Coming for the Money, staying for the Community : an analysis of the NFT community

Abstract: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a type of cryptocurrency that consist of unique, non-exchangeable tokens, which are traded on a blockchain. These unique tokens are associated with digital assets such as images, art, videos, or music. With the rapid rise of NFTs’ popularity in 2021, a community established around trading, selling, and collecting of NFTs. This study explored the NFT community at large and aimed to highlight its characteristics, its view on value as well as how the affordances and features of the social platforms Discord and Twitter influence the community’s sociality and engagement. The theoretical points of departure for this research are Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of capital and Sarah Thornton’s notion of subculture. In addition, this study implemented a multi-sited approach by looking at the NFT community on Twitter and Discord by also using multiple methods to reach a holistic view of this new phenomenon. Digital ethnography was used as an umbrella method including several qualitative tools such as qualitative text analysis, autoethnography, and interviews. The research concluded that most of the members have come into the NFT space through previous engagement in the online crypto space. The community itself can be seen as a subculture of the wider spread crypto culture. It also shares further subculture characteristics such as media playing a significant role, having a "territory", and sharing common values. NFTs are seen as collector’s items but also as an access pass to the different smaller communities within the NFT space. Especially the latter plays a big role in the NFT space. The social value of NFTs is highly intertwined with its economic and cultural value, ultimately, ascribing the NFTs to all three values at the same time. As high qualitative engagement is key for a community, the platforms play a defining role. Discord acts as backstage of the community, while Twitter presents the frontstage. However, Discord blurs the lines between the private and the public when interacting with one of the servers. In addition, new forms of positive engagement have been identified in the NFT community – low-minimum engagement and covert engagement, suggesting a scale within the main engagement varieties. All in all, the overall positive and supportive NFT community space is a new and under-researched topic and offers plenty of opportunities to dig deeper into this new online community.