Art Basel Miami Community Embraced Web3—But Use Cases Remain Stuck in Web2

“Subdued” is not a typical description associated with Art Basel Miami. But this year, the twentieth time since the city first hosted the global art and tech fest, that’s the word that fits. The wildly imaginative community representing luxury brands, contemporary art and emerging tech that converges in Miami at the end of every November is not known for restraint and practicality. But as talk of crypto winter set in as 2021’s NFT hype cooled, the mood in Miami last week was much more down to earth. And that’s actually why this Art Basel Miami may be more meaningful for brands, investors and technologists versus the unbridled party atmosphere of past years. If you missed Art Basel, don’t worry—the transformative technologies that were there are about to catch up with you before you know it. How Web3 Will Change the ‘Broken’ Relationship Between Brands and Creators The trick is to know what to do with these new tools once you grasp them. Art Basel 2022 was not the year of bright shiny objects. Rather, the most defining thing this year was the community and how they shaped and expanded the use cases for tools that have alternatively inspired and perplexed the wider public. Yes, there was the usual talk about artificial intelligence, from Lensa AI’s portraits that have flooded your Instagram feeds. And we’re all rightly captivated by the uncannily natural writing and query responses by ChatGPT. Both examples reflected the trend seen at Art Basel: the idea of identity as a value that can be owned and reworked depending on the context. The community that showed up in Miami wasn’t just a mix of early adopters and burgeoning art stars. It’s influencers and creators who are going to be the ones to usher in web3. The culture shapers Take a look at how everyone has been using Lensa and ChatGPT: They’re all stuck in a web2 context. The experience hasn’t caught up to the tech—our collective web2 mindset remains locked in. That freezes the potential use cases. And that’s the reason for the wider public’s lingering disappointment with NFTs, QR codes and virtual reality. Over the past two years, brands have handed marketing over to influencers and creators. Brands and platforms need to bring more advanced tech to these culture shapers. These individuals came together with a collective spirit and defined the Art Basel Miami experience by creating a community. Attendees were swept up in their wake. The followers quickly became part of the community as well, fueling new ways of looking at tech that has been otherwise left to languish. Take NFTs. Most of the gatherings at Art Basel Miami were token-gated events. No one thought twice about it as an entry requirement. It felt completely natural and obvious to use NFTs as the key to access an experience. This new form of loyalty was accepted by everyone. People were airdropping invites everywhere like they were physical tickets. It was seamless and natural. True, the tokens didn’t always work. But there’s always a hiccup. The point is, the idea clicked, and a new events custom was born—and the deeper sense of community was born with it. The community accepted tokens as a form of identity. Not just identity verification, though that’s one web2 aspect that makes sense in this case. Identity evolves There was a great deal of conversation at Art Basel Miami about the future of digital identity and avatars. Those lines first started to blur with games and instant messaging. Apple’s incorporation of emojis into a 3D avatar in 2018 meant you could have an animated representation of yourself. Your chosen persona would be reflected with a cartoonish version of your face, a favorite animal or symbol. No matter the choice, the avatar was an artistic statement about who you present yourself to be. Now, as consumers increasingly expect to own their data, new questions have arisen in this community of culture shapers: What does the ownership structure of your persona look like? Can you trade it? How do you transact with it? A community is sustained by the reflections and self-expressions of its members. But what does community mean when everyone can change their representation any time they want? The intersection of art and commerce ultimately is the arbiter. Expression is experience Take sneakers. There is a long-standing subculture of sneakerheads. They line up when there’s a new release they must add to their collection. That line is a community. That collective desire represents a communal self-expression. The individual and the group are joined. One of the first major executions of digital collectibles were based on sneakers. People have hundreds of pairs of sneakers because they want to represent themselves differently on different occasions and in different situations. Imagine the use cases for both a physical sneaker collection and its digital twin. There's a lot of different use cases as to where you might be able to take it. And that sneaker community is going to create those use cases. It’s up to the brands to take their cues from the community on where to go. Brands that know how to support their loyal communities always win. Inside Kraft Heinz’s Long-Term Strategy for Web3 It wasn’t all new world glory at Art Basel Miami. I got asked multiple times for business cards. I never carry them. That led to some brief awkward moments. But it was a perfect example of the natural tension between the old world and the new world. To see it still playing out in even Art Basel, where events are token-gated, sets up the challenge for web3 clearly. A business card is an old form of an avatar. It says who you are, it says where you belong, it literally spells out your identity to whomever you share it. It’s a form of connection. Thinking of virtual items like NFTs in that way provides a lighted path from pre-web to web2 to web3. We only get there when everyone recognizes the currency for identification and entry. And that’s how a community is created.