why I de-listed two of my NFTs

this week I de-listed two of my NFTs from the date pixels collection. this comes after seventy three days (at the time of writing) of actively participating in the NFT community with my own project, and was a decision I arrived at based on conclusions I’ve come to about the space, and how my project fits into it all.

de-listing an NFT isn’t as simple as clicking a button. as with any transaction or movement on the ethereum blockchain, there’s a gas fee attached to it. even still, it became important to me to hold onto these two NFTs, these days of my life that I’d minted onto the blockchain.

when I first heard about NFTs at the start of the year and began doing some research, what blew my mind and got me the most excited was the concept behind this technology: ownership of a tangible digital item. I’d try explaining it to my friends, and always end the explanation (they might call it a rant) with, “sure it’s hard to wrap your head around now, but in 5, 10 years the idea of digital ownership will just be normal.” I wasn’t expecting NFTs to enter the general public consciousness for a few more years at least…

and then Beeple happened. the amount of attention brought to NFTs after that sale was, as many reading are surely aware, absolutely staggering. I had only known about NFTs for around a month before that, but the difference between “before Beeple” and “after Beeple” was like night and day. the r/NFT subreddit grew from a few hundred people asking philosophical questions about NFTs, their uses, their purpose, etc… to thousands of new members posting “just minted my first NFT…” the conversation quickly steered away from the technology and the developing/future use cases for NFTs and shifted towards hordes of people wanting to get rich quick, with NFTs as the vehicle to do just that.

not that there’s anything wrong with that! NFTs have already changed people’s lives in massive ways during this current boom. watching people who have spent years honing their artistic skills finally enter the spotlight and get the support and recognition they deserve inspires me deeply every day.

relatively quickly however, I began noticing a new trend: the conversation started to shift further away from the art, and seemed to steer more towards the sentiment that NFTs were little more than an investment opportunity. people weren’t “collecting” so much as “investing” in projects they thought would have a future value, seemingly based more on hype than anything else. everyone wanted to be the next CryptoPunks, because suddenly (at the time of writing) even a full Bitcoin is barely worth as much as the ‘cheapest’ Punk.

it was a subtle shift at first. as soon as date pixels came out, I was jacked into the data stream- shilling my project on Twitter, joining dozens of NFT related Discord servers and meeting tons of amazing new people. caught up in the excitement, it didn’t really hit me until a tweet from one of the most outspoken voices on NFT Twitter scene, @digitalartchick, posted this brief aphorism: “please stop pretending it’s not about the money.”

reading that post, and the ensuing comments brought this idea to the forefront of my mind and helped solidify this underlying discomfort I was starting to feel despite all the hype and excitement. putting words to the feeling helped me zoom out for a second and remember why I even got excited about NFTs in the first place. that for me, it really isn’t about the money. I created date pixels because the idea of memorializing days of our lives onto the blockchain was (and remains) exciting to me. the thought that one could find meaning through carrying a day that matters to them in their digital collections forever. or, the potentially cathartic ability to burn and destroy a day you’re trying to move past. or even just embracing the sheer randomness of it all.

and that’s when I realized there were a couple days in my collection that I did not want to let go of. possibly two of the most important days of my life: april 1st and april 29th, 2021. the days I received my vaccination shots against the COVID-19 virus which has ravaged our world for the past year. finally, thanks to getting my shots on these two days, I feel some hope for the future.

so I paid the gas to delist these NFTs, to keep them in my collection. am I potentially missing out on sales, from collectors who would have found my project and wanted those specific dates? maybe. but date pixels means more to me than the balance in my crypto wallet.

endless Twitter shilling began to feel dirty to me after a while, like I was going against the nature of the project itself. but it also taught me valuable lessons in how to describe my project, which led to me furthering my understanding of what exactly it even is.

in a world of hype and FOMO-ing into the next hot project, date pixels is somewhat of an anti-hype slow burn, which I hope people will come to discover on their own, and find their own meaning in it over time. individually, each piece is minimalistic in execution, and not too flashy compared to the collectible character NFTs or the high end, cyberpunk visions of the more curated works out there. but when taken as a whole, I believe I’m building something pretty exciting, that will start to reveal itself more clearly over the months and years of this project’s existence. leave it to me that my first step into the world of NFTs would be a commitment that could last the rest of my life…

if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading and apologies for the somewhat click-baity headline. I felt compelled to share my thoughts and observations of the NFT space during this historic time that we are living through and helping to shape.

I would love to hear your thoughts as well, whether you’re another artist, a collector, or even someone just tuning into all this. what shifts have you noticed over the past few months? please let me know what you think of the current state of NFTs on Twitter @deja_dead_

and while you’re here, feel free to check out the full date pixels collection so far, or sign the date book if you’d like a reminder about a future date or are interested in a discounted bundle, to fight gas fees.

no rush though— there’s always tomorrow, or the next day, or the next…

we’re just getting started.

-DJD