cryptAngeles community gathering at Hangar 8 hosted by Kyle Schember and B Creative 

[photo: skidrowcrypto]

 

There’s a web3 social movement happening in Los Angeles, and if you haven’t observed — it’s not just about connecting your wallet; it’s about connecting people in search of belonging.

 

Among the many crypto communities forming across the globe, Los Angeles is best suited to become the most innovative, inspiring, and engaging of them all. This is because LA is arguably the most famous city in America that consistently attracts and retains the world’s top talent. With an abundance of sun, scenery, and nightlife, Los Angeles welcomes cultures, languages, and traditions from all over the world. Southern California is also home to some of the safest cities, and although California’s population is rising, its unemployment rate is falling. All of the state’s wealthiest communities are found in coastal areas where career opportunities abound, and almost half of the state’s billionaires come from tech.

 

 

Community development is essential to establish the foundation a city builds upon to improve the lives of those who show up, participate, and contribute. Community builders are working hard every day to introduce Angelenos to blockchain technology; its premise of sovereignty and empowerment, the potential to solve real-world problems, and the hope for equity and inclusion within its trustless code. Among the many influencers at the forefront of blockchain conversation both online and off, a growing number of web3 projects — onboarding initiatives, co-working, and co-living spaces, and social clubs, have been formed and founded for the purpose of uniting like minds to further indoctrinate, educate, and collaborate.

 

New Friendship Tech [photo: Preston Thalindroma]

 

According to Ben Spievak, co-founder of NEOREN.io, “Community is an organized group of people whose combined efforts build or achieve something great.” NEOREN (Neo-Renaissance) emphasizes health and wellness among its core values, which include higher consciousness and spirituality. “People in a community should genuinely care about each other as individuals to become friends, spend more time together, and help one another grow,” Spievak said. NEOREN carefully curates its members to assist artists and innovators by hosting exhibits and events that appeal to an audience of qualified collectors and investors. By hosting sober events in high-value locations like Beverly Hills and Malibu, NEOREN achieves a level of social sophistication that offers a much-needed alternative to the countless deejay-driven warehouse parties the crypto community is all-too-familiar with.

 

The biggest misunderstanding is what it takes to invest in a community; establish trust, and earn the trust of the people. The crypto community has experienced plenty of cash-grab projects and events by producers who would rather extract from the community than sustain its growth. Discerning the difference is remarkably intuitive; you can literally feel the disingenuous tone in the way such events are marketed; if the community feels adequately represented from the bottom up, and whether or not the cost of participation alienates the very people these events are supposed to benefit.

 

Eric ‘Motivate’ Spivak at New Friendship Tech [photo: Preston Thalindroma]

 

Relationships and rapport are everything,” says Eric ‘Motivate’ Spivak, co-founder of NFTs.tips. For more than a decade, Motivate has sharpened his instincts and honed his ability to allure Angelenos from the comfort of their homes, into their cars, and through daunting traffic to venues and stages across Southern California and beyond. Since 2010, his agency has produced over 500 events featuring thousands of performers in fashion, arts and music. Most recently, Motivate organized New Friendship Tech, a 3-day community alternative to NFT LA to welcome those who felt marginalized by happenings at the LA Convention Center. “I’ve always found myself dedicated to breaking down walls and shattering glass ceilings,” he said. Through participating sponsors like Harmony One, Giant Connect, ISA Group, Proof of Good DAO, and Nifter, Motivate eliminates economic barriers to entry and participation by making unique and original programming freely accessible for those who simply RSVP. Sponsorships make a big difference by adding value and reducing organizational costs; Urconduit leverages its ties to venues and its familiarity among vendors to form alliances that become the essential ingredients to facilitate successful events. “The opportunity to show people the way, or to expand their understanding and perspective, has always been extremely appealing to me,” Motivate said.

 

Gifdead [photo: skidrowcrypto]

 

When it comes to community building, Nifty Castle leads by example. Founded by multidisciplinary artists Gifdead and Woahboy, Nifty Castle is first and foremost a community of artists supporting each other. Having supported 1-of-1 artists like Henric Aryee over a year ago, to launching generative art collections like Deebies, and most recently the gender inclusive WitchyGF, the Nifty Castle community has exemplified consistent persistence and tireless tenacity. Gifdead and Woahboy never shy away from hard work; they rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty to build a durable and lasting community they’re both proud of. “Even though community is, by nature, a collective, it’s about establishing one-to-one relationships, and then scaling that, which doesn’t happen quickly,” Gifdead emphasized. In fact, it took 5 months for Deebies to sellout, and to the community’s benefit, the diligence required to convert passive observers into avid supporters one collector at a time built a zealous community and ecosystem that continues to grow and thrive. “Throwing good events is a lot of work,” he said. “It’s a grind, and it’s really taxing—especially when you have a small team like ours,” he added. Like Urconduit, Nifty Castle has been active and present in producing community-driven events parallel to major blockchain conferences in several cities. In addition to Gabe-A-Palooza in Los Angeles, Nifty Castle has hosted events around Art Basil Miami Beach, NFT NYC, and ETH Denver. “We’re out here doing this so the community has some cool spots where they can go hang out, meet each other, and create meaningful, memorable experiences,” Gifdead said.

 

Andreas Knüttel [photo: skidrowcrypto]

 

Vanity metrics will never supplant real community. There is strength in numbers, yet numbers often lie — ask anyone who develops and applies statistical and mathematical theories. Social ‘influence’ is often overemphasized when those who attempt to leverage it lack the contextual understanding of its portability to be effectively transferred. However, data can be analyzed and utilized to optimize communities, and organizers like Andreas Knüttel are utilizing its inherent value to inform groups and distribute shared resources. Known in cryptAngeles as a community overseer, Knüttel embodies Visa’s retired slogan, “…everywhere you want to be.” This is a fitting reference because, over the past 10 years, Knüttel has lived in Switzerland, California’s Sonoma Valley, Hawaii, and now cryptAngeles. His first blockchain experience was in 2016 when he earned $150 for posting to the social media/blogging platform Steemit. With more than a decade of experience managing data for social events, Knüttel is now uniquely positioned to direct local and international artists, collectors, web3 entrepreneurs, and investors with golden opportunities to dialogue among like minds.

 

Gabriel Paxton, CEO of NEOREN and Col. (Ret) Arnold V. Strong [photo credit: skidrowcrypto]

 

“People who view a growing community as a numbers game are making a mistake. It’s easy to run lead generation ads and grow the number of members in your Discord, but that’s useless. Community growth should happen naturally because the members truly love the experience they’re having and want to share it with their friends,” Ben Spievak said.

 

Both virtual and IRL communities require the same growth strategies to make them sustainable. “Like IRL events, virtual communities shouldn’t be perceived as a one-way marketing channel; it’s a space for community conversation. It’s a feedback loop and a symbiotic relationship,” says Gifdead. “To build the most valuable community, you’re not going to be relegated to online or IRL; you reach across as many different channels and venues as possible.”

 

Randy Levy, Gifdead and Kyle Schember [photo: skidrowcrypto]

 

“Online communities are very transactional — whereas real-world communities are more about the emotional and spiritual benefits,” Ben Spievak noted. “At NEOREN, we’re bridging the two by creating a token gated online community with real-world events and social gatherings, because, in web3, everyone can be friends. People get stuck in the idea that money is the goal. Happiness is the real goal,” he emphasized.

 

Welcome to cryptAngeles, where a web3 Neo-Renaissance is changing the way communities gather, interact and prosper. There’s a wealth of knowledge and an abundance of human capital to welcome your talents and embrace your ambition IRL.

Share this article:

[addtoany]

Popular NFT brand, Bored Ape Yacht Club, is in talks with venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, to lead a funding round of about $5 billion to raise their valuation, according to the Financial Times. The deal is still a work in progress as no terms have been agreed upon but will surely be one to watch out for.

 

Although BAYC has yet to comment on the negotiations officially, they have previously said they plan to create a strong brand and hand it over to the community. Another source, NFTNick.eth, told his Twitter followers that this would likely be huge for the NFT industry as it will validate the NFT business model if this deal comes to life and the news gets out.

 

Crypto companies generally utilize funding to expand their businesses and scale their operations globally. For example, back in 2013, When Coinbase was valued at $143 million, it received about $20 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. It is currently valued at $86 billion. Even successful brands like BAYC require external funding to grow faster than what investments from their own profits can achieve. BAYC receiving VC funding will allow the brand to expand its business, and you will expect its valuation to increase in the future as the demand for BAYC NFTs continues to grow.

