CGOL patterns as NFTs

[MathAndCode]

Even if it did change and NFTs gave people control, it would only be over other NFTs, so they're still only valuable if people agree they are).

However, this risks situations where someone attempts to evade this. For example, suppose that person A discovers a p19 oscillator and mints the original version, then person B mints thirty or so stator variants. (For simplicity, I shall assume that each distinct pattern can be minted a maximum of one time. This isn't the case, but the general principle that I am attempting to express still applies.) Selling thirty-one patterns instead of one decreases the market price because the person who wants an NFT of a p19 the 31st-most isn't willing to pay as much money as the person who wants an NFT of a p19 the most. Is person B stealing from person A? I would say yes, but this "yes" would become less enthusiastic (although I would continue to say yes) if the stator variants had some special property, such as having a lower population or being welds that are useful for compacting LCM oscillators. Would this harm the community? Yes, I'm sure that it would harm the community at least a little, but the extent is debatable. Would person B draw ire from the community? Yes, but I doubt that that would discourage person B since the fact that this is stealing should have already been obvious. Would person A take legal action against person B? It's possible, but it depends on person A's psychology. If this does indeed happen, it could harm the community further, depending on factors such as what the ruling is and how broadly it applies.

I would imagine NFTs minted/sold by discoverers would be much more valuable than those minted by random people seeking to capitalize on others' work, at least if we marketed them right.

Based on the fact that the current implementation of CGoL NFTs does not seem to respect the original discovers at all (for instance not giving them money or asking for their approval), I doubt that most people will care about the discoverers enough to pay them more money for CGoL NFTs. If we were starting CGoL NFTs from scratch, it would probably be possible to change this, but I think that by this point, the current culture of CGoL NFTs is ingrained enough that it cannot be changed, at least not practically.

The main problem I see with this is that discoverers who don't want to deal with anything NFT-related will still have to deal with other people making NFTs of their patterns, which would be more valuable than normal in the absence of an "official copy".

While I can certainly see people (including me) being annoyed by this, it should be easy to at let get most of them to move on since they aren't being harmed. However, I think that it's plausible that some discoverers will not mint their patterns initially but then will want to do so a while later (e.g. once they want the money more, have a cryptocurrency account, or have passed the legal threshold age of adulthood), and something should be done to protect those people. In fact, that might be at least part of the root cause of the annoyance of the first category of people whom I mentioned in this paragraph (although it would probably be murky either way).

When you introduced NFTs, you specifically said that they "obviously" can't work without community approval and engagement. It is increasingly obvious that community approval and engagement are simply not there for NFTs.

The fact that Michael Simkin continues to push for NFTs despite the the vast majority of the creator community not supporting them could indicate that "community" actually refers to the buyers. If this is the case, I suppose that that's true because selling NFTs won't work without people to buy them, but do we really want to ignore the discoverers? I, for one, don't want to be ignored, and the opinions that others have expressed in this thread, as well as common sense, suggests that I'm not the only one.

By the way, I recommend that anyone who wants to discuss the potential of a market for CGoL NFTs and has not done so already read this this post by calcyman how the lack of monetization may have allowed to the CGoL community to persist for over half of a century and the page that calcyman linked about how the potential for monetization tends to invite sociopaths, who then destroy the subculture.

[blah]

As a young child, I once went to the Grand Exchange in Runescape and started counting up from 1, saying "1", "2", "3", and so on, expecting people to give me in-game currency in return. Nobody did.

The rationale in my mind was that counting up to large numbers (I think I got into the 3-digit range) is difficult, and difficult things are rewarded.

It's nice to know that some people haven't lost that spark of childlike optimism.

[Scorbie]

For example, suppose that person A discovers a p19 oscillator and mints the original version, then person B mints thirty or so stator variants. (For simplicity, I shall assume that each distinct pattern can be minted a maximum of one time. This isn't the case, but the general principle that I am attempting to express still applies.) Selling thirty-one patterns instead of one decreases the market price because the person who wants an NFT of a p19 the 31st-most isn't willing to pay as much money as the person who wants an NFT of a p19 the most.

I don't think it works that way. If I understood correctly, an NFT is analogous to a limited edition trading card with an autograph from the card designer. The NFT with B's autograph should decrease if B has issued a lot of it, but the scarsity of the NFT with A's autograph is not affected. And a collector would value the NFT with the "autograph" from the first discoverer more than the NFT with the "autograph" by the stator reducer (if the discovery is scarcer than the stator reduction). That is the behavior of limited edition trading cards that I know of. (not that I have experience though)

Based on the fact that the current implementation of CGoL NFTs does not seem to respect the original discovers at all (for instance not giving them money or asking for their approval), I doubt that most people will care about the discoverers enough to pay them more money for CGoL NFTs. If we were starting CGoL NFTs from scratch, it would probably be possible to change this, but I think that by this point, the current culture of CGoL NFTs is ingrained enough that it cannot be changed, at least not practically.

I would argue it depends on the market preference. Currently no CGoL NFTs are minted by the pattern discoverers as far as I know of, so there is no example to compare to yet. For instance I would rather have a Sir Robin NFT from Adam P. Goucher or Tomas Rockiki rather than anyone else.

[calcyman]

The fact that Michael Simkin continues to push for NFTs despite the the vast majority of the creator community not supporting them could indicate that "community" actually refers to the buyers. If this is the case, I suppose that that's true because selling NFTs won't work without people to buy them, but do we really want to ignore the discoverers?

We certainly don't want to ignore the discoverers. Indeed, in an ideal system we want it so that only the discoverer can mint an NFT of a pattern.

As far as I can tell, the ERC-721 standard for NFTs involves each one having a positive integer ID. We could maintain somewhere (e.g. Catagolue's git repository?) a public append-only list of tuples:

(sequential integer ID, apgcode, common name, name of discoverer, Ethereum address of discoverer)

of the patterns that discoverers want to mint NFTs of. (The Ethereum address is needed to determine who initially gets the NFT. Of course, the NFT can subsequently just be traded on the Ethereum blockchain like any other NFT, independently of Catagolue's append-only list.)

I imagine that this list will be relatively small, at least initially, on the basis that relatively few Lifenthusiasts are interested in minting NFTs -- so small, in fact, that it's manageable to do this manually.

Then, in the same way that Catagolue object pages link to LifeWiki where appropriate (i.e. where a LifeWiki page exists), they could also include a link to the NFT if one exists (most likely in that list of object properties, such as minrule/maxrule, population, etc.).

Based on the fact that the current implementation of CGoL NFTs does not seem to respect the original discovers at all (for instance not giving them money or asking for their approval), I doubt that most people will care about the discoverers enough to pay them more money for CGoL NFTs. If we were starting CGoL NFTs from scratch, it would probably be possible to change this, but I think that by this point, the current culture of CGoL NFTs is ingrained enough that it cannot be changed, at least not practically.

I don't think so? Both the NFTkey and Automatons collections are stupid, and they're going to be immediately displaced as soon as genuine* CGoL NFTs exist.

* where they're 'genuine' precisely because we individually verify that every NFT in the collection was minted by the discoverer of the pattern.

Also, we can probably get our collection 'verified' (with the blue checkmark) on OpenSea. For instance, Urbit IDs are 'verified':

https://opensea.io/assets/urbit-id

whereas those NFTkey NFTs are thankfully not:

https://opensea.io/collection/life-nft

Note that this whole 'CGoL NFTs' system is only linked to the world of academic CGoL research through a one-way arrow: the discoverer of a pattern can then mint a CGoL NFT (and no-one else is allowed to), but nothing in the world of CGoL NFTs affects the use of the pattern in academic CGoL research.

Thoughts?

[pcallahan]

We certainly don't want to ignore the discoverers. Indeed, in an ideal system we want it so that only the discoverer can mint an NFT of a pattern.

As far as I can tell, the ERC-721 standard for NFTs involves each one having a positive integer ID. We could maintain somewhere (e.g. Catagolue's git repository?) a public append-only list of tuples:

(sequential integer ID, apgcode, common name, name of discoverer, Ethereum address of discoverer)

I don't understand NFTs enough to know if this makes sense, but would it be possible to preemptively mint "community owned" NFTs for most patterns discovered already so that, e.g., nobody would ever try to mint an NFT of Gosper's glider gun? The discoverer would be clear (if known) and rights to use the pattern would be granted to all.

I am not sure if an NFT can simply be "not for sale" or prohibitively expensive, ensuring that these did not become tradable. I'm reminded of white-collar crook Martin Shkreli's exclusive purchase of a Wu-Tang Clan album just to claim status and deny it to the public. If you had community-owned NFTs of common patterns that we would only sell for $1 million, there is a hypothetical fantasy-land scenario in which a billionaire sociopath could offer to buy a few from us and we'd find the offer tempting. If the price is $1 trillion, that won't happen. If there is simply a way to make them not for sale at any price, that would be even better.

