Saskia Hufnagel, Colin King, Alina-Theresa Schnedl, Milind Tiwari
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) bring many opportunities for artists, investors, and creators, but they also have a dark side with significant potential for use in financial crimes. Drawing on relevant caselaw, a systematic review and topic modeling of literature, we map common examples of NFT-related crime, including fraud, money laundering, theft, and market-related offenses. This empirical review lays the groundwork for the core contribution of this article, that is, application of the “crime triangle” to NFT-related crime. Recognizing heterogeneity in NFT-related crime, we detail five scenarios where such crime can occur and analyze these in the context of the crime triangle (inner and outer). This enables us to identify potential gaps and vulnerabilities in current crime prevention strategies. Given challenges in policing cybercrime, and specifically NFT-related crime, we argue that the crime triangle provides a useful heuristic tool for understanding the nature of NFT-related crime and for preventing such crime from happening.
In Community in a Crowd: Bitcoin and the Quest for Liberty in Tel Aviv, Matan Shapiro offers a carefully crafted ethnography of Bitcoin socialities grounded in a long fieldwork at the Bitcoin Embas...
NFT (Non-Fungible Token) art, fueled by blockchain technology and its connection to virtual currencies, gained significant attention beyond the art world. However, after peaking in 2021, interest and trading activity declined and eventually stagnated. This study examines the research landscape and market dynamics of the NFT art system from a systemic perspective, proposing future research directions. We utilize the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC) and the concept of the Chasm, compiling abstracts of 153 Scopus-indexed articles up to October 2024, along with market data from various platforms. Using VOSviewer, we categorize the literature by research type while analyzing transaction data.Our findings reveal that prior research on the NFT art market predominantly focuses on the pre-chasm stage of the TALC, highlighting the innovative nature of digital art as a medium of exchange and the decentralization it promotes. Based on these results, we recommend that future studies investigate the reasons behind the stagnation of the NFT art market, particularly by addressing the challenges of valuing intangible assets from the perspective of market stakeholders. Furthermore, additional research should explore system-level strategies that can enhance broader adoption and support the sustainable growth of NFT art.
This essay examines the transformative potential of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in urban environments, specifically regarding ownership structures, management processes, and civic participation. Employing a mixed-methods research approach, the study demonstrates that NFTs can support fractional ownership, increase transparency within smart cities, and promote urban renewal. Addressing legal challenges, technological limitations, and social equity concerns remains essential. The findings advocate for coordinated efforts among policymakers, urban planners, and technologists to ensure that NFTs contribute to equitable and sustainable urban development.
This study aims to propose a website for the preservation and accessibility of street art in Türkiye with crowdsourcing methods. The proposed website is based on the literature about the usability of street art websites. The related literature showed that the websites are weak regarding institutional information and policies, including copying and copyrights, and that descriptive data regarding the works is insufficient. Additionally, it has been observed that the most common crowdsourcing method is collection completion. Street artworks created by street artists and then converted into digital form are also prone to change and metamorphosis, requiring specific digital solutions for long-term preservation. The rise of Web3 technologies offers new opportunities to overcome the challenges of documenting, preserving, and sharing these digital street arts. It is thought that this study, conducted in the case of Türkiye, will contribute to the literature on preserving and accessing street art as a cultural heritage.
More and more street and graffiti artists are using NFTs to monetize their art. A reason for this might be that the digital medium combined with the cultural aspects surrounding the NFT scene, such as the sense of community connected to the art and the tokens, fits well within these creative subcultures. One may think that in addition to this, Web3 and NFTs allow for a more democratic and direct link between artists who place their pieces in the street and their audiences. After examining these background issues, the chapter presents and comments on the opinions of a number of street artists, graffiti writers and a curator, who have been interviewed by the authors, on a variety of topics including the tokenization of street art murals and its intersection with copyright.
