Brutal Ethereum gas fees pushed me to try alternatives. Having recently joined the Hive community (and in particular Alien Art Hive) registering to the newborn NFT Showroom platform was a no-brainer.
FIRST IMPRESSION
What a pleasant surprise! Tokenizing with Hive was fast, smooth, and most of all cheap! The NFT Showroom interface, while only recently launched, in my experience is already very competitive.
What I liked most is the ability to price editions differently. For example, my Homo Mulhollandensis was issued in an edition of 3, priced 50, 100, and 150 HIVE (currently $12.6, $25.3 and $37.9), which in my view can give a sense of urgency to collectors (the earliest one collects, the better the deal). It worked! The 1st edition sold in just 6 minutes! 🙂 Not bad for a new platform.
Low transaction fees make selling and collecting at popular prices finally convenient. With Ethereum, gas fees can currently cost more than the artwork itself!
A PLACE FOR "THE REAL" CRYPTOART MARKET?
While I have sold stuff for up to 2 ETH, I have got convinced that the real cryptoart market (where for "real" I mean genuine collectors loving an artwork and buying it) is mostly made of small sales like the one I am proposing.
Most of the big sales you see in my view are not genuine: they are publicity stunts, wash trading performed as a group sport, perhaps also some money laundering.
I am not naive, I don't expect to find purity in any trade, what truly annoys me though is the stupidity and ugliness of some of these celebrated artworks and how shameless the bullshit game got.
I am not trying to pass as morally superior, quite frankly anyone who puts money in my art for any reason is welcome. But I believe an artist has to be honest, also in pretending. I can't stand sophisticated crackpots who take themselves too seriously without being funny.
MY HOMO MULOLLHANDENSIS
My "Homo Mulhollandensis" (got the reference?) was made by transmuting ancient African tribal masks, as to say by using only photos of those masks (now completely unrecognizable) and making something new out of them, without any hand drawing involved.
Masks without a soul were turned into spirit 👹
If I could go back in time to the African tribes to which those masks belong and show the shaman what I did with them, I think they'd be afraid of me, they would respect me, or maybe they'd kill me 😅 What's for sure is that they would not remain indifferent.
This is art, much more than a fucking pixel. Art with a soul that I am selling for few bucks, not thousands. You can collect the remaining two here.
Thanks for your time and attention and congrats to @nftshowroom (in particular to @juliakponsford) for the great job! Viva HIVE!