(I don't even know why I am letting my mind wander in this direction. I don't think NFTs are a good idea for anyone, and especially not us.)

[calcyman]

I don't understand NFTs enough to know if this makes sense, but would it be possible to preemptively mint "community owned" NFTs for most patterns discovered already so that, e.g., nobody would ever try to mint an NFT of Gosper's glider gun? The discoverer would be clear (if known) and rights to use the pattern would be granted to all.

I am not sure if an NFT can simply be "not for sale" or prohibitively expensive, ensuring that these did not become tradable. I'm reminded of white-collar crook Martin Shkreli's exclusive purchase of a Wu-Tang Clan album just to claim status and deny it to the public. If you had community-owned NFTs of common patterns that we would only sell for $1 million, there is a hypothetical fantasy-land scenario in which a billionaire sociopath could offer to buy a few from us and we'd find the offer tempting. If the price is $1 trillion, that won't happen. If there is simply a way to make them not for sale at any price, that would be even better.

To reiterate, no intellectual property rights are attached to the NFT.

Under the system I'm proposing, the only way that an NFT of Gosper's glider gun could ever appear is if Bill Gosper himself suddenly decides to go down the cryptoasset rabbit hole and mint an NFT of his gun. Discoveries by Conway and Guy, such as the standard spaceships, the pulsar, and the pentadecathlon, are of course unmintable.

(If you like, there could probably be some logic in the Ethereum contract that makes it absolutely impossible to mint NFTs of these Conway/Guy objects, even if someone hacked Catagolue.)

[hotdogPi]

I feel like it's just a digital version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones.

[dvgrn]

(I don't even know why I am letting my mind wander in this direction. I don't think NFTs are a good idea for anyone, and especially not us.)

Heh, now there is a sentiment I can understand and agree with. I'm still a bit puzzled as to why anyone who knows the history of speculative asset bubbles would want to deliberately create more of them as a way of monetizing CGoL research -- independent of the practical question of whether anyone would actually be interested in participating.

It seems vaguely okay to create NFTs "for fun"; goodness knows we do lots of equally pointless things for fun around here. But trying to create any expectation that NFTs can provide a steady income for CGoL researchers seems more than a little dangerous. Speculative bubbles have an unfortunately long and well-documented history of making more people unhappy than they make happy, in the long run. The absolute best you can hope for is an "unsteady income" -- maybe large, maybe small, but definitely not steady.

It's human nature that everyone thinks of themselves as maybe being one of the lucky exceptions, but realistically the odds are against you -- unless you're willing to play the sociopath game and take advantage of the MOPs.

However, even setting aside the ethical considerations, manipulating the market will inevitably eat into your CGoL research time (well, that's no good then!). Might as well just go buy lottery tickets as a "viable model for funding" -- it might work really well, after all.

Today I Learned
Mostly unrelated but not entirely: today I learned that tulipmania is something of a myth created by propaganda pamphlets spread by Dutch Calvinists on the grounds that "great wealth is ungodly". Kind of an anti-hype campaign, I guess you could say -- or at least, a hype campaign about something else entirely.

[C28]

can someone explain to me why y'all are arguing over this?

[pcallahan]

can someone explain to me why y'all are arguing over this?

Just to hazard a guess, though it may have been a rhetorical question... basically everyone here is against the idea except Michael Simkin (simsim314). But he's respected and liked enough that he gets a fair hearing, and he continues to argue his position tenaciously.

It's interesting to watch and more entertaining for me to contribute than technical discussions where I lack too much background to offer anything new. In fact, I will even say that through sheer strenuousness he's budged the needle for me a little. In my mind, it has gone from "What a terrible idea, and who would even want that?" to "I wouldn't mind if it worked, but it obviously won't." (That's a real position change, right?)

[bubblegum]

In my mind, it has gone from "What a terrible idea, and who would even want that?" to "I wouldn't mind if it worked, but it obviously won't." (That's a real position change, right?)

Indeed, you have gone from vigorously opposing it to… hypothetically not opposing it.  (???)

[simsim314]

In my mind, it has gone from "What a terrible idea, and who would even want that?" to "I wouldn't mind if it worked, but it obviously won't." (That's a real position change, right?)

@dvgrn - I would say I take my chances with NFTs without any hopes. As I said I just got mad by mniemic concept that demanding money for your creation and suing everyone like it's common in other creative communities is completely fine.

