This month we are excited to announce our investment in TRAME, a luxury generative manufacturing platform. TRAME connects web3 artists with high-end manufacturers and collectors to create and sell both the digital and physical versions of luxury physical objects. Building at the intersection of art, design, technology, and craft, TRAME’s passion is to create innovative and immersive experiences that push the boundaries of creativity.

Earlier in 2023, TRAME partnered with Art Blocks, CPG Club, and Néolice on Craft Nouveau, a series of collections advancing generative art and craft. The debut collection, Navette by Alexis André, was a series of 200 onchain generative artworks and accompanying loom-woven tapestries. The first-of-its-kind project united 3D printing and textile craftsmanship to create uniquely coded digital outputs with complimentary physical artworks.

This week, at Art Basel Miami, TRAME introduced two new collections in the Craft Nouveau series: 1/ Optimism by Jeff Davis, a series of handcrafted stained glass procedurally generated from custom algorithms, and 2/ Portraits by Martin Grasser, colored Venetian glass procedurally-generated from the artist’s Abstract Type Generator.

Optimism and Portraits are both exciting expressions of the power of collaboration between digital artists and traditional artisans. We believe generative technology will be applied far beyond generative art – we are excited for consumer use cases ranging from fashion, architecture, and product design, and proud to see TRAME transforming the generative manufacturing space.

Powering builder energy

Backdrop closed out Build V2, a free and online 4-week program bringing together 450 builders to launch products in AI (LLMs, ML, Gen AI, etc) or Crypto, with $90K+ in grants and participation from AWS, Base, NEAR, BuidlGuidl, Ceramic, Fixie, Guru, Quix, Langchain & Stability AI. In only 4 weeks, Backdrop helped launch 170 products and selected 32 of them as finalists. You can check out all the projects here.

Ask: Backdrop is planning a V3 in February with >1000 projects, expanding the “tracks” to include: AI, Crypto, Gaming, Open-Source, AI/VR, Dev Tooling, and General infra (AWS, Supabase, etc). Please reach out to Joey DeBruin if you’re interested in working with Backdrop V3 to attract builders with grants to build with your tech and in your ecosystem!

Leading open-source gen AI

Only in the last two weeks, Stability AI released 3 groundbreaking, open-source generative AI models: Stable Diffusion Video (foundation model for generative video), SDXL Turbo (single-step image generation), and StableLM Zephyr 3B (3B parameter LLM). The releases mean Stability’s models now span image, language, code, audio, 3D, and video. 

With open-source models now across 6 modalities, Stability is shifting business model and rolling out Memberships – while “stable series” models remain free for non-commercial personal and academic use, commercial users will need to have a paid membership to access all core models. Members are also able to sign up separately for Stability’s other commercial services, including enterprise support and custom model creation. Stability's goal with this move is to focus on building and distributing great models as widely as possible, while working toward their mission to build the foundation to activate humanity's potential!

Internet Explorers 

Internet Explorers is a new Seed Club production – a weekly rundown show where Jess, Josh, and Peacenode broadly explore the most interesting consumer crypto topics and new internet experiences. It's hosted every Friday at 10AM PT // 1PM ET, recent guests included Jesse from Base, Patrick from The World's Largest, and Ben Roy from Accelerate Art. Catch up on YouTube and mint episodes on Pods! 👇

Until next time

Thank you for taking the time to read through the monthly Seed Club Ventures digest. Please don’t hesitate to share any feedback and suggestions for future newsletters and editorials with the team – we’d love to hear from you! If you’re interested in getting involved with Seed Club or any of our portfolio projects, please don’t hesitate to DM Anthony or get in touch directly! 🌱