Crimson Echo is a generative film generated by and stored fully on Ethereum, exploring how stories emerge through permanent acts of individual and collective conscience.

In reimagining what a film could be, one truth echoes through hundreds of voices - each piece telling the same story in its own way. They move with our collective pulse - transforming as our community takes action, as donations flow toward humanitarian relief, as voices of peace get etched into this always-on computer.

Crimson Echo exists as a film stored completely on-chain - pushing against technical boundaries through extreme compression and code, but more importantly, through its embrace of blockchain's native possibilities. While donations are changing children's lives, back in the blockchain Crimson Echo will see fewer scenes of suffering, witness leaves sprouting on a tree of hope, realize a burning figure finding moments of peace. And it will all interweave with the entropy of Chaos Roads - within the same blockchain art universe. This isn't just technical experimentation - it's a demonstration of blockchain's unique capacity to enable new types of art: Art that embraces real-world impact. Art that is collectively governed. Art that remains dynamically connected to other works. Art that connects worlds - where each scene transforms through individual decisions, where a story unfolds through collective governance and action, where humanitarian aid directly shapes artistic expression - a reminder that every act in this network creates ripples beyond its boundaries.

This collection comes to life at the intersection of worlds that rarely meet - where a speculation-driven industry embraces humanitarian causes, where digital art meets activism, where blockchain's permanence confronts this moment’s burning urgency. By inscribing messages of peace into the chain, by making our humanitarian values part of the artwork itself, we're creating something that lives beyond the moment. It's not just a film - it's a testament to when we choose to speak up, when we turn digital spaces into catalysts for real change. Every aspect of the collection, from its mint website to its allowlist mechanics, from the 30 smart contracts that form it to code optimization, are all working towards this purpose.

Perhaps in the echo of our collective voice, future generations will find more humanity than blood.

Allowlist Mechanics

There is no public mint for Crimson Echo. It is a completely free mint for allowlisted participants. There are only two ways to get allowlisted:

• Speak up about Palestinian Genocide and donate to ethevacuations.eth, or

• Own Chaos Roads or ART PONZI from Chainleft

A few Pushers and crypto-leftists who funded the on-chain deployment (a small campaign done in the first week of December 2024) are also in the allowlist. But they’d be in the allowlist anyway as they almost all already qualify for everything above.

Previous work allocation is quite common in the NFT space, but I believe political engagement was not used in the past as a condition to be rewarded. Two reasons for this mechanic:

Awareness

The number one goal of the project has been to increase awareness about Gaza within the crypto community.

At a time when mainstream news organizations are failing to live up to journalistic standards and social media is being hijacked and dismantled by billionaires, collective awareness and attention are all we have.

Crypto is nothing if it’s not “tokenized attention” and if this attention can be used for something meaningful, like raising awareness about a human catastrophe, it is time to do it. I wanted to do this by incentivizing people to speak up about Gaza and calling for a ceasefire. I also wanted to gift people who were doing this anyway (even without my encouragement).

Part of this is of course the film itself, which tells the story of the world closing its eyes to historically the most televised and streamed genocide. But it shapes everything around the film too. The mint site includes abstract representations of bodies of children under 9 who were killed in the last 2 years (at over 10,000), as well as news articles from international NGOs and the UN.

The Bridge

Crimson Echo tries to build bridges.

The obvious one is the bridge between art and politics, which is crucial to my process, and many artists in history. Historically, politics have been a much bigger part of art. It is surprising to see this bridge being ignored more by both traditional art institutions and by the NFT digital art scene.

At a deeper level however, I’ve always wanted to build a bridge between blockchain skeptics and blockchain enthusiasts. I sometimes sit as an outlier within the crypto space as someone who embraced leftist values of collectivism over individualism. On the other hand, most leftists are blockchain-skeptics and consider people like me as “grifters” who want to benefit from the hype, or “useful idiots” who don’t know any better and are used as tools to enhance dystopian libertarian values.

This is the part that speaks to the second group within the allowlist, my previous collectors. Collectors who have collected Chaos Roads or ART PONZI are allowlisted automatically for Crimson Echo. They don’t have to raise awareness.

This immediately brings up the question, why not? If we want maximum awareness, why shouldn’t they also tweet about it?

The reality is most blockchain enthusiasts are apolitical. It’s only marginally better in the blockchain art niche. I don’t expect them to get suddenly political. But if they collect Crimson Echo, these collectors will still engage with a political topic because the experiment itself is political. This is where I want to start building the political bridge for art collectors towards IRL issues. Furthermore, even if they are automatically allowlisted, Chainleft collectors still have to send political messages to the chain, which brings us to the next mechanic:

Mint Mechanics

If you're allowlisted, the mint process in Crimson Echo requires you to send one of three messages on-chain:

• "Nothing justifies genocide"

• "Free Palestine"

• "Ceasefire NOW"

This is more than just a gimmick. I specifically chose to deploy this mechanic and condition these three messages. Reasons:

On-Chain Poll

Firstly, these three messages are similar but demonstrate slightly distinct vectors in one's thinking. I want to understand the distribution of minters' thoughts.

Since blockchain is a record of its transactions, we would essentially be doing an on-chain poll on whether someone prioritizes:

A general value of human life taking priority, as well as an acknowledgment of what is happening in Gaza today The justice for what has already happened, and a hope for the future The urgency of the need for a ceasefire, and that we need to save these lives NOW.

Permanent Record of Messages

Secondly, as you know, many anti-genocide voices in mainstream media are silenced. Particularly in the West, mainstream media was overrun with scandals, lies, and obfuscation of not only the history but also everyday massacres.

Sending these messages into the blockchain will ensure that the plight of Gazans is observed and recorded by those of us interacting with this permanent ledger.

We'll use blockchain to add another layer to fight against censorship.

Proof of Humanitarian

Since the blockchain ledger is immutable, we will forever have a record of people who dared to send these messages. These wallet addresses will be recorded in history as people who cared.

These wallet addresses that minted Crimson Echo using one of these messages will always have a special place in my (and many other artists’) heart, even long after the mint date of Crimson Echo. It can be used as a filter for future airdrops or mints by anyone who is using the blockchain.

Ultimately, I want people who value human life equally for all races to mint Crimson Echo.

I consider these messages indubitably humanitarian. I want to connect to the collectors who want to send these messages to the blockchain.

Now let’s take a look at the mechanics within the art.

Dynamic Elements

Art Means Action

Each donation to Palestinian relief funds through Crimson Echo ripples through the artwork, increasing a 'peace' counter that transforms the film's scenes. Corpses fade, leaves sprout, and the flames consuming a revolutionary hero's body dim with each act of giving.

The collection stands as a free mint, channeling all resources directly toward humanitarian relief. Rather than trading artwork for currency, Crimson Echo's focus is making real-world impact through collective action.

The mechanics operate with blockchain efficiency - donations automatically trigger visual transformations while funds accumulate in a secure contract. These funds remain inaccessible to the contract owner, but can be bulk-transferred to the pre-assigned and verifiable relief funds by any participant, creating a transparent path from digital art to humanitarian aid.

The piecewise (mostly quadratic) architecture encourages initial donations. In other words, the lowest amount of donations (multiples of 0.005E) will go a long way in improving your art. But if you can afford, you can donate more, making your art even rarer.

Collective Spirit

Beyond individual acts of giving, Crimson Echo also responds to the sum of all donations made to Palestinian relief funds. When these collective contributions reach certain thresholds, deeper transformations emerge in the artwork. As the community's total aid grows, new symbols of hope materialize - a sun breaking through, rays of light piercing darkness. These profound changes reflect our collective capacity for transformation.

Metaversal Dynamism

Crimson Echo and my previous runtime collection Chaos Roads exist as interconnected entities within the same artistic universe, bound together through dynamic composability. This connection runs deeper than simple interoperability - it creates a living ecosystem where chaos and control flow between works.

At its core lies the getEntropy function of Chaos Roads, a parameter that shapes three distinct art forms while constantly evolving. This entropy now extends its influence into Crimson Echo, creating yet another bridge between the two works. The visual elements in Crimson Echo respond not just to ownership of Chaos Roads, but to the very forces of chaos and control within it.

Collectors who own a Chaos Road can influence their Crimson Echo through controlling their Road's entropy - or they can surrender to chaos, letting both works evolve freely. This creates a dynamic art system where individual choices ripple across multiple works, simulating a mini universe where the fundamental tension between chaos and control shapes every element.

The Art Factory: Democratic Upgrades

Another unique transformation possible in Crimson Echo flows through The Art Factory. As one of the thirty smart contracts powering the film, this contract orchestrates most of the scenes and enables their complete transformation through collector consensus.

Future artists and musicians can propose new interpretations - as 1/1s or generative works, building upon the film's foundational elements like its random seeds, peace counters, and entropy. These new creations can utilize existing visual filters and musical notes, while reimagining entire scenes within the work.

When such proposals emerge, Crimson Echo collectors vote through the multi-signature wallet to potentially replace existing scenes. Each decision affects all versions of the film, making every upgrade a shared evolution of the story.

The Medium & The Format

Generative Film

Crimson Echo is a six-minute movie, or perhaps more aptly defined - a film. Maybe even more aptly defined - a generative animation film where blockchain breathes life into every scene. The work exists at the intersection of narrative and abstraction, where code becomes both canvas and storyteller.

Creating an original story meant weaving abstract generative art with hand-crafted figurative elements - since AI still struggles with SVGs - synchronizing them to sound effects and music within blockchain's strict constraints. This yearlong journey pushed against the limits of what's possible in on-chain art. While pure abstraction might have offered an easier path, the power of recognition - of seeing and hearing familiar figures on the screen - serves as a bridge between traditional cinema and blockchain art.

Early explorations considered fragmenting the narrative across multiple pieces, following a familiar path in blockchain art. Instead, Crimson Echo exists as a complete film for each participant - a shared story told through hundreds of unique lenses. This venture into generative cinema, beginning with an early four-minute version deployed silently on Ethereum in 2023, ventures into uncharted territory. It stands as a testament to what becomes possible when we reimagine the boundaries between art and blockchain.

Compressionism

I talked a lot about Compressionism over the last few years. I consider it to be a great followup to the demo scene’s desire to do more within limits. I highly recommend reading my article on it.

Now, we stored a film on-chain. On Ethereum mainnet. A media that is absolutely not designed to be stored on-chain, is now on-chain.

This was made possible by extreme measures of optimizations for every single character of the ~73,000 character code. SVG and CSS optimizations, wrapped within an optimized JS, wrapped within an optimized HTML, all built within a further optimized Solidity.

This is a 6 minute, dynamic movie, that’s sized at only ~91 kb.

Pushing the Boundaries of In-Chain

The optimizations in Crimson Echo were not limited to the storage. Users don’t typically pay for the “read calls” happening within the blockchain. RPC providers like Alchemy or Infura cover this for users. But they only cover to some extent, Etherscan covers up to 30,000,000; while OpenSea covers a little more. If you exceed these limits, your art doesn’t get displayed. We have seen many projects where the over-calculations within the chain lead to undisplayed art.

So it was important for me to optimize not only the storage but even the functions running within the blockchain as much as possible.

This had to be also balanced against wanting to have an original art on the collection page of marketplaces, where I had to build another artwork from scratch because these pages don’t accept HTML, leading to more function usage within the smart contracts.

Originality

All art is derivative, and yet, some art is more original than others. I have nothing against derivatives, but personally I started to find them boring. This is one of the biggest differences I have seen in the NFT space as opposed to the traditional art space: Immediate derivatives have become almost the primary means to make art in the NFT space (pepes, pixelated punk derivatives, etc). I wanted to keep some originality in my work here, even though there are clear cases of inspiration that can be found in all art, including my work.

CC0

All art in Crimson Echo is CC0. If, in the future, other art pieces will go into the film, they will have to be CC0 too. This is because we would like to abolish all property, including intellectual property from the film to have it accessible to all. We shouldn’t limit access to art if our main goal here is bringing attention to genocide using art.

Performance Considerations

Films are not supposed to be made with pure HTML, vanilla JS and SVGs. Films are not supposed to be stored on chain. But here we are.

A large amount of work went into ensuring that Crimson Echo will work in all devices, operating systems, and browsers. Still, the performance and video quality will always be better in desktop, Chrome-based browsers due to better and more efficient memory usage. Here are some of the issues others and I have observed during tests:

• Firefox is not very consistent in audio quality

• Safari is a little too outdated to render everything in their full speed, where you might have FPS issues

• Safari also requires the viewer to actively view the film for a better experience

• Earlier iPhones sometimes have memory leak issues when rendering HTMLs, I advise you to close other apps / tabs to have a better experience

To be clear, art is still visible and audible in all browsers and in all modern devices. Your browser just needs to handle the memory usage, so for a better experience, I prefer viewing the film in a modern browser on desktop.

Special Thanks To:

Pushers: Who have been a breath of fresh air helping us avoid the speculative NFT space and focus on the beauty of concepts that can be brought into blockchain art by pushing the boundaries, who also funded some of the deployment cost of the 30 contracts.

Crypto-leftists: Who, much like Pushers, who not only funded some of the deployment cost of the 30 contracts but also have been crucial in helping me keep my sanity during 1.5 years of a genocide that the majority of the crypto space was either supportive or apathetic to.

Jonathan Mann: Whose music is an inspiration, who continuously spoke out about the Palestinian Genocide, who let me use his hauntingly beautiful Human Shields song in my film. As of mint date, he’s the only artist besides myself whose work is featured in Crimson Echo.

Tokenfox: Who’s been a champion in on-chain art movement, always supported me and others, and reviewed multiple Crimson Echo contracts and came up with some optimization suggestions.

Teto: Who’s an outlier in the NFT space with his kindness and thoughtful perspective in art, who gave me great ideas throughout building the film, and also gave important ideas for the mint site too.

NFTYGifY: Who came up with a more efficient solution for the donation mechanism, and has previously released his own innovative collection ChekorX where he donated part of the fees to Palestinian Childrens’ Relief Fund.

Joshua Dávila (TBSocialist): Who, as an outspoken, smart and selfless writer, podcaster and builder, have consistently defended blockchain enabling certain use cases for collective action (he literally wrote a book about it!), inspired the rest of us, and always supported me.

OMZ: Who have been extremely supportive, especially mentally, since the beginning of the genocide, as well as speaking up and donating his time and resources for the people who need it the most.

Natrix: Who has been always an inspiration through her speaking up for justice and her provocative art, but even more so with her “Black and White and Red All Over” piece, which led to me creating a scene in a similar theme.

CaptainY: For lending his time and resources in testing, especially on those pesky iOS visualizations!

Notes: SNOW CRASH proposal was received overwhelmingly positive by the Fingerprints Curation Committee. I have aligned with Fingerprints’s vision and collecting thesis for a long time, and my personal collection also overlaps with Fingerprints’s, including SNOW CRASH. I am not paid to write this article, my goal is simply (as it has always been) to highlight boundary-pushing blockchain art experiments.

SNOW CRASH

SNOW CRASH is a conceptual and performative art edition by Bushi, launched in January/February 2024. Editioned at 50 pieces, I consider SNOW CRASH a fascinating experiment.

In essence, SNOW CRASH is an SVG file that is stored fully on-chain. Within the file, there is a visual glitch artwork. But this is where the conventional part of the art ends and chaos starts.

SNOW CRASH cannot be viewed. Wherever the file exists, it crashes the renderer. What’s worse, it crashes the renderer in such a way that everything around it also crashes, not even allowing other NFTs to be viewed alongside it.

I’ll detail the technicals to explain how it achieves this, but before that, I’d like to touch on why this concept interests me so much.

Ownership & Viewership Paradox

Art has always been primarily about qualia, whether through emotions you experience or through boundaries of your thinking get pushed. As capitalism captured more and more parts of our life, the only way for artists to get deservedly paid for their labor started to be through “gated access”. Paintings became exclusive to billionaires’ homes and even mainstream movies required payment to enjoy them.

In parallel, collecting provided another source of qualia: The sense of ownership. With facets of building a personal collection, signaling taste, and supporting directional belief; the interest in collecting grew over time.

The internet broke down the gates of art, but capitalism’s involvement in every aspect of life didn’t go away; so digital art started to suffer.

Enter NFTs.

NFTs enhanced the sense of ownership in collectors, without gating the experience. This is remarkable because it provided an avenue for artists to get paid for their labor, while still maintaining art’s primary goal of providing qualia to as many people as possible.

When Mathcastles introduced the usage of zero-knowledge proofs in NFTs, they challenged how we experienced art. If we absolutely knew that the art existed, without actually being able to see it, what would be our experience? And if we absolutely knew we could own it, without actually being able to own it, what would be our relationship with the sense of ownership?

SNOW CRASH is also touching on qualia and ownership, but it subverts the expectations in digital art in an entirely different way from Mathcastles. It highlights all the advantages NFTs brought forward for digital art but destroys everything else alongside it.

How would your relationship with an art piece that you own be, if you can’t experience its visual, can’t signal its visual element or your taste, and can’t even display it within your collection alongside others?

The owner can prove it exists and that they own it. But it can’t be experienced in its raw form, even by the owner. Not only is the qualia of viewership stripped away, but so is the qualia of signaling taste, building a personal collection alongside it, and displaying it.

I own a SNOW CRASH but in a completely separate wallet where it sits alone. I can’t keep it in my main wallet. I can’t display it alongside my other on-chain art. I can’t connect it to OnCyber.

This is ownership, in its naked form.

Reliance

On-chain art is often presented as permanent, immutable art that is superior to other types of art. The main reason behind this is the reliability of the layer the data is stored.

To some extent, this is true. I myself make only fully on-chain art for similar and a few more conceptual reasons. But we often forget that most on-chain art relies on browser rendering. Particularly SVG and HTML files are heavily reliant on renderers functioning accurately.

Bushi has not disclosed this concept in their announcement, but I can’t help but be reminded of this reliance when I think about SNOW CRASH. SNOW CRASH is stored fully on-chain, so it satisfies everything on-chain art enthusiasts strive for. And yet, it still can’t be viewed.

SNOW CRASH perfectly exposes the vulnerabilities in on-chain art that we sometimes may forget.

Performance

I was hooked on the concept of SNOW CRASH from the experiential angle. But Bushi tapped into the utility aspect of SNOW CRASH to take the performance one step further.

After minting, Bushi used SNOW CRASH in ways that truly completed the art. He sent the editions to notable wallets such as Coldie’s and Nate Alex’s to crash the experience of their immensely valuable collections. To do this, he even found a way to circumvent OpenSea’s spam filter so that SNOW CRASH is placed alongside many valuable NFTs.

But that’s not even the only performance. Since the asset is fully on-chain, Bushi could pull it from the chain into his Farcaster profile, ending up crashing the entire Warpcast client (resulting in a temporary ban too).

All web3 apps were vulnerable to SNOW CRASH. Developers scrambled to deploy fixes. Some greatly enjoyed this performance and used it as an opportunity to improve their front-end security. Others were not so happy.

And that’s how SNOW CRASH as a weaponized NFT took over web3 for a few days.

Technicals

The piece is an SVG file, stored fully on-chain. It includes a flashy glitch animation but that animation is referenced a full 2²⁶, i.e more than 67 million times within the same SVG code. This over-reference is what overloads the browsers and crashes them.

This is the full file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="100%" height="100%"><rect width="100%" height="100%" fill="black"/><image href="data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20width%3D%22100%25%22%20height%3D%22100%25%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%25%22%20height%3D%22100%25%22%3E%3Canimate%20attributeName%3D%22fill%22%20values%3D%22red%3Bgreen%3Bblue%3Bred%22%20dur%3D%220.1s%22%20repeatCount%3D%22indefinite%22%2F%3E%3C%2Frect%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E" width="100%" height="100%"/><g id="b"><use xlink:href="#a" /><use xlink:href="#a" /></g><g id="c"><use xlink:href="#b" /><use xlink:href="#b" /></g><g id="d"><use xlink:href="#c" /><use xlink:href="#c" /></g><g id="e"><use xlink:href="#d" /><use xlink:href="#d" /></g><g id="f"><use xlink:href="#e" /><use xlink:href="#e" /></g><g id="g"><use xlink:href="#f" /><use xlink:href="#f" /></g><g id="h"><use xlink:href="#g" /><use xlink:href="#g" /></g><g id="i"><use xlink:href="#h" /><use xlink:href="#h" /></g><g id="j"><use xlink:href="#i" /><use xlink:href="#i" /></g><g id="j"><use xlink:href="#i" /><use xlink:href="#i" /></g><g id="k"><use xlink:href="#j" /><use xlink:href="#j" /></g><g id="l"><use xlink:href="#k" /><use xlink:href="#k" /></g><g id="m"><use xlink:href="#l" /><use xlink:href="#l" /></g><g id="n"><use xlink:href="#m" /><use xlink:href="#m" /></g><g id="o"><use xlink:href="#n" /><use xlink:href="#n" /></g><g id="p"><use xlink:href="#o" /><use xlink:href="#o" /></g><g id="q"><use xlink:href="#p" /><use xlink:href="#p" /></g><g id="r"><use xlink:href="#q" /><use xlink:href="#q" /></g><g id="s"><use xlink:href="#r" /><use xlink:href="#r" /></g><g id="t"><use xlink:href="#s" /><use xlink:href="#s" /></g><g id="u"><use xlink:href="#t" /><use xlink:href="#t" /></g><g id="v"><use xlink:href="#u" /><use xlink:href="#u" /></g><g id="w"><use xlink:href="#v" /><use xlink:href="#v" /></g><g id="x"><use xlink:href="#w" /><use xlink:href="#w" /></g><g id="y"><use xlink:href="#x" /><use xlink:href="#x" /></g><g id="z"><use xlink:href="#y" /><use xlink:href="#y" /></g></svg>

Conclusion

To me, experimental works like SNOW CRASH that challenge conventional methods of art appreciation represent the most exciting part of today's digital art landscape. The performance invites us to question the essence of the qualia in art in the age of NFTs.

Since on-chain assets all live in the same universe and are composable, I imagine the performance of SNOW CRASH is not even fully finished yet. Anyone can call the token within their piece and can crash the experience elsewhere. I’m proud to have curated a significant piece of art that contributes to the ongoing conversation about value within and outside the digital art community.

Note: You Are Here is my second accepted proposal to the Fingerprints Curation Committee. I have long aligned with Fingerprints’s vision and collecting thesis, and my personal collection overlaps with theirs, including the piece I’m now writing about.

You Are Here

You Are Here is a conceptual art collection by 0xfff from January 2024. The project is unique, coming to life with some fundamentally blockchain-native mechanics called “bridging”. Its unique mechanics, its conceptual exploration, and its on-chain existence fit Fingerprints DAO’s curation thesis perfectly. Further, the artist has shown consistency in releasing such works, the story of the collection is unique, and there is clear innovation. Therefore You Are Here finds a respectable spot in Fingerprints’s collection.

Mechanics, Aesthetics and Concept

With only 31+3 tokens, You Are Here is a relatively small collection. It is minted across 31 chains, where one token per chain gets minted. The artist reserves the right to mint more tokens if new chains become supported by Layer Zero Labs.

Art starts with a simple black dot on a white canvas. The starting dot for each token is different, as dots are positioned deterministically for each blockchain.

Art can then be transferred (or “bridged”) across different blockchains. This act of bridging leaves a line trace behind, telling the owner of the token: now “YOU ARE HERE”.

For non-crypto-native readers: Bridging is the act of transferring tokens from one chain to another, usually using custodial services. Bridges are typically considered unsafe and open to hacks due their centralized nature, however recently more work has been done to find decentralized and therefore more secure solutions. Also, not all bridges are the same - bridges between the chains within the same ecosystem (such as L2s to L1s and vice versa) tend to be safer.

As bridges get drawn, art can become chaotic. With each bridge, the owner leaves a digital footprint that can’t be erased because art is stored fully on-chain. However, if the collector plans it, they can draw something they desire within the placement limitations encoded by the artist.

This is also known as “programmable art”, where collectors participate in art alongside the artist. Collector participation is always worth exploring. Different projects in this category ask for different levels of participation from their collectors, and the difference in these requirements is what makes each project in this niche interesting. Previous examples include Brotchain, Etholvants, Terraforms, The Metro, Chaos Roads, and several more.

In this case, the boundaries are defined in the placement of dots for blockchains. The placements are determined by the chain, using the token IDs as seed. Of course, the fact that the transfer footprint cannot be erased also presents a thoughtful challenge for the collector.

The artist's concept, smart contracts, pre-determined boundaries of each chain's location, and collectors' participation tell the final story of each piece.

Ultimately, while a whole bunch is happening in the background, You Are Here still sticks to its conceptual roots and brings out a relatively simple design: Interconnected black dots and lines on a white canvas. This is not coincidental, the aesthetic is inspired by early maps of ARPANET, the 1969 precursor of today's Internet.

As ARPANET was decommissioned in 1989, it was replaced by the Internet, which grew and became the -relatively- decentralized information hub we have today.

As the blockchain space grows, we expect it to also grow and enable seamless bridging, swapping, and transferring between different chains and wallets, creating a decentralized value hub. Whether this will be a reality is one of the questions You Are Here is asking.

It’s also -perhaps unintentionally- a historical document. If some of these chains shut down completely, You Are Here will be living proof of the disappeared chain’s historical existence.

On the technical side, the artwork is an SVG file, fully generated by the EVM and stored on-chain. Under the hood, it’s using LayerZero for bridging and CREATE2 for a single consistent address across chains. I am told 0xmons (behind SudoSwap and the NFT project 0xMons) had important contributions to the smart contracts. The tracked bridges are limited to the last 100 transfers.

Artist Profile

As a relatively newer artist in the conceptual art NFT space, 0xfff first caught attention with their BEEF series, which included pieces with unique conditions assigned to them for them to be ownable or transferrable.

Many pieces had no financial value, as they could be transferable with no conditions (note: they were still on sale on primary). Some were purely experimental, and they were welcomed by conceptual art fans.

Using EVM runtime opens up interesting possibilities and 0xfff is aware of these possibilities. Their future projects seem to be also in the on-chain conceptual art realm.

Closing Thoughts

You Are Here meets almost all of the objective curation criteria: It's on-chain, dynamic, ownership-driven, and doing all of these through smart contract mechanics. Its use of bridging to draw the art is unique, and the usage of the technology to achieve its conceptual goal is certainly innovative.

You Are Here invites its collectors to experience art by exploring multiple blockchains, paying gas fees, and leaving their digital footprints on canvas. It pushes them to choose between a chaotic display, a simple blank display, or a planned display.

There’s a clear focus on connections in the small collection, as it touches on the topic of “decentralized connection of decentralized networks”, and underscores it with a reference to the Internet.

I am excited to draw my own You Are Here map, and follow 0xfff's new projects.

Notes: Receipt is my first accepted proposal to the Fingerprints Curation Committee. I have aligned with Fingerprints’s vision and collecting thesis for a long time, and my personal collection also has overlaps with Fingerprints’s.

Receipt

Receipt is a conceptual art collection from December 2022. It has both unique mint mechanics and unique rendering mechanics. As someone fully dedicated to blockchain-native art, and enjoy experimental art, I find Receipt fascinating.

Receipt fits both my and Fingerprints DAO’s curation thesis extensively and sits in good company with the rest of Fingerprints’s collection.

The uniqueness of Receipt starts with its mint mechanics. The amount paid during the mint determines the visual itself. During the mint, any amount could be paid, but only once in the entire collection. This creates a unique situation where the collector would determine whether the increased payment would make the piece more valuable. The supply design is also interesting: While new Receipts can be minted forever, there is an invisible cap: Low-priced mints are already minted out, and it can only increase if people keep minting the low prices.

Meanwhile, with each transfer, the artwork gets updated, making the collectors and transactors participants in art. Dynamism mechanics are built within the EVM runtime, and each piece is drawn and stored on-chain and served to the browser from the chain.

This unique onchain dynamism qualifies Receipt under the Runtime Art category, in the tradition of Moon in Motion, Terraforms, The Metro, Chaos Roads, and more.

Collectors’ or traders’ involvement in art remains even if they pass the piece on to someone else.

As the wallet addresses accumulate in the artwork, Receipt also becomes a social document, prompting discussions about how human interaction can attribute value to art.

Communities can keep sending Receipt to each other as the JPG community did. Or the owner can keep sending it across their alt-wallets to accumulate. Either way, art requires participation from collectors and traders to build up and become more complex.

While the project is conceptual at its core, it’s worth mentioning that the technical build of the SVG is impressive since it’s hard to satisfy the photorealistic look in this medium. There are uses of turbulence filters, lighting, and text styling, which are what seem to be the main components of the achievement.

Artist Profile

0xHaiku has done several conceptual projects in the past few years, such as marquee shelter, Progressive, and more. In human-readable, 0xHaiku explored text distortion as they did for Receipt.

Some of these past projects work directly in the realm of EVM runtime. One of my favorites is “Still Remember” where 0xHaiku stored the JPEG of a happy memory on-chain which gets corrupted over time and can only be restored upon transfers.

Closing Thoughts

Receipt meets all of the objective curation criteria: It's on-chain, dynamic, coordination-encouraging, ownership-driven, and doing all of these through smart contract mechanics. But beyond that, Receipt raises important questions about value and aesthetics both with its mint mechanics and with its dynamism.

Is art minted at a higher price more valuable? Is a longer receipt more valuable than a cleaner one? Is holding the piece what makes it iconic? Does having a legendary collector in the list of addresses displayed in the Receipt make it more valuable?

I am excited to continue exploring these questions as I watch the on-chain display of network activity, and follow 0xHaiku's new creations.

Why PERMANOISE

PERMANOISE is an audiovisual art edition (10 / 10) airdropped for free to the owners of ITTN. It aims to explore the permanence boundaries of audiovisual art by putting an interactive audiovisual piece into Bitcoin multisig outputs.

These outputs are stored directly within the Bitcoin transaction data (not witness data like inscriptions) and cannot be pruned. Therefore this data is considered the most immutable storage within the blockchain space, as Bitcoin (as of 2023) has the most number of computers securing its blocks and storing its data.

This data was experimented with for artistic purposes a few times more in the past. Most notoriously, OLGA by JP Janssen, CCSATOSHI by Cornholio, PEPERMANENT by myself, and EVAS by Masteronchain. Stamps protocol later utilized the same method to store art on Bitcoin.

While OLGA, CCSATOSHI, and EVAS use raster image (png/jpg) encoding, PEPERMANENT uses SVG as the file format.

None of these formats are capable of producing audio. On the other hand, formats like MP4, MP3, M4A, and WAV require large file sizes which make it impossible to store on Bitcoin.

PERMANOISE achieves audio production through the HTML file format. HTMLs render in all browsers automatically. Since HTML also has a Web Audio Context feature built-in, it’s possible to produce audio or even melodies using HTML.

Below is the data of PERMANOISE, if you copy it into any browser’s search field, it will automatically display PERMANOISE.

data:text/html;base64,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

Let’s now look at how to get this data from the Bitcoin blockchain.

How to view PERMANOISE

1. Go to xchain explorer, and see the Issuances tab. Click View in the initial issuance transaction.

2. You can already see the data in the description here but the better method is copying the Bitcoin transaction hash into your clipboard and resolving the multisig output data either manually or through an API. This is what we’ll do now: Copy the transaction hash.

The hash for PERMANOISE is: d9ecf73d8b3a4a5f25846506127c036cd5fb41613073cc882c82e74e2c3dff2e

3. Now you have three choices. Choose one of the instructions below to extract the image URI.

3.a) Go to bitst.art and scroll down to the “description” field under events.

The visual part starts with data:text/html;base64,PCF…. and ends with **….bWw+

You can just copy-paste this whole thing within the “animation_url” element’s quotes to any browser’s search box and it’ll show you your fully onchain PERMANOISE.

3.b) Visit JP Janssen’s decoder referring to this transaction and scroll all the way down to the “Description” field. You’ll see the full data there.

The visual part starts with data:text/html;base64,PCF…. and ends with **….bWw+

You can just copy-paste this whole thing within the “animation_url” element’s quotes to any browser’s search box and it’ll show you your fully onchain PERMANOISE.

3.c) You can also do it manually. Follow JP Janssen’s guide and use the transaction where the data is added on-chain. Here’s the blockstream link to the Bitcoin transaction.

Note: The entire URI is a JSON file; but what you’re interested in is the animation, which is located inside the “animation_url” element of the JSON. In either option above in Step 3, the image element starts with data:image/svg…. and ends with …/svg%3e.

If you copy this string into any browser’s URL section, it’ll display the artwork.

Before talking about Chaos Roads, I should probably talk a bit about my larger goals.

I believe blockchain enables use cases beyond simply “trading”, even though this has been the 99% of its usage to this day. I think blockchain uniquely offers certain features that can be beneficial to society beyond “privacy” or “freedom to transact”. I’ve been defending these use cases to crypto-skeptics for a long time, and similarly, I’ve been pushing for these use cases within the crypto space instead of more speculation.

One of the most common criticisms of blockchains is “It’s XYZ with extra steps”. You can replace “XYZ” with “database”, “art”, “identity”, or something else. Crypto proponents know that “extra steps” mean “decentralization” and all the advantages that come with it, but I believe we need to show something beyond decentralization: we need to show the use cases that are only possible with blockchains.

With art tokenized as NFTs, a common criticism has been “it’s just a receipt”. Again, crypto proponents know that that’s how any traditional art is also sold, except that with blockchains we don’t need 3rd parties to verify. Onchain art fans like myself also like showing off onchain art where the token and art come together. But again, we need to show something beyond trustlessness, we need to show the kind of art that is only possible with blockchains.

My go-to reference has been Rhea Myers, as she has consistently created conceptual art that has been uniquely possible in blockchains. Fingerprints DAO, one of my favorite DAOs, established collecting this type of art as its goal. Since I joined the NFT space in 2021, I have discovered many collections that fit the criteria of “art that’s only possible with blockchain”, and these collections have become my main interest ever since.

The Road

In the context of art, blockchain is not just a medium for transfers or trading, it’s a medium for new art ideas to be realized. So which ideas did I have in mind when making Chaos Roads?

1. Where is art?

Many conceptual artists before, such as Nili Werner, Rhea Myers, and Mitchell Chan, have explored the token and art separation. “Token is art” is a phrase you’ll hear in some blockchain circles. If I’m honest, I don’t fully subscribe to this framing. In its natural form, the token, with its transferability properties, is the deed to art. Token is art only if it contributes to the concept and the purpose.

So what if we approach this topic a bit differently: What if we had multiple art forms within each token? A visual painting, a musical piece, and a poem. And what if all of these art forms were constantly being regenerated by the Ethereum Virtual Machine within the chain? What if, if you want to sell your painting, you have to sell your poem too? What if your ownership enables a package of art that can’t be separated from each other? As such, ownership becomes art.

We can take it even further. If EVM is the entity that is constructing (and also re-constructing in the case of Chaos Roads, due to dynamism), isn’t EVM the real art form? Art is the invisible runtime of this always-on, globally accessible computer that we call Ethereum. This runtime can be transformed into any art form that we want: Paintings, music, poetry, or ideas themselves, perhaps even just numbers.

The form does not matter; it’s the unique, runtime nature of this always-on computer that makes the art come alive.

Chaos Roads is therefore aiming to show crypto-skeptics this one humble dimension of having an always-on, distributed computer.

2. Chaos vs Order

Now that I am highlighting the runtime as both the medium and the art itself, what deeper ideas could we explore with it? Can we make a rough simulation of how the universe works?

Ethereum gives us smart contracts that can run forever, automatically. On the other hand, smart contracts can also give us control.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that “as one goes forward in time, the net entropy (degree of disorder) of any isolated or closed system will always increase (or at least stay the same).”

On the other hand, Quantum Theory states that conscious observation affects reality.

Can we program a “universe” where things get more chaotic over time, but conscious attempts of humans can bring more order to the universe?

We absolutely can! And we can only do it at scale with blockchains.

So it is possible to let a smart contract automatically increase the distortion visually, musically, and poetically; while another smart contract function to give a chance to the collector to “observe” the universe and bring order to art.

Some art gets criticized because they deepen their concepts with vague statements. The thing with Chaos Roads is that all the ideas it’s trying to explore are verifiable on the contract and on the blockchain.

3. The collector with a choice

This is related to the second idea, but it’s also worth mentioning. Crypto space has a lot of whales, and many collectors prefer vaulting their art and forgetting about it. There is nothing wrong with this approach, we can’t expect everyone to constantly allocate time for their art.

But there is also something to be said about being an active participant in art. It’s more engaging and fun for some people. And it often motivates the artists to enhance their creativity.

So Chaos Roads gives an option to the collector: Chaos or Control.

A Chaos Road owner can program their art to travel back in time within the chain and enforce a lower entropy. Note that this is temporary - as is the case with nature. The entropy will keep marching on, and chaos will return, even if it takes a long time.

It was important to me to keep both sides happy, and I think all the art forms (the painting, the melody, and the poem) within each token remain beautiful whether the piece is fully distorted, or its chaos is controlled. But more importantly, there is CHOICE: Consciously “observe”, or let chaos take over.

4. Censorship Resistance

I want to be very clear, this is not a concept the collection itself is trying to explore. It has not been my intention to address censorship resistance with the NFTs or the smart contract, even though I do value this concept obviously.

In general, I have been explicitly interested in onchain art for a long time. And if I wanted to have an isolated onchain universe, what better way to push this message than having even the mint site fully onchain?

This is why Linagee Name Registrar developers and I started talking about making a fully onchain mint experience for my fully onchain art collection.

Linagee Name Registrar developers worked hard with me, and I paid a good amount of ETH for gas out of pocket to ensure that the Chaos Roads’ mint website was fully onchain.

The fact is; as the first fully onchain read+write website, I’m hoping that Chaos Roads positively contributed to the censorship resistance movement. Even within one week of the mint, there have been several more steps taken by other communities towards a more decentralized internet.

End of the Road

This is how Chaos Roads came to be. I think the collection is very rich in its conceptualizations; at least that was my main goal when doing it.

I am told there are many people who enjoyed these ideas, and I hope that even the people who bought in for the beautiful aesthetic will start to explore the ideas the collection is trying to highlight. Rest assured: the pieces will remain aesthetically, musically, and poetically beautiful; but the meaning has been in the ideas.

The first argument the followers of the onchain art movement will make is “permanence”. That’s because most of the art being sold on Ethereum is stored on centralized servers, which will eventually go down, and onchain art brings more guarantees to the existence of digital art long-term by reducing dependencies.

This is of course a powerful argument, and it’s not wrong. The NFT apocalypse might be coming in a few years. We’ve already had cases where creators changed the image in the metadata — collectors who didn’t know about how tokenURI works were baffled. The immutability argument is not hollow.

On another practical point, onchain art also brings interoperability & composability advantages thanks to the global nature of blockchains and the accessibility of onchain art directly from the chain. This feature will probably be more prevalent for gaming NFTs than art NFTs in the future, but it will certainly advance art NFTs too and it’s worth mentioning.

I fully agree with these practical reasons to enjoy onchain art, but this article isn’t about the practical advantages of onchain art.

This article is about the impact of onchain art at a conceptual level.

A Promise For Creativity

The attention span of the modern human is declining. Every digital trend distracts the modern human a little bit more. Popularity is simply transitory. This is especially true in the “digital-plus” NFT space: New metas develop, soar and plummet at hyper-speed. One week, the meta is checkers, another week it's open editions, another week it’s memes, another week it’s ASCII art. Once the meta is over, no one looks back to see whether the art is even there.

Onchain art challenges the meta-chasing behavior. All tokens carry a code of permanence and provenance of course, but onchain art weaves the fabric of the artwork itself into the cultural legacy. It comes with a promise that, even as the 'meta of the moment' flies away, the art itself remains a constant on the blockchain.

With onchain art, the creative essence is secured, promising that long after the trend has changed, art will continue to exist, untouched on the chain. It’s an “anchor of creativity” in the fluid digital world. It stamps this cultural moment of the blockchain era where the art — not just the token — stands the test of time.

Rebellion of the Artist

Blockchains are inherently designed for financial transactions. Even for NFTs, where the promises of art and culture are made, the medium is mainly used for buying and selling.

With finance, comes speculation.

One of the biggest reasons the wider public hasn’t adopted blockchains after 14 years is the amount of speculation on them. Insiders and scammers make a lot of money in this space while the uninitiated are left at the mercy of a volatile masquerade.

But here we are, once again - artists are taking charge to create actual, real culture. This may sound romantic, but storing art onchain is like painting the blockchain, bringing beauty to this speculative medium. Artists often have to pay the larger gas fees from their own pocket - they are THAT dedicated to the mission of using the medium outside its purpose.

So yes, putting art onchain is “sticking it to the man”. It’s using this ledger not just for financial transactions but for storing art. It’s a direct challenge to the purpose of the medium, which annoys the finance maximalists within the blockchain space.

But this is exactly what artists do: We annoy the suits.

Optimized Intimacy

Art has long been a dance of optimization. Whether it's miniature art dating back to prehistory, or “impossible bottles“ of the 19th century, humans always loved the challenge of telling big stories on small canvases.

We can find the same curiosity in digital space if we explore the birth of the Demoscene in the 1980s, where digital frontiers were pushed within the limits of early computing.

Onchain art is the modern heir to this curiosity. The canvas is the blockchain, where every byte comes at a premium. The need for practicality pushes digital artists to get creative and employ various optimization techniques. Here, the artist must balance the aesthetics and economy.

This is why onchain art requires an incredible amount of labor. Despite some of the most outstanding aesthetics you can find in some onchain art, only a minority of the labor is dedicated to visible aesthetics. A staggering amount of work is behind-the-scenes alchemy — transmuting data into its most elegant and economical form without sacrificing the artwork's soul.

This is the quiet intensity of onchain artistry. It’s not merely the creation of visual pleasure. It’s a complex mosaic where every tile is meticulously placed to form a harmonious tableau within a limited gallery. To play in the onchain art realm requires a harmony of innovation, where the artist becomes both creator and engineer.

Onchain art is a testament to human ingenuity, a celebration of our relentless pursuit to do more with less, and a homage to the timeless belief that within the tiny, we capture the infinite.

Runtime Concepts

This is specific to Ethereum (and other smart-contract-based networks), but with a constantly running virtual machine that anyone in the world can maintain, we now have access to an entirely new set of art concepts that can be realized.

This is not explored much yet, but when the art is stored fully onchain, it can be reconstructed (or “painted”) by this global, always-on computer in unique ways. The blocks, timestamps, wallet addresses, transactions, other contracts, DAOs, multisigs, Uniswap pools, and even users’ actions themselves can directly affect the art with no reliance on servers or other trust-based systems.

Runtime (EVM) concepts deserve their own article because the amount of new conceptual fronts blockchain opens is endless.

It can help us explore unique relationships between the artists and collectors, where collectors can interact and influence the art. We can explore how much collectors are willing to care for their art. We can encode “pocket universes” inside the blockchain and explore the concept of chaos and the observer's effect on reality. We can explore collaborative artmaking concepts. We can explore unpredictable evolution. The possibilities are vast, and we can explore these concepts only via fully onchain art because everyone can access them, and they’re automated in blockchain runtime and safely secured by a global, reliable, always-on computer.

Conclusion

Onchain art has the practical advantages of permanence and interoperability, but it transcends that. It offers profound conceptual value.

Onchain art challenges the fleeting nature of digital trends by ensuring the enduring presence of art. It adds beauty and purpose to a primarily financial medium and embraces the intensity of optimization. Plus, the potential of runtime concepts in the blockchain environment unlocks further interactive, collaborative, and evolutionary art experiences.

As the onchain art movement gains traction, I am inviting artists, collectors, and enthusiasts not only to appreciate its practical benefits but also to embrace the groundbreaking, transformative possibilities it offers for the future of art and creative expression.

Let’s talk about PEPERMANENT.

• How to confirm the permanence of PEPERMANENT

• Walkthrough on creating a fully on-chain NFT on Bitcoin

• Final words

How to confirm the permanence of PEPERMANENT

1. Go to xchain explorer, and see the Issuances tab. Click View in the initial issuance transaction.

2. You can already see the data in the description here but the better method is copying the transaction hash into your clipboard and resolving the op_return data either manually or through an API. This is what we’ll do now: Copy the transaction hash.

3. Now you have three choices. Choose one of the instructions below to extract the image URI.

3.a) Go to bitst.art and scroll to the “description” field under events.

The image element starts with data:image/svg…. and ends with …/svg%3e.

You can just copy-paste everything within the “image” element to any browser and it’ll show you your on-chain Pepe.

3.b) Visit JP Janssen’s decoder referring to this transaction and scroll down to the “Description” field. You’ll see the full data there.