Dijitalleşme süreci, her disiplinde kendi teknolojik dönüşümünü oluşturmaktadır. Sanatın dönüşüm sürecinde birtakım problemler ortaya çıkmış ve bu süreçte ortaya çıkan “Taklidi Mümkün Olmayan Jeton” Non-Fungible-Token (NFT) sanat alanında; eserlerin dijital olarak sertifikalanması, eser sahipliğini sunması ve satış sürecinin takibi vb. birçok ihtiyaca çözüm niteliği olarak görülmektedir. Nitekim NFT teknolojisi, sanattan bağımsız kullanımından kaynaklı, insanlarda kavram çatışmasına, sanatçılarda fikir ayrılıklarına sebep olurken aynı zamanda direnç unsurları oluşturmuştur. Teknolojik determinizm bakış açısıyla ele alınan bu çalışma, NFT teknolojisi özelinde aura ve direnç unsurlarını çözümlemektedir. Çalışma grubu, NFT tabanlı eser üreten sanatçılarla sınırlandırılmıştır. Sanatçılarının direnç ve auraya yönelik tutumlarına ilişkin veriler, çevrimiçi anket çalışması aracılığıyla toplanmış olup istatistiki analiz programıyla analiz edilmiştir. Veriler, araştırma grubuna uygulanan yarı-yapılandırılmış derinlemesine görüşmeler ile desteklenmiştir. Çalışmada nicel ve nitel araştırma yönteminin birlikte kullanıldığı karma araştırma yöntemi seçilmiştir. Karma yöntemin sınıflandırılması “Açıklayıcı”, düzeyi “Tamamen”, zaman yönelimi “Sıralı”, vurgu yaklaşımı “Eşit statüde” belirlenmiştir. Soruların kuramsal temeli Walter Benjamin’in “Sanatın Aurası” kavramından oluşturulurken çalışmada “NFT teknolojisiyle inşa edilen dijital sanatın aurası, sanatı toplumdan uzaklaştırmaktadır” hipotezi araştırılmıştır. Analizler sonucunda, sanatçılar tarafından NFT tabanlı eserlerde aura oluşumunun ve karşılaşılan direnç unsurlarından dolayı NFT teknolojisinden uzaklaşmama eğiliminin desteklendiği saptanmıştır. Çalışmada sanatın dönüşüm sürecinde ihtiyaca çözüm olarak görülen bir aracın, sanatı dönüştürüp dönüştürmediği, direnç ve sanatçı ilişkisi, gelecek ön görüleri tespit edilmiş olup “Siber Aura” kavramı ortaya atılmıştır. Veriler, sanatın teknolojik yeniliklerde aynı veya benzer sorunlar yaşamamasına, sanatçıların dijitalleşme sürecindeki sanata bakış açılarına dikkat çekme ve yeni kavramların literatüre eklenmesi amacı taşımaktadır.
Textile waste constitutes a significant fraction of municipal solid waste sent to landfill or incinerated. Its innovative management is important to enhance sustainability and circularity. This review aims to present the latest policies and the state-of-the-art technologies in the collection, sorting and recycling of textile waste. Policies at global and regional levels are increasingly made to address the sustainability of the textile industry and integrate the concept of circular economy. They are crucial to driving changes and innovations in current textile waste management. The Internet of Things, big data, blockchain and smart contracts have been proposed to improve transparency, traceability and accountability in the textile waste collection process. They optimize collection routes, and transactions and agreements among stakeholders. The sorting of textile waste using near-infrared spectroscopy, optical sorting and artificial intelligence enables its separation based on composition, color and quality. The mechanical recycling of textiles regenerates fibers with the same or different applications from those of the original fabrics. Fibers have been used for making building and slope protection materials. Chemical recycling depolymerizes waste textiles using chemicals to produce monomers for new textiles or other materials, while biological recycling uses enzymes and microorganisms for this purpose instead of chemicals. Thermal recycling recovers energy and fuels from textile waste through pyrolysis, gasification and hydrothermal liquefaction. These innovations may have the drawbacks of high cost and scalability. This review contributes to decision making by synthesizing the strengths and weaknesses of the innovations in textile waste management.
Zhen Liu, Zulan Yang, Ming-Jie Liang, Yi Liu · 6 authors
In the face of the health challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, healing and therapeutic design (HTD) as interventions can help with improving people's health. It is considered to have great potential to promote health in the forms of art, architecture, landscape, space, and environment. However, there are insufficient design approaches to address the challenges during the HTD process. An increased number of studies have shown that emerging information modeling (IM) such as building information modeling (BIM), landscape information modeling (LIM), and city information modeling (CIM) coupled with blockchain (BC) functionalities have the potential to enhance designers' HTD by considering important design elements, namely design variables, design knowledge, and design decision. It can also address challenges during the design process, such as design changes, conflicts in design requirements, the lack of design evaluation tools and frameworks, and incomplete design information. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a conceptual BC enhanced IM for HTD (BC-HTD) framework that addresses the challenges in the HTD and promotes health and well-being. The structure of BC-HTD framework is twofold: (1) a conceptual high-level framework comprising three levels: user; system; and information, (2) a conceptual low-level framework of detailed content at the system level, which has been constructed using a mixed quantitative and qualitative method of literature analysis, and validated via a pre-interview questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with industry experts and academics. This paper analyzes the process of BC enhanced HTD and the knowledge management of HTD to aid design decisions in managing design information. This paper is the first attempt to apply the advantages of BC enabled IM to enhance the HTD process. The results of this study can foster and propel new research pathways and knowledge on the value of design in the form of non-fungible token (NFT) based on the extended advantages of BC in the field of design, which can fully mobilize the healing and therapeutic behaviors of designers and the advantage potential of HTD to promote health, and realize the vision of Health Metaverse in the context of sustainable development.