NFTs are dead. Long live NFTs! The last few weeks have brought an enormous amount of drama and gray hair to the space. It’s time to put the degening on pause and go back to the fundamentals.

What are we doing here with these jpegs? Is it art? Is it an access token? Where does the value come from?

All art is about storytelling. This is how humans are wired. Whether you listen to a writer, composer, architect, or chef, they will all talk about moving their audience through a story with a beginning, middle, and end. NFTs are just a new way of telling stories —with tokens. We are witnessing the birth of a new artform – tokenized storytelling. 

I got introduced to NFTs in early 2021. As a filmmaker, fairly disillusioned with the entertainment industry, and previously a lawyer disillusioned with the power of law, I couldn’t help but get excited. Both storytelling and self-governance are set to get supercharged by blockchain. In fact, they are going to supercharge each other through blockchain.

A few disclaimers.

First, I will not talk about the speculative aspects (sorry, degens, but it’s for your own good considering current market conditions), even though it is an essential component of the NFT space. Let’s try and focus on storytelling technology innovation.

Second, this breakdown is a bit Bored Ape Yacht Club heavy. This is because since I belong to the club, I follow the news within the ecosystem closer than some other projects, and also because Yuga Labs has to a large extent, been a pioneer in the space, and we get to watch them build what I believe is one of the early massive tokies. 

Finally, here comes the traditional reminder that nothing in this article should be considered financial advice, and I do hold some of the tokens mentioned here. Anyway,…