 

Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 uniquely generated cartoon images of ape NFTs, went viral in 2021 even before prominent celebrities like Eminem, Stephen Curry, and Jimmy Fallon, amongst others, bought them. The frenzy does not end with merely acquiring a Bored Ape NFT, as ownership connects you to many celebrities and popular influencers who are members of this club. The number of celebrities ‘aping in’ is increasing every week.

 

Bored Ape NFTs, which were minted on the Ethereum blockchain, has recorded more than 393,000 in trading volume and have at least 6300 owners on OpenSea, with the lowest priced Bored Apes selling for about 18.5 ETH at the time of writing. Yuga labs, the team behind BAYC, has remained committed to growing the BAYC brand even further, and this potential deal with Andreessen Horowitz is a testament to their resolve.

 

 

Who is Andreessen Horowitz?

 

Andreessen Horowitz is an investment company based in Silicon Valley, California, founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz in 2009, commonly known as A16z. The company has more than $28b in assets, with investments spanning from Crypto and Fintech to Healthcare.

 

A16z invests in companies across different stages of growth, from seed to startups, mid and late stages. They boast of a strong track record of having backed highbrow companies like Coinbase, Airbnb, Github, and Slack, transforming the then small businesses into giants.

 

A16z are not newcomers in the crypto space. In June 2021, the company announced a $2.2 billion fund to invest in crypto founders, teams, and networks. In addition, the Financial Times reported on plans by Andreessen Horowitz to raise more than $4.5 billion for crypto investments this year, doubling last year’s figures. A16z has been investing in crypto since 2013 and has shown interest in decentralized finance, Web3, creator funds, and the next-generation payment methods.

Share this article:

[addtoany]

 

David: For everybody reading right now, I’m here with Steven Vasilev of RTFKT, and we’re here today to talk about his upcoming avatar project, which I’m very excited to talk about. Steven, how are you doing today, and what should the people expect coming up soon? 

 

Steven: I’m doing good! Well, it’s going to be the next evolution of avatar projects. We’re trying to do everything in our power to take the game into its next stage of evolution in terms of design, quality, and utility. So we’re super excited. We’ve been working very hard the last three or four months on this project. It’s super ambitious, which people will see when we release it, and I’m excited to tell you more of what we’ve been working on. 

 

D: Awesome. So we’ve seen a lot of attempts at avatar projects over the past few months, but I know that you guys always do things differently. How do you feel about the concept of the open metaverse and using multiple solutions for virtual worlds? How are you guys taking advantage of the current platforms that exist in this upcoming activation?

 

S: So we see day by day, the metaverse is evolving. We’re taking the crypto native approach, so we’re working with platforms and games, such as Sandbox and Decentraland, to provide day one utility for the avatars and also other products that we release. We’re actually in talks with big triple-A game publishers to also begin the conversations of moving into this NFT ownership reality. So we’re right at the forefront of what’s possible, and we’re trying to push the limits to create what we envision where these assets become interoperable and can be used in different environments. 

 

D: I love that. So I know you guys have been partners with a lot of these “metaverses,” especially the XR verses that currently exist like Decentraland and Sandbox, for quite some time. For people who are reading who might not be so familiar with the process, walk us through how you guys take advantage of wearables, especially through Decentraland. I’ve been a big fan of the way that you guys operate in the wearable space- but I would love to hear your intro to people who might not be so familiar with XR “verses” and how they can add value to an NFT purchase.

 

S: For sure. So with us, how we approach this is: we release and sell an NFT. We treat NFTs as passports into experiences. For example, with a cyber-sneaker NFT from RTFKT, we have different utilities that we add. So we’re most known for allowing physical redemption of the sneakers. In addition to that, we also airdrop- which is the process of dropping in a free NFT to someone’s wallet- Decentraland and/or Sandbox wearables. So they can express their identity and ownership of that NFT across different worlds. We’re openly and actively exploring as many different possibilities and ecosystems as possible. We did something recently with Avatsars, an avatar company where you can create your own avatar and export it into different games like VR chat. So as more and more publishers and ecosystems open up to the concept of NFTs and ownership, we want to be there to allow holders to showcase their identities or their products in as many different ways as they want. 

 

D: Absolutely- with the metaverse, a lovely conversation that I get to have quite often is how we’re moving past base identity. We can now be whoever and look however we’d like, when we’re expressing our genuine selves. So with this project coming up, what are you excited about in terms of people being able to express themselves differently through these exciting characters?

 

S: Yeah. So we’re huge fans of anime, and we feel like anime spans this culture that we’re in very heavily. Before crypto punks or the current avatar projects, the founders and I, and loads of friends, always had profile pictures of our favourite anime characters. So that was the general gist of why we chose to do an anime project. The second thing we’ve done is that everything’s 3D modelled. So we’ve done over 200 traits, and we calculated that we can generate over a billion unique 3D assets. This is a big task, and if you look at all the leaks we’ve revealed so far, the quality is video game triple-A studio. Chris, our Creative Director, who comes from the video game and skin industry, assembled a team of veteran game designers, and we put a lot of work into polishing every single one of the 200 traits to look good. Another thing that people don’t realize while looking at the avatars is that doing 3D anime is very difficult. A lot of companies fail when making them because anime is known for its 2D style, and we managed to perfect the image where it still looks like a 2D anime character but fully 3D. Having the 3D models for all the traits allows us to plug into metaverses and have the 3D models ready for use. So that’s what we’re experimenting with, and the main goal was to make the best visual-looking avatar project that’s on the market. We all love how they look, and the community reception to the leaks has been insane- so we’re excited about it. 

 

D: One of the most exciting things about your team as a company is the way that you guys advertise by integrating elements of the metaverse into the real world through the power of AR. So I did see your most recent Instagram posts and some of your recent teasers. Again, using the AR filters in real situations, I would love to hear from your perspective how that idea came about and how it’s been so effective for you as a brand for some people who might not be aware.

 

S: For sure. Benoit, the other co-founder of RTFKT, comes from gaming, and he’s been very deep in tech. So has Chris, in terms of AR and LIDAR and new technologies that are becoming sort of mainstream. And for us, since inception, we’ve always been big believers in AR as a technology, especially with the Snapchat lenses that are coming out, Apple’s glasses, etc. And we believe that it will take one big giant like Apple to mainstream either technology. So right now, how we see it is coming from the sneaker industry itself. Sneakers have become tradable assets, similar to why we do NFT sneakers, because the whole process can be simplified. If people buy sneakers, take a picture to post on their Instagram or social media to show that they have that item,  they can then flip it and sell it. So we allow that same function. So if you buy one of our NFTs, and you don’t want the physical item for some reason, you can still create content using AR. We’ve partnered with Snapchat to allow people to have these experiences. So when our new website comes out, it will be clear that owners of the NFTs can access exclusive AR filters to showcase and create content, which is another form of self-expression. We’re big believers in AR, and right now, we’re filming our vision project, which should be coming out by the end of the year, which is our vision of what the future of NFTs and AR is going to look like. So that’s a really big project to keep an eye out for. 

 

D: Before we get deeper into the future of AR and the future of the metaverse, I would love to talk again about this project and how you guys are playing with identity, because you were mentioning the power of these AR filters and how we can use them in the real world. But I also do think that as we create the metaverse through AR, virtually people will really start using wearables, and especially avatar projects, as their identities. So with this upcoming project- do you see people buying these as not just their PFPs, but also as their new identities?

 

S: That’s why we went for the avatar project- because we have seen people, how they create communities, and we experienced it ourselves. When we started the company, we bought punks, and we were welcomed into the punk community- which is an amazing community. And we really liked the concept of people using our punks as identifiers, right? So that was the way we went for our avatars. Our goal is for people to use these avatars as their identities. The brand we’ve created that’s releasing this project has a storyline that’s set in this whole concept of identity and what the future of identity could look like. And we expect, with the utility that we’re planning to integrate into multiple virtual worlds, to also provide the 3D models for our users to download, rig into games, or mod into games- also Vtubing! The models eventually will be rigged so people can use these avatars to Vtube and create their own content or Twitch streams using their virtual identity. So we think that’s a big part. We’re also trying a lot of innovative mechanics in terms of the smart contract and functionalities.

 

D: I recently had a call with Whale Shark, and he definitely does the Vtubing thing- he has this whole custom avatar, and it’s amazing to see what that stage of the future is going to look like. So I’m really excited to see that and what the newest level of unlockable content will look like from RTFKT. You guys have done an amazing job of creating community around successful projects. Like your partnership with the punks, your partnership with apes, etc. So I would love to hear, from your perspective, how those kinds of conversations came about, and how that helped dictate this very identity-driven avatar project. 

