NFTS and the Post-Centralized Platform Internet: A Look Inside User Experience Outside of the Normative Price Speculation Lense

Abstract

Through the study of the discourse surrounding NFTs, the infrastructure enabling its proliferation, as well as the systems of belief it builds around it, this thesis aims to understand the user experience of NFTs and specifically what drives users to purchase such tokens outside of the purview of price speculation. This thesis studies increasingly complex, disintermediated, and the decentralized digital world by exploring different concepts once linked to the traditional study of the internet and linking them back to NFTs. From uncovering themes within the discourse pertaining to counter-cultural manifestation to the use of the infrastructure as a vital enabler of the players within the environment to the systems of belief as key enticers turning users into evangelists, this thesis uncovers three reasons why people are lured into NFTs outside of the current price speculation norm which engulfs the widespread knowledge behind the nascent technology.