Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Tag: NFT

  • The Tower — NFT Residences of Solana

    I am not counting on my nascent NFT collection to fund my retirement. At least not yet. But I have enjoyed collecting them this year and using them to learn about and get involved in the crypto space. Playing around and experimenting is one of the best ways to learn.

    I recently discovered a project called The Tower (DAO) and I think that many of you, particularly those in the real estate community, might find it interesting. In its simplest form, it is an NFT project where you buy “residences” in a virtual metaverse tower. They look something like this:

    The tower has 500 floors and 20 units per floor. And so there are 10,000 units in total. Each is unique.

    When you buy a residence, you get, among other things, a profile page on the web that allows you to show off your residence and all of the other NFTs in your crypto wallet. You can also see who else owns on your floor.

    Of course there are plans for a lot more. As part of The Tower’s roadmap, the team wants to direct some of the funds that it raises toward real-world affordable housing. There’s also a roommate model in the works where, presumably, people can share their residences and earn tokens.

    Now, I have no idea how a project like this ends up evolving or what it ultimately becomes. But I think it’s a fun example of the kind of creative projects that are being developed as a result of the fact that we can now all take ownership over scarce digital assets.

    Many of these “assets” will likely end up going to $0. But others, as we have seen, will come to be worth a lot.

  • Toronto is missing out on one of the biggest economic development opportunities right now

    Wired published a great article last week talking about “the 10,000 faces that launched an NFT revolution.” What they are of course talking about are the CryptoPunk NFTs that I think most people would agree are one of the “OGs” of NFT art. Initially minted in 2017, they are usually credited with starting the NFT craze that we are all living through today. CryptoPunk #7523, for example, sold for $11.75 million. I think this is the most expensive CryptoPunk in the world. Either way, it is one of the most expensive NFTs out there.

    But as I was reading through the article I was reminded of something. Toronto is doing an awful job celebrating the fact that an immense out of crypto innovation has and continues to come out of Toronto. CryptoPunks, which is Larva Labs, was started by two guys from Toronto who met at the University of Toronto. I know that it is still early days for crypto and web3, but why are we not telling this story to the rest of the world and using it to continue to attract the smartest and most ambitious people to our great city?

    This is a missed economic development opportunity. And the door won’t be open forever. If any of our city leaders are reading this post (which is unlikely), I would encourage you to give this some serious thought and take action.

    On a related note, the above article is great evidence for Chris Dixon’s argument that, “what the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.” Larva Labs was started by two software developers who worked during the day and used their evenings and weekends for new passion projects. CryptoPunks wasn’t their first initiative, but it has obviously come to define them. Smart people need room to play and experiment. Often that happens after hours.

  • 8 years of writing every day

    This weekend was the 8 year anniversary of writing this daily blog. It’s hard to imagine that it has been this long. Perhaps because COVID has accelerated the last little while and made it difficult to remember what day or year it is sometimes.

    I am often asked what the end game is for this blog. What am I hoping to get out of it? The truth is there is no real end game. I like reading and writing. I like being constantly curious about the world. I like discipline. I like meeting and connecting with new people. And I like having my own little place on the internet, however small it may be.

    I get dozens of emails each week from people and companies wanting to pay for sponsored posts on this blog. I’m not sure how legitimate these inbounds are, but I ignore all of them. That’s not what this blog is for or about.

    In the early days of writing this blog it was called Architect This City and the focus was a bit narrower: real estate, design, planning and all things cities. That is still more or less the case, but I do often stray from these topics. Sometimes into personal topics. Sometimes into my photography. And more recently into the world of crypto and blockchains. This is one of the reasons why I decided to move to just blogging under my own name. There’s more flexibility.

    Sidebar: I recently bought my first NFT — a CryptoBabyPunk. I’m not at all suggesting that you should do the same. It could be worthless in the future. But I continue to be fascinated by what’s happening in this space and I’ve committed myself to experimenting and learning a lot more.

    Writing something each day is extremely difficult. Some days it only takes 15-20 minutes. And other days, when I’m not in the mood or I’m exhausted from doing too many other things, it can take over an hour. It’s a big time commitment and on more than one occasion I’ve questioned whether my time was better spent elsewhere. But then I think about all of the benefits that I derive from this daily practice.

    They say that the definition of a habit is that you don’t feel normal until you’ve done it. And this blog has certainly become a habit of mine. It forces me to wake up every morning and consider at least one interesting thing that may be happening in our cities and our world. I don’t intend to stop anytime soon. So thank you all for reading over the years.

  • How buildings convey meaning

    Witold Rybczynski and I clearly do not have the same taste in architecture. But he raises an interesting point about the relationship between architecture and art in this recent post. Here’s an excerpt:

    In the name of renouncing the past—and denouncing anything that smacks of decoration—modernism has largely done away with art, the lonely Henry Moore stranded on a plaza, notwithstanding. The problem is that when you strip away figural and allegorical ornament, what is left are mute building materials, mechanical-looking details, and abstract space.

    There is a long-standing tradition of integrating art, and other ornament, into architecture. But modernism viewed this sort of decoration as being superfluous. It wasn’t functionally necessary and so why include it?