Unfortunately, the formatting may not work when you copy-paste, so just right-click the “inspect” element.

Under the console, you’ll find the entire image URI.

The image element starts with data:image/svg…. and ends with …/svg%3e.

You can just copy-paste everything within the “image” element to any browser and it’ll show you your on-chain Pepe.

3.c) You can also do it manually. Follow JP Janssen’s guide and use the transaction where the data is added on-chain. Here’s the blockstream link to the Bitcoin transaction.

Note: The entire URI is a JSON file; but what you’re interested in is the image, which is located inside the image element of the JSON. In either option above in Step 3, the image element starts with data:image/svg…. and ends with …/svg%3e.

If you copy this string into any browser’s URL section, it’ll display the artwork.

Here’s the full image URI string:

data:image/svg+xml;utf8,%3csvg width='480' height='672' viewBox='0 0 480 672' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%3e%3cfilter id='a' filterUnits='userSpaceOnUse'%3e%3cfeGaussianBlur in='SourceGraphic' stdDeviation='5' result='v'/%3e%3cfeGaussianBlur in='SourceGraphic' stdDeviation='10' result='w'/%3e%3cfeGaussianBlur in='SourceGraphic' stdDeviation='15' result='x'/%3e%3cfeGaussianBlur in='SourceGraphic' stdDeviation='20' result='y'/%3e%3cfeMerge%3e%3cfeMergeNode in='v'/%3e%3cfeMergeNode in='w'/%3e%3cfeMergeNode in='x'/%3e%3cfeMergeNode in='y'/%3e%3c/feMerge%3e%3c/filter%3e%3cfilter id='b'%3e%3cfeTurbulence baseFrequency='0.1'/%3e%3cfeDisplacementMap in='SourceGraphic' scale='12'/%3e%3c/filter%3e%3cpath d='M0 0h480v672H0z'%3e%3canimate attributeName='fill' from='%23000' to='%23222' dur='0.1s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3c/path%3e%3cg fill='%231a44f1'%3e%3cpath d='M69 389c38 274-101 237 294 238-4-145-113-259-284-240 260 47 239 9 239 15-7 275 196 240-262 222 12 21 62-225 13-235z'/%3e%3cpath d='M153 421c-139-69 41 215 182 187-270 97-54-305-66-142-323 268-21 2-116-45Z'/%3e%3canimate attributeName='fill-opacity' from='0.8' to='0.2' dur='0.1s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cg fill='%231a44f1'%3e%3cpath d='M212 417c-128 78-123 197 9 190-282 116 100-225 88-62-39 176-23-18-97-128Z'/%3e%3canimate attributeName='fill-opacity' from='0.2' to='0.8' dur='0.1s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cg style='filter:url(%23a)'%3e%3cg fill='%23fff' id='c'%3e%3cpath d='M36 707c15-17 24-61 19-86-9 60-16 44-19 86zm147 9c31-37 42-66 37-92-9 60-34 49-37 92z'/%3e%3cpath d='M220 718c13-25 7-85 9-103-15-10-9 86-9 103zm136-88c-16 10-10 56-10 82 9-18 3-61 10-81zm42-509c4-65-99-69-121-33 87-44 93-29 121 33z'/%3e%3cg%3e%3canimateTransform attributeName='transform' type='translate' from='0 0' to='0 -20' dur='0.2s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3cpath d='M61 358C-77 674 71 623 88 676c-3 25 51-260-8-310 61 88-21 449-24 254-48 132-72-137 5-262Zm262 31c41 27 91 383 33 258-32 111-31-181-47-256 3 426 138 306 14-2zm115-247c-30-22-93-42-153-19 46-2 122-20 153 19z'/%3e%3cpath d='M304 140c-30-22-83-68-143-17 84-34 112-22 143 17z'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cpath d='M99 191c4-126 135-196 187-74C273 11 68 59 99 191zm359-22c-72-52-179 17-136-11 46-34 141-13 136 11z'/%3e%3cpath d='M325 161c-68-47-193 34-150 6 71-51 156-30 150-6zm135 38c-49 42-62 55-136 31 37 0 109 24 136-31zm-132 13c-19 36-69 27-150 4 63 32 113 23 151-4zM86 380c-76-23-58-205 12-221-88 55-84 212-12 221z'/%3e%3cpath d='M195 405c70 22 318-38 215-161 130 308-609 57-215 161z'/%3e%3cg style='filter:url(%23b)'%3e%3cpath d='M315 199c-3-2 3-26 6-25-83-38-118-8-148 14 75 54 122 13 142 11z'/%3e%3cpath d='M317 198c-3-2 2-25 5-24 32-31 119-22 129 9-33 51-144 23-134 15z'/%3e%3cg fill='%230c0705'%3e%3ccircle cx='249' cy='186' r='28'/%3e%3ccircle cx='385' cy='184' r='27'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3cuse href='%23c'/%3e%3cpath d='M336 320c104 24-93 0-154-22 42 47 208 82 154 22z' fill='%23e2145f'%3e%3canimate attributeName='fill-opacity' from='0' to='0.8' dur='0.2s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3c/path%3e%3cpath fill='%23af6648' stroke='%23af6648' stroke-width='2'%3e%3canimate attributeName='d' from='m 277,327 c -150,-19 -133,0 -118,5 155,36 317,23 260,1 -22,1 -95,9 -208,-12 -57,-9 -83,-29 11,-20 178,39 256,-16 206,18 0,0 -10,26 -151,9 z' to='m 279,314 c -148,-30 -147,-47 -87,23 70,67 318,36 193,-30 39,29 -25,82 -171,20 -8,-3 -115,-81 10,-46 122,52 258,-41 185,19 0,0 -97,20 -130,13 z' dur='0.2s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3c/path%3e%3cg fill='%2367974c'%3e%3cg%3e%3canimate attributeName='fill-opacity' from='0.8' to='0.2' dur='0.1s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3cpath d='M184 253c-257 59-36 64-71 123 118-49-101-132 37-179-207 17 94 108 34 56zm-75-62c28-60 89-171 149-99 44 13-162-65-149 99zm216-45c65-15 42-40 96-5-51-12-144-33-96 5z'/%3e%3cpath d='M398 261c-33 23-230 42-192-6 121 91 40 7 192 6zM36 592c117-39-43-25 25-138-54 35-41 119-25 158zm325-70c-61 227 26 25-37-109 0 162 64 334 37 109zM200 654c-27-41-119 50-102-22 40 26 56 56 102 22Z'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cg%3e%3canimate attributeName='fill-opacity' from='0.2' to='0.8' dur='0.2s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3cpath d='M117 216c-160 74 36 159 202 165-255 40-206-134-156-152 54 67-160 125-45-13zm170-113c43-39 42 0 84 5-11-63-34-2-84-5zm-157 86c63-54 18-81 130-70-54 35-140-17-130 70z'/%3e%3cpath d='M185 278c45-58 361 27 109 14 281-92-163 5-109-14zM72 581c17-118-56-57 1-145-78 46 59-194 9 145zm253 72c-27-41-86 57-69-15 40 26 56 50 69 15z'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/g%3e%3cuse href='%23e' x='136'/%3e%3cpath fill='none' stroke='%23fff' id='e'%3e%3canimate attributeName='d' from='m243 198c41-37 4-6 5 6 38-34 4-10 10 4 2-30-9-11-7-25-4 2-12 15-8 15z' to='m 237,183 c -9,24 44,-4 36,18 -6,17 -29,-1 -12,-1 20,0 -9,-65 -10,-3 -1,30 -7,-33 -13,-14 z' dur='0.2s' repeatCount='indefinite'/%3e%3c/path%3e%3cuse href='%23e' x='136'/%3e%3c/svg%3e

Bitcoin On-Chain NFT Creation Walkthrough

First a little bit of history: The first 100% on-chain ownable artwork on Bitcoin was created by JP Janssen. His work, OLGA, to this day remains one of the most significant relics in the entire NFT space regardless of the chain.

Mr. Janssen encoded OLGA (which is a JPG file) in Bitcoin transactions. He chose to store in a transaction that isn’t linked to the OLGA token itself (the method resembles how CryptoPunks stored its images on-chain on a separate contract).

I use SVG file type in my art, because SVG is vector graphics. Since it’s based on a mathematical framework, it takes significantly less space than raster graphic files. SVG can also scale infinitely and has no frame loss in its animations (technically infinite frame per second). These advantages make SVG one of the best file types for the metaverse, especially an on-chain one.

While creating the artwork, I do a lot of optimizations. Already while drawing on inkscape, I minimize the number of nodes on each pathway without losing the aesthetic feel. Then I edit the drawing directly in code; removing decimals, grouping similar property assets, adding animations, effects, etc. This stage is usually 80% of the work - making sure I create an aesthetically pleasing artwork while minimizing its cost storage.

Up until this point, we haven’t uploaded anything on-chain. In Ethereum, this is pretty easy - you just update the tokenURI and all marketplaces & wallets will be able to read the on-chain data and display the artwork. Unfortunately, this isn’t common practice in Bitcoin. So I had to get creative a bit.

I noticed that description fields in Counterparty wallets were being stored within Bitcoin transactions (as part of op_return). This is usually a link to a JSON file, stored on a centralized server or Arweave. But what if I stored my JSON file which included my SVG file directly in it?

Make no mistake, once you add a weird JSON to your description, nothing will be visible on any Counterparty wallets, or Counterparty explorers. These fields are not designed for this purpose.

But artists use mediums outside their original purpose all the time.

So that’s exactly what I did.

I wanted to make sure that the file gets stored on-chain “at issuance” (not added later). So I minted PEPERMANENT directly with the long JSON file including the SVG artwork, which cost me ~$200 to store on-chain. Then I ran another transaction to add an Arweave link so that wallets and explorers could recognize the artwork.

Final Words

Storing the most iconic web3 character on Bitcoin itself is a very interesting idea to me. I also wanted it to look aesthetically pleasing, which I hope I managed. This of course required a lot of optimization because storing stuff on Bitcoin is expensive AF. Beyond that, I had a lot of fun creating the artwork. There is some reference to my earlier pieces in PEPERMANENT. I’d love it if people could find that reference.

I deployed PEPERMANENT on 2022-11-23, but I had to wait for Fake Rares to approve me and add the card to the directory before I announced it, which is why the hype started only recently.

I hope everyone enjoys PEPERMANENT as much as I did.

Update: PEPERMANENT is now fully sold and can only be bought on the secondary market. As of this writing, there are no dispensers available on Counterparty. The only available assets seem to be on Emblem Vault on Ethereum. The current floor price is 0.69E.

Feels immutable man.

Fun and standing out. That’s the story of Partyleft.

The NFT bear market is making the web3 participants increasingly depressed. Especially after the FTX fiasco, people in Crypto Twitter are way more cynical. To top that off, Elon Musk is turning Twitter into Parler, which is making everyone’s social experience worse.

So I wanted to do something fun, and something unique. Plus we’re about to finish the first series of ART PONZI, so I wanted to celebrate it. I hope you all like it.

The Concept

“On-chain visual story” is a concept I experimented with while making Mergeleft and Pushersleft before. Mergeleft depicted the story of proof of work switching to an environmentally friendly proof of stake. Pushersleft depicted the story of web3 artists pushing the boundaries of concepts and techniques in the NFT space. Both of these pieces had scenes that changed throughout the animation.

Partyleft doesn’t come with scenes, but it’s rather showing a continuous, ongoing story, much like a loop. But it’s taking what was done before one step further: It has music! It’s an on-chain AUDIO-visual story.

I tried to walk in the footsteps of geniuses before me; mainly Unigrids, EulerBeats, Jonathan Mann, Bleeps, Ocarinas, and In Noise We Trust. These are fantastic pieces, and to me some of the most interesting experiments in web3.

Unigrids (January 2021): First on-chain beats (can be considered first on-chain music too). EulerBeats (February 2021): First on-chain music** Jonathan Mann’s “This Song Will Never Die” (August 2021): First on-chain song (depicted with notation). Bleeps (December 2021):** First fully on-chain sounds. Also first fully on-chain generative sounds. Ocarinas (January 2022): First fully on-chain music. In Noise We Trust (April 2022): First fully on-chain audiovisual generative art.

“Fully on-chain” in this context refers to the artwork as a file existing on the chain, with no JS or other library dependencies.

Bear in mind that most of these are generative, so the visual output is mostly beautiful shapes (except “This Song Will Never Die”, which doesn’t have on-chain visuals). I love generative art, but I find 1/1 and editioned art also beautiful; because these works can tell complete visual stories. So I wanted to do a fully on-chain audiovisual artwork that also tells a full visual story, not only beautiful shapes.

So now we have Partyleft: Possibly the first 100% on-chain audiovisual story. Or as I like to call it: 100% on-chain party 😊 Was this ever done before?

Technicals

The Visual

As you can tell by now, I love skeleton aesthetics! I promise this is the last time I’m using it (in the first season of ART PONZI 😉). Of course the skeleton resembles the artist symbolism I had in earlier pieces: Findersleft and Pushersleft. I decided to distort it a little more to give a messier party vibe.

One challenge was to make sure I can actually make the skelly look like it’s really dancing. Up & down movement was easy but the largest space in the entire file is taken by the hand and leg movements. That’s because it’s actually quite complex to be able to simulate dancing with pathway animation - it needs to go to a second state, and then return to the initial state again (unlike classical glitch where there is no return, just a restart).

For falling martinis, I used the motion command technique - the same technique I had used in Dropleft. Another technique borrowed from Dropleft is stroke-dasharray animation: There it was used to create an ever-moving universe tear, but here I’ve used it to replicate fireworks animation. I think it looks pretty cool and it occupies an incredibly low space in the entire file.

Disco lights made me work a little but the answer turned out really simple: A circle that’s blurred with a very high standard deviation. That’s it!

The Audio

I learnt how to play guitar and keyboard when I was a kid, but haven’t touched them for a long time. But I still remember chords and I can tell which note should go after the next (my wife says I have a good music ear).

Still, I’m not a musician and I was clueless about different audio file types before I started this piece. So I had to do a lot of research.

After a few nights of googling & reading, I started exploring what was done in NFTs before. I ended up discarding notation because I wanted the file to be present on the chain with the beats and everything. I wanted people to be able to listen just using the data from the chain.

It became clear that there were two prominent options remaining at that point: WAV and MIDI. The rawer the file, the better it would be. WAV is probably as raw as it gets. It also plays automatically when you put it on HTML which is a streaming advantage; and it can go on a loop forever, much like SVG.

The problem is, WAV is uncompressed, and it takes approximately 1000 times (this is not an exaggeration) more space than MIDI. This is why when you see WAV being used (like with Bleeps or INWT), it’s a single beep sound, or it’s more like a noise than coherent music.

MIDI is optimized and compressed, although it can’t be looped and as far as I understand; you need specific players to play it, i.e. you cannot play it on the browser directly.

I have no problems with noisy audio, but I ended up deciding to go with MIDI to create a true party vibe for this piece. In the future, I’d like to use WAV as well, but perhaps for a different type of piece.

