NFTs beyond Hype: Cultural Value, Labor, and LongTerm Market Stabilization
Kagaba Amina G.
Faculty of Business, Kampala International University, Uganda
ABSTRACT
This paper examines non-fungible tokens (NFTs) beyond speculative hype, focusing on their cultural value, labour structures, and prospects for long-term market stabilisation. It argues that NFTs function as technological primitives that enable the attribution, ownership, and exchange of digital cultural artefacts through blockchainbased provenance systems. While often framed primarily as financial instruments, NFTs also operate as cultural infrastructures that encode identity, community participation, and creative expression across art, music, gaming, and digital media ecosystems. The study highlights how value in NFT systems emerges not only from market dynamics but also from labour-intensive processes of creation, curation, and platform governance. It further explores how labour is distributed across artists, collectors, curators, developers, and communities, revealing complex hierarchies shaped by platform economies and speculative incentives. In addressing market stabilisation, the paper analyses liquidity, speculation, and price discovery as central mechanisms shaping NFT volatility, while also considering regulatory, institutional, and infrastructural developments that may support more sustainable ecosystems. Ultimately, it contends that NFTs should be understood as socio-technical systems where cultural meaning, economic exchange, and labour relations intersect, and that their long-term relevance depends on whether these dimensions can be balanced beyond cycles of hype and collapse.
Keywords: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Cultural value; Digital labour, Blockchain provenance, and Market stabilization.
CITE AS: Kagaba Amina G. (2026). NFTs beyond Hype: Cultural Value, Labor, and Long-Term Market Stabilization. IDOSR JOURNAL OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES 12(1):94-101.
https://doi.org/10.59298/IDOSRJAH/2025/12194101