Chengdu Dialect Xuanlongmen Array | NFT - From Grassroots to Elites to Grassroots

Old art dealer A: I don't understand.
Art dealer: Of course you don't understand.
Old art dealer A: Am I getting old?
Art dealer: Yes.
Public: . . .
Old art dealer B: What's so good about this painting?

Hello fellow listeners from Matt City!

When thinking about the topic of centralization and decentralization recently, I thought of the Chinese language - it is politically subject to many regulations and constraints, and it can be said that the degree of centralization is very high. But at the same time, due to the large number of people who use it and the wide distribution area, there are many branches of Chinese, which are very different from each other, and show a very decentralized feature.

This tension between centralization and decentralization is very much like the contradiction we face when vigorously advocating the decentralized features of Web3. In this show, my brain is wide open, and I want to talk about an important concept in Web3 through the change of language: NFT.

Mandarin, Dialect, Mandarin: The Power Structure Behind Language

I was born and raised in Chengdu, and my relatives are located in Luzhou and Chongqing. When I was a child, when I went to visit relatives, I would automatically change to the local accent, because I would be laughed at by relatives because of the wrong accent.

Chengdu speaks "here", Luzhou speaks "detained in Hong Kong"; Chengdu speaks "there", Luzhou speaks "lai port". Luzhou dialect feels a little more earthy. Relatives in Luzhou would point at me and say, "It's different depending on the provincial capital." Although there is an element of envy, I will quickly adjust my accent so that I don't want to stand out among a group of relatives' dolls.

When I was a child, I developed the habit of saying "eat hot pot" with relatives who went to Chongqing. When I go back to Chengdu and ask my classmates to eat hot pot "er", I will be washed: "What we eat is hot pot!"

People in Chongqing should not belittle themselves by "seeing people coming from the provincial capital", because Chongqing, an important economic town and a transportation fortress, competed with Chengdu for the provincial capital back then. Later, it was divided into a municipality directly under the central government, and the dispute between Chengyu and Chongqing ended.

Categorizing languages has always been difficult, and linguists have a lot of controversy over Chinese classification. The figure below is a Chinese branch line map taken from Wikipedia, arranged in the order of historical differentiation.

It can be seen that the Sichuan dialect, which belongs to "Southern Mandarin > Southwest Mandarin", is not far from the northern Mandarin. Chengdu, especially, is rich in poets and civil servants, and the language is more written, so it is not difficult to call Chengdu people to speak Mandarin, just change the tone and pay attention to the problem of flat tongue. I set up a dragon gate formation with you, can you understand? Can you understand it when you write it?

Still, this diagram simplifies the evolution of the language. The language in natural flow is not as clear as this table. Taking our own experience as an example, when we speak, we must bear the imprint of our past experience—the hometown dialect, the friends we have played with, the partners we have lived in the city, and the partners we have worked with... all constitute the characteristics of our language today. But because we express so that others can understand, we adjust our language to the object of the conversation. The formation and standardization of popular language is affected by the following practical conditions:

• Language used for everyday communication needs: This language focuses on efficiency and is often straightforward. Therefore, we will see that the more people come and go in the metropolis, the language will tend to be universal, universal, and even often mix several languages.
• The language of regulations, contracts, official documents, etc.: accurate, standardized, and even redundant. It exists to compensate for the ambiguity of everyday language. It sacrifices the dexterity and beauty of language to ensure the fair execution of the agreement.
• As a language of artistic expression: the language in literature and film and television works is derived from Japanese, but incorporates the artist's aesthetic taste. The unique artistic communication language, its promotion and acceptance originally occurred naturally among readers and audiences. However, artistic creation is easily politicized, so which expressions are honored and which expressions are resisted will be guided by political groups.

The combination of the standardized expression of official documents and the literary and artistic expression that has been approved by politics has become Mandarin, which is blessed by political forces.

So what do these language-expressed features have to do with NFT?

NFT Mandarin: Popular Interest, Promotional Marketing and Capital Power

If the power structure behind language is rooted in politics, then the power structure behind NFT is rooted in capital. The form of language depends on the expressor, the recipient and the medium of communication. Transactions of NFTs depend on creators, buyers and sales platforms.