    This has led us to today where there is a joke that investing in public art means investing in some sort of add-on that sits outside of your building and that can be classified as art. Perhaps something by Henry Moore.

    The result, Witold argues, is that we have lost something critically important in our buildings: meaning.

    But is allegorical ornament really all that different from a freestanding art piece? Don’t both tell a story? And don’t they both get applied, in a way, to a building that could surely continue on without it?

    At the same time, what is meaningful art? Does it need to include bas-relief and/or figural representations? Or could it be a signed urinal on a pedestal in the lobby with an accompanying digital NFT?

    There’s no question that buildings need meaning. We all crave stories. But sometimes they communicate in different ways.

    Photo by David Vives on Unsplash

  • Digital-only clothing is seemingly taking off — is real estate next?

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CPX05kKAXPb/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    Last month a digital-only version of a Gucci bag sold on gaming platform Roblox for about US$4,115. Again, digital-only. No physical bag that can be brought to brunch. At the time, this was about US$800 more than the real life version of the same Gucci bag. So why not go and buy that one instead?

    I am sure that most of you are scratching your head at this and wondering: who the hell is valuing the digital more than the physical? Could it be that status and signaling — perhaps the real purposes of a designer bag — are even more important online in the world of Roblox than in real life? In this case, it wasn’t even an NFT and so presumably there aren’t any value claims around scarcity and authenticity. (Full disclosure: I don’t know how Roblox works.)

    It’s important to keep in mind that meaningful innovation often starts out looking pretty silly to some/most. And to me, this feels like one of those times. What we are clearly seeing is a blurring between our digital and physical worlds. In fact, just today I was reading about a slew of digital-only clothing companies that sell, you know, contactless cyber fashion. One of those companies is Tribute (embedded post above).

    The way it works is that you first buy a piece of digital clothing (which can sell out just like regular clothing). You then send them a picture of yourself and the company goes and renders that piece of digital clothing onto your photo. The result is what you see above, which to me looks fairly realistic (though at the same time fantastical, which I think is part of the point).

    As out-there as this may seem, this strikes me as something that could become a very big deal. What is real on Instagram anyways? I can also see this being applied to other industries, including real estate. Maybe that is already happening.

    What do you think?

  • A fundamental and profound innovation

    I setup a new cryptocurrency wallet (offline hardware storage) this evening and then used it to buy brandondonnelly.eth using ENS (Ethereum Name Service). I don’t know what the hell I’m going to use it for, yet, but I own brandondonnelly.com. So I figured I should grab the decentralized blockchain version of my name as well. Perhaps at some point in the future I’ll be glad I did.

    I plan to buy a bunch of other .eth domains in the near future as well. The costs are similar to registering a traditional domain.

    Part of the reason why I’m doing all of this because I’ve decided that it’s time to do a deep dive and better understand the possibilities of the blockchain (a decentralized vs. centralized internet). I’ve been following for a number of years, but it has been pretty surface level. It’s time to get serious. And I must say that it felt pretty cool to use my new hardware wallet to buy something with ETH.

    Overall, things started to really click for me when I saw the digital economy that was emerging with Ethereum (applications, NFTs, DeFi, etc.). Instead of just digital money, I could now see clear use cases and demand drivers for the cryptocurrency. Again, I used ETH to buy brandondonnelly.eth, which means I first had to be an owner of ETH.

    If you’re looking to better understand the possibilities of a decentralized internet — specifically why non fungible tokens are bad ass — check out this blog post by Albert Wenger. He uses the example of the Mona Lisa sitting in the Louvre to explain why NFTs are not a fad and, instead, a “fundamental and profound innovation.”

  • Plastic surgery, LA mega-mansions, and digital NFT art

    “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” -Warren Buffet

    According to the Wall Street Journal, there is a real estate trend underway in Los Angeles: Celebrity plastic surgeons are piling into the business of building over-the-top spec homes. (Spec means that they are built speculatively, without a buyer in place, and sold — hopefully — upon completion.)

    What is clear from this phenomenon is that there appears to be a bit of money to be made in the world of LA plastic surgery. What is also clear is that the market value for a 21,000 square foot mega-mansion in Los Angeles is basically who-the-hell-knows:

    The rush of new contemporary spec homes built in the Los Angeles area has put downward pressure on prices. While Dr. Nassif says he’s had significant interest in his home since listing it earlier this year, Dr. Kanodia recently slashed the asking price of his home to $99 million from $180 million. Developers like Nile Niami, known widely as the king of Los Angeles spec homes, handed the keys over to his lenders on at least one project and is facing default on others, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

    Is the market price $180 million? Is it $99 million? Or is it much less? Probably depends on which way the winds are blowing that day. At this snack bracket, you’re looking to harpoon a whale and there are only so many of those. But ultimately, the market price is whatever someone is willing to pay.

    One thing that is interesting to see in some of these homes — besides hidden DJ platforms on hydraulic lifts — is that NFT art displays are now starting to get incorporated into these new builds. Assuming that digital NFT art does continue to take off, which is still TBD, there is going to be an explosion of different display/gallery solutions.

