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Hi! I am Slashed Ace, I have been in the NFT space for 100 days now. I am a sponge for information, I have a drastic case of ADHD, which has it's downsides, but can also be a valuable tool when harnessed. When I find something that I truly enjoy, my focus on it is a laser beam. Most recently, this thing has been the world of Non-fungible Artwork and crypto-currencies. I am going to start writing my experiences and knowledge that I've picked up along the way. I truly hope that someone finds it useful, if it helps one person here, it will be worth it to me.
I have noticed lately that there are tons of new artists finding the world of NFT's and exploring their options. I learned many lessons in this space the hard way so that hopefully you don't have to. I will try to lay them out as concise and quick as possible for you. If there is anything that you ever want to know about, feel free to leave a comment and ask. I'll answer it the best I can. I will start off this first post by explaining to you a bit of my journey, and next time we can jump into some deeper stuff.
I have made art in one way or another ever since I can remember. Mostly physical paintings, woodworks, and random projects. By day, I am an electrician in Southern California, I have done this ever since I joined the Air Force way back in 2000. Working down here has afforded me many cool blips on my resume, I got to build the Broadcom World Headquarters, a JW Marriot hotel, a pair of hotels on the Disneyland property, the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run ride, and I even got to lead up the four man electrical team that built the life-sized Millennium Falcon in Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. I suppose that those things are artworks in their own form, but mostly they were just work. The paintings that I made sold decently well, and I had quite a few collectors in the physical world.
It was my collectors that told me about NFT's over a year ago. I buzzed the subject really quick, but didn't look deep enough into it at the time. My words to them were "This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of, who is going to pay me money for an image they could just download for free?" Looking back, I kick myself a bit for not listening to them then. A few months ago, after a few texts and pushy phone calls with one of them, I came home to a package on the doorstep. It was a new Samsung drawing tablet and a note that simply said "Get to work." To me, gifts are an invaluable thing, when I recieve a gift I think of the thought and time it took for the giver to make the gesture. I don't take gifts lightly, so I responded in kind and did what he asked. The first NFT's I made were utter garbage and cost me a fortune to mint because I had no clue what I was doing, but it was a lot of fun. I did as I always had and taught myself to use the art software, and the things I was putting out got better and better. I was extremely fortunate to come into the space with collectors in hand, loaded with crypto, I know that the vast majority of you do not come with that, but the knowledge I gained along the way is more valuable than the money I made. This I will share freely.
The back-story of my life has been written already, if you're interested to read that you can find it here. I have been into NFT's for 100 days today. I started listing my first NFT's on Rarible. After being around for a little while, a good friend invited me to join Foundation, and just recently I got dragged into the world of Hic et Nunc. Two months ago, I launched a project that some of you may have heard of, with a few friends I met along the way, The DEKT Project. We all teamed up to make a full 54 card deck of NFT playing cards that will also be turned into physical, playable decks. We sell the individual card NFT's on our Foundation page, and we track our physical decks via an airdrop system from our Rarible page. You are free to join our discord channel and meet the team, get updates on DEKT 2, and see all of our artwork here. To date I have minted 47 pieces of digital art and sold nearly all of them. After about a month in the space, my collector base grew from a few to quite a few, and it grows almost daily lately. Along the way, I somehow managed to collect over 30 NFT's myself, you can see them all on my Showtime page.
Probably for me, the most valuable thing I have gained along this journey have been the relationships I have made with other members of the NFT space. We call ourselves The NFT Family, hence the url of this blog. We are a very welcoming and helpful bunch for the most part. There are a few snakes in the grass trying to sell their particular brand of hair tonic, or run a quick scam here and there, but they will come to any emerging space where money is changing hand. You can find shill posts galore from people claiming to have a zillion $ETH to spend, or calling themselves "collectors" when they don't own a single NFT, they are just posting those threads to build their own follower base and feel good about themselves. There are a few good ones out there though, that are worth your time to post in. Trust, but verify is the best thing you can do here, do a little research on where you are dropping your artwork and who it is you are actually following. Any true NFT collector is proud of the works they have purchased and enjoys showing them off, most have either an OnCyber gallery or a Showtime page that will be linked in their bio or on their Linktr.ee. If you don't have a LinkTree already, I highly suggest getting one set up, they have a free version, and it is a very useful tool for collectors to be able to easily locate your artworks.
A good friend of mine refers to The Family as having "graduating classes", and I have found this to be very true. The friends that you meet and make in your first month here will always be your "class", you will form the tightest bonds here, just as I have. The first NFT that I ever bought was from PunkActual, since the moment I bought his piece we have been pretty much inseparable. We Co-host a Sunday night NFT show on LADZ City Radio, where we bring on artists and collectors and talk all things Non-fungible.
Next time, I think we will start with some very basic stuff. Which wallet to choose, what gas fees are, some basics about setting up your art program, etc. I just want to get through the brass tacks things for the very new people, and we will jump off from there. I want to thank you all for joining me, since this is new and just getting started, I want to do a little giveaway to help build up our base. I will make up a special 1/1 NFT, and airdrop to someone who follows these simple rules:
-Follow the blog here, and leave me a comment so you don't get lost
-Make sure you follow me on twitter
-Post a link to this article from your twitter page and tag two friends who might be interested in reading more - publish0x.com/nft-family
That's it, I just want to get the word out that this will be here for NFT Family members, new and old alike. I will be adding other authors to this blog to share their knowledge of selected areas. I am also working with a good friend on starting a word form artists interview blog. There are many podcasts and interview shows already in our space, but I want to offer one in text format. There are a lot of artists here who are introverts, they don't enjoy talking in twitter spaces, or talking much at all. For them, it's far easier to type out what they feel and put it out to the world so we will be offering them a space to do so.
I hope you have a great day! Go kill it!
-Slashed Ace