In this chapter, we will analyze three cases of high-profile NFT sales, and learn about the creators, buyers and sales platforms behind the huge capital transactions:

Case 1. Everydays: The First 5000 Days - $69M

Many people paid attention to the artist Beeple because he sold the price of $69M at the beginning of last year, which triggered the NFT carnival for the next six months. People who dream of getting rich overnight, people who despise the smell of copper, and passers-by who don't understand the situation, all end up in succession, making money, making money, and criticizing.

In all fairness, Beeple is a powerful digital artist. You can go to his website: https://www.beeple-crap.com/everydays is absolutely different from many fake artists who want to copy his experience of making a fortune. . For 14 consecutive years, Beeple insisted on poing a painting every day in addition to the regular design work, and trained his basic art skills. This kind of self-discipline over the years is not something that ordinary people can do first. To this day, after selling the astronomical wealth, he is still flattered and insists on painting.

Most of the way digital artists get paid is to contribute to audio-visual multimedia and brand promotion. NFT brings digital artists to the ranks of Fine Art for the first time. Christie's, which helps Beeple with PR, is a global art auction house. You can see Beeple's video of the auction day in Christie's official report . He has many years of experience in art trading among the wealthy class, and his collections include oil paintings, sculptures, antiques, jewelry, vintage wines... This is the first time Christie's has promoted digital works so vigorously.

So why would such an auction house with the words "traditional", "classic" and "time-honored" come to help a digital artist buy paintings?

To answer this question, we have to look at who was in the bidding and who came out on top in the end.

According to comprehensive information on the Internet, the number of people participating in the bidding is between 40 and 60 people. Before the auction, Beeple's own Instagram account had 1.8M fans. It is not ruled out that some fans will come to support the idol, and it is not ruled out that some traditional customers of Christie's will come to join in the fun, but according to the buyer's information disclosed after the final price has entered the heat , the later price hikes are all investors in blockchain-related industries. According to Business Insider, the last successful bidder was Vignesh Sundaresan. Immediately after he took the photo, he put it on the Internet and encouraged netizens to circulate it, saying:

The internet wants to be free, and paywalls don't work.

It is not difficult to see from the resume of this funder that, as a well-known investor in the Silicon Valley blockchain venture capital industry, he has this motive to create momentum for NFT. $69M alone is too expensive to buy a digital painting, but considering the funds he usually invests in the start-up team, and the media exposure caused by this round of eye-catching operations, this price is cheap. What's more, how do we know if this VC has any interest in Christie's or other NFT institutions? The money spent by VC is not guaranteed to be out of the left pocket and in the right pocket. We eat melons and people just take a look.

As for the artist himself, he can be said to be sober in the world. As soon as the ETH arrives, it is immediately converted into USD . He says:

There is no doubt that NFT is a bubble. I will continue to paint and create, what to do.

This should be the lottery of a powerful artist who has been persistent in his creation for 14 years: luck is really lucky, he can improve his family's living standards, and he can reject some projects he doesn't want to take on, but his artistic life will continue.

Of course, for the artist, if he can sell a price of $69M around the age of 40, then his subsequent works can be predicted to start from millions of dollars.

That's how the art market is winner-take-all.

Case 2. Charlie Bit My Finger - $760K

Videos of everyday jokes have been a staple of popular entertainment since the advent of home video. For example, the following Charlie Bit My Finger has been uploaded to YouTube 15 years ago, and it has contracted countless people's laughter. In the past ten years, Charlie's family has made enough traffic, and they have also improved the life of an ordinary working family by relying on TV shows, receiving advertisements, etc. Charlie's mother said in an interview:

The film's continued popularity has allowed us to afford two more children. Otherwise raising four sons is unthinkable for our financial situation.

Charlie's father can keep pace with the times. In 2021, he saw the business opportunity of NFT, auctioned the film to $790K, and raised education funds for the four children in the family.

The platform responsible for running the auction is Origin. They have developed a set of NFT Launchpad Protocol, which allows content creators who are disliked by art auction houses but have their own traffic to more easily mint and auction NFTs by themselves. This is an auction site made by Origin for Charlie's family , doesn't it feel a bit shabby? This protocol focuses on the independent promotion and auction of a single work, ignoring the community effect, and it seems outdated now. But before OpenSea, Foundation and other more well-tooled platforms became the industry standard, Origin filled a brief void.

 Unfortunately, I couldn't find this video as a record of NFT transactions. Perhaps because of the irregularity of the early market, NFT signature files were submerged in the massive transaction log of Ethereum? If you have any clues, please leave a message.

