The Joy of Being Early: How to Love Technical Issues in the NFT World
First up, let me say that I have tremendous empathy for people who have lost money and missed out on opportunities because of technical issues in the NFT space. I've tried both and they don't feel good! With that being said though, I have learned to love what the technical issues represent.
If you've ever participated in an NFT launch, or just spent more than a day in the field, you know the issues I'm talking about:
A project's website crashing due to too much traffic.
Smart contracts being exploited by nefarious actors.
Scammers stealing your NFTs and crypto on OpenSea.
Extremely slow transactions because of network congestion.
And, the one everyone on Ethereum knows, extreme gas fees.
I've personally minted and bought on secondary markets in both the Ethereum, Solana, WAX, and Tezos ecosystems. I've also experienced all the issues listed above.
Recently I bought my very first Cardano NFT from the Baby Alien Club. That launch didn’t go quite according to plan either. The Cardano blockchain got congested due to the high volume, transactions slowed down considerably or got stuck altogether, and it took hours before people who tried to mint even knew if they had gotten a Baby Alien or not.
Naturally, people weren't happy.
Discord turned into a shitstorm with lots of people complaining and pointing fingers, which I completely understand! I get why some people feel like they've been treated unfairly, that the developers should have done a better job, or even that the team intentionally screwed them over.
Aside from the latter, which understandably can make you lose some faith in humanity, I've learned not to get annoyed by the issues though. And that's what made me write this article. I wasn't annoyed when the Baby Alien launch failed, even during the many hours where I just assumed I hadn't gotten one of the NFTs. As it turned out, I actually did. But that's beside the point.
My point in this: The technical issues mean we're early. We, the ones who are building, creating, buying, and selling NFTs in 2021, are the trailblazers in this space. We're part of creating something completely new and profound, something that has the potential to completely revolutionize so many industries and parts of our lives that we can't even fathom it.
Whenever there's a glitch, a transaction gets stuck, we lose our gas fee, and miss out on an exciting new launch, it's proof of exactly that. Proof that we, and especially the artists and developers who I think deserve a lot more credit, are the innovators who are shaping a new technology and getting in on the ground floor from different angles.
When all the kinks are ironed out, it means that NFTs have gone mainstream and the exciting early days are over. The thought of this makes me enjoy the bugs. They're part of the experience in the early stages of the innovation process and I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can while it lasts. I suggest you do the same.
I hope this article will serve as memorabilia for myself and others when we look back, a year or two or five from now, and say:
"Remember back in 2021... Back when we paid 2k gwei in gas fees, lost it all when the transaction failed, crashed the website in every other launch, and got screwed over by people who exploited the smart contracts? Yeah, those were the good ol' days before all this went mainstream and became part of everyone's everyday lives..."