Thanks for the input!

I am not on any side - I am on the fence because I could not find good evidence for or against and I generally don't get into something just because it's trendy. My original plan was to wait until ETH 2.0 rolled out, but with all the new non PoW platforms (NFTs or other) I thought it would be worth poking into this again before 2022.

I still think the PoW vs PoS argument has some weight, beyond the energy consumption (as in gas fees) - so if I had a choice between an ETH main net platform and something that bridged over to Polygon to cut fees, I would still pick the latter.

In terms of the fine art market, I never said there is an issue with selling for less - the issue is being cut off the circle if one is not well known or an insider. I have seen a few smaller artist having success and that was encouraging, but it seemed to be the exception. Some incredibly talented folks I know ended up falling flat simply because they were out of the loop, which was a shame.

There is intrinsic value in things - the way I see it is like comparing a project that has real use cases (something like ETH that has a whole ecosystem and countless use cases) vs a hyped meme coin (SHIB?) that spikes when people suddenly buy en masse (but will also fall quickly once the frenzy fades). What I meant was, is there a way to create materials that have real use for the average art or NFT enthusiast or artist? Can this go beyond collecting? There are interesting cases for using NFTs, such as ticketing or community, governance and membership management.

What I am asking is, can this grow into something more tangible for the average user now that the frenzy has subsided?