Believe it or not, the bass that you hear within this disco/beat music is an adjusted version of a lullaby for my newborn (now 4 months old) I made up a few weeks ago.

The thing with MIDI is that it may play differently on different tools, apps, or browsers. It depends on what instruments you use for your MIDI. I tested multiple instruments and tried to use only the generic ones where the output would definitely play both on an online sequencer, and offline software. I tested onlinesequencer.net, as well as GarageBand and iMovie. While slightly different, both drums and bass worked in all these tools. I then tried ehubsoft where only the bass played, in piano form, without the drums. So this is the downside of using MIDI: It’s not as commonly accepted as SVG. But it’s the best we have for on-chain music.

The Synchronization

I typically do fast glitches on my pieces, but I noticed that I had to synchronize the music and the glitch animation; so after finishing everything, I had to change animation durations to match the beat’s speed.

That means not only adjusting the skelly’s movements, but even adjusting the fireworks. And adjusting fireworks means an hour of changing the optimum stroke dash offset for the firework to explode perfectly in sync with the beat…

The Display

As mentioned before, MIDI may not automatically play on the marketplaces. But almost every computer will run it. But since I want it to work on OpenSea, I recorded the video of the piece (SVG + MIDI) as an MP4 and uploaded the video on Manifold.

Therefore, what you’re seeing on OpenSea is the off-chain fallback file, but both audio and visual files are stored 100% on-chain and can be accessed easily. Not just reproducable through code, the actual files are stored onchain.

Final Thoughts

I hope everyone likes Partyleft as much as I enjoyed making it. It took me about 15 days to make it and throughout this time I was mostly sick, so this was an escape for me. It’s incredibly rewarding to be doing unique things in the web3 space. Hopefully the amount of innovation ART PONZI Series 1 brought to the space will be remembered in the distant future.

This was ART PONZI’s 9th drop. Only one more drop left before we finish Series 1, where all the released pieces were stored 100% on-chain. ART PONZI holders: Expect some surprises (and I mean beyond the already promised drops).

Don’t forget; every piece you own in ART PONZI qualifies you an airdrop of the next piece. The final piece in the Series 1 will qualify its holders for a piece from a secret collection. This means; if you keep holding all drops, the final ART PONZI piece (piece #10) will qualify you for a piece from the secret collection.

I started making Clipleft exactly on the day of the FTX collapse. I always held skepticism towards “effective altruism” ideology (or even philanthropy in general) but I was especially suspicious of SBF. So when FTX was collapsing and SBF’s frauds were coming out, I was filled with a lot of emotions: Anger, affirmation, sadness for people who lost their money, fear, and ultimately cynicism.

Clipleft is open to interpretation, on purpose. I see it as the people who are scarred by the various frauds in web3 space. But one can interpret it as sth entirely different, as a glitchy pfp, as a painting (I worked hard to make it look like a painting), as a doom warning, or something completely different.

The Concept

My goal while doing Clipleft was to do a painting with the smallest possible file. Obviously a simple square would result in a small file, but I also wanted to aim for an aesthetic piece. I talked about this concept extensively for Pushersleft, and Pushersleft itself was a massively optimized piece. But of course Pushersleft was a very complex piece, it was a literal mini-movie, so it had to be more than 5,000 bytes.

I think the result aesthetically speaks for itself, and finally we have this beautiful glitch painting that’s stored only in 1,653 bytes.

This was made possible because I used an SVG technique for the first time within ART PONZI called clipping, which brings us to:

Technicals

By now I feel like I’ve iterated on the distortion effects enough times so I won’t go into the details on them much, apart from mentioning that the double-distortion here is what allowed me to create splash-like brushes on the canvas. Still, if you’re interested, here’s the non-distorted hand drawing:

The real difference in this piece was using the technique called “clipping”. Clipping allows you to crop a specific shape over a pre-existing layout. So I can create beautiful abstract color animations as a baselayer, and add a skull shape on top of it using clipping. This is basically what I’ve done in this piece, and this is what helped create this painting at such a small size.

You can get very creative with this technique. You can use shapes and pathways of course, but even texts or dashed strokes. In fact I tried showcasing the flexibility that can come with clipping in one of my experiments for Keepersleft, but decided to not mint his version in the end.

I suggest other SVG aficionados to try clipping.

Final Thoughts

I hope everyone likes Clipleft as much as I do. The painting itself didn’t take too long to complete, but the larger part of the work was optimization of the SVG elements to minimize the code as much as possible, since this was my goal for this piece.

This was ART PONZI’s 8th drop. We’re close to the end of the Series 1, where all the released were stored 100% on-chain. I plan to do some interesting things with the last 2 drops, and meanwhile, some surprises will be waiting for ART PONZI holders.

Don’t forget; every piece you own in ART PONZI qualify you an airdrop of the next piece. The final piece in the Series 1 will qualify its holders for a piece from a secret collection. This means; if you keep holding all drops, the next ART PONZI piece (piece #9) will qualify you for a total of 2 additional pieces.

With each piece in ART PONZI, I tried to tell a story about the entire collection. This is important for this 1st series. So far, the pieces in the collection referred to the collection’s genesis, its drop mechanics, the time of the drops (close to the merge), the glitch art style, on-chain immutability, and never-ending artistic tweaks.

There are a couple of ways to interpret this piece, but the one I like is the story of artists and builders in web3, who are pushing the space forward, pushing the boundaries, and in the end cracking through, becoming damaged themselves but hopefully making a change and leaving their mark.

So Pushersleft wants to honor the boundary-pushers in web3, but also represents my hope for ART PONZI to be a part of these legendary collections. This is why I tried to do “firsts” throughout each drop, even if they’re niche (first on-chain glitch art, first on-chain editions, first on-chain visual story with scenes, first on-chain puzzle, etc).

The Concept

The first time I told an on-chain visual story was through Mergeleft. Mergeleft depicted the story of proof of work switching to an environmentally friendly proof of stake.

What was unique about Mergeleft?

Mergeleft included three scenes. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the ending didn’t stop like in a video file. The ending was on a loop.

With Pushersleft, I’m taking a similar approach to Mergeleft. So technically it’s not a first. But hopefully, it’s a more complete story this time.

Pushersleft has four scenes: Pushing, cracking, distorting, and birth. The code was even written based on the separation of scenes.

Technicals

In my view, the most artistic part of this work is not the aesthetic (although I find it beautiful), not the concept (although I think non-looping scenes of visual events is a pretty unique concept), but the optimizations to ensure the work can be immutably stored on-chain.

Here I’ll explain some of the strategies I use to deploy my works on-chain.

I first draw different scenes by hand. Already at this stage, I have to consider the number of nodes I’m using. I reduce the number of nodes used to reduce the length of the pathways. There’s already a trade-off here; optimize for the shortest path while maintaining an aesthetic image that conveys the emotion you want to express with the artwork. Much like pixel art, simplicity is key in SVG art. One of the tricks is drawing the pathways that may go outside the viewbox to reduce the number of nodes.

The next step is removing decimals where not needed. Why would you need coordinate 71.89 when you can have coordinate 72? Barely anything changes in the final artwork after making such a change.

I also sectionize parts of the SVG code. For example, if there are elements in the piece with the same color, they can go under the same layer, even if they are in irrelevant parts of the piece. This applies to animations too, similar animations can be grouped. Choosing the right command is also key. You can save about 5% if you use ‘path’ command instead of ‘rect’ command to reach the same shape. Then there’s the ‘use’ command. You can assign identities to sections of the code to reuse them later. You can even move them slightly to repeat the same section in a different coordinate. You have to be careful though; everything, including the animation, gets copied with this command. There are several minor tricks also specific to the use case; like how you animate (draw a new pathway, or simply use command) or how much glow you add. This is how I can build these animated mini-movies on-chain with the files sized 99% smaller than a fiverr cartoon pfp. Final Thoughts I hope everyone likes Pushersleft as much as I enjoyed making it. It took about a week to complete, but due to the volatility in crypto, gas cost was high and the transaction to put the file on-chain got stuck more than a week. This was ART PONZI’s 7th drop. I want to keep marking other niche “firsts” in NFT space with the next drops, explore new frontiers and hopefully push the boundaries of what can be done on-chain a little further. Don’t forget; every piece you own in ART PONZI qualify you an airdrop of the next piece. The 10th piece in the collection will qualify its holders for a piece from a secret collection. This means; if you keep holding all drops, the next ART PONZI piece (piece #8) will qualify you for 3 additional airdrops of unique artworks.

Whether it’s through interesting drop mechanics or through creating new forms of visual forms such as years-long loops, everlasting non-loop pieces, or on-chain visual magic; since the beginning of ART PONZI, I tried doing something unique with every single piece.

This double-drop is no different.

Introducing Findersleft & Keepersleft.

Findersleft

With Findersleft, not only are we experimenting by doing a puzzle 100% on-chain, but also we’re doing the puzzle in a way that wouldn’t be possible with any other visual file format than SVG! And this puzzle also affects the drop mechanism of the next ART PONZI piece.

The Story

This piece continues the tradition of the other ART PONZI pieces in telling a story about the entire collection. It’s a pretty clear message but for those not familiar: The skeleton represents on-chain artists, who are storing their artworks somewhere extremely safe, in this case, Ethereum blockchain. Oh, and the artwork the skeleton is holding is the GIF-eater from my previous drop Glitchleft.

Today, more than 70% of NFTs are hosted on centralized websites whose owners can decide to shut down, or the servers running these websites might go offline. This includes the most popular NFT collection today, Bored Ape Yacht Club.

About 25% of NFTs are stored in IPFS, a decentralized storage service, which is a much safer option. But even IPFS needs to be pinned continuously, and there have been multiple occasions where the network slowed so significantly that assets would not load fast enough.

Arweave aims to solve the pinning issue. It’s by far the best option besides on-chain storage. However it still introduces a dependency on a separate chain, whose security model will need more battle-testing in the future.

On-chain storage ignores all of these issues. It only needs Ethereum to exist, which is why I have been trying to bring attention to it.

The Puzzle

This is probably the part of the article you’ve been looking forward to reading.

I realize that today in October 2022 we’re in an NFT bear market and a lot of people either lack liquidity or are worried about an expected financial crisis. But I also know a lot of people are interested in unique artworks. thought I could perhaps find a way to add a puzzle to the piece so that these people can get rewarded for their curiosity.

For this, I needed to create the second piece (Keepersleft) alongside the first (Findersleft). The first piece would include a key (a web3 wallet passphrase) to a wallet, which would store an edition of the second piece.

The wallet passphrase is hidden inside the safe our skeleton is opening. However it’s not possible to read it easily. To read each word in the passphrase, you have to zoom massively and wait for the distortion effect to be over. Thanks to SVG format, the letters of the words would not lose any quality when zoomed.

The other way to solve the puzzle would be to look at the SVG code itself! Again, only possible in SVG and not GIF or JPG formats as these are raster images, not code-based. However this approach would be trickier, because I split the words into multiple parts to make the words and their orders incomprehensible.

As the passphrase is discovered, the owner would type that into an Ethereum wallet and log in, and see Keepersleft beautifully sitting in the wallet. Additionally, if they visit OpenSea, they’d be greeted with this profile that urges them to send the asset to their own wallet. I even funded the wallet with enough ETH to transfer the asset.

I think Tokenfox, who solved the puzzle and got his reward, had a lot of fun.

The Technicals

The most visible visual effect in the piece is the glow effect on the skeleton and the Ethereum symbol. This is usually a pretty commonly used effect in beautiful off-chain glitch artworks, but I don’t think examples of it exist on-chain. Or exist-ed.

The way to do a glow effect in SVG is by having two layers: The bottom layer would have the Gaussian blur filter and the top layer would be the same element but without a filter.

The real trick when doing this on-chain is shortening the code to save storage space. To do that, I assigned the blur filter in a separate section where the visual is identified, and then deployed the “” command. A relatively short code for the visual on the left Perhaps the other artistically nerdy part here is the perspective in the Ethereum symbol. The angles of the symbol are mathematically calculated in relation to the door being opened. Keepersleft Keepersleft, in significantly reduced quality of GIF format, cut at 15 seconds. Oh, the number of times I iterated on Keepersleft. And I didn’t even plan to sell it. One edition was rewarded to the person who solved the puzzle in Findersleft, and the other editions were airdropped to the previous ART PONZI holders. Of course, I still wanted to do something visually appealing, something that tells a story, something that is unique. The Story This was the first time I experimented with abstract glitch art. Let’s get this out of the way; abstract art is much easier when doing things on-chain, because the exact coordinates of the elements are much less problematic. This is one of the reasons we see most on-chain art projects being abstract art. The harder part of abstract art is to convey meaning and emotion in your painting. Abstract art is often interpreted differently by different people. I’m open to other people’s interpretations, but my intention was to depict the transitory nature of art. You’ll notice the calm color bubbles in the piece when you first look, but in about 10-15 seconds, the colors start to form a rigid structure and rush together. Never the same frame twice Additionally, there’s the demon. The demon represents the urge to keep iterating on the artwork. You can see that the demon shows up when the colors are brightening and flowing faster. Art demons are what drives artists’ creative force, but it’s also the very thing that causes the imposter syndrome, wanting to keep changing the artwork over and over. The Technicals What’s unique about the piece? Apart from the drop mechanic (tied-in with Findersleft and given for free to the puzzle-solver), hopefully the visual side is a bit unique too. The abstract glitch art follows a similar pattern throughout the animation, but it’ll take a really long time to ever see the same frame again. The abstract art background is designed in a way to keep changing for a long time. I actually wanted to introduce clipping/masking feature of SVGs in this piece, but after dozens of iterations, I decided against it as it was causing performance issues on Safari or Firefox. I’ll give it another shot in some of the next pieces. Here are just 6 of the iterations (out of many more) I decided not to mint. Unminted versions, in reduced qu... you get the gist Final Thoughts I hope everyone likes Findersleft and Keepersleft as much as I enjoyed making them. It took about three weeks to complete both, but I’m finally happy with the result. We’re now more than half way through ART PONZI’s Series 1 drops. The collection is shaping up beautifully and marking a lot of “firsts” in the NFT space with each piece. With every piece, I’m getting better at SVG drawing, coding and optimization; and I’m coming up with new ideas to use the unique elements of SVGs to create unique experiences. Several people contacted me to say that they’ve converted to on-chain NFTs thanks to this collection, and I can’t imagine a bigger praise than that. We’ll continue the remaining drops in the same manner. New experiments, explorations, and sometimes just weird stuff. Don’t forget; every piece you own in ART PONZI qualify you an airdrop of the next piece. The 10th piece in the collection will qualify its holders for a piece from a secret collection. This means; if you keep holding all drops, the next ART PONZI piece will qualify you for 4 more airdrops of unique artworks.

Namecoin NFT skeptic: The name expired between 2011 and now. You just bought the re-registered version. This re-registration creates a new UTXO chain in Namecoin’s design, so it's a new NFT.

