Stakeholders and Value in the NFT Ecosystem: Towards a Multi-disciplinary Understanding of the NFT Phenomenon
2022 (English)In: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) , 2022Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been a defining trend for design, technology, and business in 2021. The value, legitimacy, and utility of NFTs is disputed: proponents highlight revolutionary economic and cultural potentials of an open, secure, and immutable ownership database, while opponents are displeased by the environmental issues and abundant wrongdoing in the ecosystem. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is relevant to HCI, and signifies important developments for future interactive products. To better understand the NFT phenomenon, and to inform future HCI research and design, we investigated the stakeholders in the NFT ecosystem and relations between them. Based on open data we mined from the social news website Hacker News, we contribute the first data-backed model of stakeholders in the NFT ecosystem. The model reveals a nuanced account of the outlooks of creators, owners, and technologists; identifies investment firms and auction houses as arbiters of knowledge and value; and presents implications for future research.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) , 2022.
Keywords [en]
art market, blockchain, business, creator economy, cryptocurrencies, cryptography, digital art, economics, finance, NFTs, non-fungible tokens, speculation, startups, venture capital, Arts computing, Ecosystems, Investments, Open Data, Block-chain, Design technologies, Non-fungible token, Startup, Personal computing
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences Economics and Business
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-323794DOI: 10.1145/3491101.3519694Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85129693086OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-323794DiVA, id: diva2:1736466
Conference
2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2022, 30 April 2022 through 5 May 2022
Note
Part of proceedings: ISBN 978-1-4503-9156-6
QC 20230213
2023-02-132023-02-132023-02-13Bibliographically approved