‘WAGMI’ Is Dead: Pplpleasr, UnicornDAO, TIME President Weighs in on NFTs

Are we everyone can manage it? Probably not – and some Web3 supporters don’t even want people to use the term “NFTs” anymore.

At a Tuesday panel on the “Future of NFTs” at SALT New York, speakers ranged from jaded and jaded to hopeful about the impact of the Ethereum merger on NFTs and what the future of NFTs might look like.

The panel featured TIME President Keith Grossman, Emily Yang (aka Pplpleasr) of pleasrDAO, Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot and UnicornDAO, John Caldwell of Wave Financial and UnicornDAO, and author and NFT trader Andrew Wang.

As for the impact of the merger – where the Ethereum network will transition to proof-of-stake – Caldwell doubts it will have much of an impact on the NFT market.

While Caldwell said that “anything on Ethereum” would be considered “ESG compliant” (environmental, social and corporate governance) in a post-merger world, he suggested that ESG is essentially a talking point for businesses. In his view, “artists and creators” are the ones who actually care about the environmental impact of cryptocurrency.

“I don’t know if financial institutions really care, except for this ESG assessment, which they kind of have to,” he said of Ethereum and its NFTs moving to proof-of-stake.

“But you know, financial institutions have been making good out of things that are terrible for the environment forever,” Caldwell noted. “I don’t think this is an exception.”

“I hate that this might make me look bad, but the fun I had with NFTs and the people I met always made the environmental costs kind of an afterthought,” Wang said of trading Ethereum NFTs.

“A lot of people hated me for fucking with NFTs,” Tolokonnikova added. She hopes the merger will make people hate her “a little less”.

But what about the ongoing crypto bear market’s impact on NFTs?

Caldwell said that in this bear market, people may “give up” on NFTs entirely.

“If you remember [20]18 and [20]19, people completely gave up on crypto and they will give up on NFTs again,” he argued.

Wang shared a similar sentiment – mainly that the NFT boom in 2021 and early 2022 is over.

“I don’t know if you would call this an extended bear market, [but] It’s definitely at the point where even I no longer believe in WAGMI, unfortunately,” Wang said.

But this crypto winter isn’t all doom and gloom.

“Obviously, prices are down from all-time highs. But there are still people in the audience here on the panel for NFTs. Like [in] a true, just terrible bear market, nobody is going to care,” Caldwell said.

While NFT trading volume may be staggeringly low now compared to just a few months ago, Caldwell believes NFTs will make a comeback.

“You won’t even know you’re using NFTs, but they’ll come back,” he said of the next bull cycle.

“Hopefully by this time next year, people won’t even really use the term anymore,” Pplpleasr said of NFTs.

Grossman made a similar prediction about where NFT technology will be in the future.

“Slowly but surely, we will move from what is a specification state — where people talk about the technology — to an experience state, where people talk about, like, ‘Oh, I went to Starbucks and I got XYZ.’