Article originally posted on Medium.
We recently sent out a missive at Atticus Review about our plans for the future. We’re scaling down. We’ll be changing our format. But the most important thing is that we will be minting the work we publish on the blockchain in the form of NFTs. Personally, I’ve come to believe that blockchain technology will be the engine that the Internet runs on in the coming years and there are many industries that will benefit from it from healthcare to real-estate.
The industry we’re most interested in at Atticus Review, though, is literature and the creative arts. We think artists and creators of all kinds ultimately stand to benefit from this technology for a number of reasons.
I’m going to outline what I think a few of those reasons are below.
My Background
First, I just want to re-introduce myself. My name is David Olimpio. For five years, from 2016 through 2021, I ran the online literary magazine Atticus Review. During that time, we published a lot of great work, some of it online, some of it in print.
I took a break from that in early 2022 to make some life changes. Then I came back to it last year with the intention of doing something different within the literary magazine space. I joined up with a colleague and friend of mine, Boo Trundle, and together we’ve been working on a new Atticus.
Professionally, I’ve also been in the website-building space since 1999. Before that, I wasn’t much of a “tech person.” I was an English major in college. I wrote my first stories, poems, and papers on a glorified typewriter which you could connect to a monitor. For those of you born after 1990, we called that thing a “word processor.” Truthfully, I disliked computers and technology as a young writer.
I didn’t become somebody “techy” until I realized that the Internet was just a huge publishing platform. Then I wanted to learn everything I could about it. (Unfortunately, the Web has also been a flawed publishing platform. I believe blockchain technology will make it less so. That is what I want to explore on this Medium channel.)
One reason I mention my background is because I want to emphasize that I am by no means an “expert” in blockchain technology. I am learning about it as I go, the same way I did with the Internet in 1999 when I started building websites. I’ve studied and researched it pretty hard for the past three years and, based on that, I believe in its potential for publishing of all kinds. But at the same time, I do consider myself a “student” in this. I am, and forever will be, a student in most things. I am, for instance, also a student of writing. A student of music. A student of having a successful relationships. A student of how to only have one beer with dinner. You get the picture.
Okay, with that out of the way, here are the three biggest problems I found working in the literary magazine space, and how I believe blockchain can help solve them.
Benefits of Blockchain on the Literary Magazine space
1. Sustainability
During my time managing Atticus Review several years ago, what I saw as probably the biggest issue in the lit mag space was the problem of permanence, or rather, the lack of it.
Of course, nothing is permanent. The sun will burn out and all life will eventually be extinguished on this planet. That’s just a tragic scientific fact.
But online literary magazines are particularly afflicted by ephemerality. Many of them are passion projects that either lose money, or only just sustain themselves. I used to think the college lit mags were immune to this, but even they, it seems, are susceptible to extinction due to an unsustainable business model.
I don’t have anything against passion projects. But I do get a little upset by how casually some of these magazines seem to start, and then fold. In accepting people’s writing, I think these publications are taking on a responsibility to work towards being around into the future, to operate more like a business. The problem is that when the people running these projects decide to step away and stop paying the web hosting and domain registration bills, the work that is on these sites disappears and becomes a relic on the Wayback Machine.
When something is minted on a decentralized blockchain platform such as Ethereum, the work becomes more than some 1s and 0s on a screen. It becomes a digital asset. It has a permanent place on the blockchain. And, important to what we’re talking about here, it enables that asset — that writing — to exist outside of a central publisher. It allows the work to be owned and traded among entities without the need of any intermediary. So if the publisher decides to close up shop, the work will continue to exist, almost the same way a piece of real-estate continues to exist even if the property owner dies. In a decentralized blockchain such as Ethereum, nobody owns the network. Rather, the network functions as a sort of global, open-source computer maintained by a community of “nodes” that all contribute to the whole.
I used to worry about all the pieces we were publishing on Atticus Review and what would happen to them if I had to stop running it. Lit mags aren’t the easiest thing in the world to pass along to somebody else. I knew if the magazine were to someday close up, all that writing would go with it. I love the fact that if work is minted on a decentralized blockchain, it doesn’t matter if Atticus Review lives or dies. That work will live on, regardless.
