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So there seems to be quite a lot of confusion surrounding the Doge NFT and our involvement in it. I've seen some comments suggesting all kinds of things that simply aren't true and felt the need to address them here.

We were contacted by the people putting this together and found out that Atsuko herself would be auctioning off the NFTs and donating a significant portion of the proceeds to charity. We discussed having Know Your Meme officially certify the auction as authentic, as this is something we became concerned about after discovering that someone had tried to impersonate the creator of the "Me Gusta" Rage Comic to sell it off as an NFT:

https://news.knowyourmeme.com/news/me-gusta-nft-faked-online-after-original-creator-may-oswald-has-her-identity-stolen-by-imposter

This space desperately needs safeguards to prevent people from having their work stolen out from under them in fraudulent auctions, and we were able to verify that this auction was being conducted by Atsuko herself. If NFTs are going to exist, it's certainly better if they are being auctioned off by their actual creators, rather than imposters.

In this case, it's an NFT being auctioned by the actual owner of Doge with a significant portion of the proceeds going to charity. Atsuko is also an awesome woman. We didn't reach out to her to do sell Doge and we didn't put together this auction, we simply verified that she is who she says she is and are happy to do so.

Glad you addressed this. I was scrolling through Twitter and found that KYM curated and retweeted the tweet regarding the NFT for Doge. I, like many others, have glaring issues against NFTs and seeing the main hub having some form of interaction with this kind of transaction was very concerning.

Glad you explained it. However the disabling the comments on the announcement itself was a poor decision on your part. I can't speak for everyone else but I personally felt like it was an attempt on your end to avoid criticism.

I still don't like it.

"If NFTs are going to exist, it's certainly better if they are being auctioned off by their actual creators, rather than imposters."
But they shouldn't exist, that's the whole issue. By certifying the seller, you're helping the sale of NFTs, thereby helping make NFTs legitimate. Don't act like a neutral party in this, because you're not.

Also lmao at you mentioning charity, but leaving out the fact that the bidding is done in ETH, which means the environmental concerns of NFTs are fully relevant here. You could've at least tried to sell it on one of those """"clean energy"""" NFT sites

In terms of the environmental impact of NFTs, I'm no expert, but Jamie Dubs shared this article with me that I think you should take a look at if you've been convinced that NFTs have a huge carbon footprint:
http://sterlingcrispin.blogspot.com/2021/02/crypto-art-sky-is-not-falling.html

In particular, take a look at this graph comparing Bitcoin and Ethereum to our other C02 output:

That said, I'm no expert and I'm not a crypto evangelist either, but the scale of this does put it into perspective.

Well, that is certainly a much better story than what was presented on the first article and should have mentioned that there to begin with. The disclaimer is appreciated.

I still do not fully trust anything regarding NFTs that much, but knowing that KYM's involvement is moreso that of a third party changes things drastically for sure, and if the "significant portion" part of the charity proceeds is true, then maybe it will be worth it. Maybe.

This does beg the question, though: just how effective NFTs truly are at authenticating anything if people can still impersonate and fake them like with any other thing..? That is their whole allegued point, after all. But I suppose that is not really our problem here and is more a shower thought, if anything.

As for the environmental impact part, I would rather not jump to conclusions either, but I will say that "it contaminates less than industrial work so it's fine" as the main point of defense is just "it kills less than the common flu so it's fine" used in a new context. Like I said, I am not really sold on NFTs being harmless, but you did explain KYM's actual involvement on this effectively, so I guess that is good enough from a pragmatic standpoint.

I just hope Kabosu's owner knows what she is doing and this whole business is a net positive for all involved in the end.

The graph means nothing, of course bitcoin and ethereum pale in comparison, because not everyone uses those yet, but everyone relies on agriculture. An actually useful measure would be if you compared the co2 output of a crypto transaction compared to a regular transaction.

Look at that. Ethereum consumes over 10,000 times more energy than a credit ard. Per transaction!

Also, the energy use of bitcoin as a whole is comparable to an entire country

Even the article you cite admits that Proof of Work, which is what Ethereum uses, is a bad system. It points out that Eth2 uses Proof of Stake instead, so since you're aware of the environmental impact, are you using that for this doge auction?

>It points out that Eth2 uses Proof of Stake instead, so since you're aware of the environmental impact, are you using that for this doge auction?

The Ethereum 2.0 update is in the development pipeline without an official release date, but is expected in 2022. It will replace the old version when it launches. If all goes as planned it should solve both the energy consumption problem and the scalability issues.