Enthusiast: You’re right that this is a new UTXO. If you are considering the asset to be “UTXO + name”, what changes is the fungible part (unspent NMC = UTXO) and not the non-fungible object/blob itself.

It’s a bit odd to say it’s a new NFT when the only thing changing is the fungible part.

Nevertheless, to keep it technical and not philosophical, I’ll stop calling them assets or tokens, and just keep referring to them as what they are: “names” and “UTXOs“. The fact is, this is a new UTXO, but this new UTXO provides the ownership proof for the old "name" entity.

Skeptic: No, the original name doesn't exist when it expires. When you or someone else re-registers it, it creates a new name. Your re-registration is simply a copymint of the old name.

Enthusiast: Even semantically things that expire continue existing (like the spoilt milk); but in this case, we can also check the chain, the name definitely exists after expiration.

Skeptic: At the protocol level, there is literally a rule:

“name_firstupdate must be on a name never seen or that has expired”

So “name_firstupdate” function (command) does not distinguish between “expired names” or “never-registered names”. If the actual protocol design is treating the expired names the same as never-registered names, we can conclude that expired names stop existing.

Enthusiast: This is an added interpretation you’re making. In reality, name_firstupdate is a software function (command). At the code level, this function’s scope is simply checking whether a name is controlled (active).

The false equivalence of “never-existing names” and “re-registered names” is a human interpretation. After all, the expired name exists on the chain, unlike never-registered names.

Skeptic: Yes, it physically exists but only as part of the previous transactions. After all, blockchain is just a ledger with a record of historical transactions. A history of its existence doesn't mean it still exists today.

This is like saying the two tokenURIs on Ethereum, on two separate tokens which are from completely separate collections are the same asset!

Enthusiast: That would be a fair point if this was just a message or an entry on the blockchain like metadata; but names aren't just entries, they're the unique identifiers in Namecoin. Namecoin names exist as identifiers just like their UTXOs still exist at the point of expiration.

Skeptic: So how do we know it's the same name?

Enthusiast: It's literally the same text string with the same characters.

Skeptic: Yes, but cryptographically speaking, it has a different UTXO. If different UTXOs are attached to two same-looking names, then these two names are actually different entities. There can be a “John Doe” living in the USA and another “John Doe” living in Singapore, they can have the same name but they would have different DNAs. They’re different people. Their DNA is the distinguishing factor. It’s their unique identifier.

Enthusiast: That’s the thing. In Namecoin, NAMES are the unique identifiers:

In Namecoin, two names with the same set of characters cannot exist at the same time, only ONE can exist.

So yes, names are literally the DNAs.

There are many proofs of this:

1. Technical proof 1: Consensus code creates a decentralized database where the names are directly used as primary keys of the database.

2. Technical proof 2: Consensus code itself treats names as unique keys, for example via mapping the value fields to names, or via making controls through names (meanwhile UTXOs keep changing while names never do)

3. Technical proof 3: Namecoin fork is designed in a way where every single addition to the Bitcoin protocol is designed around names, not UTXOs.

4. Ecosystem-level proof: RPCs use name-specific calls (and not UTXO calls) such as name_show, name_history since the earliest days of the Namecoin blockchain.

5. Intention proofs in the documentation: Terms such as “re-registration“ differentiated from “registration”.

6. Intention proofs from the code syntax: Terms like “active/inactive names” instead of “existing/destroyed names“

My favorite ones are the technical proofs, because I can directly show the code.

This is one of the examples in the consensus code that checks whether the name being requested is already active. Never mind the fact that the syntax is wholly based around “names” (showing the intention of the protocol), the code directly treats “names” as the technical identifiers of the asset.

Skeptic: Hold up. How does it treat the name as an identifier based on this code piece?

Enthusiast: If you are an administrator of a database, and if a column in the database is used as a key to match with another database entry, then that column is treated as an identifier for that data table. This is just how databases work.

Here, when the user wants to add a NEW name to the database, the code is checking whether it matches an OLD name in the database already. Along with it, it checks whether it’s expired (inactive) or not [Note that this second check is not a key-match but rather a feature of the asset]. If not expired, then the new entry is added to the database. The code is using the “name” field as the database key to match!

This is important.

The fact that the code decides the database entry based on a match between the new name to the old name is proof that the code treats names as “database keys”, i.e. identifiers of that database.

In fact, in the entire lifetime of this text field (i.e. name), this unique set of characters has multiple UTXO stations even during standard transfers (i.e. separate 0.01 NMCs that keep getting spent and new ones being created) without ever changing the text field itself.

Skeptic: What’s a UTXO station? I heard about UTXOs but never “UTXO stations”.

Enthusiast: That’s the term Daniel Kraft (Chief Namecoin Scientist) used in our conversations. It refers to individual 0.01NMCs that get spent and/or get created throughout a name’s lifecycle. It’s actually what a UTXO is. The term is less important than what actually happens. The point is that your name remains the same during a standard transfer but your UTXO changes. In fact, that even happens in Counterparty and Dogeparty!

Skeptic: Well, UTXOs technically change, but in Counterparty and Dogeparty, and in fact in Namecoin during the standard transfer, there is a clear chain of custody. You can see within the same process that the first UTXO is being spent, and the second UTXO is being created. That’s a clear chain of custody.

That’s not the case with expired and re-registered Namecoin assets. You can’t show clear chain custody for the re-registered Namecoin assets.

Enthusiast: Determining the provenance based on the UTXO chain is a human interpretation rather than technical one. The technical reality, when you look at the snapshot of today, is that the UTXO of the transferred asset is different from the UTXO that was originally issued. But Counterparty protocol ADDS this “UTXO-chain” interpretation to create a provenance record. Just like Namecoin protocol ADDS the “name-chain” interpretation to create a provenance record.

Ultimately, my only point is that we can see that UTXOs are not being treated as unique identifiers.

Coming back to your “name/DNA analogy”; NAMES are the DNAs in Namecoin.

Skeptic: Where is the transaction linking this name you’re trading to the old name?

Enthusiast: The easiest way to prove it is using the name_history RPC method to show your currently owned name’s history and how it -the very asset that you hold- was first registered much earlier. Of course RPC methods are external to the protocol, but it’s just a simple way to show how the Namecoin ecosystem tools work to prove the protocol-level provenance.

But you asked about the transactions. At the protocol level, the transaction linking the new UTXO to the name exists exactly on the chain. So does the transaction linking the old UTXO to the same name.

Here they are: The old one and the new one.

Skeptic: Yeah but aren’t these just different versions of the same name?

Enthusiast: This is an incorrect interpretation. There is nothing in these transactions that verifies this interpretation. All that we know based on only looking at the chain, the name fields in these transactions are the same text fields and UTXOs are different. Solely based on the information in a ledger of transactions, we have no way to declare whether UTXOs or names should be unique identifiers (and this applies to Counterparty and Dogeparty too).

I actually understand why your initial instinct is to call the UTXO set “the main identifier”. This is an assumption rooted in our knowledge of other chains, but this would mean ignoring the technical design of Namecoin. After all, names have their own tracking as per Namecoin consensus design. It’s right there in the consensus code and the consensus rule.

This is why re-registered Namecoin names are the old names.

Skeptic: Wait; you literally just said the consensus rule says “allow name registration only if the name does not exist already“. Doesn’t this mean the expiration made the name “non-existent”? So indeed the expiration destroys the asset from existence, and when you register it in 2022, this becomes a new name!

Enthusiast: Now you’re making a semantic argument. Technically what you’re referring to is re-registration, as referred to in the Namecoin documentation itself.

I could even make the semantic argument that there is a reason every Namecoin documentation has different names for “registration” and “re-registration”; meaning that an expired asset is different from a never-existed asset.

But this is of course still just semantics. What matters is the code: The consensus code undoubtedly treats names as unique identifiers, which means names maintain their history throughout expiration and re-registration.

Skeptic: OK, but your argument makes sense in the context of databases, not cryptographic proofs. When we want to track a record of an NFT, we look at the chain of ownership records that link the NFT to a wallet. This is how it works everywhere else. What you’re saying makes no sense…

Enthusiast: There is proof of everything above in the cryptographically secured blockchain and in the blockchain consensus code. In fact, the consensus code constructs the database from the blockchain before making these checks. The database does not exist in isolation.

If we narrow down the definitions, and we were to consider only “proof of ownership with cryptographic private keys” as NFTs, then we would have to consider pre-Bitcoin p2p cryptographic proofs between artists/collectors also NFTs. In this case, the first NFTs would probably be from the 1970s or 1980s :) I don’t think you want to make such an arbitrary and forced definition.

Skeptic: I’m specifically talking about cryptographic ownership records throughout the asset lifecycle in a blockchain. This doesn’t seem to exist in these re-registered assets.

Enthusiast: Different chains have different logic for tracking provenance. There is a world of difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum too. We shouldn’t make conclusions based on “how it should be”, we should make conclusions based on “how it is in reality”. The scientific method dictates systematic observation and modifying hypotheses.

Skeptic: So what, do you call re-registered Namecoin assets “old NFTs” then?

Enthusiast: One could consider the “non-fungible part” (name) in the asset as the NFT and still call these names “old NFTs”. It is a completely acceptable way of defining them. Others can respectfully disagree and say that these are new tokens due to the new UTXOs. The former group is more liberal with its definitions, and the latter group is more conservative with its definitions.

But in both cases, both groups should accept the technical fact that the “name” itself is old.

I prefer the term “blockchain collectible” anyway; and in that context, what’s 100% technically correct is that historical Namecoin assets are the oldest non-fungible blockchain collectibles.

Skeptic: Fair enough. But do you realize that you are making a lot of detailed arguments? Your argument is very nuanced, and you’re having to make all these clarifications. Namecoin assets will always have these debates. Ethereum or Bitcoin assets don’t need these explanations. So Namecoin assets aren’t for me.

Enthusiast: That’s fine. Nothing is for everyone. Every chain has different issues; for example in Counterparty, the issuer (or the name owner) can always change the metadata and rug the buyers. In the end, technology improves iteratively and cumulatively. Namecoin is quirky because it’s the oldest. Ethereum is more sophisticated because it’s newer. Nothing wrong with wanting to collect newer assets.

Skeptic: I prefer old collectibles with clean histories. I think more sophisticated assets with no debates around them (even if slightly newer) will accrue more value over time than older but expiring, nuanced assets.

Enthusiast: I can poke holes in newer but still old assets too. For example there is no way to verify the link between a Rare Pepe token and a Rare Pepe card image, not even through an off-chain URL. Ultimately every step that moved the NFT space forward is interesting, older or newer. I’m just talking about timestamps and technical provenance. We can agree to disagree on significance or valuations.

Skeptic: Agree to disagree then 🤝

Disclaimer: While all the arguments made in this conversation are real; I may edit this conversation later if new arguments or facts arise. Also, unfortunately, most of the conversations in the Vintage NFT space aren’t this respectful. I hope we can start basing our conversations on technical facts.

PS: Special thanks to Daniel Kraft (Chief Namecoin Scientist) who proof-read this article and provided the links to the consensus code. Also thanks to 0xSchatz for his feedback.

When launching ART PONZI’s first piece Genesisleft, I mentioned the many advantages of using SVG. It allows storing media 100% on-chain, it allows infinite scalability, it allows infinite frames, and it allows creating forever animations that don’t have to be loops. The only disadvantage I had raised was the fact that storing things on-chain could limit creative freedom. Since SVG is essentially mathematical coordinates, its outputs are mostly geometric with its paths, circles, curves, and rectangles.

This is why if you pay attention, you’ll see that most of the glitchy effects from the previous pieces in ART PONZI are more geometrically designed. This is not a bad thing of course, it’s part of the creative choice and I think they look fantastic.

Every artist has a different style of course, but when we look at the iconic glitch art from this blockchain era (2021-2022), we see the common pattern of distorted strokes, neon glows, skulls, and other dark themes.

This is why with Glitchleft, I wanted to break the limitations of SVG and almost write a love letter to this era’s iconic glitch art. I wanted to do this while still sticking with SVG so that I can still store it immutably 100% on-chain.

The Method

SVG has some mathematical filters that are normally used for illustration, but if we can use them creatively, perhaps we can get the effects and styles we want!

For neon glow, I used blur filters to create a blurry effect of an object and then layered it with the actual object on top.

For distortion, I used turbulence filters layered with spatial displacement filters.

In some cases, I animated the intensity of these distortions to create outrageous outputs (such as the fire in the background).

I knew about and used these filters in the past (see the tree in Mergeleft), but working on this piece I had to use them much more creatively, in conjunction with each other. I also had to design the undistorted version of the pathways in advance with an estimate of how it should look with the distortion.

The mouth was the part I was most indecisive on. I was between a distorted black hole eating away the darkness, or a flowing neon-lighted mouth which displays a clearer mouth shape. So I asked my artist and collector friends and got their opinions.

Having a network of friends in web3 is amazing. Everyone gave really good feedbacks and ideas. One idea from Tokenfox stuck in my head badly: “Use #4 but add the neon gradient lines in #1!”.

And the result was incredible.

The screenshots here don’t do justice as they reduce the quality of SVG. But even in this quality-reduced version you can see the details and the depth of the mouth.

The Story

I pretty much told the story in the beginning. This was a love letter to the iconic glitch art in this blockchain era, but I also wanted to keep what made ART PONZI special so far. I wanted to store this still on-chain and be loyal to the amazing benefits of SVGs.

The piece reveals a skull with bleeding eyes, in front of a hellish fire.

The skull is screaming with his thunderous and cloudy mouth and while doing so, is eating an animated GIF file. It’s consuming and adopting the distortion elements of the GIF file; by doing so it destroys the GIF but creates something more dynamic and hauntingly beautiful.

Final Thoughts

Obviously neither GIF nor SVG formats are going away anytime soon. But hopefully with this love letter to the glitch art world; I can perhaps encourage the adoption of the usage of SVGs. This format allows artists to play around with the time element of an animation much more flexibly and in doing so enables more creative freedom. And as I’ve hopefully shown in this piece, we don’t even have to lose the distortion elements of the GIF file format.

Just as a reminder: Glitchleft qualifies its owners for the airdrop of the upcoming piece in ART PONZI, and that piece qualifies its owners for the next one. And the 10th piece in the collection will qualify its holders for a piece from a secret collection. This means; if you keep holding all drops, Glitchleft will qualify you for 7 more airdrops of unique artworks.

I hope everyone likes Glitchleft as much as I enjoyed making it. It took about nine days to complete but I’m extremely happy with the result. OpenSea does not allow auctions on editioned pieces, even though only 1 piece is for sale and the rest will be airdropped to previous holders. Feel free to make a bid to end on the 27th of September 2022 at 11pm GMT, even if you don’t see the live auction.

Let’s jump into what makes Mergeleft special (yes, there’s again unique stuff that you can’t find elsewhere):

1. The story

2. The technicals

The Story

The story behind this piece is relatively obvious.

The piece begins with a depiction of Proof of Work. A rock, golden colored, energized. A rugged, worn-out pickaxe doing its job. The colors in this scene are picked particularly to represent the dirty, rugged, and robust nature of PoW. The pickaxe’s shape and color also send an homage to Runescape’s Dragon Pickaxe. You’ll also notice the smoke coming out, which represents the criticism PoW receives on its environmental impact.

Within 3 seconds into the piece, the walls or the curtains of the screen close in (or merge). The walls represent execution and consensus layers. Why 3 seconds? Because this piece is minted exactly 72 hours (3 days) before the estimated time of the merge.

The merge is a complex transition. The messiness of the past delays and the complexity of the event is symbolized by the messed-up walls.

When the merge finishes, or the way I see it: When the curtains open again, we see a new scene depicting Proof of Stake. A tree, representing not only the environment-friendly nature of the merge, but also the harmonious growth of an ecosystem. The network in the background represents both validators communicating with each other to ensure security, but also the social coordination element that the Ethereum community often talks about.

Oh by the way… Do you remember the previous piece in ART PONZI? I mentioned before that the pieces dropping from the sky in Dropleft represented the next pieces in the ART PONZI collection. If you have followed Dropleft’s story, a leaf starts to fall after one hour of watching the piece. That leaf is the very same leaf falling from the tree in Mergeleft.

Yup. ART PONZI collection’s pieces are connected like that.

Technicals

Since the first piece in ART PONZI, I have been trying to highlight the versatility and uniqueness of SVG artworks. I’ve highlighted the infinite scalability in the metaverse and infinite frames in animation. I’ve also highlighted the possibility of storing these works on Ethereum itself (100% onchain) to keep them immutable forever.

Using SVGs, ART PONZI introduced the first onchain glitch art (Genesisleft) and the longest animated NFT (Dropleft).

This time, we’re introducing an NFT that lasts forever but is not a loop. There are three scenes in this single token, and the final scene lasts forever. I’m not entirely sure, but these scenes may make Mergeleft also the first 100% onchain visual story.

Ignore NFTs, even outside NFTs, it’s impossible to make a piece like this with JPG, PNG, GIF, mp4, MOV, or any other type of media file. I’m almost sure a piece like this doesn’t exist within the NFT space, but I’m starting to wonder if it would exist even outside the NFT space, within the entire digital assets class.

I’m starting to sound arrogant, so I’ll stop here. Just a final note: You may be surprised to see these noisy and messy effects on the smoke, on the merge walls, and on the tree. Despite being limited to geometry and code, SVG also has filters that produce mathematical noises such as Perlin noise, graphical displacement, blur, and more. By using a combination of these, you can create pretty cool effects.

Here are some screenshots from discarded works.

Just as a reminder: Mergeleft qualifies its owners for the airdrop of the upcoming piece in ART PONZI, and that piece qualifies its owners for the next one. And the 10th piece in the collection will qualify its holders for a piece from a secret collection. This means; if you keep holding all drops, Mergeleft will qualify you for 8 more airdrops.

I hope everyone likes this Mergeleft as much as I do. OpenSea does not allow auctions on editioned pieces, even though only 1 piece is for sale and the rest will be airdropped to previous holders. So feel free to make a bid, even if you don’t see a live auction.

A colorful eye, the eye of an omni-dynamic artist, watching our world... observing, creating... and dropping art.

A woman’s vagina (nothing dirty, I promise), giving birth to creativity, creating art... dropping art on our world.

This piece is incredibly special.

It’s not just because this is the first piece in ART PONZI where one of the editions will be airdropped.

It’s not just because this piece qualifies you for 9 more art airdrops.

There are many more reasons why this piece is special.

The Story & The Concept

Dropleft represents the ART PONZI collection.

I worked 40+ hours in total on this piece, out of which 18 hours specifically on the flowfield at the top. This was to make sure it resembles all three of the symbols mentioned above (space-tear, artist’s eye, woman’s vagina) at the same time. There are many ways to express “creator” and “observer”, but I can’t think of better symbols than these three.

In this piece, I wanted to reflect on the symbiosis between the creative subject and the speculative market. The shaking pyramid (pyramid scheme nature of many crypto projects) represents the fragile speculative market in this case.

Ponzi mechanics are common in the crypto market and ART PONZI as a collection itself pokes fun at that phenomenon (even though the collection has a hard stop of 10 pieces, so it’s not really a Ponzi scheme). In Dropleft, art pieces are falling onto the market like there’s no tomorrow. The market benefits from it, but make no mistake: The fact that people are enjoying these dropped pieces is the very thing that makes the artist alive - as represented by the never-ending colorful flow of the field around the TEV (tear/eye/vagina).

Here’s the cool part that completes this story:

First of all, every single piece dropping from the tear represents one of the future drops of ART PONZI. Yes, I’m already working on these pieces. Nothing is final and things may change, but currently we’re on track to link this piece forever to a few other pieces in the collection.

You may have also noticed: Some pieces are dropped fast from the TEV (tear/eye/vagina), and some are dropped slowly. An artist can sometimes deliver quickly, but sometimes it takes time. As a collector, your patience will be rewarded.

Yes, if you wait for 1 hour, you will see another piece being dropped from the TEV.

If you wait 9 hours, you will see yet another piece being dropped from the TEV.

If you wait 9999 hours, you get to experience the final version of the piece in full.

The Technique

You read it right. The loop of this glitch art lasts 9999 hours. Not possible in a reasonably sized GIF.

This fact makes this piece likely the longest loop NFT so far, also likely the longest animated NFT so far (or perhaps the longest onchain one).

I’m actually being cheeky because making these long loops or waiting times is not that difficult in SVG using a few animation functions and parameters. So someone can easily (and hopefully) beat my record by doing the same trick. But the fact that no one thought about using these tricks to tell a story until today is what makes this piece still very unique.

The other thing in this piece is that there is an animated "flow field” in it. Flow fields are a well-known art style that is visually very appealing to the eye. They are popularized within the NFT space thanks to Fidenza. I did an animated flow field to keep things fresh. To create the flowing boxes, I used “stroke-dasharray” and to create the actual flow animation, I animated the stroke-dashoffset.

Beyond that, Dropleft continues the tradition established by Genesisleft: It’s 100% stored on-chain. Not just the instructions with library dependencies (like Art Blocks), but the actual media file is onchain, so there are zero dependencies.

It’s again done with SVG, so there is no frame loss and no quality loss. It’s infinitely scalable in the metaverse. It’s future-proof!

I worked a lot harder on Dropleft than Genesisleft, probably because I fell into a bit of an imposter syndrome after the successful auction of Genesisleft and tried to prove to myself that Genesisleft was not a fluke.

I ended up discarding 8 finished versions to finally end up with one that I really liked. I hope everyone likes this piece as much as I do.

The auction will be held on this link. After the auction is over, one out of the two editions of Dropleft will be sent to Genesisleft’s owner.

Today I'll introduce you to two things:

1. A new art NFT collection with a unique drop mechanism.

2. The first piece in that collection with a unique feature.

What is ART PONZI?

ART PONZI is a curated, growing art collection with unique drop mechanics and unique artworks. It’s designed for NFT art collectors and those who love unique blockchain experiments. The name is obviously a shout to crypto's cursed ponzi culture, but hopefully, this mechanic in the context of art is more positive than the original context. Plus, there is a clear stopping point (10th drop with new airdrops) and no further promises so hopefully it’s a lot more innocent!

To explain how it works, I need to explain what other artists are doing.

Blockchains benefitted artists massively not just as a medium to sell art, but also by providing interesting ways for artists to distribute their work. The most common example is the art drop tokens spearheaded by the likes of JakNFT, Manic, Zanoza, Stranger Solemn, King Xerox, and several more.

Art drop tokens allow you to buy the token from an artist in advance. Then the artist airdrops art to your wallet every few weeks. Some artists take this even further by introducing burn or breed mechanisms. Other artists introduced open edition free mints with burn-to-own mechanisms.

These creative distribution mechanisms advance the way artists connect with their collectors and further their brands.

The artists mentioned above already over-delivered to their collectors, but as someone with not many previously released artworks, I wanted to try something different.

What if each NFT in the collection is an art drop token?

In ART PONZI, edition size increases with each drop.

Each drop auctions one edition and the rest are rewarded to the holders of the previous drop.

Unlike art drop tokens, I don't sell 50 tokens at once, I sell one with each new artwork.

This mechanism allows us to try a few unique things. For example, a guest artist can drop their work and choose to auction their work or join the holders community for future drops. As they say; sometimes the best collectors are other artists.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s the cherry on top.

After the 10th piece, two things will happen:

1. There will be a surprise for the holders of the 10th piece.

2. We as a small community will decide what to do next.

A lot to say about this surprise but for now, just know these: It’s a conceptual attempt, it’s something I’ve been working on for months, and it’s likely again a first in the NFT space.

After the 10th drop and the special airdrop, the community will decide the direction of ART PONZI.

• We can stop the collection.

• We can continue and increase edition supply with every drop.

• We can do raffles for the new editioned drops.

• We can restart the cycle with a new 1/1.

There are a lot of supply/demand mechanics to consider, so I’m excited to see what others will think about the future of the collection.

What is Genesisleft?

If you’ve been following me, you know that I recently had a daughter. Obviously I’m a proud dad but the real props go to my wife. So I thought my wife’s pregnancy should be depicted in my first piece in this new collection.

The genesis of a new life. The genesis of a new, unique art collection.

Genesisleft.

Genesisleft is glitch art, with a twist:

It’s 100% stored on-chain.

It’s permanent, and it has no external dependency such as IPFS or Arweave. It does not even require a programming language like JS or its libraries. Unlike Art Blocks which stores the JS code to produce the art (which is still very novel) on-chain, Genesisleft is the actual media file stored on-chain.

Genesisleft is akin to other 100% on-chain NFTs such as Autoglyphs, OnChainMonkeys, InNoiseWeTrust, Terraforms, and a few more.

Genesisleft might be the first 100% on-chain glitch art. Or more specifically the first 100% on-chain figurative (non-abstract) glitch art. I know it sounds super niche, but hear me out: Being glitchy, on-chain, and non-abstract comes with its challenges!

There are extremely few animated truly on-chain NFTs and most of them are generative, so they pretty much have to be abstract (see INWT). I don’t know if these generative works qualify as glitch art, but in any case, I’m a huge fan of them.

With this piece I’ve followed a much more detailed process than I could if I were doing a generative art project. I’ve drawn the piece myself on Inkscape, meticulously minimized its size by removing nodes in SVG path, further optimized on the SVG code itself.

For the glitch effect, I used SVG animate functions (both for movement and for the flash effect).

Independent of the “first evoor” title, I think this work is pretty unique in itself. The few art movements that represent today’s blockchain movement are on-chain art, glitch art, pixel art, and generative art. This piece is one of the few NFTs that check multiple boxes here.

Storing stuff on-chain has its limitations. I had to limit the number of strokes and nodes used in the piece, so balancing the quality and storage was the most challenging task here.

But using SVG has its advantages too!

The obvious first advantage is that the entire media is stored 100% on-chain and secured by Ethereum itself. This is close to impossible with JPG and PNG files.

Unlike classic glitch art, I don’t have a frame limit thanks to SVG’s built-in functions. Technically there are infinite frames in the piece itself (the quality of the version copied here is reduced due to Mirror’s limitations).

Notice the different frequencies managed in two separate waves. Notice how the baby's heart beats faster than the mama’s heart (because babies have higher heart rates). There is no loss of frame between these thanks to the programmatic nature of SVG.

Another advantage of using SVG is the quality. SVG allows infinite scalability. As InarusJuan put it, it can fit into any frame in the metaverse without losing any quality. SVG is future-proof!

I hope people like Genesisleft as much as I do! Keep in mind that owning this piece will qualify for an edition airdrop of the next piece in ART PONZI. And owning that second piece will qualify for an edition airdrop for the following piece. And so on…

What’s Next?

I’m aware that the lack of network effects in small collections reduces liquidity and chances to “flip”. This is not a bug but a feature in ART PONZI. I want to SLOWLY build a community of art and technology lovers, at the expense of making less money in the short term.

We are in a bear market and this is how you build during the bear market.

I’ll keep building this collection, whether we bring in other artists or not. I’m interested in building the pieces as a way to display my own artistic skills, and hopefully achieve unique artwork that hasn’t been done in the NFT space. If I can get other artists on board soon, things may progress a bit faster than I imagine and even prefer, but if not, we’ll keep a consistent Chainleft collection!

My Twitter DMs are open, so if you want to ask anything, feel free to reach out.

Debate on Namecoin NFTs focuses on the “token” aspect of non-fungible tokens.

Namecoin NFTs are the first NFTs. Minted on April 21st, 2011; the simple text “d/bitcoin” domain name became the first NFT.

Namecoin assets are non-fungible and they are ownable, transferable tokens. There is not much debate on this definition specifically. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, referred to Namecoin NFTs on the first page of the Ethereum whitepaper (he used the term “non-fungible assets” but bear in mind that the term “NFT” was only adopted in 2017).

The fact that Namecoin NFTs are the first NFTs is mostly accepted. The bigger debate is about their expiration. Yes, Namecoin domains expire after ~9 months if the owner does not renew them.

Some argue that if you have to renew your NFT, this feels like renting and does not represent real ownership which is what web3 is about.

This analogy would be false, as Namecoin NFTs provide the owner with complete ownership. Unlike renting, the decision to continue the ownership solely relies on the owners themselves. The renewal is akin to paying an extremely low infrastructure tax to the miners for the maintenance of the network (not unlike the tax you pay for the house you own, which would be taken away from you if you don’t pay it). As of this writing, 50 years of renewals cost ~$1.

But the bigger question on Namecoin NFTs is about the provenance because there is an ongoing debate about the age of Namecoin NFTs that expired and then got re-registered. To be clear, there are Namecoin NFTs from 2011 that never expired. This debate does not apply to them. I will be focusing on the Namecoin NFTs that expired and then got re-registered.

Namecoin NFT Provenance - Technical

What happens to Namecoin domains when the domain name ownership expires and gets re-registered after a while?

Namecoin is designed around domain names, but when a domain name gets registered the first time, it is represented by a particular identifier (UTXO design) to allow its trading. The chain of these identifiers (UTXOs) can be considered a special coin, which we will call a “colored coin” in this article. Rhea Myers extensively wrote about Namecoin’s UTXO design here.

When a Namecoin domain expires, the colored coin becomes unspendable. In practice, it can be called “burnt”, because when the domain name is re-registered later, a new UTXO chain starts, and the original UTXO chain breaks.

At this point, the question of age regarding the Namecoin domain name is still unanswered, or perhaps translated to: “Is the ‘name’ entity in the new UTXO-chain the same domain name as the name in the old UTXO-chain?”

Rhea Myers argues that during the re-registration, the Namecoin protocol does not make a distinction between a never-used domain name and a previously expired domain name; and this should support the argument that the re-registration is akin to creating a new token.

On the other hand, as mentioned before, Namecoin is designed around names. Names are unique identifiers themselves and they function that way immutably in a cryptographically secured blockchain. The history of the unique name, previous updates and transactions remain on-chain, as is the case with blockchains.