2. Provenance and Authenticity
The question of authenticity has always been an issue on the Internet. Digital artwork, writing, videos, images — they are endlessly reproducible, and copies are virtually indistinguishable from one another. For this reason, it’s easy for digital files to become modified or corrupted without the creator’s consent or knowledge. Verifying that something is “true” or “original” has become increasingly difficult, especially with the sudden explosion of Generative AI. Any writing that appears online could potentially be manipulated and re-cast as something that wasn’t in the original. Without a reliable way to establish provenance, it can be nearly impossible to prove who originally wrote a thing if there is ever a dispute.
Blockchain technology functions as a huge distributed digital ledger. Transactions are recorded across a network of computers and there is no “central authority” holding the record. No mega business or government stands at the center of the transfer of data. In this decentralized structure, every participant in the network maintains an identical copy of the entire ledger, creating a system that is highly resistant to corruption and tampering.
Each transaction is cryptographically secured and added to a “block,” which is then linked to previous blocks, forming an unalterable chain. (Hence: blockchain.) The immutability of this chain is reinforced by something referred to as a consensus mechanism. The consensus mechanism requires network-wide agreement before new transactions can be added. This process makes it extremely difficult for any single entity to alter the ledger, as doing so would require simultaneously changing the data on a majority of the network’s nodes — a task that is practically infeasible.
The transparency and cryptographic security of a blockchain creates a highly tamper-resistant system that significantly reduces the potential for fraud and corruption in various applications, from financial transactions to supply chain management…to art and writing!
Many technologists see blockchain technology as a possible antidote to the threat to truth posed by generative AI and “deep fake” images and videos. While the blockchain can’t stop deep fakes from being created, it can offer a way to authenticate original works.
In the case of art, letters, and literary magazines, we at Atticus Review see blockchain technology and NFTs as a way of establishing a record that says, this writing is original, this particular human wrote it, and when it was written, this is exactly what it said.
3. Smart Contracts
If you’ve ever tried to buy or sell a house, you know that the house is only part of the expense. There are a number of intermediaries that are also part of the transaction: lawyers, agents, states, municipalities. It’s a very complicated process and often involves a tremendous amount of paper.
We have intermediaries all over the finance world. When we swipe a credit card, there is a bank taking a cut and a transaction processor taking a cut. If you want to send money to somebody in another country, there are foreign exchange fees. And while most of these transactions seem to be immediate from our end of things, it often takes several days to settle those payments.
Transactions that happen on the blockchain are immediate. Cryptocurrencies can move from one wallet to another immediately and seamlessly with a relatively small network fee which goes back into that blockchain’s ecosystem. In the case of an NFT that represents a digital asset, you can set up a “smart contract” to automatically distribute funds to all parties involved in the transaction. For instance: the writer and the publisher.
What does this mean for writers and artists? To me, it means, that they can have more control over their work. It means that they can be compensated immediately and directly when a digital asset is sold. And this automated distribution of funds will happen not only for the first sale, but for any subsequent sale — in the form of royalties.
Blockchain technology in the form of cryptocurrencies and NFTs pose a real threat to the traditional way transactions are done in the world. It threatens to disrupt entire business models that are built to capitalize off of transactions such as buying a house. It’s one of the reasons, in my opinion, the traditional finance world has been so very opposed to cryptocurrencies and have spent a lot of time and money trying to convince politicians they are bad. People who have massive fortunes and vested interest in the fiat US capitalist system (CEOs of big banks, for instance) are particularly threatened.
This brings to some criticisms and challenges of blockchain.
Criticisms and Challenges
1. Not Quite Ready for Prime Time
As much as I think blockchain technology offers a great way forward for literary magazines, I also recognize that there are many challenges in implementation. There is a steep learning curve to understanding how to do basic tasks with cryptocurrencies such as setting up a wallet, buying crypto, and transferring it to others. There are inherent limitations to the technology right now particularly when it comes to integrating it with traditional “web2” online businesses. Creating smart contracts is a complex process and there is a strong need for more user-friendly interfaces.
