- If you're like me,
you want to have success selling your art as NFTs,
but you've found that barriers like Ethereum gas fees
are keeping you from getting beyond testing the waters.
In this video, I will introduce you
to what could just be a better, user-first way
of creating NFTs,
that just about any artist can take advantage of.
Quick disclaimer:
This video is intended to introduce you
to the Pastel Network,
but is not meant to be investment advice.
This video is sponsored by Pastel.
As always, all opinions in this review are my own.
Pastel is the world's most advanced, secure,
and decentralized blockchain for NFTs.
Pastel's network and platform are fully dedicated
to the creation, validation, storage and exchange
of provably-rare digital assets.
In order to understand what all of that means,
we need to explore the current NFT creation ecosystem.
If you've tried to create an NFT in 2021,
you've likely been discouraged
by a few of the barriers to entry such as:
The excessive gas fees to mint an NFT,
the security of blockchain transactions,
the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies,
the integrity of NFTs over time,
and the authenticity of rare assets.
That's not to mention
all of the prerequisite stuff you have to learn
to even get set up with a wallet and purchase some Ethereum.
Let's start by addressing the biggest turn off for me,
which are the excessively high gas fees
associated with creating NFTs.
Gas fees are essentially the fee you pay
to process a transaction,
such as minting or creating an NFT.
I had to put a hold on building up my NFT portfolio
because minting required $40 per image,
or in some cases, even double or triple that in gas fees.
And forget about buying any NFTs from other artists.
I'm sure I'm not the only one
who doesn't want to pay more in gas fees
than the retail price of the artwork.
Unfortunately, a lot of people who just want to buy
or sell affordable NFTs without so many zeros in the price
have been excluded from the market
due to the influence of the price of Ethereum
and the resulting gas fees,
which only get higher
when the Ethereum network becomes congested.
Pastel aims to make minting an NFT on their network
much more affordable and practical.
Somewhere between five cents and 50 cents per image.
The fees are balanced automatically by the network,
so that unlike Ethereum,
even during high levels of network activity
or interest in the PSL token,
the transaction fees scale in proportion.
For example, if the network difficulty
were increased by 10x,
the cost of minting would decrease to 1/10.
As I just mentioned, I had to spend $40 in Ether
just to mint a single piece of artwork
on the Ethereum network,
so a fee of less than a dollar is more than reasonable.
There are also benefits like file storage
that you are paying for
when you register an asset on the Pastel Network,
but we'll come back to that.
My goal is to try not to get too technical
about what I'm discussing in this video,
but we do need to at least get an idea
of the inner workings of a blockchain
to explain the benefits that are specific to artists.
Much like an art museum, which relies on security guards,
alarms and cameras to protect its assets,
blockchains also need to be secured 24/7.
Just like a burglar can break into a gallery
and steal from or vandalize it,
a hacker could disrupt a blockchain as well.
While blockchains are developed with security in mind,
they are not all equal.
The Pastel blockchain relies on multiple supernodes
to provide additional security for the network,
register and store NFTs, authenticate users,
process transactions, and perform other essential tasks.
Anyone with the means to can operate a supernode
without the reliance of any third party,
and even make a profit for their efforts.
But unlike an art museum,
no one person, organization or government
has ownership of the blockchain.
Though the supernodes
facilitate essential NFT-related tasks,
they do not own the network.
The Pastel protocol always requires
that multiple, randomly selected nodes perform the work.
These nodes work independently to reach a secure consensus,
and supernodes even periodically challenge one another
to prove that they are storing the correct information.
So then who owns the Pastel Network?
No one.
That's the cool thing about it, it's self-sustaining.
Who owns the lake?
The fish?
The water?
The algae?
The earth?
Metaphorically, it makes sense:
Anyone who participates in the Pastel Network
can benefit from it, but unlike a lake,
no one can take possession of it.
It really is sort of an ecosystem:
Creators have a purpose-built platform
that enables them to generate income from their NFTs,
the operators of supernodes
earn something for processing the transactions
and storing NFTs,
and a portion of the transaction fees
sustain all of the necessary support functions
to keep the decentralized network operational.
Pastel even supports
the development of third party applications
on top of the Pastel Network to encourage collaboration.
While many applications for NFT creation run on Ethereum,
Pastel runs on the proprietary PSL token,
since it is its own blockchain.
At its core, the PSL token is based on Bitcoin,
which means that it works in a similar way:
PSL is a store of value that can be used for transactions
or transferred to other users.
It also utilizes some of the privacy
and security benefits of Zcash.
Just like other cryptocurrencies,
PSL can be converted to other tokens
or fiat currency on an exchange.
You can even earn royalties from future sales of your work.
Right now, the limit is up to 10%.
Personally, I think this should be higher,
but 10% is better than no royalty option at all.
In terms of accessibility,
you can add PSL to your wallet using a variety of methods
rather than relying solely on something like MetaMask.
But what really makes the PSL token special
is that it enables users to securely register
and store their NFTs on the Pastel Network.
I'll explain more about that later in this review.
The Pastel Network also includes a deflationary mechanism
whereby a small amount of PSL is burned
or spent by users during regular activity on the network.
For example, it will cost you 1,000 PSL
to create a Pastel ID
to register your signature on the network.
At the time of publishing this review,
1,000 PSL is worth around $4 USD.
Those tokens are burned or made unspendable
to control inflation.
There are other activities
performed by supernodes, buyers and sellers,
which contribute to the burning of PSL tokens as well.
For those buyers and sellers
who are concerned about the environmental impact
of creating and selling NFTs, you may be relieved to know
that Pastel is built with efficiency
and long-term scalability in mind.
