TECH TALK: NFT - Steer clear unless you know what you're doing

If you grew up in the 2000s like me, you’d definitely be familiar of Gempak Starz. Currently known as Kadokawa Gempak Starz, the popular comic publisher has successfully combined NFT technology with the excitement of collectible cards, which is already extremely popular within the comic fanbase.

The main reason I reluctantly dived into NFT is to purchase a one-of-a-kind collection card of Gengkey, one of KGS’s highly sought after comic series back in 2002 that tells the story of Lowkey, Paul and Amin who always fill their daily lives with cheerful and ‘mischievous’ plans either at school or off campus.

When I found out that KGS famous cartoonist, C2V was creating a limited edition NFT collectible cards of the trio comic characters, I wasn’t planning on missing out on getting one of the 1,010 card packs available for purchase.

And of course you can’t get the digital cards elsewhere as it only caters to the NFT marketplace. Even if you purchased it via Shopee, you as the sole buyer can only redeem the pack, download it to your hardware wallet but not for distribution to friends or family. There’s no button accessible for you to share it with anyone else once it’s in your e-wallet.

That’s the unique part of NFT. A non-fungible token artwork cannot be copied, distributed or mass produced without the permission of the creator, who in the above scenario is C2V.

When I buy a pack, my personal information as the buyer will be transferred to the Blockchain and it will create a smart contract that binds the creator (C2V) and the buyer (me).

This Blockchain technology will then create a certificate of authenticity and ownership to me as the sole buyer of said artwork and the information will forever be in the Blockchain. Even if I were to sell the pack to another NFT buyer for a higher price, it will not erase me as the first buyer of the digital artwork.

To make it more appealing to future artists, the creator will also get a commission - or using NFT jargon, royalties whenever his/her artwork is being sold to other buyers even if it’s being passed on for generations to come! It’s a win-win situation for both parties. For example, I get to sell the artwork for a higher price and C2V gets royalties for his work as a creator.

By now, you already get the gist on why NFT is considered a hype to digital technology. The allure of making money by minting your artwork or buying NFT for long term investment sounds like a good plan, right?

Some individual NFTs have sold for staggering sums, such as work by digital artist Beeple for USD69.3 million or an Indonesian lad, Ghozali Everyday who rose to fame with his everyday selfies NFT that garnered USD1 million in just 8 minutes of uploading it to the marketplace.

But that’s not the case with all NFT creators. Some posted 100 NFTs to the marketplace and still get no buyers until today. Similar to any business challenges, creating brand awareness is part of the process to be known in the NFT community.

Word of mouth and a good fan base can probably help boost you as an artist or creator. With your unique style of creating an art, buyers will start to appreciate and recognize your art’s worth and then only the money will start to roll in.

Don’t get blindsided by the million dollars that these fortunate NFT stars acquire in their digital arts’ journey. There’s a whole chunk of unspoken reality of NFT digitalization that you have to learn more if you want to venture into selling anything online for this matter.

For buyers, scary as it may be, you could lose your NFT purchases forever. For instance, if a creator decides to close his business tomorrow, all of his NFT buyers might lose their metadata because the smart contract allows it.

The creator is capable of making changes to his artwork, or in this case even erase it for good.

Similar to online transactions, it’s best to do a thorough research before purchasing anything NFT, especially from a foreign marketplace that you can’t get ahold of if anything were to happen during the buying process.

In Malaysia, we have Pentas.io and Trart that are Malaysian based and founded by Malaysian digiprenuers so in case if you needed assistance, help is just a local phone call away.

In my humble opinion as a crypto fan of 5 years (and counting), buy NFT because you want to own it, not because you want to get in on the hype. You’d want to participate for the asset and not the underlying technology that powers this because you might be losing a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to NFT.

TECH TALK column is written by Sinar Daily’s video producer, Nabihah Rosdi