We All Gonna Own It

WAGOI = we all gonna own it. Some art projects are built different. How do you know? Look for the words 'public release' or 'no rights reserved'...or the cryptic 'CC0' acryonym where creators waive all their copyright to the fullest extent for an artwork. An example... The Sisyphus Toad is a collaboration between @gremplin & @nnimrodd with no rights reserved. "It has been really interesting getting to know @nnimrodd the past few months and was thrilled to do a drawing with him (also love that Foundation can do gifs now)" says Gremplin.

Sisyphus Toad by Gremplin & Nimrodd on Foundation marketplace

...but what does 'no rights reserved' mean? Everyone can use the work with no strings attached. Nimrodd had this to say...

"I own a toad and always amazed how they keep cheating the floor, with no road maps, no rights reserved. So we thought of an appropriate punishment for this uncontrolled vibe, and sisyphus came to mind."

Ok but if everyone can use the work...does that make the art worthless? No. The opposite. Anyone can get creative... and have fun...and send it.

Before NFTs there weren't many options for 20th century artists who had their work appropriated without proper credit and payment. My great grandfather took the first photograph of New Zealand troops landing into war at Gallipoli and it took 100 years to get proper attribution. The photograph had been widely used and monetised with no economic value back to the original artist. Now with NFTs work can be public domained from day one...encouraging distribution...removing friction from sharing and ultimately creating network benefits for the artist to leverage. But who in their right mind would purchase an NFT that effectively frees the art with no rights reserved? In the case of the Sisyphus Toad... that person is Jim O'Brien aka @JimGMI. Jim already owns a few CrypToadz with #1923, #506 and #6306 safely stacked up so he's no beginner.

'But the CrypToadz are no rights reserved too.' Yes indeed they are so it makes sense that Jim probably knew what he was doing by evaporating 5 eth acquiring the Sisyphus Toad.

The congratulatory 'auction settled' blockchain provenance goes to Jim O'Brien

Jim of course must be chuffed with this and all within the first month of his NFT journey. I mean Gremplin is the artist behind NounsDao and Cryptoadz. There's a great thread by tada...Thread Guy on the Cryptoadz.

...and the second artists making Sisyphus Toad is Nimrod Kamer, who authored 'The Social Climber's Handbook' thanks to smooth talk in status laden situations. Now that you know the three players that made this NFT art sale possible... what might the art itself be communicating? Is the toadz lunging its tongue ahead to bring the fly back down to its level? Or is the toad hitching a ride with the fly heading 'only up' on their journey together? The description says...

"Founder and king of Ephyra-!vib, Sisyphus-Toad (Σίσυφος φρύνος) was punished for cheating the floor twice, being forced to push an immense fly up the eth, using only his tongue, just to see it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity, without a road-map."

Go and enjoy the Sisyphus Toad art in its full glory as a GIF, because Foundation now supports them. Then... you can decide what happens with the Sisyphus Toad next because remember... we all gonna own it. WAGOI.

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