- I wrote last week about what it was like to buy my first NFT on OpenSea.
- It took about seven big steps to finally secure a cartoon pig, which is no use to me now.
- Common users are likely to face the same hurdles, presenting hurdles to mass adoption.
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Earlier this month I bought an NFT on OpenSea, the largest online marketplace for buying and selling digital assets.
I’ve written about how tedious the process was and how long it took when I was starting from scratch. For the uninitiated, here is an overview of the steps:
1. Buy Ether on Coinbase.
2. Set up a digital wallet (I used Coinbase Wallet.)
3. Wait a week before I can use the ether outside of Coinbase.
4. Connect my Coinbase wallet to OpenSea.
5. Understand that you cannot purchase NFTs through the OpenSea mobile app; start on a laptop.
6. Select an NFT.
7. Buy more ether on Coinbase to cover OpenSea gas fees; finally buy the NFT.
Well, to be fair, I would imagine that the majority of users participating in this space already own crypto and have a digital wallet. But I don’t, which means many other ordinary people unfamiliar with this space would probably be going through the same thing as me.
So why is there so much friction in the NFT market? And how does that bode that they will ever achieve mass adoption? I turned to an expert.
I told Nick Casares – the Head of Product at PolyientX, a company that creates tools for NFT developers – that provides tools to NFT communities – about my experience and asked him if there was an easier way for me. He said no: I chose the quickest and least complicated option on the open market.
“It’s not an easy process,” Casares told me. “There are too many hurdles for a consumer to overcome in order to purchase an NFT.”
(There are other platforms where you can buy NFTs directly with a credit card, but that means your ownership of the asset isn’t secured on the blockchain, so it’s a bit different.)
Casares said there are a few layers to this, including increasing access to crypto and crypto wallets. This can go hand in hand with integrating the digital asset into popular apps like PayPal, Stripe, or Shopify.
The idea of a digital wallet is a bit counter-intuitive and may not make sense for everyone at first. However, Casares had a good way of explaining it: Think of it as a gateway to Web3 and a way to interact with NFTs.
It’s also still a bit difficult for the average person to grapple with the concept of a digital asset. But that’s slowly changing, especially after crypto ads dominated ad breaks during the Super Bowl and ultra-expensive ads sold at famous auction houses made headlines last year.
But there is a lot of contention.
Critics say NFTs are a hyped crypto trend with no real merit, while proponents say they’re a great way to build community and empower not only the creators but also those who buy them. (A big aspect of decentralized technology is giving participants a say in decision-making within a given project.)
It’s also worth noting that the craze for cryptocurrency and other Web3 technologies like NFTs don’t always go hand in hand. I’ve previously written about crypto fans like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey’s disdain for both NFTs and the future AR and VR-centric evolution of the internet: the Metaverse.
And even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin told Time that he and many others are donating cryptocurrencies to Ukraine as the nation battles an unprovoked attack from Russia. It’s a real-world use case for digital currencies where people aren’t collectively spending $1 billion on cartoons of bored monkeys.
“A silver lining to the situation over the past three weeks is that it has reminded many people in the crypto space that ultimately, the goal of crypto isn’t to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that make significant effects in the real world,” he said.