Emporium, the NFT marketplace, has just undergone a major upgrade, bringing transaction history logging, enhanced filters, faster loading, and a zero-royalty structure. The changes sound promising, but with only one NFT collection on Alexandria, questions arise. What’s the point of an entire marketplace when scarcity is barely a factor?
Scarcity in NFTs has always been a slippery concept. Technically, anyone can mint a copy of an existing collection on Ethereum without consequences. The Bored Ape Yacht Club, for instance, derives value largely from its cultural cachet, fuelled by social media hype and celebrity endorsements. The connection is social rather than technical.
Alexandria’s approach doesn’t prevent duplication, but it offers a fundamental shift. Metadata remains immutable, and every interaction carries a cost. Instead of a token being valuable solely due to brand or buzz, the history of engagement embedded within it plays a role. Each ‘like’ or ‘repost’ ties into real funds, ensuring that value is intrinsically linked to past user activity.
Even after an NFT changes hands, its engagement history persists. Profiles and social posts hold a record of interactions, making discovery and revenue opportunities more transparent. While these functions aren’t live yet, the system is structured to retroactively apply them once implemented. Arweave, with its permanent data storage, underpins this ecosystem, ensuring links remain unbroken.
A decentralised model like this presents a bold vision. Imagine a scenario where sharing a duplicate Bored Ape is automatically deprioritised by algorithms, while posting an original results in boosted visibility. Alexandria applications embed these principles, effectively enforcing authenticity by design. The aim is to create a landscape where an NFT’s worth isn’t dictated merely by external hype but by demonstrable engagement and usage.
It’s an ambitious vision, certainly unconventional, but a step toward redefining digital ownership in ways the current landscape hasn’t quite managed. Whether the market is ready to embrace such a shift remains to be seen, but the foundations are in place for something radically different.
