By: chorne (founder of Filta)
I think most NFTs are a scam***.
Yeah.
So why the hell would I build an NFT platform?
In 2017 when I first ran into Cryptokitties (and NFTs) - I was floored. I immediately thought it would be the future of digital art ownership and started building an NFT app for AR sculptures. We tried to recruit an engineer from Pinterest (he founded MakersPlace instead) right around the same time OpenSea was founded. We started most of our NFT conversations with a controversial statement:
Nobody wants to buy a jpeg
Buried deep in that critique is one key thing: utility. The utility of a jpeg is viewing it. Owning a jpeg gives me no more utility than having a screenshot of the same thing. Scam***
For an NFT to not be a scam*** it needs to have some amount of unique utility.
Profile pictures are an interesting twist. It’s a public display of something you own where the scarcity of ownership is enforced (socially...though eventually via software). The utility of ownership is that you actually get to use it as your profile picture and gain clout. As we’ve seen from most PFPs - this extra sprinkle of utility is a multiplier on market value.
With Filta - the utility is threefold: