They say a week is a long time in NFTs, well this last week has felt like a lifetime.
It's been 8 days since I bought my last NFT and today I finally accepted the current climate and decided to break my duck and buy two.
My inaction wasn't through lack of options, I have plenty of stuff I want to buy, my browser is full of open tabs of NFTs on my wishlist. We all know why we aren't buying as often, it's our good old friend gas.
I know it's become a joke in the NFT community but it really is a problem, how can anyone justify paying hundreds of dollars to process a transaction for a $50 item? The answer seems to be continued optimism around Eth 2.0, an update that has been delayed before and now is apparently set for release mid 2022.
There are a lot of people hanging all their hopes on Ethereum 2.0 to be delivered on schedule and with the promise of low gas fees but I have to admit, and this is probably a rare opinion, I think Ethereum's day's are numbered. Think about it, even if the update is delivered on time with no issues we are still looking at around 7 months of this crap.
Take the last 7 days, the impact it has had on the Ethereum based NFT community, floor prices crashing, unsold artwork, devs ditching, the landscape has resembled a desolate wasteland compared to what it was a couple of months ago. Of course we can attribute this to bull/bear markets and if you look at individual NFTs as coins (which I do) then you could pass off this dip as just a turn in the market, but this doesn't have the feel of a market cycle.
It's unsustainable to continue on Ethereum if nothing changes and we are likely in for another 7 months of this, if deadlines are met. It's unthinkable at this point what would happen if another delay is announced.
As gas fees price out the everyday collector people start looking for alternatives and one thing I have found strange about the NFT world lately is the reluctance to utilise Polygon. OpenSea supports Polygon and yes there are thousands of collections on there already but from my casual observations it seems to be a mental barrier that a lot of artists have to launch on there. The low fees make it much easier to launch and naturally that will attract more scams, I'll admit I even think twice about buying some Polygon NFTs because I'm wary of interacting with it, those fears are probably ridiculous to someone with a wealth of technical knowledge but I am not that person, I am the average NFT collector.
Recently I noticed a project called Flowtys began the first of their airdrops to holders, the project was launched on Ethereum but interestingly the airdrops were all on Polygon, it's not a surprising move when you consider the scenario and I fully expect more of this in the next few weeks/months.
If more projects follow the same path of Flowtys then what does this mean for Ethereum? Competing networks are likely to take a market share and I invested in Solana a while back in anticipation of this happening, this could have an easing effect as the network traffic decreases and gas fees start dropping but this isn't a fix.
If the answer to the question is simply Ethereum 2.0 then we are really pinning our hopes on this upgrade and hopefully it will deliver but it's always worth considering the reality where it doesn't deliver and we are looking for suitable alternatives. Although it sounds like I'm anti-eth I'm not, nearly all of my NFTs are on Ethereum, I nearly bought one on Solana yesterday but I couldn't bring myself to spend my SOL!
It's during the quiet times that we afford ourselves an opportunity to step back and assess and during these last 8 days that's exactly what I have done, so while I will continue to purchase Eth NFTs on OpenSea I will be putting a higher percentage of my income into their competitors, mainly MATIC and SOL although I am aware there are a number of others, just in case 2.0 doesn't arrive.
Remember, it never pays to have all your eggs in one basket ✌️
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