We’ve already seen and learned a lot during this initial wave of JPG Canon alpha testing, during which a number of broad themes came to the fore through our community governance discussions in Discord. In the interest of recapping these excellent discussions, let’s walk through 5 big themes the community surfaced.

1) New definers on the NFT frontier

A dynamic NFT is an NFT that changes or can change in some way over time, right? Right?

Turns out it’s not so simple because an NFT that changes or can change can mean a ton of different things. As such, it was fascinating to see the JPG community’s hivemind grapple with the ontology of dynamic NFTs, i.e. what their actual nature is, what we should be meaning when we say “dynamic,” how the interactive vs. dynamic distinction is important, etc.

For example, artist and SALT co-creator Figure31 offered this taxonomy that many of us quickly took to:

This sort of excellent dialogue and the surrounding conversations were so insightful that JPG even ended up updating the Dynamic NFT Canon’s criteria to reflect the community’s evolving understanding of these NFTs. The update’s a reminder that this community is now started in the work of defining and conceptualizing NFTs with a level of depth that the NFT ecosystem has never seen before.

2) Rise of the sub-canons?

This theme is related to the previous one. But it quickly became apparent in the community convos that “dynamic NFTs” was broad enough of a category that sub-categorizations would be useful.

For instance, there are some NFTs that can evolve through one-time coordination activities, and others that are visually interactive without changing any blockchain state post-mint, so being able to sub-categorize these NFTs would be helpful to more accurately reflect their semi-dynamic natures. The JPG team still has to figure out exactly how to structure such a system, but it’s definitely on our radar. 

3) The edge cases

Going off the previous themes, another thing the JPG community quickly discovered is that some NFT projects have unique ambiguous structures where one can make reasonable cases for or against their dynamism depending on one’s interpretation of dynamism. Here we get back into grappling with the ontology of dynamic digital things, right. Anyways, an example of such a project is REPLICATOR by Mad Dog Jones, as its contract facilitates self-replicating, albeit visually static, NFTs.

Now it’s up for the voting process to decide, but that’s also what’s cool about Canons: they are living lists that can be updated via governance on an ongoing basis. If our collective understanding changes or grows, the Canons will evolve accordingly.

4) Reflecting new happenings

https://twitter.com/moonbirds/status/1603457713022697472

Speaking of evolution, in the middle of the second week of the first Canon governance cycle the Moonbirds PFP collection unveiled customizable backgrounds, making these NFTs dynamic. Boom! JPG dev extraordinaire and Moonbirds aficionado Billy proposed the collection to the Dynamic Canon, and now Moonbirds are pending and ready to receive votes in the second governance cycle. 

5) Into the unknown

In the Canon voting dashboard, you can click on a proposed NFT project and read its main description. Many of these descriptions are informative and clear, but some projects had little to no descriptions to pull from whatsoever, and even if you dug deeper across the web it was difficult to discern how exactly some of these collections were precisely dynamic. As such, we understandably saw some initially incongruent interpretations. 

For example, Leo Villareal’s *Cosmic Bloom *and Ezra Miller’s *Solvency *projects are operationally similar when it comes to their mode of dynamism, yet only Cosmic Bloom made the cut during the first round of Canon voting.

This incongruence can be rectified during future voting, but it’s also understandable in these early times when we’re just starting to chart out the cultural landscape of NFTs and in many cases we only have our own research to lean on.

Zooming out

It’s been an exhilarating two weeks since we launched the first JPG Canon. The JPG team has been once again blown away by how our community and the way you’ve rallied to this effort, and we couldn’t be more inspired as we continue to push ahead on the good work to come. 

At the same time, we want to be realistic and stress over and over that this first Canon and the next couple to follow it are alpha experiences, so bugs and hiccups will come up. Many of you have been tremendous help in reporting issues you’ve faced in our Discord, which has allowed us to make fixes quickly on the backend. We couldn’t be more appreciative of your aid and patience as we continue to clean things up, so please keep letting us know and sitting tight if you run into any problems, we’ll dig in asap.  

Lastly, I want to conclude by noting how more than a few people across the community expressed that these initial Canon discussions were a “breath of fresh air” in the NFT ecosystem for their quality and depth. What we saw were dozens of people excited to discuss and debate NFTs on cultural and intellectual grounds rather than financial merit. 

There’s no question that the NFT space has been dominated by financial hype to date, but building up and supporting the cultural value of NFTs is what will bring lasting meaning and balance to these intangibly tangible digital things. While they’ve just begun, the Canons are indeed a decisive and heartening step in that direction. If you haven’t already, please consider joining us in the JPG Discord if you want to take part in shaping these Canons, too!