The Failure of Blockchain Art
Blockchain should have been the kill-switch. Infrastructure for permanence, for open memory, for tearing down the velvet ropes of the gallery class. Instead, it got flipped, gutted, and worn as a costume by the same parasites it was meant to burn.
On one side: the nepo-babies and trustafarians, the trust-fund curators, the art-school aristocracy. They saw a shiny new cage and rushed to hang their names on it, importing their walled-garden elitism straight into the chain. On the other side: the weak-minded desperate, chasing crumbs, buying into the hype machine with the hope of flipping out of poverty. Both ends complicit. Both ends guilty.
The revolution failed because it was never about art — it was about power. The blockchain didn’t collapse; it calcified. What should have been infrastructure became institution. And that’s why we’re still here, surrounded by empty promises and hollow markets, waiting for someone to finally strip the ego out and build what was supposed to be built.