I’ve been studying how to move Atticus Review to an NFT model for the past three years. Every time I think I find a solution, I discover an obstacle to that implementation. I finally think I’ve discovered something that will work. But I also know, that better solutions will come out in the coming years and I may need to pivot to one of those.
The problem of adoption among our audience is trickier. One of our goals in doing this is to educate the literary community on blockchain in general and how to do basic things like set up a wallet.
To me, it’s only a matter of time before a catalyst comes along that sparks mass adoption and I want to be there when it does.
2. Environmental Concerns
One concern regarding blockchain technology is the impact that its power consumption has on the environment. This has been a particular concern with blockchains that operate under a “Proof of Work” consensus mechanism. (The only one that still does is Bitcoin.) Most blockchains operate under a “Proof of Stake” (PoS) mechanism, which consumes significantly less power. Ethereum, the second largest blockchain (based on market capitalization), moved to a PoS consensus mechanism in 2022. This move reduced its energy consumption by over 99%.
But even a PoW blockchain like Bitcoin consumes less energy than the worldwide traditional banking system. It’s estimated that Bitcoin consumes between 120–170 TWh per year. Estimates vary on the power consumption of worldwide traditional banking, with a low around 258 TWh to as much as 4,981 TWh.
Ethereum has an estimated annual consumption of .01 TWh per year. Polygon, a blockchain that runs on top of Ethereum, and the blockchain Atticus Review has been researching to use to mint its NFTs, has an estimated annual consumption of .0000074 TWh per year. Which means traditional finance networks consume at least 23,892 times more energy than Ethereum and 32 million times more than Polygon.
There are also actual benefits blockchain can have to the environment in the form of enabling decentralized energy grids, transparent, tamper-resistant environmental data tracking, more efficient supply-chain solutions, and more efficient and transparent carbon credit markets.
This topic deserves its own post, so I will write in more detail about this in the future, but my overall opinion is this: traditional financial institutions (and the powerful, rich people who run them) feel threatened by cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology and it is in their best interest to exaggerate environmental concerns in order to slow adoption.
American Capitalism is what has been devastating to the environment. Blockchain technology can and will help reverse this.
I plan to post more articles on this Medium channel about the intersection of blockchain technology and the literary magazine world. If it’s something that interests you, please consider subscribing.
Also, if you’re somebody who would like to be involved in the move to NFTs at Atticus Review, please reach out to me.
Some sources and further reading:
The Principles of Blockchain Technology: How It Works
https://blockapps.net/blog/the-principles-of-blockchain-technology-how-it-works/
What Is Blockchain Technology? Why Does It Matter
https://www.identity.com/what-is-blockchain-and-why-does-it-matter/
Analyzing the Role of Blockchain Technology in Strengthening Democracies
https://www.csis.org/analysis/analyzing-role-blockchain-technology-strengthening-democracies
The Role of Blockchain In Fighting Fraud And Corruption: Blockchain Anti-Fraud Solutions
https://blockchainmagazine.com/the-role-of-blockchain-in-fighting-fraud-and-corruption-blockchain-anti-fraud-solutions/
Bitcoin, gold or traditional banking: It will surprise you to know which uses the most energy
https://www.cnbctv18.com/cryptocurrency/bitcoin-gold-traditional-banking-which-uses-most-energy-15117061.htm
Crypto Energy Consumption and Crypto Energy Explained
https://justenergy.com/blog/crypto-energy-consumption-crypto-energy/
The Bitcoin Network vs. World Banking Energy Consumption
https://paylesspower.com/blog/the-bitcoin-network-vs-world-banking-energy-consumption/
The Energy Debate: How Bitcoin Mining, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrency Shape Our Carbon Future
https://carboncredits.com/the-energy-debate-how-bitcoin-mining-blockchain-and-cryptocurrency-shape-our-carbon-future/
Gettysburg College Shutters Acclaimed Literary Journal
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/books-publishing/2023/10/09/why-did-gettysburg-college-shutter-its-literary
The Story of NFTs: Artists, Technology, and Democracy
https://amzn.to/4h0XULq
