Exilian

Announcements and Articles: The Gatehouse Quarter => Announcements! The Town Crier! => Topic started by: Jubal on November 17, 2021, 05:03:02 PM

Title: Our NFTs Policy
Post by: Jubal on November 17, 2021, 05:03:02 PM
NFTs: Why We're Not Supporting Them

As many of you will be aware, there has been a recent boom in the use of non-fungible token blockchain technologies. These technologies offer unique digital signatures, which can be used to authenticate sales of individual items. However, there are numerous concerns around their use. The fact that they only usually offer a verified unique link to a piece of intellectual property, not the unique right to use that property, often causes intentional misunderstanding about the nature of the goods and rights being bought. There are also intellectual property concerns around the minting of NFTs for properties that the NFT minters do not necessarily own.

Besides these concerns, there are also problems with the environmental impact of NFTs, with current technologies and even their replacements proving significantly higher in energy usage than conventional methods of authenticating sales. A single proof-of-work transation on the Etherium system commonly used for these transactions requires enough power to serve a household for two days, or drive a car 150 miles, producing thirty kilograms of CO2 emissions at a time of climate crisis.

As of today, we are acting on those concerns: Exilian's voting members have unanimously endorsed the position that Exilian does not support the use of NFT technologies. This means that as of today we will not be providing newsletter space, social media plugs, article slots, and other resources to promoting those technologies or any projects that use them. We will additionally be taking into account companies' NFT usage and policy when commissioning or purchasing services on Exilian's behalf, and avoiding where at all possible providing income to companies that are using these technologies.

We on Exilian's staff are committed to ensuring that we uphold our public interest goals as an organisation, and to keeping members democratically in the driving seat: we've done both here, with a considered discussion and multiple viewpoints raised among voting members along the way. We think our aim to inform the public and members on topics related to creative projects makes it important that we raise awareness of the problems with NFTs and their impacts.

We hope that you'll support us - and as ever we're happy to answer any questions. You can find the motion passed by our voting members here (https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=6426.msg146639#msg146639).

Jubal (Megadux/Basileus)