This is a great breakthrough for me as today I listed my first artwork at Opensea NFT gallery. I have others available on Hive blockchain at www.nftshowroom.com but this one is the first of my works on sale for Ethereum. I was always reluctant before but now I have found a solution to avoid the bad ETH gas fees that the miners are extorting. I’m using the MATIC Polygon sidechain linked to the Ethereum blockchain. 

![Who's the bigger dragon thumbnail.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/julianhorack/EoEoeEVWvS5jwFy9h6buGjzyiqgedbYF9CzCSzTdHvX8JRsciQnQNsrHekMtcVXhUyA.jpg)

At last there is a decent solution to what I believe is not good practice on Ethereum. The miners are charging way too much in gas fees for any little transaction on the Ethereum blockchain and it must end soon. Hopefully the move away from PoW to PoS on Ethereum will come soon and remove those unscrupulous miners who are extorting us. 

Well I don’t have to wait any longer because MATIC Polygon have provided the solution for me that is just about free of gas fees. I can now upload and mint my NFT artwork at Opensea NFT gallery via their site https://mintnft.today/. This is such good news for small retail traders, collectors and artists like me. Here in the third world of sunny South Africa and elsewhere naturally, our currency is much weaker than the dollar (ZAR14=$1) and so those fees were prohibitive. I was never going to pay the miners simply to list my artwork that may not even sell.

The NFT space is perhaps cooling off, especially with the current market crash and cryptocurrency price retracement. And there are many artworks to choose from, so I don’t expect a massive interest in this niche art market of NFT collectibles.
 
Nevertheless, as an artist I am creating all the time simply because I love making artworks. Now this year for the first time I can actually put them up for sale thanks to the NFT revolution and blockchain technology. Some have already sold at Hive’s NFTshowroom.

However, the Hive blockchain is underutilized and has much less engagement than the Ethereum blockchain, and Opensea is where the vast majority of NFTs are sold today. So I have been aiming to launch my artworks at that gallery and today the official launch has arrived. I have minted my first artwork there called “Who is the bigger dragon?”. It is in my usual style which consists of handmade paper collage composition, made from found pictures and using scissors and glue. I then scan the paper artwork and upload it to mint as an NFT. This is, in other words, a unique creation using old school manual hand made paper collage plus cutting edge digital minting as a non-fungible token on the blockchain. 

The collage depicts three nations – China, Russia and Switzerland – via their currencies or other imagery, and consists of dragons or massive reptiles all vying for some coin, or treasure of some sort. The theme is that of giant reptiles competing for currency domination. One may think he is the bigger one but another may be lurking unnoticed all along. 

It’s much the same in cryptocurrency trading and investing. There is always going to be a bigger whale to outdo your trading when you are a retail day trader or hodler like me. The whales compete and manipulate the market all the time, pushing the price of your coin up or down at their whim. And we are like small fish trying to capture some little gains beside them along the way. The entire political space globally is dominated by massive whales or dragons (especially in the case of China) constantly at war for global reserve currency domination, as well as financial and political domination. 

This collage artwork may actually be quite controversial because it shows some CCP (Communist party of China) iconography and imagery. I wonder if they will ban it one day and track me down as an activist and dissident who is making satirical fun of the CCP? They are one of the biggest dragons, about to take over the world allegedly. Let’s see how long it takes them to find my artwork. At least the blockchain is not censored and allows free speech. The best form of activism for social awareness is through art of any sort, whether visual, musical or performance.

Switzerland is also seen in today’s NFT artwork, since they have always been a global financial dominant player. They never went on to the EURO with the rest of the EU and still have their own currency. They have always been a safe haven for whales to park their money, and Swiss banks have sheltered all sorts of war criminals and their ill-gotten gains.

To utilize the MATIC network I added a small amount of 1 MATIC token to my Metamask wallet. You simply change the setting at the very top of the Metamask wallet to the Matic Mainnet and add 1 MATIC token for it to work. Here is a post with more details for you https://leofinance.io/@agr8buzz/how-to-use-the-matic-network-with-metamask. 

Today’s NFT artwork is a single edition minting so only one exists, besides the original paper artwork which I have, and I have priced it at 0.2ETH. I put many hours into the creation process and it is unique in that it’s hand made. So my time and skill will be worth this price tag. You can view the NFT on Opensea here to buy it: https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x36a8377e2bb3ec7d6b0f1675e243e542eb6a4764/236  Let me know what you think in the comments below.