Racial Capitalism, Platform Capitalism, and NFTs

Abstract

This chapter posits that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) contribute to an expansion, acceleration, and individualization of exploitative labor practices and advance the blockchain project of decentralized, non-governmental financial engagement. It considers play-to-earn, NFT-based video games such as Axie Infinity as sites where centuries-old structures of racialized labor exploitation are reproduced and rendered invisible by everyday contexts for digital labor and utopian perspectives inherent to platform capitalism. This chapter advocates for a framework of racial capitalism and platform capitalism and argues that platform capitalism’s promises, purposes, and capacity for boundary-setting obfuscate precarious and racialized realities experienced by Axie Infinity’s labor class and enabled by economic inequality and crisis, differential access to technology or capital, and the capacity for regulators to keep pace with nascent technologies. In Axie Infinity, the labor of the game’s Scholars is fulfilled at the discretion of its rentier class or Managers, with the two parties experiencing unequal rewards, burdens, and privileges. The chapter argues that the accumulative interests of Axie Infinity’s NFT owners and Managers are predicated upon unseen, racialized labor. By extension, the NFTs’ ability to generate earnings and speculative potential are dependent upon a surplus of global laborers to complete the work necessary to realize the NFTs’ value propositions.