@A for awesome - no I don't think that asking for monetary compensation for effort put into art piece is immoral. And even if everyone here are giving their art for free as I did many times, this doesn't mean I should respect this tradition and put more effort into this art for free. I don't find this logic valid, and I'm not bounded by community standards as a whole to behave the same way as everyone else. Yet I agree it will harm the research - and it was just a path of thinking to make a point mainly to reject mniemic idea that it's great to demand money for your creations, and making a point that this approach harms any community. So the question remains: if this is moral to try and monetize your work, and you oppose commercial licensing, how then? dvgrn tried to suggest some less probable paths than NFTs in my view (kickstarter, patreon, goFundMe).

I imagine that this list will be relatively small, at least initially, on the basis that relatively few Lifenthusiasts are interested in minting NFTs -- so small, in fact, that it's manageable to do this manually.

Then, in the same way that Catagolue object pages link to LifeWiki where appropriate (i.e. where a LifeWiki page exists), they could also include a link to the NFT if one exists (most likely in that list of object properties, such as minrule/maxrule, population, etc.).

As I see it - we will have a minting week. During this week we will invite community members to mint (on opensea), sell - and buy NFTs from each other. I can sponsor those initial attempts. The idea would be to have our minting list - outside of the opensea infrastructure. The minting week results will be backed by the community as forks on GitHub page with all the NFTs minted during this week with all the links, and I also want to place it into ArDrive. This is permanent blockchain based drive. That means that the link to any document is permanent and immutable.

The opensea infrastructure promotes NFTs that are traded more. This is why I can't simply just mint NFT alone - I can but no one will notice. We need to make deal out of it inside some circle of people that give some initial value to the mint. This is why I think we need to have also a week - or period of time that will focus the attention of people who want to mint. And create value to the NFTs - we have a beginning and an end of event that has some value to minting time. This time restrictions trick is used in other creative communities too.

The initial documentation will be manual - and the point will be to make sure the inventor is also the minter.

---------------

NFTs are not represented algorithmically to do anything. NFTs are just tradable codes on the blockchain. The meaning and their value is outside of the chain - no one can take your NFT by minting 1000 more NFTs of his own like it. The value comes from social constructs and social norms, like for example supporting the creators of CGOL pattern. NFT is just a monetization format, like Kickstarter or commercial licensing, but unlike those formats NFTs is open source friendly and creators friendly i.e. once a piece of art was created and openly available to anyone, the NFT associated with it can gain value if people see value in the creation and want to support the author. There could be many meanings to it - but this is the most common one that is worked for several creators so far. This allowed them to continue work on their art and continue to mint the work, especially digital visual artists.

-------

@dvgrn - can I start the minting week in the sandbox of conwaylife.com? I guess there are much less worthy threads there, than trying to monetize CGOL research. I agree it's probably less relevant to the General topic.
It's still appealing to CA creators.

@calcyman The main objection came from dvgrn - that it will take focus of our community. My objection is to the contrary it will create more focus and motivation inside the community and outside it. I think no one can tell who is right.

[dvgrn]

@dvgrn - I would say I take my chances with NFTs without any hopes. As I said I just got mad by mniemic concept that demanding money for your creation and suing everyone like it's common in other creative communities is completely fine.

That's what it sounded like after a while. Some of your earlier posts were very confusing; in some of them, it seems like maybe you were exploring an extended hypothetical situation, but you were using a verb tense that made it sound like you were really planning to do whatever-it-was.

@dvgrn - can I start the minting week in the sandbox of conwaylife.com? I guess there are much less worthy threads there, than trying to monetize CGOL research. I agree it's probably less relevant to the General topic.
It's still appealing to CA creators.

Heh, I can't argue with any of that! I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not subscribed to Sandbox posts, so a calm, careful, and clear discussion of Minting Week won't do me any harm, as long as nobody gets too upset about anything. The rule I'd suggest is that nobody should post anything on the Minting Week thread while they're angry... but then, that's the rule I'd suggest for the rest of the forums, too.

If anyone has serious objections to the idea of Minting Week, here and now would be a good time to speak up (as opposed to, say, reporting posts after they start showing up on the Minting Week thread).

[simsim314]

@dvgrn - I think you had the most objections so far, especially as the moderator.

And yes I got deeply into this possibility - but I agree with most of the reasons you mentioned why it's bad for the community and for the field in general. My main point was - look how bad actors can ruin the hegemony of the community just to make a buck, wouldn't you say it's better to have a more friendly monetization path? But it seems no one had been convinced by this, people just got mad at me. I would say the best way to convince someone who is using commercial license to stop doing it - is to switch to NFT monetization model (as it both letting more people enjoy your creation and still monetize the work by the artist). But this also seems to be far from anyone's perception. Actually it's very not trivial question how to monetize open source - and today we have an answer to this (except patreon which is also great option, but depends on constant effort).

[dvgrn]

Actually it's very not trivial question how to monetize open source - and today we have an answer to this (except patreon which is also great option, but depends on constant effort).

I'm a bit suspicious that NFTs will also require more or less constant effort to make them any kind of dependable monetization method. But I won't mind being wrong -- that happens a lot, so I'm used to it.

It does seem to be possible to end up with a contingent of Patreon supporters that just expect you to do whatever you want to do -- once you've developed a reputation for doing sufficiently cool things. Tim Urban's "Wait But Why" megablog is the example that comes to my mind; it's hard to imagine there being a market for the incredibly long detailed explorations of topics that Tim likes to do -- but he's found a niche, and it seems to work.

I could imagine a Conway's Life pattern engineer doing something new and interesting every week, for long enough to come to the attention of some larger interested group like Hacker News readers, and ending up with a whole lot of people putting in a dollar a month or whatever -- just out of curiosity to see what will show up next. But I'm not finding the idea plausible enough to attempt the necessary initial sales and marketing campaign myself!

[calcyman]

@dvgrn - I would say I take my chances with NFTs without any hopes. As I said I just got mad by mniemic concept that demanding money for your creation and suing everyone like it's common in other creative communities is completely fine.

Before you rush into doing this alone, I'm already building some tools and infrastructure so that any pattern discoverers interested in minting NFTs of their discoveries (and only their discoveries) can do so.

In particular, I've been implementing:

• lifelib functionality for producing visually appealing and globally consistent animated GIFs of GoL patterns;
• lifelib functionality to give full canonical apgcodes to glider guns;
• changes to Catagolue to enable its update process to push commits to the repository (so that it can build these animated GIFs and metadata JSONs automatically);
• functionality on Catagolue object pages for linking to the NFT of a pattern if it has been minted.

Then, once all of that has been completed (I'm most of the way there), I can write a corresponding ERC-721 contract and deploy it. I'm following the developer guide on OpenSea, so these ERC-721 tokens will be maximally compatible with OpenSea. For example, the recommended GIF size is 350x350; here's an example produced by the new lifelib functionality (the hue is user-specified, so that different NFTs can have different coloured glow whilst still adhering to a common global style):

Animated GIF of Sir Robin

robin.gif (947.65 KiB) Viewed 2653 times

To give more information about how this works, the minting process will be centralised (so that, for instance, it's possible to enforce that only the original discoverer of a pattern is allowed to mint it) but the resulting tokens will be ERC-721 NFTs that live on the decentralised Ethereum blockchain (so once you've minted an NFT, it's entirely owned by you and you can sell it like any other cryptoassets).

I've already acquired some nontrivial community interest here: John Winston Garth wants to mint his p21 2c/7 spaceship, so that will likely be the first NFT to test this pipeline.

I like your proposal of having a launch week, though, in which many interested parties mint NFTs of their patterns. Obviously we have John Winston Garth on board at the moment, and it would be great if any other pro-NFT Lifenthusiasts also join in to give the 'community approval and engagement' that you mention. So, if you want to mint an NFT of your p120 gun, for example, it would look something like this:

Animated GIF of Simkin's p120 glider gun

simkin120.gif (2.49 MiB) Viewed 2653 times

but you can choose the colour of it (this example is #0000ff). I'll need to know your Ethereum address when you're ready so that the NFT goes straight to your address when minted.

[simsim314]

@calcyman - this looks great, I don't mind to wait for technical stuff you started. My point is that I would also probably want to mint larger patterns or for example 23 quadratic growth - which might have some time-lapse at several resolutions etc. otherwise we support not all patterns but only small ones. I think lifelib was the only tool that could even run the quadratic self replication, just saying that it would be nice to have some custom animation available too.

Another point is some other rules I guess many people could join from wider CA community - we already have the gif generator from golly. Considering so few are interested in CGOL NFTs the option including more rules might bring more people.

I think opensea can support custom ERC-721 tokens, do you want to have it all installed there before we start the minting week? I think we should also focus on polygon and not Ethereum network, as the gas prices are incredibly high these days in Ethereum.

Other than that - I want to sponsor a little bit the first mints so that people could buy and trade them. I think sponsoring first 10 creators with 5$ - or how much is needed to buy/sell NFTs from each other, to motivate minting.