    Perhaps these mega-mansions are a leading indicator for that trend.

  • The tokenization of cities

    The web in its current state is like a city without public spaces. People can only interact in places owned by someone else, and a small group of landlords captures an oversized share of all economic activity. – Dror Poleg

    I would encourage you all to read Dror Poleg’s recent article called, “The Token Society: Cryptocurrencies will change the way we work, live, and love.” It’s an interesting read, particularly for us urbanists. Poleg starts with urban history. He first talks about how the emergence of industrial cities allowed for new divisions of labor. The example he gives is that of the quatorzième, which is a job that emerged in Parisian society sometime in the late 19th century. The job of a quatorzième was literally to be the 14th person at dinners and functions. Since a headcount of 13 was thought to be bad luck, it was important to be able to call on someone at a moment’s notice to fill this critically important role. While this probably seems silly in today’s context — I mean, who goes out anymore? — it was a real thing and it was a thing that the modern city was suddenly able to provide. Poleg goes on to thread this idea all the way through to today. Web 2.0 enabled a new sharing economy and much larger digital communities (though note the quote at the top of this post). However, we’re nowhere near done yet. Web 3.0 is going to, in his words, enable “the finalization [or tokenization] of all human activity.” Welcome to the new token society.

    P.S. I’m by no means an expert on cryptocurrencies. I have just been watching from afar for the past several years. But over the last few months, it has been hard not to pay attention to what is happening with NFTs and the Ethereum network. And I’m not just talking about the price of ETH (which is up ~56% over the last month alone). I am now of the opinion that we are seeing one of the first mainstream use cases emerge on top of a blockchain network. And yes, I believe it will also change our cities.

  • NFTs, luxury brands, and reclaiming ownership

    Here is an interesting interview discussion about NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and the world of luxury brands. It’s a conversation between Benoit Pagotto, cofounder of the NFT brand RTFKT Studios, and Ian Rogers, who is Chief Experience Officer at the blockchain startup Ledger (he was previously the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH). Below is an excerpt that stood out to me. It starts to speak to the potential of NFTs for fashion/luxury brands. Rogers also makes an interesting comparison to the music industry in that things are playing out very differently today compared to what happened back in the late 90s.

    Benoit is proving that he can basically sell a $4,900 digital good alongside a $100 physical good. Now imagine when the lightbulb goes off in Adidas’s head, that the item on adidas.com comes with a digital collectible and the item at “retailer dot com” does not. It fits with their focus way more than the internet did. The internet didn’t fit in any incumbent’s focus. It was the opposite. It was like, “Oh my God, this threatens our monopoly in some way,” right? For the music business, it was, “Wait a minute, we want to sell a $17 compact disc, not a $1 digital file.” They got dragged into that world. 

    On a related note, it was recently announced that model Emily Ratajkowski has made an NFT containing a photograph of herself standing in front of a Richard Prince print that had previously appropriated one of her photos. (Richard Prince’s artwork is known for appropriation.) So this is an exceptionally neat idea. Here she is using an NFT to try and take back some control. Basically: You took my photo and then profited from it. So now I’m going to stand in front of that image, take a new photo, and then reclaim some ownership using the blockchain. Is this the future?

  • Scarcity and stories

    Scarcity. FOMO. Scott Galloway is right. In this recent post, he talks about why humans are programmed to chase scarcity and why blockchains (specifically NFTs) could represent something incredibly meaningful for not just the art world but for many other asset classes. Here’s an excerpt from the post:

    People like scarcity — a lot. Owning something scarce makes one feel unique, and signals success and worthiness as a potential mate. Scarcity is also an instinctual trigger for obsession — when we sense a scarcity of something, be it food or a mate, we are programmed to become obsessed with finding it. Art auctions, the (pre-pandemic) lines outside Supreme, and the margins on a Panerai Tourbillon prove this point.

    A Van Gogh and a Rothko are both unique, and therefore scarce, because they are made of atoms, and it is impossible to arrange a second set of atoms in an identical configuration. Print artists, whose lithographs are made to be reproduced without alteration, use a small “17/100” written in the corner, to distinguish each print and bestow scarcity upon it.

    To hold value, scarcity must be credible. The dirty (not-so) secret of the art world is that art buyers, and even professional art appraisers, struggle to discern originals from forgeries. A well-made forgery provides the same practical value as an original — you can hang it on your wall and bask in its profundity. Yet the art world invests millions of dollars in identifying the “real” version of valuable works; once unmasked, forgeries are nearly worthless.

    I have always found this fascinating about art (but really, it applies to most other things). Is the price you pay so that you can “bask in its profundity” or because the object in question signifies something — it tells a story? In addition to scarcity, we also obsess over stories. They help create meaning for us.

    The interesting thing about all of this is that it’s really just a question of perception. When a work of art is discovered to be a fake that is, indeed, detrimental to value. But what changed? The art itself hasn’t changed. We just no longer enjoy it and derive as much value from it because the story is not what we thought it was.