Broadly speaking, the market no longer cares about NFT art. I love the collection that I have put together over the last five years and I continue to buy pieces from time to time. But it is becoming harder as fewer artists mint their work and as more marketplaces shut down. For instance, last month, Foundation announced that it would be closing up shop after a failed sale of the company. This was one of the most well-known marketplaces from the 2021 NFT era.

The other problem with marketplaces shutting down is that now many NFTs are at risk of getting lost forever. But how is that possible given that blockchains are supposed to decentralized and immune to this sort of thing? Here's my non-technical explanation, which you may want to pay attention to if you own any NFTs.

The actual images or graphics that make up NFT art can be stored on blockchains in generally one of two ways: either on-chain or off-chain (which is how most NFTs are stored). On-chain means that the code required to render the image (usually vector graphics) is stored directly on the blockchain itself.

One of the most notable examples is the CyberBrokers collection created by Chicago artist Josie Bellini. In this instance, everything is stored on the Ethereum blockchain. It's more expensive to do it this way, but it means that as long as Ethereum exists, CyberBrokers exist. So, pretty permanent!

The other way that NFT art can be stored is off-chain. What this means is that the NFT you are buying is essentially a pointer to an image stored somewhere else on the internet. Owning the pointer is a way of saying, "I own that thing over there!" And since the pointer exists on a blockchain, you should have it forever. The question is whether "over there" still exists or if it's pointing to nothing. This is the problem to be concerned about if you own any NFTs.

"Over there" can take many forms. The image could be stored on a centralized server like what Instagram would use when you upload a photo or story. In this case, there's a high degree of risk that your art could disappear forever and you'd be left with a pointer that points to nothing. The link would be broken.

Decentralized storage is better than centralized storage, but it's important to understand the differences. Some decentralized storage networks, like Arweave, are more or less permanent. Arweave works by collecting a fee upfront with the promise that it will be enough to cover the cost of storing the data for at least 200 years. So again, pretty permanent.

But the most common place for NFTs to be stored is on something called the InterPlanetary File System (or IPFS). IPFS is unique in that it is a peer-to-peer network that uses content-based addressing, instead of location-based addressing. What this means is that you don't ask the network "where is this file stored?"; you ask the network, "who has this file?"

This is a crucial difference because it means that as long as your NFT art is stored somewhere in the world, it will remain accessible. However, the challenge is that there isn't a permanent funding model, so if a marketplace like Foundation was paying to store your art on IPFS and has now shut down, then "stored over there" will disappear and the pointer will point to nothing.

The good news is that there's an easy solution if your pieces are on IPFS. All you have to do is store or back up your NFT art somewhere and then there will always be an "over there" to point to! The term used is "pinning" your NFTs and I've been in the market for a service for a while. I considered a bunch of companies, and then last week I signed up with Piñata. It's free for 1GB of storage or $20/month for 1TB of storage.

If you've collected any NFTs that you care about, I would strongly encourage you to make sure that you've pinned the ones you can. It doesn't matter what you use to do it. It doesn't have to be Piñata. This is not a sponsored post and I'm in no way affiliated with the company. I just care about the crypto and NFT space, and I would hate for any of you to lose any of the work that you've collected.

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you might remember that back in 2021 we created the first-ever NFT collection tied to pre-construction condominiums (or at least we think we were the first to do it). It is called the Petra Cortright NFT Collection at One Delisle and you can read more about it here.

Cover photo by Peter Olexa on Unsplash

Here are some interesting charts from a16z showing that, despite its dominance today, tech still represents a smaller percentage of the US stock market than railroads did at the turn of the 20th century. One parallel you could draw from this is that "tech" as we know it today, may not be so dominant a hundred years from now.

But railroads continue to play a critical function in the modern economy. They are still the most cost-effective way to move heavy goods over long distances. A single freight train can carry the load of several hundred semi-trucks.

The more interesting parallel might be the one that a16z raises in its post: railroads both led to further economic growth and rewired the way businesses and organizations were structured.

Railroads were a new kind of business requiring massive scale and coordination, which led to new ways of thinking about "management." Perhaps not surprisingly, it was around this time (1881) that the world's first collegiate business school was formed at the University of Pennsylvania.

The parallel to AI today, as argued by Jack Dorsey and maybe others, is that it's going to similarly rewire how businesses are organized and what middle management does:

"Instead of absorb and route information, maintain alignment, pre-compute decisions, etc.—the kind of coordination that management typically is responsible for—in an AI business, humans move to the edges, to focus their judgment on customer contact and human interactions."

At least, this is the hypothesis.

But if it does prove to be true, let's consider what we often discuss on this blog, which is: what will it mean for our cities and built environment? Well, what I find interesting about the above quote is that it suggests AI will push humans further toward the things that we are uniquely suited to do: interacting with other humans and building meaningful relationships.

And if that is, in fact, what happens, then there's no more efficient place to be than in dense urban cities. Looking someone in the eyes, shaking their hand, and slurping ramen noodles together at a busy bar counter is not something that AI will be able to do for us.

Cover photo by Mike Beaumont on Unsplash

Charts from a16z

Back in 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote a widely cited blog post where he argued that "software is eating the world." In some ways, it feels like just yesterday that I first read it. But it has been 15 years, and boy, has the world changed. Now, the worry is that AI is eating software.

It has become significantly easier to write code, to the point that in the span of only two years, Google has gone from 0% of its new code being written by AI to now over 75% of it! But it's not just big companies. I know lots of non-technical people who wanted software that could do "X," and so they just vibe coded a solution. Done.

In fact, I've been experimenting and doing the same for several months now. It has become so easy that I feel an obligation to do it. But as we know, if everyone can do it, then it means there is no longer any value. The value will necessarily need to be created in other ways.

Earlier this week, we spoke about Uber and how being asset light — previously a hallmark of the gig economy — is potentially now a liability. Well, this is a broader theme. Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, even coined a term for this: HALO. This stands for Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence.

The general idea is that you now want physical stuff with a big moat that is immune to being disrupted by someone in their parents' basement using Claude Code. Hard assets are, arguably, where you want to be today. I guess that means real estate is back, baby!

Cover photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash