Context
NFT marketplaces promised artists a direct route to collectors, free of the intermediaries that traditionally shaped the art trade. In practice, artists entering the space met a new and less legible set of costs — search, negotiation, gas fees, community building and the constant work of staying visible.
The project
A master's thesis at Jönköping University examining how transaction costs influence NFT artists' experiences and entrepreneurial journeys across marketplaces. The study combines a relativist ontology and constructionist epistemology with semi-structured artist interviews and transaction-cost data.
Naima’s role
Co-author with Carolina Zuniga Rojas. Naima contributed to the research design, the interview programme with practising NFT artists, and the analysis and writing of the final thesis.
Outcome
The research found that marketplace transaction costs were less influential on artists' journeys than the broader non-marketplace costs connected to the wider NFT ecosystem, and proposed a framework incorporating bounded rationality to account for how artists actually make decisions under uncertainty.
The thesis was recognised as a runner-up in the MMTC Thesis Awards 2023 and is published in full through the DiVA repository.
Collaborators
- Carolina Zuniga Rojas