Which one is spending a fortune?

The buyer claimed to be a music studio in Dubai.

They not only photographed Charlie Bit My Finger, but also many popular meme animations on the Internet. This record of the 20 most expensive meme NFTs in history shows that 3F Music took 6 of them by one person - excluding Charlie Bit My Finger - for a total of $2,052,000. Although these combined are not as good as Beeple's $68M, but...3F Music is not a person who engages in blockchain after all. What is the purpose of buying these meme NFTs?

Around March last year, 3F Music sold several million dollars worth of NFTs. In a report that they paid an additional $560K for a New York Times op-ed photo NFT , they explained their motives this way:

Our management team is always in cooperation with some highly knowledgeable and experienced art advisers who believe that we must grow with technological movements that help us to not only promote our business but also to support artists and the art market. Thus, we have proudly decided to dedicate sufficient funds and resources to invest in NFT as pioneers of this industry.

"Our management has art consultants, so let's keep abreast of technological trends... We must not only do business promotion ourselves, but also actively support the art market..."

🤔 Nani?

I'm not a regional prejudice, but when I saw that they were in Dubai, I inexplicably gave birth to a sense of sight like a melon child of a landlord's family ... Ouch, clap! Don't talk nonsense! Millions of dollars may be a fraction to others. After all, everyone's passenger flights are equipped with granite floors and gold handrails...

Case 3. Uniswap Promo Video - $525K

This lady pplpleasr ( https://twitter.com/pplpleasr1 ) should be no stranger to Taiwanese, the light of Chinese! Her story is inspiring:

Born in Taiwan, raised in Canada, graduated from UCLA with a degree in Media Art and Design, worked in Hollywood and made animation scenes for many Marvel Super Hero movies. I originally left the film industry because I got Apple's Job Offer, but I didn't go because of visa issues. After dawdling, I became interested in DeFi and began to produce animated short films for companies such as Uniswap for promotion and explanation.

At the beginning of last year, seeing the escalation of violence against Asians in the United States, she discussed with Uniswap and decided to use her masterpiece, Uniswap v3 promo, x * y = k , for a charity auction. The auction takes place on the Foundation App. In the beginning, like other NFT crazes, her auction also attracted bids from investors and local tycoons.

But at this time, a young brother of a Singapore data engineer appeared——

Like us, he is an ordinary working class. Although I really want to support pplpleasr, I can't beat the local tyrants with my own money. So he fought hard on Twitter, calling on people who want to support Miss Sister and #StandWithAsians to raise money together. Soon, he got a lot of responses from netizens, and pleasr DAO was born.

After several rounds of bloody battles, pleaser DAO finally defeated other financial giants and marked x * y = k with $525K.

After that, the DAO named after Miss pplpleasr did not dissolve after the bidding, but continued with the goal of raising funds to purchase high-priced NFTs for charity DeFi. Now that the currency circle has entered a bear market, the NFTs they started do not know if they can still be sold at higher prices. How should charity fundraising continue? Let us bless them not to go bankrupt! The blood you have invested in will eventually burn into your own little universe ! 😜

As for pplplear, the money raised from the auction was distributed according to the agreement. At the same time, she has the opportunity to cooperate with more star projects and continue to explore the possibility of NFT and DeFi. I am very impressed by her recent actions:

• She created and distributed Ethereum: The Infinite Garden animated NFT for the Ethereum documentary, which successfully raised funds.
• She created an animated movie game with an open story line, https://www.shibuya.xyz/ , where early fans voted to decide where the story should go.
• She founded https://twitter.com/plsA0k1 to support NFT creation by female artists
• Of course, she is also an honorary member of the pleasr DAO.

After reading the above stories, what do you think?

Case 1 made the most money, but the artist never really understood Web3. He is skeptical of the value of NFT, so he follows the path of traditional artists: cooperate with internationally renowned auction houses, maintain his reputation and price, and make a fortune. He only benefits from NFTs, but he does not understand the core of this decentralization spirit. Maybe he got rich because of this wave, but I believe he will not leave a lasting impact in the world of Web3. He felt that this was a bubble, and he made himself into a bubble.