And to offset carbon emissions related to cryptocurrency,
a percentage of every registration fee
is donated to a non-profit that plants new trees.
So now that we've covered some of the technical stuff,
let's discuss the benefits of Pastel
and how they might be useful for artists.
Both buyers and sellers of NFTs
can agree that a digital asset
should last theoretically forever
and shouldn't simply vanish or become inaccessible.
If you think those NFTs you bought or sold
are stored on some proprietary network
that will host the images for all eternity,
you may be surprised to learn that in most cases,
you only own the token.
The actual digital asset
may be stored on a third party cloud service
hosted by Google or Amazon.
That means if the company hosting the file shuts down,
or the links to your asset become inaccessible,
so does the ability
to retrieve the actual substance of an NFT,
and you are just left with a dead, but provably rare, link.
Nearly every NFT project
misses this very important aspect of digital assets:
They need to be stored and preserved
in a sustainable and reliable way for a long, long time,
otherwise what is the point in purchasing a digital painting
over a physical print?
Pastel aims to solve this problem by storing,
not just the token,
but the entire digital asset in the Pastel blockchain.
This truly distributed storage system
enables a digital painting
to be broken up into random chunks
and shared across the supernodes on the Pastel Network.
As long as there are Pastel supernodes in operation,
the artwork or asset can always be accessed by its owner.
Even if there was a global disaster
and 95% of all nodes went down,
you could still recover the file from the remaining nodes.
Another concern that creators and collectors have in common
is the authenticity of NFTs.
Online impersonation is a real threat,
which creates a lot of anxiety in creators
who are worried that someone will steal their work.
Furthermore, counterfeiting discourages collectors
from purchasing work because,
although some NFT marketplaces offer verification badges,
an artist may require a significant online following
to even be considered for a review.
Pastel addresses digital asset authenticity
by allowing creators to establish a unique identity
on the decentralized Pastel Network.
Only the creator's private key
can be used to validate transactions,
and anyone can check to see
if an NFT is digitally signed by the true artist,
rather than an impostor.
By sharing their Pastel ID, a creator can alleviate
some of the concern their patrons may have
surrounding the authenticity of their work.
But what if someone takes your digital art
and reuploads a copy of it to sell as a counterfeit NFT?
What if they tweak your work a bit first?
Pastel has a really impressive way of dealing with duplicate
or even near-duplicate artwork,
and is the only NFT platform I have seen
even trying to tackle this problem.
When an image is validated on the network,
it is assigned a unique fingerprint
which encompasses not only the original image,
but also a series of AI machine learning simulations
showing how the image may look when color corrected, warped,
flipped, cropped, et cetera.
Not only does that highlight how lazy counterfeiters are,
but it's also really clever.
What's also remarkable is that the Pastel Network
can assign a level of rareness to the image data
of each new NFT.
It compares it to all existing NFTs on the network,
to NFTs on comparable platforms like OpenSea,
and even all of the open database of images on the Internet.
Think of it like
a really neat reverse image search on Google.
If the asset has been signed
and is not significantly similar
to any other image on the Pastel Network,
then it earns the special designation of Rare to Pastel.
This gives buyers a level of confidence
that they are buying an original and not a counterfeit.
If the image asset is truly unique
and cannot even be found in external sources
like Google Search,
then it is designated as New to the Internet.
This is a way to certify that the NFT you are selling
is truly rare and, prior to certification,
has never been seen on the Internet.
While the previous level of authenticity
may suffice for the casual NFT collector,
New to the Internet is more geared toward buyers
who are interested in purchasing a work
because it is exceptionally rare.
In addition to validating that images uploaded
to the Pastel Network are not duplicates,
files are also scanned by supernodes
for imagery that is Not Safe For Work.
If that's what you want to upload, go for it.
The Pastel Network allows NSFW content.
In fact, it's permissionless to register an asset,
but it will designate NSFW images accordingly
so that buyers can browse the market
without seeing anything they might find offensive.
Just as well, operators of supernodes
can choose which image settings they want to support,
with the option to opt out of hosting NSFW files
of various types or altogether.
Okay, I'm impressed.
I went from being excited about NFTs, to disappointed,
to excited again.
What Pastel aims to do
really does alleviate a lot of the concerns that I have
about taking the next step with NFTs.
And I know a lot of people who want to purchase an NFT
will appreciate the guidance and authentication features
offered by the Pastel Network.
All of this helps to establish confidence
in the NFT marketplace.
Pastel's borderless currency and low price point for entry
makes it significantly easier for the average artist
to start selling NFTs.
It also removes many of the barriers for buyers
which encourages more collectors
to become both comfortable and capable of buying an NFT.
The Pastel team is managed by developers, cryptographers,
technologists and many other talented people.
It is decentralized,
so no underlying stakeholder or individual
owns more than 5% of the total supply of PSL tokens.
Pastel's founder is Jeff Emanuel,
who is an aspiring digital artist among other things.
He and I share the desire to solve some of the obstacles
that stand in the way of artists,
both traditional and digital.
The Pastel team believes that rare digital assets
are important enough of an application
to merit their own purpose-built system.
And I couldn't agree more.
The Pastel Network is live
and builders can start developing really cool things
like their own platforms directly on top of Pastel today.
Pastel will also be launching its own marketplace
on the network early next month.
I'll be making a follow up video
demonstrating how to use the network
to create, buy, trade and sell NFTs.
So be sure to subscribe to this channel
if you don't want to miss that video.
That brings us to the end of my review
of the Pastel Network.
I've greatly simplified what Pastel can do,
so if you are interested in learning more about the project,
check out their website at pastel.network,
follow them on social media
and subscribe to their YouTube channel.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
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