When the NFT Hype Settles, What Is Left beyond Profile Pictures? A Critical Review on the Impact of Blockchain Technologies in the Art Market

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper provides a brief overview and lit survey of the recent development of the market for NFT's int he art market. I know a fair amount about art markets in general but very little about NFTs or blockchain technology.  The paper was too brief to really educate me much on these things, but has some value as a lit survey, but reads more like a magazine or newspaper presentation than as a research paper. The Introduction doesn't present well the analytical problems that the authors seek to address in the body of the paper, I would like to see better presented how this paper could eb of interest to art market researchers.   

The English is awkward or incorrect in anumber of places, I would suggest the consultation of an expert proofreader

Author Response

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewer for providing valuable feedback and insightful suggestions. Based on their comments, I have made revisions to the sentence structure and carefully reviewed the grammar of the paper. In addition, I have updated the introduction paragraph to better align with the format and style expected for this type of review paper. The original title was also changed to reflect my original plans.

It was my typo mistake to have missed 

The title was like

"When the NFT hype settles? A critical review on the impact of blockchain technologies in the art market"

The new title should have been / is now

"When the NFT hype settles, what’s left beyond profile pictures? A critical review on the impact of blockchain technologies in the art market"

Hope this makes more sense

kind regards

Reviewer 2 Report

- The article pointed out that the sight of art work in NFT is less attention comparing to 2021.
- In the article, the author mentioned the blockchain proof-of-work mechanism and the potential carbon footprint transaction problem. Which was solved in recently technology called proof-of-stake. The author could update the background of blockchain technology.
    - in line[141~147]
- In chapter 2 last part. The author talked about myths of NFT and refered others conclusion. However the paragraph was less personal author point of view or any others further discussion or any critical. As the paper focuse much on impact of technology on art work. It's quite irrelevant to what the paper core concept.
    - in line[121~128]   - In chapter 3 and also chapter 3.1. The author talked about art standardized and artwork fabric preservation. Which is great, and also key to digital art. As the feature and important part in the article. The author could add more strength into this part.
    - in line [182~200] - In chapter 4. The author claimed that the blockchain-based technology break the traditional relationship between owner and artwork. However, it's the digital artwork pros. Even a centralized network could reach any potential pros and break the bond between owner and artwork without any decentralized technology much like blockchain. If then, the author should also focus on how would blockchain could be prefer than tradional digital artwork.
    - in line[205~228]

Author Response

Thank you for the suggestions from the reviewer. Some of the suggestions are really useful for a deeper comparative study in the future.

As this article is meant to discuss the importance of blockchain even though NFTs market has been showing a downward trend, hence the details of many technology-specific are intentionally left out. 

I have however taken his/her suggestions to add / include extra explanation on how the provenance data (use case) for using blockchain such as the codex protocol. Thank you for his/her suggestions

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I can offer my review of this work as follows: -The treatment of the NFT art market topic as being largely attributed to "hype" and the general effects of popularity, excitement, and "FOMO - Fear of Missing Out" is and remains a worthwhile topic in the area of art collection and investment.   -The article discusses the general attention that I and a few others have written on concerning that the collection (purchase, holding, sale) of NFTs is following the same rules as for the collection of other more traditional art forms.  But other than pointing out these conclusions, the article does not delve more deeply into the reasoning and explanation of these topics.  The work (p. 3) seems to take issue with the general thesis that NFTs are just as predictable or unpredictable as any other art form when viewed for investment and collectibility.  The art market is susceptible to just as many fads and "star artist power" spikes in valuation and speculation in traditional art forms as NFTs, the main difference being that NFTs rode a boom and bust cycle over the course of 18 months that would usually take 3-5 years in the non-blockchain art market.   -The biggest shortcoming in the article was that it does not discuss the Ordinals and Inscription market on the Bitcoin blockchain. This market has far outstripped the NFT market on the Ethereum blockchain and it has been the hottest blockchain art market in 2023.   -The article (p.3) says that the NFT market is largely unregulated but the regular art market is highly regulated. This is incorrect on both counts:  the regular art market is not highly regulated, but it is governed by normal laws and rules of sales law, fraud and misrepresentation law, and general concepts of unfair business practices such as insider dealing, front running, market manipulation and the like.  And the NFT market is subject to the same laws and rules of sales law, fraud and misrepresentation law, and general concepts of unfair business practices such as insider dealing, front running, market manipulation. Witness the prosecution of the OpenSea product manager for insider trading and self-dealing for buying NFTs that were about to be spotlighted on the OpenSea site.   -The article should also mention that when the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) in the USA gets in motion with its regulation by prosecution method of dealing with the market, most NFTs and Ordinals projects are going to identified as securities, and they will become subject to the same SEC pressures as the brokers and traders in other cryptocurrency and tokens -- ie., the operating theory is that every token that is not Bitcoin is a security, and NFTs are all tokens on a blockchain, so all NFTs are securities.   -Why don't those who are cheated and scammed in NFT rugpulls go to court?  That's worth exploring, too. I wager is it a combination of the ethos of the crypto-community---be a big boy, take your licks with your successes, code is law, do your own research/I didn't do enough research---and the general obstacles caused by the international-transnational nature of the NFT market and its participants and the general problem of pseudonymous ownership, all of which making figuring out who to sue, where to sue, personal jurisdiction power of the court, etc., very real and very expensive time-consuming problems to iron out before suing.   - The material on the future of the NFT market and innovations to try to curb or correct some problems is all well done and a good topic to write on right now.   Those are my comments on the article.

Author Response

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewer for providing valuable feedback and insightful suggestions. Based on their comments, I have made revisions to the sentence structure and carefully reviewed the grammar of the paper. In addition, I have updated the introduction paragraph to better align with the format and style expected for this type of review paper.

The review has shared a lot of good suggestions about the NFT markets status quo and these are all great suggestions. 

I had made some errors when submitting the articles. the title was kind of misleading.

"When the NFT hype settles? A critical review on the impact of blockchain technologies in the art market"

The title should have been / is now

"When the NFT hype settles, what’s left beyond profile pictures? A critical review on the impact of blockchain technologies in the art market"

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

There are still a number of minor errors or typos in the writing that should be easy to correct.  The Dutch tulip mania was in the 17th century (not the 16th)

Understandable and mostly adequately written, but a number of minor errors are still present

Author Response

Thank you for the reviewer's suggestion for the editing on the English language used in the paper and the kind reminder of the Tulip Mania being 17th century as opposed to 16th century. These will be corrected.