Are you a circle or a hexagon?

Twitter has finally rolled out their NFT Profile Pictures (NFT PFP). This feature displays an NFT you hold in a special hexagonal shape on Twitter. This is supposed to be a clear indication that you own an NFT and your Twitter profile is linked to your wallet. Your new NFT PFP will be linked to wherever you purchased it (primarily verified by OpenSea) and anyone will be inspect the details of your NFT.

This is supposed to:

• brings more legitimacy to NFT Art
• promote decentralisation
• verify the true owners of the art behind NFT PFPs.

It is a step in the right direction, but it fails on all fronts that matter to receipt holders of original, verified NFT collections on OpenSea.

Quick recap on terms

NFTs: Non-Fungible Tokens are unique digital items, such as artwork, with proof of ownership that’s stored on a blockchain (a digital database that’s publicly accessible).

PFP: Short for Profile Pictures or Picture for Proof

Blockchain: A shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a network.

Crypto Wallet: A hardware or software device medium which stores the public and/or private keys for transactions on a blockchain. Transactions include purchasing NFTs, cryptocurrencies, transfers, etc...)

Shilling: A person or group of persons promote a particular digital asset (cryptocurrency or NFTs) to create excitement for it. It is usually done in collaboration with social media influencers for a quicker and wider reach

SUCCESS: Bringing more legitimacy to NFT Art

NFTs will now become mainstream for about 400million users on Twitter. For the last few years, Twitter has been the unofficial distribution channel for decentralised projects. A vast majority of NFT projects use Twitter as their channel of choice to spread the word and direct people to their Discord, Telegram or Signal communities. The irony of a using centralised platforms for the promotion of decentralised projects is not lost on me.

Now that Twitter have made the official move, Meta will be close behind deploying their solution across Facebook and in Oculus. Whether they allow a user to connect their PFP or they focus on what can only be created in their ecosystem is still unknown.

FAIL: Promotes decentralisation

NFT PFPs are promoting decentralised projects through a centralised platform using a centralising Open Sea API with centrally verified collections from another centralised organisation and centrally storing and associating decentralised identities with centralised identities.

Only people who have the receipt, care about the receipt when it comes to digital art.

FAIL: Verify the true owners of the art behind NFT PFPs

Validation, yes. Verification, no. Twitter connects to your wallet and allows you to associate an NFT in your position with your Twitter profile. Once the link is in place, everyone can see your associated wallet and the NFT details. This includes, the orginal source of the NFT on OpenSea. This means, if you have an original CryptoPunk, Bored Ape or any other verified collection on OpenSea, it will be clear that it is an original.

This process of adding an NFT to your Twitter profile also means ANYONE could "right-click and save" a hi-res version of verifiable NFT art, mint it again, then add it to their profile. Under Collection, it won't show as a Verified collection by OpenSea, but to-date, no one who has been copying NFTs cares.

Some people will want to investigate further into the source of an NFT, but in reality, those numbers will rapidly dwindle.

Either way, this is going to be a very polarising feature and great for the Twitter Blue subscription numbers. Circles will look even less special. They don't have a blue tick AND now they're not hexagonal. Even if they were willing to pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to get the feature (currently limited to US & New Zealand), they now need to get a decent NFT to show off. Hexagons will proudly display their NFTs as a badge of honour and there will be some silliness about which looks better in a Hexagon. I also suspect there will be some form of visbile NFT verifiable tick coming soon. Then you'll have Hexa-bashers who will hunt and bully any Hexagon people mascarading as original NFT holders.

If someone were REALLY enterprising, they would capitilise on this desire to be "part of the club" by creating the equilavent of digital prints of the originals for a heavily reduced price so people feel like they have some level of ownership. It woud cost them nothing. ??

NFTs are here to stay

There is real division across Twitter as to whether this NFT PFP feature is fine as is or creates more problems. However this space plays out, NFTs are now mainstream. They aren't going any where and they're only going to continue to evolve and mature. NFT Art is but one small use case for NFTs. We will see a rise in their utility across many industries like Music, Sports, AI, Real Estate, Publishing, Hospitatility and Gaming.

The question now is, who are going to be the centralising forces for the future of decentralised technologies? The companies who currently have the largest customer base or will there be a new decentralised force bringing everyone together?