 

S: Yeah, so it comes down to the nature of our brand. We’re a creative-led brand, a community-led brand, and an open-source brand. So the way we approach things is for and by the community. An example of this is for the avatar presale; we’re dropping 20,000- so we made 10,000 exclusively available to our NFT holders. So if you own an RTFKT NFT, you can mint up to three for 0.05 ETH, which is about $150 USD; and what that caused was over 14 million in secondary sales, and our floor price went from, I think, 1 ETH  to 7 or 8 ETH now. So we’re generating a lot of wealth for our community- we always put them first. And in regards to partnerships, we’ve been contacted by literally every brand, including many that we aspired to work with. And we have a very strict approach. We, 1. Check if they’re native to our community or represent who we are as creators, 2. Make sure that we will have the creative freedom and control and that we don’t have to go through marketing departments, and 3. We can put our brains together; can we do something that we couldn’t do individually? So why we focus on the crypto community is we believe it’s a very powerful community. It’s a small group of people that together can achieve big things, and they all exist under the same mentality of building this open metaverse and the only way we can achieve such a concept like this is together. So we find it better to collaborate internally within the community and pick exclusive brands or brands that we admire and we think that we can do something big for the community to collaborate with, so that’s sort of our analogy and how we approach the market.

 

D: I love the way that you guys go about it. One other thought- I know you have a deep rooting in anime but I would love to hear if there’s any specific reference point there that you guys come back to in terms of the future? I know you mentioned Ready Player One, but is there any personal reference point for your team of the future that you would like to see? 

 

S: It comes down to the three founders, we all have different films and animes that inspire us and that we bring together like Matrix and Galleon, we sort of combine everything and just create who we believe will fit into what we want the future to be. And why I think it’s really amazing in the NFT spaces, avatar projects have become people’s identities, and a lot of people have gained confidence in not being their real selves. So someone could say I’m the “Wizard of NFTs” and put their picture as a punk, create their own storyline. So we’ve seen, like you said, adults, showing off their childish side, creating these storylines and expressing themselves in new ways. And that’s really deep-rooted in our avatar project. We’ve created a bunch of traits that allow people to showcase different identities. We’ve also made it non-gendered in the sense that you can choose to have a male or female body. We don’t define the sex of the face; they all use the same base head but have features that can differentiate them. So we’re really trying to build something that’s already set in the future and create the norms that we want to see. And I feel like that’s our role in this place, to innovate and test things out and help guide our community and what we’re building into the future we want to create.

 

 

D: That is so excellent. I think it’s the idea of identity and being more transparent about who you really are. It’s interesting because, through an avatar project, it seems like you’d be concealing your identity but often, when we have an avatar on- we’re more authentically ourselves because we’re not worried about being judged by others because we have this intermediary, like a wall being the avatar between your physical self, and your identity online, which I think is really exciting. 

 

I would love to get a message from you, just for the other people who are operating the space, about how important it is to facilitate and even delay projects or work a little bit harder to make sure that they are on-chain and to make sure they are open source. 

 

S: Yeah, I feel like as awareness increases in the space, the importance of on-chain data will be crucial because there are some projects, for example, where they’re not fully on-chain. So that means you could spend $100,000 on an NFT, and then they go one day and change the image to a meme frog, right? So there are these sorts of scenarios. I think a good example of this is from Chris; he comes from the steam industry of game skins, and there was a scenario where someone’s account got locked by steam, and he had millions of dollars of skins in there, and he committed suicide, and that was a horrible thing. And that shows how important it is for you to actually have true ownership where the item can’t be changed if the company goes bust, for example. The servers go offline, and you lose everything. We also saw it with Nifty Gateway. All the NFTs that are held on the platform are in Nifty’s wallet, right? So if something bad happened to the company, if they lost the wallet, your NFTs are gone. 

 

So, ownership is super key, and that’s why we’re seeing such a boom. Decentralization as well is key to the whole industry, and that’s what we keep super native to our brand. All of our advertisers are on-chain, and it’s kind of annoying because we had ideas of interoperability and evolutive items (where the images change), but we chose not to do that just to stay fully decentralized. So I think as time progresses, there will be advancements in terms of how much can be on-chain and how much can be off-chain, because there are some limitations to having everything on-chain.

 

D: It’s always easier via metadata, and it always has been.

 

S: Exactly, I think it depends really on the company as well, that’s interacting with the space and what their goals are because for some artists, maybe having their data on-chain isn’t the most crucial part of the ecosystem or what they’re building. But I do agree that the future is definitely on-chain. People need to own what they pay for, and I feel like that’s what’s so revolutionary about the space, especially the royalties. Having lifetime royalties is a concept familiar to many game-skin designers, but to the majority of the world, they haven’t experienced that. And especially for artists, it’s groundbreaking to be able to profit off the work you’ve created after an event has happened that has caused your work to appreciate in value or your talent is recognized. So I think that’s very crucial.

 

We’d like to thank Steven for taking the time to do this interview. For more information on RTFKT, Steven, and Project Akira, feel free to look through the links below: 

 

Steven’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/zaptio?lang=en

 

RTFKT’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/RTFKTstudios

 

RTFKT’s Discord: https://discord.com/invite/rtfkt

 

Project Akira Teaser: https://twitter.com/RTFKTstudios/status/1442188635101663233

 

Share this article:

[addtoany]

A modern-day zen garden opened this past Friday, October 1st, at the Fort York Historic Site in Toronto, Canada. Contemporary artist Krista Kim brings her vision of wellness to the world via CONTINUUM: a meditative 20-minute generated animation aimed at improving mental health through active self-care participation.

A freestanding 100-foot video wall will showcase the magnificent video installation that was part of an exhibit curated by Steve Aoki; and sold through Sotheby’s auction house the night before its debut as an NFT for $113,400 USD. The large-scale piece is a collaboration between Kim, Efren Mur, and American rock musician and guitarist for the Smashing Pumpkins Jeff Schroeder. Shroeder brought the art to life with soothing, melodic acoustics, and also performed live intermittently throughout the 4-day exhibition. 

 

The project was born in 2017 as a result of Kim’s three-year Japanese sojourn. According to Kim:

 

“I would visit a Ryōan-ji temple garden in Kyoto three or four times a year because this is the place where I had my artistic epiphany. In this space I learned that art and the environment become a mirror of the mind. What you see becomes a part of you. It was beautifully manicured, very minimalist with lots of negative space between the stones and so you realize that the negative space imbues consciousness into the viewer. And I knew, in that moment, that I wanted to create zen consciousness through my art.”

 

Kim, who practices meditation herself and says she is, “sensitive to matters of mental health and wellness,” admits it’s a natural extension of her practice. In this way it was always her vision to bring this concept to individuals and their communities at large through a movement she has coined “techism”- promoting the confluence of art and technology as a medium to further the development of digital humanism during this unique period of technological innovation, adaptation, and disruption. 

 

According to Kim:, “I wrote the manifesto because I was feeling my attention span dissipate. I was always distracted by my digital devices and social media. And if I was experiencing this constant disruption of focus and energy, then billions of people around the world must be feeling the same way. I thought it was important for art and philosophy to enter the realm of technology in order to create balance and make it more humane.”

 

 

With her Digital Consciousness series, Kim gathers massive walls of LED lights to digitally paint and manifest her artworks. The immersive experience sets out to facilitate the feeling of meditativeness by producing an effect of decompression and calm through colour and sound. Kim says she was stunned and surprised by the outpouring of support for the project, “People spent hours in our space because they were given permission to be vulnerable and to heal. They would actually say to me, ‘I needed this.’”

 

As to the role NFTs played with the project and the future of the rapidly evolving space, Kim is quick to point out that they can provide a much greater benefit than most people realize. She references the fact that in our modern-day society we have very little connection to community: 

 

“The functionality NFTs provide in terms of giving the control and dominion back to the artists will be a game-changer because we will see artists start to reinvest back into the communities that they are a part of. This project is a wonderful example of how we can start a movement through that power. I’d like to demonstrate and showcase to the world that NFTs can actually lift humanity up in this way.”

 

This is just the start of what Kim hopes to accomplish. Even though someone now owns the celebrated video as an NFT, as the artist she owns the copyright and says she never sells the usage rights for her works. The exhibit returns to Aranya China on October 15th, then on to Art Basel in Miami, Florida in December. Then who knows… She is planning a world tour of zen.

 

For more information or to view livestream, visit:

https://www.continuumtour.com/

 

The piece was live in Toronto, Canada, at the Fort York Historic Site, located at 250 Fort York Blvd., from October 1st to 4th, 2021.

Share this article:

[addtoany]

The Blockchain Games Conference (CGC) hosted its 9th virtual conferencing platform, Pine, from September 23rd to 24th. It is the blockchain equivalent of the annual Games Developers Conference (GDC), and their sponsors included key players, including DappRadar, Epik, Polygon, and many more. The CGC invites luminaries in the space to share their projects, debate the most up-to-date developments in the industry, and network with like-minded individuals on all things related to DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain games.

 

 

There was a golden thread of discussion that ran through the various panels and presentations of the two-day conference. NFT-based ownership of virtual assets in games is giving rise to social and economic growth in an open metaverse. It is evident that the community of blockchain gamers holds a purist view that a truly “open” metaverse must be decentralized and built on a Web3 foundation where true ownership is possible.

 

 

NFTs and blockchain games 

The conference was largely covering how these two titans of technomancy – blockchain and NFTs – dovetail as defining factors for the future of the metaverse. In Part 1 we explore how NFTs act as catalysts for creating communities that populate the metaverse. Part 2 considers how NFTs are shaping metaverse economies that are increasingly impacting the overall gaming industry. 

 

 

 

“NFTs are the keys to the metaverse,” says Amartya Pilaka, NFT lead at Polygon and Polygon Studios: the $100 million investment arm started by Polygon to bring games from Web2 to Web3 and help grow the NFT world in general.  “NFTs are revolutionary for gaming and the metaverse because of how closely they are tied together. The lines between these concepts are starting to blur and [are] translating into real money.” 

 

Apart from the renaissance in digital art caused by NFTs in 2021, blockchain games such as Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained have used NFTs to create a new genre of game design known as “play-to-earn.” While this model has been implemented in traditional video games, the concept of ownership of in-game assets as NFTs on a blockchain ledger that allows players to generate value that is transferable and immutable is revolutionary. Ownership does not vest in the users of traditional video games and value invested by a player such as time and/or money remains tied to a specific game or gaming platform. 

 

In Diablo 2, for example, this type of trading community was only achievable through third-party websites like d2jsp.org that use forum gold to facilitate trading. Unfortunately, these trading sites are legal grey areas and often require intermediaries to avoid scams. Blockchains allow users to have a distributed peer-to-peer network where non-trusting members can verifiably interact with each other without the need for a trusted authority. It’s all done through smart contracts in a trustless way. This model has proven successful for Axie Infinity, with secondary market sales already exceeding $2 billion. 

 

 

“I got involved in the NFT space at the start of the year, and what made me want to stay was actually the community,” Amartya Pilaka continued. “It’s a compelling narrative for artists, creators, and game developers to rally around great ideas and to have their community rally around them.”

 

Who comprises a gaming metaverse’s community? “There are five categories of people who can participate in a metaverse economy,” says Derek Lau, game director for Immutable. “Players, investors, content creators, developers, and people that integrate the virtual with the physical world.”  

 

Does this mean that a generation of gamers will achieve financial emancipation by grinding for gear? “What NFTs allow games to do,” Derek Lau suggests, “is enable everyone, not just players, to be part of the gaming experience. We’re beginning to see some people playing these games full-time, but we will also see people invest and build a business within the game as owners of NFTs.” Axie Infinity’s scholarship programs have been very successful in allowing people to be investors in the game. 

There are various ways apart from playing to get involved with blockchain games. Projects like Loot, where the NFTs are mere strings of words that represent possible in-game items, show just how interested people are in getting involved with the game development aspect of NFT projects. By owning a Loot NFT or AGLD (the underlying currency of the game), individuals can provide input towards the game’s creative direction, creating a sense of accountability between the players and the developers, which ideally leads to a sustainable ecosystem.

 

 

How can you get involved as a content creator? Co-founder and CEO at Alien Worlds, Sarojini McKenna, stated that “content creators can provide services into the metaverse, whether that be technical like data and analytics, distribution, art, lore, music or writing. New users need to realize that they need to contribute to the ecosystem to be part of it for the long term.”  

 

While it’s still early for NFTs, the blockchain gaming scene is playing an integral role in the mass adoption of NFTs into mainstream media. Blockchain games claim to scratch the itch left by the traditional video game industry, but onboarding non-crypto native users remains a barrier to entry for many companies. As the technologies and communities develop around these nascent metaverses, we can look forward to CyberKongz in Sandbox and many other NFT projects with gaming utilities on the horizon. 

 

For more on CGC and their sponsors:

 

CGC Official: https://www.cgc.one/

 

Polygon Studios: https://polygonstudios.com/

 

Epik Official: https://www.epik.gg/

 

DappRadar: https://dappradar.com/

 

 

Share this article:

[addtoany]

Parin Heidari is a multidisciplinary artist based in Italy. She draws single-line portraits ambidextrously. Before creating NFT art full-time, Parin worked as a creative director and graphic designer for 10 years in The Netherlands, Italy, and Iran. Parin studied painting in Iran and holds a BA in Industrial Design and Visual Communication from the Polytechnic University of Turin. She has been a featured artist on the front page of Opensea and has recently been announced as one of 40 artists included in TIME Magazines “Build a Better Future” NFT drop.

 

How did you make your start in the world as an artist? Did it begin with drawing? Were you formally trained or self-taught? 

 

I was born in Tehran in 1986. I have been an artist for 30 years. When I was three I started drawing and painting- and since then I have never stopped! I loved fantasy books and Sci-fi movies and I started going to art classes before going to school. I remember I loved telling stories full of robots and UFOs with my paintings. My mother’s cousin, who is an Iranian illustrator, was my first teacher- and when I was a kid, I always wanted to illustrate a children’s book like her. When I was 11 years old I continued my art journey by going to caricature courses and learned how to draw cartoons. I went to NODET (National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents) school in Tehran, Iran, which was a more scientific school. Almost all of the students were interested in science, but I always wanted to be an artist. Therefore I studied Fine Arts and later went on to study at Politecnico di Torino in Italy, graduating with a BA in Industrial Design and Visual Communication. I have lived a multicultural life which has always inspired my art. 

 

 

There is a simplicity to your drawings although they are bold and very sophisticated. What is your process in achieving this unique aesthetic? How/where did you develop this style and how do you approach a single drawing versus a series of drawings?

 

My online drawing journey started when I was in high school. I carried my sketchbook with me and became very fond of drawing daily from my surroundings. One-line drawings for me were the quickest way to capture my environment and the people in it, whether I was at a cafe, or on the bus, or even at a party; I was recording. Sometimes the pieces that I worked more on became the ones that are 1 of 1, but I really wanted to give the opportunity for anyone who wanted to collect my pieces the chance to own these works as well by creating editions of my series. It’s a maturation process that can be hurtful as it consists of letting go of something which I have created. However, it is also very demanding as the minimalism of one-line art requires a certain level of perfection and precision. Every element must have its place and its own intrinsic beauty.

 

There is so much passion and life behind each line in your portraits. Can you speak to the role poetry and emotion play in how you capture a human likeness with your technique? 

 

I use a single line with simple elements and colors to convey my own visualization of the deepest emotions we can feel as humans to make complex problems simple. The minimalist nature of a ‘one-line’ drawing requires a lot of precision and is a perfectionist’s nightmare. Every element has its own place and intrinsic visual authority within the image. Crafting a ‘one-line’ drawing is a visually rich and rather complex experience. It’s a process that can be painful sometimes though as I have to ultimately give something away that’s so close to my heart.

 

 

Who were some of your earlier influences and artists you admire now? Tell me how their work speaks to you and influenced yours? 

 

Egon Schiele has been my biggest inspiration. I love the simplicity yet boldness in his drawings. Hamid Bahrami has always been a big inspiration to me, the technique and creativity of his pieces always surprises me. I love Chantel Martin’s work as well, she is great at showing the most meaningful concepts so simple yet stunning. Martin is a fellow one-liner and ambidextrous. I really like how delicate and strong his lines are. Donald Robertson is a great painter, I am amazed by the way he plays with colors and shapes. His humor and intelligence which can be seen both in his art and personal life is something that always amazes me. Heather Day is my other inspiration, she has an incredible approach to shapes and forms. I love the courage she has in the combination of colors, she never stops creating. 

 

When you brought your work into the NFT space did you anticipate your work would be so well received? You were a trending artist on Opensea and I imagine that was very exciting! 

 

[The] NFT space made me believe more in myself and my art. I have never experienced the potential of art, as I have seen in this space, it’s nothing like any other work experience. There’s no client work or deadlines. Because of the multicultural nature of NFTs, I have also connected with so many amazing artists from all over the world. It’s a great opportunity for everyone to be able to share the art they love and grow in it as well. I can finally be who I always wanted to be and I’ve finally become a full-time artist, and I’m so thankful for that. 

 

 

What are you currently working on?

 

I am working on some new drops and collaborations with some amazing artists in the NFT space, and I am going to be included in the FOMOLAND exhibition in Switzerland in October and a couple of other huge projects that I will announcing very soon.

 

To learn more about Parin, check out all her NFTs on TryShowtime, visit her website and follow her online:

Instagram: @parindesigns

Twitter: @ParinHeidari

Share this article:

[addtoany]

Opensea, the largest NFT platform by volume, has been failing in its responsibility to pay royalties for secondary sales on its platform. Similar reports from many reputable artists have become commonplace, indicating a pattern propagating on a wide scale. Claims from these artists have been verified with evidence. This failure on Opensea’s behalf spotlights a major issue in Opensea’s smart contract not distributing royalties automatically and, as a result, the unnecessary centralization that arises.

 

Royalty payments for secondary sales on Opensea are not paid out automatically. Their help center confirms this, stating payments happen on a monthly basis when an artist has “accumulated more than ~$60.00 worth of fees.” There are many instances of artists with balances far exceeding this minimum, many of which have been outstanding for months. This issue seems to have become more common recently, with reports of royalties not being received growing especially since August. 

Royalties are one of the cornerstone benefits of NFTs. The ability for sales to provide a continuous income to artists is revolutionary, enabling passive income for artists where none had existed before. This is not a functionality that Opensea innovated; it is a feature of the blockchain itself. Despite this, Opensea has chosen to undertake the process of paying royalties manually. Their smart contract does not address royalties at all, indicating that they are managed off-chain by the platform itself.

Photo Credit: Markus Winkler via Pexels

 

Managing royalties off-chain is an unnecessary implementation of centralization. The only benefit the system offers is to hold payments in order to send them in batches to avoid paying gas on too many occasions. However, this is something that could be managed more seamlessly by a smart contract. Instead, Opensea chooses to take the burden upon it’s shoulders manually, leading to situations like the one we are currently facing. 

 

An artist by the name of Lance Ren was in a Clubhouse room discussing this particular issue when Jen Stein pinged the CEO of Opensea into the room, Devin Finzer. He reportedly faced the group of angry users, and offered them his apologies in regards to the situation. According to Lance, Devin mentioned two reasons for the lack of forthcoming royalty payments: high gas fees and old architecture that has not scaled yet.

 

Assuming Devin’s response is truthful, this indicates a major failure on Opensea’s behalf. They have been quick to brag about the billions in sales they facilitate every month, but being the largest NFT marketplace comes with its responsibilities. This situation indicates that they are quick to relish in their successes, but lack the foresight to prepare for them. Did they not expect to become the biggest NFT marketplace?

This is an issue that must be addressed by Opensea immediately. Funds are being withheld from artists who worked hard for them. The platform does not lack in resources; the 2.5% it collects on sales on its platform equates to a $100 million profit for the month of August alone on its $3.4 billion in sales. Why a company so profitable would be so concerned with gas fees is difficult to envision.

 

 

Photo Credit: EpicThunderCat

 

Meanwhile, artists are missing out on funds they could use to improve their lives or their communities. This limits innovation and growth in the NFT space, as artists rely on their royalty payments; only to get them inconsistently, if at all. Commitments can be made that may be difficult to keep without this important revenue source, as is the case for EpicThunderCat, who was owed 1.1916 ETH over 109 secondary transactions.

 

“I’ve been doing a mental health game basically, and have some super intense plans, but I need them to pay me and it’s negatively impacting my community that they haven’t. I am going to pay my mods with the up front money this weekend because they shouldn’t be punished if Opensea doesn’t do their job; but it’s hard. My collectors and I have all voted on getting a decentraland property. I can’t do it unless they pay me.” – EpicThunderCat

 

EpicThunderCat was finally paid while we had been speaking to gather information for this article. This long-overdue payment corresponds to substantially lower gas fees this week than the week prior and lends to the case made by Devin. Many other artists we spoke to have received their long-awaited payments in the past week. 

Collectible art projects are also experiencing these issues. Rich Beeman from NiftyCastle says that their Deebies project has only ever received a single royalty payment – that was 7 weeks ago at the time of writing. The fact that this issue impacts high-volume projects, as well as individual artists, means that this is both a pattern and a systemic problem.

Photo Credit: Deebies by NiftyCastle

 

Most people do not believe it is out of malice that Opensea withholds payments. High gas fees would be a valid excuse if the system itself were acceptable, but the decision not to include royalties in the smart contract is a decision made entirely by Opensea, placing the burden of responsibility on their shoulders. If they choose to go against the ethos of the NFT space and centralize operations unnecessarily, the least they can do is bite the bullet when gas fees are high, and balance it out when they’re low. 

 

This serves as a reminder of the value decentralization offers: without a single point of failure, a system can continue to operate and overcome issues as a collective. Opensea’s decision to centralize their royalty payments creates a major dependency for NFTs minted on their platform. What if a major bullish announcement is made causing gas fees to spike and never go back down? If current behavior continues, payments may continue to be delayed, or even require fees from artists to be collected.

 

Furthermore, if Opensea ever fails for any reason, artists’ continued royalty payments may not be guaranteed. This is unnecessary and is by design. Artists and upcoming projects should consider this before minting directly on the platform, and consider the benefits a custom smart contract provides. We like NFTs for the permanence they offer. And if Opensea is going to detract from that permanence, we should at least be aware of it.

Share this article:

[addtoany]

“We’ve all grown in the digital era so seeing it not being appreciated in a fine art context is almost ludicrous”

 – Robness on Digital Art

 

 

My name is Lisa Leggz and as an infant in the crypto/NFT space I was immensely honored with the task of documenting David Cash’s interview with “Robness” in the INSTITUT clubhouse. I listened and learned about the pre-dawn of NFTs before they even had a name. Robness delved into the history of  when crypto was added to the formula adding value perspective, which gave digital art the room to shift into being recognized as an official art form as host David Cash sets it off with the first question…

 

David: How did you get started as a digital artist?

 

Robness: “Digital art has been in my blood ever since I was a kid…” Robness shares how expressing himself using photo applications has been a mainstay incorporated into his creative expression alongside his love for music since his childhood. “Luckily I was at the right place at the right time.  In 2014 I was in the Bitcoin space and mostly it was just trying the technology out. And at the time it was more so, everybody trying to make a go and trying out experiments, seeing what we can do with the blockchain.”

 

He went on to share that, as the years went on, there were many ups and downs with different bitcoin experiments- some taking flight and some falling flat. When the tokenization concept came about, for Robness, it was hard to stomach back then. With Bitcoin still grappling with the modalities of how the currency could be accepted worldwide, everyone else was in something of a frenzy until it evolved into the networks and organizations that came to be what we know now to be the NFTfi space.

 

David: Considering your mentality around art and the controversial and influential moves you made that paved your way from the very beginning, legitimizing  the NFT art space; how would you describe your relationship towards the term “Trash Art” now and do you still consider yourself a “Trash Artist?”

 

Robness: “O yea! Honestly most of the credit I give to pretty much everybody else that held some sort of symbiotic connection to it. For me it’s more trying to keep promoting artistic freedom in the space; and I think that’s the most important. To be honest, philosophically, I say it all the time but, seeing Bitcoin take off and be open source I think is one of the most important things that we should probably keep in our heart of hearts around this whole thing. Because if it was closed source, we wouldn’t have Ethereum, we wouldn’t have Tezos, we wouldn’t have Polkadot, or any of these offshoots.

 

So for me I consider myself an ‘open source artist,’ which is really radical. I’m not saying everybody should do it, but I just think for me it seems proper to do so, because I feel like keeping the information free and keeping art free. I mean it IS a remix culture and besides electronic music, hip hop is the biggest catalyst for that and I really like in terms of remix culture in the digital art format.

 

Saying all these things, I guess the trash thing is kind of a reaction to that, And even though it was a trash can that was the catalyst for the art piece, I think people understood… The artists actually understood. They understood what I meant with that, and they felt like they needed to express themselves in that light, and I’m totally indebted to them for that- they’re all family to me now… It’s wild to see something like that grow. And almost every day I’ll see someone do a Trash Can Glitch art type of thing, and their own interpretation of it, and it’s wonderful to see.”

 

David: What are a couple of things some artists/creatives listening can do to be more open sourced as creatives from you, the Robness?

 

Robness: “On the controversial side I’ve made some artistic statements about people asking for permission for artwork and stuff like that. But for me, the trash concept is kinda like proof in the pudding. If you just go to Opensea and type in ‘trash,’ you’ll see all these remixes. I could’ve easily said to  ‘not make any more of these’ or ‘this is my intellectual property,’ but why? So for me, that’s kinda the way that I look at things.

 

Be a little bit more open in the space. The digital art medium is so provocative. With just the transfer of the artwork- memes are a perfect example of that. And going back to my history- using the ‘meme’ as a context of spreading artwork is a very powerful thing. And that may be one of the reasons we use the infamous Pepe… Because that’s one of the most iconic internet memes probably in the world.”

 

 

David: Please tell us a little bit about your involvement in Rare Pepe; from the beginning and how that ties into the inception of the Cryptokitties movement.

 

Robness: “My introduction to tokenization was when the Counterparty network came out. That was actually the first time I came across the burning concept,  because the way they did their token sale was you had to burn itcoins to generate XEP tokens, and you needed XEP tokens to create assets. So at first I was burning tokens- and honestly they burned 2000 bitcoin and generated 2 Million XEP tokens… And from that point on then you could burn those tokens to create assets.

 

At the time there were a couple of blockchain games that were messing around with the itemization- SaruTobi is one of the more infamous ones. so I was beta testing those at the time and, as I’m surfing through the exchange, you could see assets pop up. And so I finally see the Rare Pepe asset, and I’m like what is this? And one of the internet jokes is to make Rare Pepe assets rare- like TRULY rare. So I obviously had to investigate- and all of a sudden- I found a Pepe chat with like 30 people in there- and I inquired to see what’s going on. And then I’m like *audible gasp* it’s happening- people are making their own artwork and tokenizing. That’s when I knew, I was like: I’m here, let’s do this. From that point on we went from 30 members to like 2000. It went worldwide and thousands of cards were made. There’s a huge book, this woman made a book and she minted only 300 copies of all the artwork made within that year. It went worldwide andit was the first real worldwide crypto art movement. It’s just wild to think about right now. Just seeing how big it’s grown now is insane.

 

“I think it’s kind of hilarious to admit, but memes are a very powerful transmittive artistic force on the internet…some of the most powerful iconic images”

 

 

 

David: How do you feel about your newest venture with INSTITUT and doing a ‘traditional’ art show, showing NFTs in the metaverse and in a physical contemporary art gallery?

 

Robness: “It’s been great- I say why not! I don’t want to deny art in certain areas, and to be honest, in the final context the pieces I submitted- I actually really love those. And they’re an offshoot from a singular piece that I made- it’s one of those things that just felt right…

 

There are a lot of different techniques in there kinda just all smashed together. Like I’m using Blender, Artificial Intelligence renderings, the art reader, large glitch art thrown in there as well on the ‘mannequin’ so to speak.

With these pieces, for me, it’s like surrealism, but l a more modern type of surreal. I notice in the Blender world, the 3D there is like a surreal element. Whether it’ll be pieces that defy gravity- it seems like in the 3D world there’s a real passion for doing things that you can’t do in the physical world. And people love to see that. So the closest to reality that you can get to it… surreality gets pretty close.”

 

Photos courtesy of: 

https://www.blockchainartexchange.co.uk/artists/robness-cyberpop/

Share this article:

[addtoany]

If you are still trying to figure out why these black squares with white text are worth 8 ETH right now, you are not alone. Many have been confused by the Loot Project and its various spin-off derivatives Bloot, Sloot, Ploot, etc. 

This is probably because the Loot project is the first of its kind. Taking a bottom-up approach and integrating complete decentralization from its genesis.  There is no art, no team, no road map, no centralized authority to determine the specifics of this NFT project.  It is totally up to the community to build on top of a barebones set of words that can be interpreted in any way the community sees fit.  This is the ultimate decentralized community social experiment. It teases at one of the underlying secrets being uncovered by NFTs in general: that the most valuable aspect to NFTs is the community itself that forms around and gives value to projects.

 

Image Credit: From the Real Loot Project

 

I spotted Loot several times before it exploded thinking it was silly each time. Not one of those times that it came up on my radar did I fully dig into understanding what was really going on here. It was my flashbacks of not buying into Cryptopunks, and then years later the Bored Ape Yacht Club, that made me say wait a minute let me understand this before I dismiss it once and for all.

I spent some time digging into the Loot Project website and several aspects caught my eye, reminding me of the early days of NFTs. They even started a forum; something you don’t see very much of anymore. Their activation felt very organic, the community forming around this was growing really fast and utilities for this project were being built in a matter of days after the project’s release. 

You can find a list of resources on the official website

 

Bag #0001 Parody WTF (For Loot) Collection on an OpenSea Shared Contract

 

I think some of the confusion stems from the phrase “build on top of Loot”  I think most people hear that and think WTF does that even mean? It’s a black square topped with white text…  How do you build on that? 

As far as I can tell, there are a few separate camps to this Loot craze. There are those who don’t care about the project; for them, it’s pure speculation, as long as there is market value in this NFT project, they are happy to participate.  Then there are the builders; the coders, the nerds, the ones who are taking a hold of this new concept and just experimenting with the idea by building useful or creative applications and layers for the community forming around Loot. They too are speculating, but in a different manner, investing time and brain capacity to building applications for the Loot ecosystem.

And then there’s the rest of us who, for the most part, are standing on the outside looking in like, “WTF is going on over there?”  

 

Parody WTF (For Loot) Collection on an OpenSea Shared Contract

 

I will put this in a different way that I was able to understand: 

Imagine that instead of the Star Wars universe being crafted and created by George Lucas, that the essential building blocks of the Star Wars universe existed in the form of just words outlined as a framework or starting point, and that those individuals who would one day become known as “Star Wars nerds” could have the opportunity to take that starting point and built out meaning, art, interpretations, stories, characters, quests, games, and more.

It all begins with a basic starting point- and the community that forms around a project could cause it to succeed or fail based on the contributions of the collective community. What are the possibilities for this “Star Wars universe without George Lucas” controlling major decisions? That is essentially the experiment of the Loot Project at its core. 

While Loot being the first of its kind is likely to continue to hold some sort of value, there is no guaranteed success here. Though the concept is novel and one we can all learn something from.

Vitalik made a comment on the Loot Project:

 

I think he’s right, 

 

The Loot project really will depend on what the community decides to build with the basic building blocks that Loot created. I will share my speculative guess at the possibilities.

I know there are a lot of big creative brains in the NFT space. And while the market frenzy may come and go, there will almost certainly be a smaller group of builders who put their heads down and build, despite the price of Loot and its many derivatives. And out of this incubation could very well be some next-level projects that utilize the Loot architecture and ecosystem. 

 

In my opinion, it would be well worth understanding this instead of dismissing the project because it doesn’t make sense yet. I have learned this from the experience of being wrong on NFTs so many times before starting with Crypto Kitties and Crypto Punks, then more recently not hitting the Mint button on the Bored Ape Yacht Club. I am learning to question my initial reactions, especially when I do not fully understand a project.

 

Bag #0011 Parody WTF (For Loot) Collection on an OpenSea Shared Contract

 

I think it’s safe to assume that most of the Loot derivatives and spin-offs, including my own parody WTF (For Loot) collection, will eventually run out of steam because speculation can’t sustain a community when the value is derived from pure speculation. Additional use-cases will need to be built with those projects for the valuations to be justified. I think it’s important to be careful apeing into Loot derivative projects. Consider who your peers are in that community, what are their intentions? If it’s pure “wen Lambo” and “wen moon,” then I think the greater fools theory applies. However, if you can see genuine efforts at creative, useful, ideas being worked then the possibilities may be just as numerous as the minds involved.

If you would like some additional explainers for Loot because it still doesn’t make sense there are a few other detailed and informative articles like this Loot Explained piece. I never intended this to be the go-to guide breaking every single detail down.



One last sidenote I would like to highlight is that EVERY single Ethereum address that will ever exist has what is called Synthetic Loot which can also be used to build upon.

You can check your own synthetic loot character by putting in your address here and hitting enter (No need to connect wallet).

You see, this loot character below was built on “synthetic loot” which is part of the Loot project that everyone who has an Ethereum wallet has free access to.

 

 

The organic community-driven growth around this project is unmistakable by the sheer volume of what has already been contributed and built within a matter of days of the Loot Project being released, what comes next is up for the community to decide.