Case 3 has the lowest transaction price among the three cases, but I am very bullish on pplpleasr. She is not only professional, but also sincere, kind, and beautiful. She is willing to cooperate with others, and uses her own strength as the goal of the community and fuels the ideas that she recognizes. She doesn't think NFT is a bubble, she can seize all the possibilities brought by related technologies to play and create. She's in the spirit of Web3. I believe she can make steady progress in both bear and bull markets.

Case 2 is the story of the chance encounter with a rich man who throws money, and the commoner baby can finally buy a house, marry a wife and have a son... Blessings!

NFT local dialect: Internal identity of the local community

After reading the NFT cases that cost tens of millions of dollars, and then touch the NTD in your pocket, do you suddenly feel that life is easy?

In fact, just as there are always local dialects outside the jurisdiction of Mandarin, there are also small and beautiful NFT groups outside the bloody storms of the international art market.

Different from the NFT of the art-like transaction in the previous case, there is another kind of avatar NFT based on the fan DAO. This marketing method was first introduced by CryptoPunk and carried forward by Bored Ape Yacht Club. Since the project attracted a large number of entertainment stars to invest and bring goods in the early stage, it also received a lot of attention.

Its operation method is to first create a world view, and then design an avatar template. Through the arrangement and combination of several different hairstyles, expressions, clothing, etc., thousands of different avatars can be changed. At first glance, each avatar looks similar, but upon closer inspection, there are subtle differences.

They usually set up a fan DAO, open a project Discord, and then provide benefits according to the level of fans' input, and also allow fans to participate in the direction of the voting project.

Go to https://coinmarketcap.com/nft/ and take a look, there are close to 3,000 NFT projects in active trading. Personally, I think everyone looks the same, and the artists are all pretty good.

You said, there are so many projects, which project should you invest in?

Let's tell a story 😜

Under @swiftevoInterview@Migao and the puppy ThankYou, Migao said:

When I saw this sentence, I felt very touched.

Although I also think it’s great to talk to Chengdu people in their native dialect and use slang words that only we understand (guawazi🤣), but as mentioned earlier, Chengdu dialect is not much different from Mandarin, and the written language is basically the same, so I don't have that strong feeling.

Cantonese and Mandarin are far from each other, and they are squeezed by politics. It is definitely different to meet a stranger on the Internet talking to him in a familiar language.

In the world of languages, the most important thing is to talk. Only in the exchange of words can you find the destination of your thoughts and feelings.

In the world of Web3, the most important thing is participation. You can only "own" if you are involved in it yourself. If you don't participate, you can't buy "ownership" just by spending money.

So NFT and DAO are two inseparable concepts. NFT is a certificate, and DAO is a community. Without the internal recognition of the community, what is the use of the certificate?

So it is not so much to buy NFTs as to invest in a group. No matter how small your group is, as long as you can have an internal sense of identity and cohesion, you can do something together.

@c2x3 Introduces many Taiwanese local NFT projects, go and see if there is any project you like!

In addition, the waste rabbit NFT project introduced by@黃太仙森｜Lingsha Record Interpretation and Promotion expressed a kind of frustration that can no longer beat chicken blood, which resonated with many netizens.

Mintverse, the NFT concept that forged a new dictionary, is even more of a language that only we understand: https://mintverse.world/secondworld/

Invest in local niche NFTs that resonate with you, buy at a price you can afford, and preferably participate in the construction of the project. Appreciation is lucky, did not appreciate? It's the same sentence, the blood that has been invested in it will eventually burn into its own small universe ! 😜

NFT Official Document: Unexplored Areas

Finally, the nature of NFTs actually makes them ideal for legal contracts. But maybe because the lawyer industry is too lucrative, and legal NFTs don't know how to operate the business model, so we haven't seen reliable projects appear. Of course, the more likely reason is that people in the legal world are relatively conservative and rigorous in their thinking, and they are often afraid of loopholes when they use new technologies to do things.

Probably the only one that is out of the circle is the Proof of Attendance Protocol. I participated in the "Suffix" writing camp a while ago and won a POAP medal: https://app.poap.xyz/scan/gardeniadurian.eth is a commemoration of this trip!

Official summary

Damn, the long novel has finally come to an end. . . Thanks for listening to my nonsense to the end! 😅

What language do you communicate in? What do you think about the relationship between language and Web3?

With the help of@Jeger, the editor-in-chief of "Suffix", we set up the DAO label for dialect (password) knowledge , hoping to continue to collect relevant research and make a special issue. Looking forward to your contribution!