[pcallahan]

For example, the recommended GIF size is 350x350; here's an example produced by the new lifelib functionality (the hue is user-specified, so that different NFTs can have different coloured glow whilst still adhering to a common global style)

I like the gifs. This is enough of a "value add" that it doesn't seem like a complete scam to me, but I will believe it when I see an actual buyer.

Note: this may be very old school, but I would at least consider paying for a limited edition lucite "tombstone" with layers of laser-etched pattern generations inside if such a thing existed*. I can even imagine a fantasy world in which such desk ornaments had a collectibles market. I would not pay for some kind of conceptual ownership of a digital animation, even if I liked the animation itself. My semi-evolved primate brain just says it is not real.

*Or another idea, one of those animated plastic cards they used to give out in cereal boxes. Is there a service that produces them customized in small quantities? Aha, they're called lenticular cards. I don't think I ever considered this idea before for Life patterns (which surprises me). Has anyone else in the CGoL community? I may start a thread (at least in sandbox).

[simsim314]

My semi-evolved primate brain just says it is not real.

How it's less real than supporting someone on patreon or paying for kickstarter? The only idea you should grasp that past is more certain than the future so supporting someone continuously, supporting someone for his past, and supporting someone for future promises is really just supporting the creator at any point of time. NFTs are supporting someone for his work that was done, patreon for his continuous creation, kickstarter for future promise. The only difference is that NFTs can give you additional benefit as investment, so sometimes some people are using them more as source of speculative trading. I would say it's better than just getting the promised product like in kickstarter or patreon, you don't only support the creator but also get an opportunity to benefit from it like from some investment. It's just win-win.

[pcallahan]

How it's less real than supporting someone on patreon or paying for kickstarter?

To be honest, I have never given money for these either, but I think the value I would get is the promise that they'll do something in the future. It could even be a tangible product in the case of kickstarter. Tangible or not, it's original and contingent on support. So the value is the actual product, even if it's a YouTube video.

An NFT feels more like a trophy rather than original creative content. It is derived from content of value, but that content isn't tied to ownership of the trophy. I guess what I'm saying is that if it's basically a trophy, I want something that provides more than abstract stimulation. Think about all the swag corporations give out to employees and conference attendees. These are often cheaply made and yet even seemingly mature, educated people get kick out of them (up to a point). I am trying to imagine what would happen if a company offered NFTs in lieu of swag. I bet they'd have a lot of unhappy recipients even if the alternative was just a cheap frisbee knockoff. (Kind of like getting a toothbrush instead of Halloween goodies.)

[simsim314]

@pcallahan - imagine an artist or creation that you like. A history channel for example or some sort of product review or any content creation you like. Now the content creator needs support in order to have time and freedom to continue his effort. So the creation is continuous and the support is continuous as well. Every week he releases a video and every week you give him 1 buck. Why do you need some sort of a story, if this is a promise for the next video, or payment for the past video, or you need some sort of trophy as supporter? You like the content, you understand that monetary support is promoting it - why do you need to tell yourself any special story what exactly you are paying for? do you get a promise, a trophy or some early access to content? You get the content you like, and your support allows him to continue the effort. Past, present, future are less relevant - money doesn't care about time nor about the narrative. If you support him for his past creations, he will be more motivated to create again. If you pay for the future - you create some sort of pressure on him, but this really just a nuance.

The formalities here is a story which is besides the main point as I see it. The point is that your like of creation, and promoting the content by sponsoring it. You get something in return when you buy NFT - you get the content you wanted, and you get the higher probability the content will be created again. Everything else is besides the point. The virtual transaction or the physical trophy is just some sort of formality, some format to make a transaction.

[pcallahan]

The virtual transaction or the physical trophy is just some sort of formality, some format to make a transaction.

I follow your reasoning, but I will believe it when I see a real buyer. I am open-minded, just not optimistic.

[wwei47]

I remember making a laser-etched acrylic "print" of a Lei in B3/S2 a few years ago. Maybe that would sell? Of course, we would also give out instructions on how to make your own, the idea being that you payed not for the pattern, but for the production if you sold these prints. A scarf would also work, there are some steps in the evolution of 6o! that I thought looked cool.

[pcallahan]

I remember making a laser-etched acrylic "print" of a Lei in B3/S2 a few years ago.

Do you have a picture you can post?

[wwei47]

I remember making a laser-etched acrylic "print" of a Lei in B3/S2 a few years ago.

Do you have a picture you can post?

No, but I'll see if I can find the print again.