My CryptoPunk

Although the general structure of the classic CryptoPunks may seem heavily limited, I had a lot of fun jumping in and making my own. I decided to create a character that truly did resemble myself visually for a couple of reasons. First, I have been feeling quite detached and uneducated in the world of cybercurrency and block chains recently. I find myself lost in terminology and it’s clear that I have to put in extra research to really grasp these concepts. With this being said, however, I do see the fiscal value in NFT’s and digital marketplaces. Through our recent class discussions and assignments, I have been inspired to go the extra mile to involve myself more deeply with this content. By making my CryptoPunks look like me, I felt as though I was making this comprehension more personal. I want to invest some part of myself into this culture, so putting my face physically into this context was a great start. In Chris Nune's Video, he talks about the beauty of digital collaboration. This was one of my favorite take always from this week’s course work, and it another reason why I decided to make my CryptoPunk resemble myself. To elaborate on this further, it is clear that my character is quite plain. Besides a handful of features that I do have in real like (the hair and skin color, blue hat, earrings and color of my hair tie), this CryptoPunk can be developed much further. I intentionally kept it plain because the idea of releasing it digitally for other people to modify excites me.

My instinct to simplify my CryptoPunk may also be rooted from some of the protection policy readings we have done. In "Another New World" my Michael Conner, he explains the risk associated with creating NFT’s. Lots of artists have experienced their authentic digital work minted and sold under their name without consent. This is very disheartening and makes me uncomfortable exposing an “exact” replica of myself on the internet through this form (even though getting an exact replica is impossible). Keeping my CryptoPunk simple and plain grants me the ability to go incognito is anything horrible were to happen. I understand that of course, these will not be illegally sold, but after dissecting the readings this week, this decision seemed intuitive rather than organized. On this note, I also do find it kind of weird that if, perhaps, my personal CryptoPunk was added to the famous collection, someone would pay money to own it. With the lack of crazy features, I wonder if it would be worth less, or less desired? Regardless, it is weird to think that someone else can own the rights to my own digital portrait created by me.

In my own outside research , Clark comments on the possibility of connecting NFT’s to real-world objects. For example, Nike is experimenting with releasing CryptoKicks. Essentially this means that Nike has patented a method to verify the sneaker’s authenticity using an NFT system which I do not fully understand, but I am fascinated by the approach. I wonder how this could translate into our conversation about personalized CryptoPunks and fraud. Is it possible to use an NFT approach by patenting our own rea life faces to verify we are, in fact, the owner of the NFT?

Lastly, because I do care so much about sustainably and my personal carbon footprint, I did some more research about the environmental factors that go into. NFT’s use blockchain technology that uses up a lot of electricity. As a result, the creation and disturbance of NFT’s generate huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. This is potentially the biggest factor holding me back from taking this CryptoPunks a step further and minting it. I would love to experience the full and complex journey of making, selling, buying and collecting NFT’s, but the environmental concerns outweigh the benefits in my opinion.