There were understandably a lot of replies to this thread suggesting a move to other smart contract chains with lower fees. I get the sentiment but I don't think that's a good idea, especially for new artists trying to make a name for themselves. Quick thread on why: https://twitter.com/TennesseeJed3/status/1356999220218257411

Just like BTC has established network effects and broad widespread adoption as the dominant form of “store of value” digital money, ETH has an insurmountable lead in network effects and widespread adoption as the dominant smart contract platform.

Other shitcoins/platforms do have markets and liquidity, but the only thing anyone actually uses them for is short term speculation and/or staking (neither of which count as genuine use to me.)

ETH is the only smart contract platform anyone genuinely uses for anything other than trading or staking. Why? Because the infrastructure already exists and continues to advance rapidly, and the activity is already here, and is exponentially increasing.

Even if I do buy one of these "lower fee" shitcoins, I’m not buying it so I can use that network's smart contract functionality, I’m buying it because I believe number go up in the short run, so I can then sell that shitcoin to ETH and buy more art (or sell to BTC cold storage.)

The art/NFT space is extremely young. When we consider where future generations of collectors will come from, we have to acknowledge the fact that the first cryptocurrencies sidelined normies will hear about are bitcoin and ETH. You can literally go directly from FIAT to ETH.

Newbs, normies, and nocoiners who haven’t entered crypto yet will find ETH immediately. Nobody will find these deep shitcoins until they are miles into the cyrpto rabbit hole, and when they do, they won’t be using them, they'll be trading them (or ignoring them.)

Artists need exposure, and they need a broad reaching market with easy accessibility to collectors. If you mint on ETH, you’re minting on a spotlight platform with an insane amount of usage, accessibility, rapid development, and widespread adoption.

If you mint on any other platform, you may pay low fees, but your pigeonholing yourself because no serious collectors will ever see your work. Beyond that, you need to consider the long term resale/royalty potential. ETH has staying power. Most shitcoins will disappear or die.

Lastly, layer 2 solutions and/or ETH 2.0 are ostensibly coming within a year or so. So at worst, we are looking at another year of stupidly high fees before these growing pains become a distant memory. The current environment may be prohibitive to new entrants, but not for long.