the Polygon blockchain so everything is more affordable, but you’ll have to switch networks in your wallet to use it.
Lens requires that you claim a Lens handle NFT to establish an account on the protocol and use it. In this artist’s humble opinion it’s certainly worth getting your Lens name when possible, and keeping an eye on the progress in the ecosystem.
Nerds: dive deep into Lens with the Lens developer documentation{rel=“noreferrer” target="_blank"}.
I’m obxium.lens and you can catch me on Lenster.
Mastodon
No.
Nostr
Is it a powerful nasal spray or a social protocol?
Nostr is an open protocol and the one most notably associated with Bitcoin maximalist Jack Dorsey, the previous CEO of the platform once known as Twitter. One of its main driving principles is censorship resistance.
This is a tall order and of most importance to artists who find themselves born in or residing in the wrong parts of the world according to the governments of other parts of the world.
Some of us have been here long enough to see the sellout platforms, quick to grab the just-as-quickly dying USD and exit instead of staying on, decentralizing/tokenizing and fighting. Then as a course of business, buyers of those sellout platforms implemented compliance actions against artists in sanctioned countries.
Sure it’s the rules, but damn it goes against the spirit.
Nostr can conceivably fix this.
Development is open and driven by community proposals similar to how it’s done for blockchains. There’s even a proposal for classified ads at the protocol level. There are a range of Nostr clients available for Android, iOS or web.
Nerds: dive deep into the Nostr Improvement Proposals (NIP) beginning with NIP-01.
Threads
Threads is dead, baby.
X
Twitter had a good run and then all that stuff that happened happened.
It never had a chance at any point to keep pace with the future of crypto powered social protocols or platforms and it sure as hell doesn’t now, as it races towards fiat payment processing in its effort to everything app into mediocrity.
It’s the Yahoo! of people interaction methods, and will end up facing a similar fate.
It’s over here, and in my humble opinion, you need to be considering one of the decentralized alternatives mentioned here for future sharing of your art.
Probably one of the best uses of your X client these days would be to follow the accounts of the other platforms and protocols listed here.
Nerds: the APIs are expensive here, and it’s a non-decentralized relic now.
I’m not trying to be on X anymore, and will soon be reducing posting frequency there to once-a-week or less.
Now what?
This is all moving at breakneck speeds and as you can imagine, it’s kind of difficult to maintain presence as a human on several platforms. At least neat apps like yup are popping up to help with this, and it’s also super interesting to have diverse sources of information on the same topic all flowing in real-time each day.
Rather than contend with FOMO in this area though, you’re looking at being technologically left behind by ignoring the newer protocols & platforms altogether.
Instead be patient, but inquisitive. Hit up your contacts for invites, then spend some time, some ETH, MATTIC, whatever— get your accounts in order and proceed to the next stage of crypto art on decentralized systems.
See you there,
obxium
