Decrypting the Medium: A Report on the NFT Market

Research Team: Suzanne Stein, Miriam Kramer, Crystal Melville, Amreen Ashraf, Eric Leo Blais 

OCAD University’s Cultural Policy Centre and Super Ordinary Lab have collaborated to develop a report for Canadian Heritage on non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The report, titled “Decrypting the Medium: A Report on the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Market,” is the product of a collaborative and structured approach to research that involved a literature review and strategic foresight methods including a horizon scan and an expert panel workshop with scenario planning. 

Guiding research questions, addressed in the report, included:  

  • How does the NFT art market work?  

  • How do artists, sellers and buyers access the market?  

  • Is the market an extension of an existing art market or something new?  

  • Do artists see NFTs as a new form of artistic creation, a new medium, or a new method to monetize existing artistic practices?  

  • What are the hurdles and advantages for Canadian artists entering the NFT market?  

  • Have other countries regulated in this space and how?  

  • What does the Government of Canada and Canadian Heritage need to consider as they strive to continue to support and protect creatives?  

What are Non-Fungible Tokens? 

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital files that have stirred up considerable interest from investors, artists and governments globally. The underlying technology of NFTs—more specifically cryptocurrency applications—challenge not only how art markets operate but how both the government and the sector provide support and protect creatives.   

This research highlighted that the NFT market is rapidly evolving, and that understanding NFTs, and their overall ecosystem will require ongoing research and study. The following key findings were highlighted:  

  1. NFTs change how the art market works  

  1. Blockchain and smart contracts support more equitable copyright legislation and protect creators  

  1. NFTs create new marketplaces for artists to present their work  

  1. NFTs both create barriers and reduce barriers  

  1. NFTs have the potential to increase diversity and inclusion in the Canadian art market 

The NFT art market poses an opportunity to rethink and reduce the inequities posed by the traditional art market. NFTs allow equity-identifying artists and artists marginalized by location a platform to monetize their work and to survive and advance as an artist. By regulating parts of the underlying NFT technology, Canadian artists are positioned better to securely, and equitably advance and thrive.  

Ongoing research will be critical to track drivers of change, ongoing associative drivers and new market pathways that will guide policy decision-making. Monitoring the media and industry resources for developments regularly will be central as will tracking legislation from countries around the world. 

This research and report were led collaboratively by the Cultural Policy Centre at OCAD University and Super Ordinary Laboratory.  

Cultural Policy Centre at OCAD University (CPC)  

The Cultural Policy Centre is Canada’s first national cultural policy centre working to expand the arts and culture sector’s capacity in policy research, program development and advocacy. Convening academics, industry experts and not for profits from across Canada, the Cultural Policy Centre at OCAD University will provide crucial direction and support for Canada’s arts and culture sector as we adapt to and thrive in the ever-changing environment that characterizes the twenty-first century.  

The Super Ordinary Laboratory  

Super Ordinary Lab at OCAD University looks at emerging technologies to understand their social significance and tracks broad-based trends for the purposes of meaningful innovation in technologies, ethnographic methods and cultures of production as well as potential users of these technologies. 

 

Funded by the Government of Canada.

Sponsor(s): 
A photograph of OCAD U with the report title overlaid in black text
Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 2:30pm

Action Research & Knowledge Transfer Project: The Futures of Canadian Identities

This action research project had an explicit focus on co-creating and sharing generated knowledge and an experiential knowledge-transfer orientation, operating at multiple levels: Integrated team, buddy system between individual team members, workshops and active participation in design, analysis and conclusions. The experiential learning used a strategic foresight investigation of the futures of Canadian identities, which allowed the practice of various elements of the complexity toolkit.

FRAMING QUESTIONS:

1. How might we improve Canadian Heritage (PCH)'s capabilities to engage in the increasingly complex issues facing it?
2. How might PCH be better prepared for the possible evolutions of Canadian identities?

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

1. Provide PCH with a sound methodological approach – action research – in relation to the ways in which knowledge-sharing, -generation and -transfer are achieved.
2. Provide guidance to develop internal capacity related to ways to:
       • Reframe the chosen problem through the development of multiple futures;
       • Identify key challenges, insights and intervention points through an assessment of implications across these multiple futures; and importantly,
       • Use new, participatory and collaborative problem-solving approaches to deploy such insights and to inform and influence systems change that can improve PCH agility and resilience in the face of inevitable challenges associated with the emergent future.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

To provide experiential learning of a number of complexity tools, a framework was needed that offered enough complexity to provide opportunities for using the various tools of the toolkit. Strategic Foresight offers such a wide framework.

The topic for the foresight investigation was selected such that it presented a topic directly related to the mandate of PCH, which enhances interest and incentive to pursue the topic itself rather than focusing on individual tools and their concepts.

The introduction of multiple futures and identities, was challenging enough to the established orthodoxy to reduce boredom and raise curiosity and engagement throughout the project.

The foresight investigation followed a modified 2x2 matrix method incorporating the participatory elements specific to the foresight practice at OCAD University.

In addition to the transfer of knowledge and capacity building, the project yielded 268 relevant signals of changes, a set of 14 trends, and an analysis of 12 underlying drivers. It also uncovered the top critical uncertain drivers for the PCH team and built 4 scenarios using the top two such uncertainties. Using the scenarios, a rich list of implications and a set of strategic perspectives were developed to assist the MTP process in articulating policies and strategies. 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

One of the results from this project is that PCH hired 5 SFI students to look in more detail at process for embedding artists in policy development processes. This new project builds partially on the final report of this project. The PI of this project has been invited to be a member of the Steering Committee of the new project.
All artefacts of the foresight process as well as the final report are property of PCH, who can decide what to release publicly and when.

The following video was developed by PCH during the workshops conducted and was distributed to all workshop participants in English and French:

L’avenir des identités canadiennes (Français)
The Future of Canadian Identities (English)

Creator: 
Photo of Join Team at Workshop #1
Photo of Joint Team during break at Workshop #1
Monday, September 25, 2017 - 11:15am
Embed Video: