How Will CharitiesNFT Work For Canadian First Nations Grassroots Artists? Will NFTs Revolutionize the First Nation Grassroots Communities? (Part 1)

CharitiesNFT: A kind of digital-twin NFT, promotes NFTizing physical artwork created by grass-root artists, using Hologram and Holo-DKEY for Crypto-Validation. 

CharitiesDAO: A kind of DANO (Decentralized Autonomous Non-profit Organization) with an ecosystem of charities founders, individual contributors and receivers, project accelerators and incubators. This is building more transparent and efficient decentralized donation chains.

In a series of articles, I will introduce WHITE PAPER of CharitiesNFT and CharitiesDAO and discuss how they work for Canadian Indigenous Traditional Culture and Grass-root Artists as one of the application scenarios of CharitiesNFT.

Why Are NFTs Promising?

With advancements in technology, we have seen traditional graphic artworks (like oil painting, woodcarving, or photography) been digitalized and preserved in the cloud. These approaches are designed to preserve the integrity of art contents and to retain the ability for users to retrieve, display, and learn about the artworks via the cloud.

With the rise of the NFT technology, NFT allows grassroots artists or traditional visual art communities seize opportunities to tap into an inaccessible market. Being both grassroots and traditional visual artists, NFT will be great for the Canadian First Nation artists. This article will explain why and how the First Nation artists’ artistic skills in woodcarving, painting, and embroidery can transfer easily over to NFT digital art platform.  

Why will NFTs benefit the First Nation people? Many First Nation artists are grassroots artists. They are skilled in physical artworks that are by handmade or traditional craftsmanship (like Totem handicraft, Totem woodcarving & wood-engraving & wood-painting). Each piece of their artwork has its value embedded esoteric craftsmanship and creation along with mysterious tradition and culture. Unfortunately, their physical artworks have been unappreciated and undervalued by the mainstream society for too long. 

Revolutionize First Nation Grassroots Communities

On top of the limited appreciation and supports, the pandemic take opportunities from the hands of local, grassroots, First Nation artists alike. The artists are unable to mount exhibits. I think that NFT will be a great idea to create a space where celebrated artists could come together and show whatever work they liked and make it available for the public.

NFT has great potential to upend the First Nation grassroots artist communities as we know it. But trying to determine whether they will, let alone in what ways, demands doing what few buyers plunging into this emerging platform and market want to do. NFTs are crypto-collectibles: tradable digital assets (in both the coding and investing senses of “assets”) whose authenticity, identity, ownership history, and sales prices are all tracked on a blockchain. Like physical art, NFTs are either unique or produced in limited editions. The database consists of unalterable “blocks” of transactions, verified cooperatively by the network.The “non-fungible” aspect comes from the fact that each NFT has a value independent of all others, and each NFT has a “Token” — an unique alphanumeric code recorded on the blockchain. NFT’s scarcity is secure, which in turn amplifies demand, which builds a more confident and robust market than digital artworks without blockchain backing.

Decentralized Marketplaces Welcome Grassroots Artists

NFT is friendlier to grassroots artists in the First Nation communities. Many great talents get buried because the pre-existing art industry connections and establishment wield great influence over who gets to participate in a fundamentally hierarchical system. New, decentralized marketplaces of the NFTs welcome artists independent of the art establishment’s approval. The blockchain art space has potential to “change the game” for First Nation grassroots artists because NFTs are giving voice to the voiceless — “Make sure the grassroots can build the art communities they want to build as they see fit.”

The blockchain allows NFT artists to reinvent resale royalties, marketplace structures, and even exhibition design in ways that prioritize their own needs. It is a means of “collectivizing economics” and, if the artists choose, even “combining for-profit and nonprofit structures so people can funnel some of the proceeds into grant-making or charity”. 

When it comes to cashing in on art, even the most fortunate artists generally only receive, a merger resale royalty. So, for unappropriated, grassroots artists, they get even less royalties. However, with NFTs, it is a “game changer” for the First Nation grassroots artists. NFTs allow artists to have the potential to benefit proportionally as their works circulate through the marketplace over time, because percentage-based resale royalties can be baked into the terms of every NFT sale. NFT trades is the “smart contract,” a set of commands that executes on the blockchain without outside intervention once objectively verifiable conditions are met. 

NFTize Physical Artworks Into “Token” —  Unique Alphanumeric Code Recorded On The Blockchain

I believe that system particular for NFTizing physical artworks should be considered in the First Nation grassroots communities. A grassroots organization that provides crowdfunding and community support to First Nation artists looking to produce their first NFTs. It can create “generational and circular economic structures” for every artists and their education into NFT technologies. Furthermore, this grassroots organization can help the artists to digitalize/ or NFTize their physical artworks into “Token” —  unique alphanumeric code recorded on the blockchain. In the case for First Nation grassroots artists, we can code information of physical artwork into the token, which is turns  is encrypted with a 3D holography of the physical artwork, which in turns shows esoteric craftsmanship and creation of the artist and the tradition and culture embedded behind the artwork. Once data of the artwork is “on-chain,” it cannot be deleted and it can be reviewed forever by anyone — each NFT’s scarcity and provenance are secure. 

Digital Twin NFT benefits First Nation artists who are only skilled in physical artwork (handicraft, handmade woodcarving & engraving, embroidery), which can be mirrored and linked to its unique NFT, embedding scarcity, authenticity and up-valuation.  CharitiesNFT, based on the technique of Digital-Twin NFT, is one of the best tools for this system. Any traditional physical artwork can be digitally mirrored and linked to its unique NFT on a specific customized blockchain, embedding scarcity and rarity, traceability and identifiability, authenticity and non-counterfeited, high-appreciation and up-valuation. CharitiesDAO via smart contracts can solve the deadlocks, besetting the traditional charities criticized by the public for many years. Ideally, anyone can supervise and scrutinize, which will minimize unnecessary waste and corruption in the whole donation chain. 

Summary: Will NFTs Benefit The Grassroots First Nation Artists With CharitiesDAO?

A lack of pre-existing art establishment and a limitless freedom is both good and bad. Decentralization is not always what it is said to be on the textbook. While the NFT thrives on utopian rhetoric about freedom and artist’s rights, distributed systems of the NFT can also lead to disrupted power. The majority of people buying and selling NFTs dependent on platforms. Those platforms vastly simplify the process for users. However, the disrupted technology or the web are now claiming that they have changed the world again, when really it is just the same people making the same stuff for the same people to get rich from. 

So, will NFTs revolutionize the art world and benefit the grassroots First Nation artists with CharitiesDAO? I think so. NFTs has galvanized artists to radically restructure how the art market could work if they started from square one. Because in a way, they can. New, decentralized marketplaces can welcome artists and buyers independent of the art establishment’s approval. It will break the norms in art world where the institutions with pre-existing industry connections wield enormous influence over who gets to participate in a hierarchical system.

In my vision, CharitiesDAO is not simply a “DAO” , but is trans-border integration with traditional charities. It will have distinctive infrastructure that is built with unique protocols and rules, which different with those of other DAOs. In web 3.0, CharitiesDAO will be an overthrowing revolution for traditional charities, which is based on decentralized platforms DAOs making the ability to offer “Share-to-Give” that charity resources can we share best and contribute sustainably to maximize value of charity. Also, the new technologies will lead to a new economic system and create charities on #decentralized platforms leveraging DAOs and smart contracts, create an possibility of a more transparent and efficient decentralized donation-chain.