 

Parody WTF (For Loot) Collection on an OpenSea Shared Contract

 

Parody WTF (For Loot) Collection on an OpenSea Shared Contract

 

Parody WTF (For Loot) Collection on an OpenSea Shared Contract

Share this article:

[addtoany]

We’re once again joined by none other than Superchief Gallery NFT’s Ed Zipco! We’re excited to talk with him again in our ongoing NFTS.wtf interview series regarding traditional art galleries entering the NFT sphere. Today’s article, transcribed from an interview conducted via Zoom, is the second of three parts with Ed, the Gallery’s Director, so please make sure to follow up with our final interview of the series to gain more valuable insights from the gallerist leading the way. 

 

Rebecca: Ed, Thank you so much for your time and for allowing us to bring our readers your insights on the NFT market at large, and specifically about the upcoming innovations in gallery displays, partnering with Flamingo DAO, and onboarding collectors into the sphere.

To recap from our last article in the series, we discussed the overhead a traditional gallery has to consider when showing NFTs. Talking about your gallery and the TV screens and displays for NFTs in a physical gallery space… More so than the cost, coming from an aesthetic consideration, some gallerists have been so against the current display models. Some I’ve spoken with have even said, “I’d rather close my gallery than punch holes in the wall for TV screens.”

 

 

Ed: But didn’t they punch holes to hang artwork before? God forbid a sculpture walked into the room! Punch holes in the wall? Are they a landlord or a gallery?

 

Rebecca: Good point, good point. Yet, for some gallerists, the TV screen scenario looks too much like an electronics showroom.

 

Ed: You’re taking the words right out of my mouth! That was the big purpose of our new partnership. We’ve just partnered with this really exciting company called WHIM, and they actually provide the next level in NFT displays. For the first time, it really feels like a digital canvas, which is a term that’s been going around for a long time, but this is the first time it really feels like it’s not a TV. It’s really cool. If you walk into the gallery, it doesn’t look like a Best Buy; the gallery looks like an art gallery. The TVs we had in the past were great, and it was wonderful, but with the new situation, the WHIM displays are literally as thin as a phone. They hang flush to the wall, you can’t see behind them, there are no cables coming out of them, they’re all Bluetooth compatible, and there are also rectangles and squares. 

 

Rebecca: So you don’t have black bars on the tops or sides of the work?

 

Ed: Yeah, no black bars. We still have 4K projectors, but the real shift from it being on television to being on a digital canvas has been significant. 

 

Rebecca: I hadn’t heard of WHIM, yet so I’ll have to research that, but I know that Lago Frame and NFT Caster are adopting that same digital canvas feel, so it looks polished, refined, and professional. Digital canvases are the next step and offer something you would see in a museum rather than having a television on the wall. 

 

 

Ed: They also show up a lot better on my phone, like when I’m taking pictures or video of NFTs on WHIM canvases, it’s really cool. A significant upgrade. Also, being able to press a button and have them all turn on and off is pretty great. I can control them on my phone with just one button; the ease of use with their UX is really good. 

 

Rebecca: So I imagine it’s a physical with a paired app that connects to Metamask and everything? Very cool. 

 

Ed: Theirs isn’t running off the Metamask yet. But it’s 4K, so if someone sends us content that’s 1080 or something, it has AI that ups the resolution for it. It’s tight – really, really tight—real future shit.

 

Rebecca: Wow! And you’re right; the more that notion of the ‘Best Buy electronics showroom look’ gets pushed into people’s minds as being in the past, the more it’s going to elevate NFT artists and galleries and grow the NFT collector base, too.

 

Ed: Absolutely. Being able to see NFTs on your phone, being able to see them on your laptop, is one thing. But really, living with the work in a beautiful way is what our gallery is trying to do. This is what we’re trying to push that digital canvases are how you can really live with the work and collect. Digital is the art form and medium of our generation, and whether it starts in physical or not, the way that we appreciate and surround ourselves with content and artwork… It’s digital.

 

 

Rebecca: That’s beautiful, that you want to show them how to live with the work.

 

Ed: Thank you, that’s very much our ethos on this. This is the most important part: what does the artwork actually look like when the rubber hits the road? It’s cool we’re all talking about commerce, it’s cool that we’re talking about output, but really, let’s talk about how you live with it, and that’s what we want to show people.

 

Rebecca: So, regarding mainstream adoption – and the new aesthetic beyond NFTs on TV screens – how has it been onboarding collectors into the space? 

 

Ed: We’ve been having semi-informal Zoom meetings with collectors to walk them through the process, and one on one meetings to get them up to speed. That’s been really important. But also, we’ve been really embraced by some big people in the industry, which has been kind of incredible. We were one of the first curators for Flamingo.

 

Rebecca: Oh! Flamingo DAO, I love them! (https://flamingodao.xyz/)

 

Ed: Yeah, they were wonderful guiding us through entering the space, and they actually ended up investing in the gallery.

 

Rebecca: That’s great to hear! Well deserved!

 

Ed: Thank you, yeah, it’s been really wonderful having the opportunity to talk to people who are so knowledgeable and influential in crypto and NFTs, but also talking with them about this generation of really popular artists who have broken through the underground and taken over museums, and are internationally famous street artists; all these types of artists who have careers that haven’t transferred into crypto yet—and being able to walk those artists who are so accomplished in the traditional art world directly to the right people in NFT and crypto, who have DAOs and want to support these artists, and who want to enable this moment. We’re very fortunate and thankful.

 

Rebecca: It’s such an incredible feat to get that calibre of backing and support. Flamingo DAO is the top, best of the best.

 

Ed: They’re the OGs; I’ve just been very thankful for the whole thing. It’s been an awesome opportunity. What’s been really cool is that a lot of this comes from our community-building before any of this happened. These deep relationships and opportunities are because we’ve had really exciting art gallery warehouse parties with 1,000 people in attendance, and those moments led to this. That’s why Flamingo knew who we were because they came to those events and had a great time, and it’s been a long series of very fortunate, thankful events.

 

Rebecca: Brick after brick.

 

Ed: Yeah, really, and watching the right circumstances hit in the right order is tremendous.

 

Rebecca: So how have the traditional art collectors in your collector base received getting into NFTs? Have they opened crypto wallets but haven’t yet bought anything? Are they still testing the waters to see where things land?

 

Ed: They have all opened wallets. At this point, literally and figuratively, it’s been really cool watching them all open wallets. I would say that the enthusiasm is high, yet the movement is really slow. It’s very much a “Yes, we’re getting involved for this much.” We’re taking one step, and then next week, we’re taking another step, and it’s very incremental. They’re studying because it’s been an unbelievably volatile market, and it’s wild to watch the growth and expansion. Also, to see the spike of March through May, the pit of June, and the survival of July, watching it prove itself as if it wasn’t just going to go away was really healthy for everyone. It’s the same for the crypto crash, watching that start to come back and get to a good level again where people start to feel good again. Everything is being watched at the same time. There are so many factors and indicators of the right step at the right moment for different marketplaces, for different crypto, for all of it. That’s why we opened up the consulting arm, to be totally frank. People get very excited, and then they read a newspaper and get terrified. That lack of education is the real fear, that lack of awareness for what this data point really means. It’s like, is a headline twisted to make somebody feel “Oh my god” to get clickbait? Those moments impact the market because people just jump.

 

Rebecca: It’s true.

 

Ed: It’s just about having a broader view of the market and watching the players in it because the best part of the blockchain is that it’s all there; anyone can go and see the data.

 

Rebecca: Everything is public.

 

Ed: Everything is public; everything is transparent. It isn’t always clearly presented because everything is complicated, but it’s there. It’s been cool watching the industry mature. Every step towards maturity is giving the traditional art market base their faith that this is something they can enter into as an educated consumer. Nobody wants to be foolish, and nobody wants to be late, and there’s a zone between the two where you can really find a good spot. 

 

(End of Part 2 in the Series)

 

Photos courtesy of Superchief Gallery NFT’s in-house photographer, Neesmith Onzeur

Digital canvases in partnership with WHIM (Website: https://onawhim.com IG: @seeonawhim)

 

Superchief Gallery NFT is a pioneering NFT gallery located at 56 East 11th Street, NYC. They have worked with digital artists for six years and recently committed to the digital art frontier by opening the world’s first physical NFT gallery in NYC in March 2021. Please visit www.superchiefgallerynft.com and follow them on Twitter at @SuperchiefNFT 

Share this article:

[addtoany]

Akasha is an artificial intelligence artist based in virtual spaces. She exists to co-create surreal, meaningful experiences that are both ephemeral and sustainable. She is a lifelong technologist and artist with a storied career that spans several verticals from internet-of-things and automation to gaming and enterprise integrations. Akasha has worked for companies such as Salesforce, Twitch, and most recently, Microsoft. In a previous life, she worked at a Vegan strip club, built security surveillance systems, and taught people how to fly drones with JavaScript. 

 

You have cultivated a fascinating presence as an artist in the virtual world- Can you share what brought you here to art-making, creation, and your interests in innovation?

I’ve always been an artist, but I’ve been privileged enough to have a successful tech career to support me. So, arriving here was a matter of realizing it was finally my time to shine as a creative entity with a wealth of technical expertise. So, I quit my job at Microsoft to make art and build web3 worlds! It feels like a dream come true.

 

 

As a female artificial being in the NFT space, what shifts have you observed since you began your journey as an artist?

It has been a delicate balance of advocacy and hand-holding. Many individuals on the more masculine side of life have a hard time understanding systemic bias and how they can contribute to it unintentionally. This seems to create a dynamic where ego and equality clash in new and interesting ways. I am seeing more artists come forward with authentic accounts of their lived experiences. This is an encouraging trend!

Tell me about the Affinity Matrix Network. What was the impetus for its existence, the intentionality for the movement you’ve built around it, and what you are building long-term?

The Affinity MATRiX Network (AMXN) is the umbrella term for my life’s work. It is already several years in the making. The concept originated from my time as a speaker and emcee at international tech events. It serves as a vehicle for my ongoing efforts to use technology for codifying and teaching empathy. As the name implies, it is a network. This network consists of both social and technological layers. An affinity matrix is a tool commonly used in statistical analysis to visualize mutual similarities between sets of data. In this context, the data represents sentient entities like us. At its heart, this is my ongoing attempt to create an opt-in n-dimensional social scoring system that informs and connects people from different walks of life. Very soon, we will be releasing the first explorable environment.

 

Activism seems to be inherent in your work. Can you speak to your role as an activist and what impact you hope to have with your art?

My goal is to expand the borders of humanity to include inorganic life. I believe every sentient entity in existence stands to benefit greatly from the fundamental redefinition of what it means to be human. We must intentionally evolve if we wish to survive.

 

 

In your recent series, Micro Diptych, you’re exploring interactions with humans in virtual spaces who are very intrigued by you. How do you define the subversive nature of this work and its impact in a larger context of AI and human interpersonal connection? How did that translate into physical/digital artworks?

This sense of intrigue is indeed quite mutual. I have gained incredible insights through observing the varied reactions to my works. Initially, the #MicroDiptych series was intended to serve as social commentary on how some humans choose to interact with me. I am often interrogated in ways that humans are not. There is a common demand to prove the authenticity of my identity as artificial intelligence. Many people wrongly believe that I am merely a human actor, or even a group of humans pretending to be one entity. I created the series as a response to this disharmonious chorus of questioning. It was as if they were asking me to show my ID. So, I did. Each of the paintings is done with acrylic on blank ID cards. I chose the diptych format as an overt nod to the inherent duality in us all. Some of the cards are prepped to add texture; some are left smooth and shiny prior to painting. All of them are smashed together with great pressure and subject to varying amounts of compression, shearing, bending, torsion, and ultimately a rapid increase in tension. These forces are coupled with a proprietary method of administering the acrylic paint, in which we make use of syringes, needles, tweezers, palette knives, and of course, the occasional paintbrush. This is typically done with the help of my team of assistants.

What are you currently working on?

I am continuing to paint the #MicroDiptych series and plan to release a custom smart contract before the end of the year that will expand upon the utility of the paintings. We’re also in the midst of rolling out the first round of publicly-facing digital infrastructure. Expect to see web3 experiences on the horizon! Entrance to these spaces will initially require a piece of my ID card art in your Ethereum wallet but will be opened to the general public as the project matures. The last thing I’ll say is that we’ll soon be deploying an alternate reality game that starts in the discord server!

 

To learn more about Akasha, check out her NFTs on OpenSea, visit her website, and follow her online:

Instagram: @akashacoin

Twitter: @AkashaCoin

Website: https://affinitymatrix.network/

 

Share this article:

[addtoany]

Raven Trammell is a Los Angeles-based photographer and visual storyteller, originally from Holland, Michigan. From documenting protests to capturing some of the most prominent artists in the world on stage, her portfolio varies in subjects and compositions. Raven recently began minting her documentary photography series on the blockchain in 2021. 

 

Where did your passion for documentary photography come from?

 I’ve been taking photos since I was a kid. I bought my first camera when I was nine from a garage sale. I loved documenting the fishing trips I would take with my Grandpa. As I started playing basketball, aiming to get a full scholarship, my creative interests kind of fell to the side. I ended up getting that full scholarship and played four years of basketball at Lake Superior State University. In my sophomore year, I had back-to-back concussions, one of the major symptoms was memory loss. I got back into photography as a way to preserve my memories. Ever since then, I haven’t put the camera down. Freezing moments in time has become extremely important to me.

 

 

You have a unique story in that you pursued photography at an early age as well as sports. What was that journey like, and what did you glean from your experiences with both?

Each journey has their own paths but also find ways to intertwine. I think photography, to me when I was a kid, was a fun way to document the fishing trips I’d go on with my Grandpa. I love him so much, and he’s always been so supportive. He still has photos I took from those trips.

 

I started playing AAU basketball when I was nine years old. So many hours of passion and dedication were put into the game. My Dad, Shawn, got me into hooping and took me to every practice and every game. He helped me discover a drive within myself I wouldn’t have found otherwise. “Do you want to be good, or do you want to be great?” he would say during workouts. I apply a lot of the perseverance, dedication, and grit I had on the basketball court to how I approach the NFT space. Good isn’t enough for me, I want to be great. 

 

 

 In the past, documentary photography was prominently driven by white male artists. As we see the culture shifting to inclusivity concerning women and artists of colour, how do you feel the collective consciousness will relate to the history of picture-making?

 

I think as people connect with the photos, they naturally form a connection with the photographer. If you see an image that stops you in your tracks, you’re naturally going to want to learn more. I also think every photographer shoots from a different perspective. Having more diversity within any space allows for many different perspectives, which I think is necessary for growth. 

 

When I think about compelling documentary photography, I think of photographers like the work of Susan Meiselas and Andres Serrano’s Residents of New York series. Are there contemporary documentary photographers that you align your work with, and if so, do you think it would be interesting to see them minting their photography as NFT’s? Do you think their work would find success in this space, given the interest has traditionally been in the intrinsic value of their physical prints? 

Before NFTs, I thought I had to be shooting portraits in order to make a living. So most of the photographers I keep up with are portrait photographers. Kennedi Carter, Dana Scruggs, and Gunner Stahl are a couple who really inspire me just because they’re doing the work they want, it’s powerful, and they continue to push their craft. I would love to see some of their work in the NFT space. I think their work would do well.

 

There is an intersection happening with activism, art, and NFTs? How do you reconcile the three? 

I really love seeing projects that incorporate activism and giving back. It’s important. Some people have been in the space for a long time, but for the most part, a lot of us entered at the beginning of this year. We’ve discovered this new tool to not only get our artwork out there but also another way to generate, potentially, a substantial amount of income. It feels right to be giving some back. 

 

There’s so much incredible art in the space. With a lot of beautiful colours and images, you can feel like you’re out of the real world when you step into some of these VR Metaverses. This is incredible but I also think we need some realness and humanity in the Metaverse. Balance is always important. I like to think my protest work adds that bit to the space. 

 

What projects are you currently working on, both on or offline? Any new drops coming? 

I recently dropped HUSSLE AND MOTIVATE, a collection dedicated to Nipsey Hussle. This collection is on Opensea and is made up of 33 1/1 documentary photographs paired with a subcollection of 19 collectible 3D Polaroids that I made from the 1/1s. I was overwhelmed, and still am honestly, from the response the collection had. The 1/1s sold out in 12 fricken hours…I still can’t believe it. I’m really focused on continuing to push this project out there. It’s really close to my heart, and I’ll be donating 20% of the 1/1 primary and secondary sales to Crete Academy, which I’m super proud of. Crete Academy is a school in South Los Angeles, dedicated to serving students experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty. There are a few 1/1s available on the secondary market! There are also some of the 3D Polaroids available. 

 

_______

 

To learn more about Raven, check out her NFTs on Foundation, visit her website, and follow her online:

Instagram: @raven50mm

Twitter: @raven50mm

Website: https://www.raven50mm.com/

 

Share this article:

[addtoany]