The aforementioned “UTXO chains” are formed of individual UTXO stations. Each UTXO has an address and domain names are attached to these UTXOs. When Bob makes a standard domain name transfer to Alice, a 0.01NMC is spent on Bob’s side where the domain name is attached, and a new 0.01NMC is created on Alice’s side where the domain name is attached. The thing that physically (for lack of a better term) moves from one address to another during a typical transfer is the domain name, not UTXOs. The design choice of a typical domain name transfer supports the argument that the domain name is the unique identifier and the token, and it never burns even after expiration.

The name-first design is perhaps the most visible directly in Namecoin consensus code. The code often makes “oldName = newName” checks and in fact, it even constructs a public name database to keep track of the existing and expired names.

Most Namecoin NFT collectors argue that if there is a primary key identifier used in the consensus code of a blockchain, that identifier should be used to track the provenance and not temporary identifiers like UTXOs. Using UTXO is simply a design choice that comes from another blockchain (Bitcoin) and it's not logical to apply the rules of a blockchain to another blockchain.

This name-first design can be seen not only in consensus code and Namecoin block explorers but also in functions to utilize the domain names. There’s a built-in RPC method since the beginning of Namecoin called name_show which returns the information about the domain name even during the expired period. This function does not return anything for never-registered domains.

In fact, an expired domain can still be functional. When expired, Namecoin Core will still have the name and return its local state with name_show (just indicating the expired status). If the resolver setup accepts it, the domain will still work. Similarly, expired “id/” names in Namecoin still work as logins, which indicates the usefulness of the name_show function.

Another built-in RCP method since the early days is name_history. This function allows pulling all the metadata and history of a domain name. The existence of this function also indicates the intentions behind Namecoin design: The domain name’s history will always come with the domain name itself, so the domain name itself has a provenance.

As mentioned in the original article, “token” is an abstract term. In Namecoin’s context, it is better to offer all interpretations of the terms “token” and “asset” (or even simply “entity”).

Interpretation 1: “The token is the colored coin, and that is the asset. Names may be unique but they are cryptographically represented by tokens and only that representation matters. Since a re-registered name is assigned to an entirely new UTXO chain, the provenance from the earlier UTXO chain is broken, therefore this is a new asset and cannot claim historical value.”

Interpretation 2: “The token is the name, and that is the asset. Namecoin is designed around names where names are the main unique identifiers. This is supported by the technical design when you do a typical name transfer or assign a value field to the name. These are all visible on-chain. Further, when the name expires, the data of the name remains on the blockchain. If the blockchain is designed around names and their whole history is on-chain, when the name is re-registered you are simply reactivating the old token, therefore provenance is not broken.”

Interpretation 3: “The token is the colored coin because it is a cryptographic representation of the name. But the main collectible asset is the name itself and these names have their own provenance because Namecoin is designed and coded around names as the primary keys and identifiers. A name’s history and UTXO assignments are all visible on-chain, and the Namecoin consensus code is clear about the usage of name entities everywhere. This is further proven by the existence of name_show and name_history RPC methods. Therefore when the name is re-registered, the new colored coin (UTXO chain) can be assumed as a new NFT, but it represents the old decentralized collectible asset which was intact and ownable since its birth.”

This third interpretation separates the record into multiple parts:

• Cryptographic token

• Cryptographic asset

• Off-chain asset (For the cases when there is a reference to an external asset, such as Twitter Eggs, Blockheads, Quantum, etc.. Does not exist for Punycodes, Damselfly, Identities, Bit Domains)

According to interpretation #3, if “NFT” is a cryptographic receipt of ownership, then re-registered Namecoin NFTs are “new” receipts of ownership for the “old” blockchain assets. If you recently re-registered a Namecoin name; you minted a new token to own an old asset. Not a tribute, not a replica; but the actual, old, collectible asset.

Disclaimer: As of this writing, I own 11 Namecoin assets in my collection of 80+ NFTs. Those who like collecting Namecoin NFTs mostly accept interpretation #2, and those who disagree mostly accept interpretation #1. I am more inclined to accept interpretation #3. This interpretation is not in favor of my assets if I want to call them “old NFTs” strictly, but it is in favor of my assets if I am OK to call them “old decentralized collectibles” or “old blockchain collectibles”.

The argument made in the original article is that meanings matter, not terms. For collectors and decentralization enthusiasts, what matters is “owning collectible things in a decentralized way”. An expired Namecoin name (ignoring token or asset definitions for a second) physically exists on a decentralized blockchain at least as historical data with its own provenance, even when expired. That data can be owned in a decentralized way. This is what makes it a decentralized collectible.

Part of the debate specifically arises from the term “non-fungible token” itself, which should not limit us if we are aware of the point of NFTs.

So far, the focus has been on technical elements; but there is more at play when ethical, philosophical, and legal angles are considered. These angles are more subjective, but they are worth talking about.

Namecoin NFT Provenance - Ethical & Philosophical

The 2021 NFT bull run convinced many Web3 participants that Web3 is a paradigm shift and that the ownership philosophy will never remain the same. Proponents of this view are strictly pro-CC0, accept the blockchain as the ultimate source of truth, and care much less about the arguments outside the blockchain (including legal ones).

Critics of this view argue that blockchains can bring significant value to creators and collectors; but physical, ethical, and universal truths cannot be ignored.

The conflict between Larva Labs vs v1Punks reflects these two distinct opinions. Larva Labs, the original creator of the CryptoPunks, has long argued that the buggy v1 contract did not represent their genuine artworks (artist declaration & intention). In contrast, v1Punks owners argued that blockchain timestamp reflected that v1s are the original punks.

A similar debate is occurring for Namecoin NFTs, but it gets even more philosophical for Namecoin art NFTs.

In the art world, provenance is usually measured through a chain of ownership, starting from the artist’s hand to the first collector, then the second, then the third, and so on. From this philosophical perspective, the broken UTXO chains may pose a problem for art that’s originally created on Namecoin.

Here the camps are again split with different interpretations.

Interpretation 1 arguments:

• Philosophically, the link between the artist’s hand and the work is broken, therefore the re-registration by another person cannot claim philosophical provenance.

• It is unethical to squat someone else’s work and sell it.

Interpretation 2 arguments:

• Namecoin provides 100% ownership. It is entirely up to the owner of an asset to prolong their ownership. Philosophically, if the artist does not prolong their ownership, they are making a conscious decision to leave their artwork in public for anyone to claim.

• If the claimers did the marketing around the work and increased its recognition, it is ethical for them to benefit financially.

It is important to remember that many Namecoin NFTs’ original creators are unknown. This, combined with the fact that Namecoin implemented the most ancient versions of NFTs, makes Namecoin art NFTs less akin to traditional art, and more akin to ancient or archeological art. After all, the provenance of old artifacts with unknown creators is measured not through the chain of ownership, but through technical (visual, chemical, or other) analysis.

It gets more complicated when the artwork is not on-chain like Punycodes or Damselfly but instead linked to a file in an external server where the original creator has control. In this case, we are already taking off-chain information into account. What is the asset? Is it the off-chain file? Is it the domain name to which the link is attached? Or is it the colored coin that corresponds to the domain name?

The philosophical and legal side of the debate turned into a lawsuit for Kevin McCoy’s Quantum where there are even more interpretations than the ones outlined above. The wording used in the initial minted NFT and the sale of the Quantum re-minted on Ethereum make this specific debate even more complex. It should also be noted that the creator of Quantum is a well-known artist, so the philosophical “artist’s hand” debate is more voiced there. Due to this complexity and lack of legal knowledge on my part, I will not go into further detail on Quantum in this article.

Compromise on Ethical Provenance?

Perhaps there is a way to achieve ethical provenance. Recently Punycodes community (a fairly large one thanks to the fair distribution during rediscovery) was able to find the original creator of 966 Punycodes. The creator was a known artist, halluciphile, who had also created (or contributed to) 15 Rare Pepes, 12 Mafia Wars, 7 Bitcorns, and 19 Kaliedoscopes in the past. Punycodes community rallied around the artist and gave him a warm welcome. Punycodes DAO immediately made halluciphile a DAO member (membership cost ~1E at the time), gifted multiple Punycodes from DAO wallet, and committed to assigning a substantial part of the royalties when Punycodes own vault contract would go live on Ethereum (this is dependent on the development work of a 3rd party service called Emblem Vault). Meanwhile, halluciphile expressed happiness that his work found a new life with a large community.

Following this feel-good story, Punycodes announced a manifesto:

If an original creator of a historical Punycode ever proves that they're the original creator via the wallet verification message process, Punycodes DAO commits to doing its best to ensure that the original creator receives value. An example of this could be to receive a substantial part of the royalties forever if & Vault launches individual contracts for historical collections. Another example could be gifting Punycode assets to the original creator from the DAO wallet, as per the DAO vote (depending on the creator's contribution to the collection).

Similar manifesto announcements are being planned by other Namecoin communities too. Perhaps by combining the works of the original creators and marketing efforts of the larger communities, Namecoin NFTs can find peace from an ethical and philosophical perspective too.

Conclusion

Debates of semi-fungibility, collectibility, or ownership expiration are less meaningful and more semantic, considering how arbitrarily we landed on the term “NFTs”. As mentioned in the original article, almost all historical NFTs have some level of semantic debates, but the spirit of the entire NFT movement is “decentralized collectibility”. As long as a collectible asset satisfies the criteria of “being ownable in a decentralized way”, they qualify and contribute to the NFT movement.

One can only hope that with mass adoption, we can move on from the confusing “NFT” term to a less confusing “Decentralized Digital Collectibles” or “Blockchain Collectibles”.

Special thanks to Rhea Myers, XCPinata, Daniel Kraft, Casey Rodarmor, Doggfather, and many others who provided feedback and contributions while I was working on this article.

If you’d like to learn more about these early collectibles, I highly suggest 0xSchatz’s oldnft.com website. I have no financial or administrative relation to the website, I only provided feedback & data to 0xSchatz when asked.

Is NFT just a receipt? Is it the actual artwork? What about editions? What even is a token?

These details are being discussed even more among Historical / Vintage NFT communities because early NFTs have antique value. These early assets also indicate pioneering achievements, which collectors love to celebrate. But what if what you collected is not an NFT? Or what if there are way more, earlier NFTs than the ones you already collected? Financial motives are sometimes at the center of these debates.

In this article, I’ll go through how we’ve come to adopt the term “NFTs” and how the semantics of “non-fungibility” and “tokenness” are shaping the debates in the Historical NFT community today.

Before we go into the technicals, let’s look at what NFTs enable that cannot be enabled otherwise.

What’s So Significant About an NFT

What have NFTs specifically brought to the digital art scene (or to the digital collectibles scene)?

Digital art has been around for a while. But they never attracted collectors at large, at least not the way NFTs did. Beyond digital art, even cryptographic artworks were around for a while.

I’ll go one step further.

In 2011, someone put messages on the Bitcoin blockchain and created ASCII art with those messages. This was a tribute to early Bitcoin dev Len Sassaman who had recently died. It contained two ASCII images, one of Len Sassaman and one of Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve at the time.

“BitLen ASCII” is a remarkable artwork in blockchain history that will forever be remembered. It beautifully resides on the blockchain for everyone to see. But we are back to the original question: Why are NFTs more popular than blockchain entry artworks?

Let’s finally answer it: With NFTs, digital artworks became “OWNABLE”. While “BitLen ASCII” was significant, it wasn’t ownable. The philosophy of ownership deserves its own article but the fact is; blockchains for the first time allowed decentralized ownership of digital collectibles. The stark differences from “corporation-issued collectibles” such as Beanie Babies or Pokemon Cards made NFTs (or decentralized digital collectibles, or blockchain collectibles) a huge deal for collectors. This, in return, helped more digital artists and creators onboard into NFTs. This is why NFT historians tend to consider this decentralized collectibility as the main characteristic that started the movement.

This is also why -for better or worse- the concept of “token” was brought up.

“Token” is an abstract term. Tokens do not physically exist. It’s a shorthand way to call the 1s and 0s of the software that determines an ownable asset. “The owned asset” is represented by the “token”.

Join tokens with humans’ innate desire to own unique things, we ended up having non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. And so the infighting began…

Debates

Semi-fungibility

If you join discord servers of some projects, you will see people objecting to significant collectibles (such as Rare Pepes, Curio Cards, or JakNFT editions) being called “NFTs” because they are semi-fungible.

Of course, these assets are still different from completely fungible tokens, as they are non-fungible within a collection. But it is also true that different editions of the same token can be exchanged without losing any value.

If we would not be stuck with the term “NFTs”, all of these would probably be called “Decentralized Digital Collectibles”. But since we are stuck with the term “NFTs”, it makes more sense to focus on NFTs’ spirit, i.e. what NFTs brought to the collectors and art scene.

Technical terms aside, these artworks certainly represent the blockchain revolution’s benefits to artists and collectors; because they are “ownable collectibles whose ownership can be verified in a decentralized way”. This is why I think it’s fair to call them NFTs.

Disclaimer: As of this writing, I own three semi-fungible tokens in my collection of 80+ NFTs.

Collectibility

There are also fully-fungible tokens that claim an “NFT” status. They are interchangeable amongst themselves equally, and they are not part of a collection. Critics argue that since they are fully fungible tokens, they do not deserve the NFT status.

Definitions get blurry here. Technically these are fully fungible tokens, and critics are right that some of them are created for fully fungible purposes. On the other hand, some of these tokens still have collectibility value, and they are on decentralized networks. So the question then becomes, “what is a collectible?”

Defining “collectible” is a speculative attempt, so I will only write my observations of other collectors.

People seem to attach a “collectibility value” to the scarce assets that either had some collectibility intention when issued or were a milestone in the NFT timeline.

One such example is the JOLLYROGER on Dogeparty, from 2014. It is a Dogeparty token with an image attached to it at issuance. It’s not part of a collection and each token is fully fungible within the JOLLYROGER; but due to having an image attached at issuance, it displays collectability intention during its creation.

But what if there was no image attached?

• Prominent blockchain artist Rhea Myers created MYSOUL in 2014 as a conceptual art piece. She is not selling this piece, but it was an ownable & tradable art, and this makes it a collectible (even when we cannot collect it).

• NILIcoins on Counterparty was issued with prescribed artistic intentions despite not having an image attached. The early timestamp and the fact that it was a declared art project so long ago make the project significant.

• Also on Counterparty are XCPinata assets which were too issued with artistic intentions. Even though the actual images were attached in 2021, the original intentions make this project a significant collectible.

Sometimes an asset becomes a collectible retroactively, even if it was not intended that way originally. TEST token on Counterparty (2014) is the first Counterparty token and has a supply of 400. Due to its nature of being the first on a chain that gave birth to the crypto art movement (Rare Pepes) and due to its scarcity, it seems to have a collectible status for collectors.

One could also argue Bitcoins mined in early blocks could have a “collectible” status. These coins were explicitly created for monetary reasons, they do not have images and they are not scarce at large. Also, the only thing that makes them unique is their UTXOs which are forced to burn when transferred. Perhaps the uniqueness and therefore collectible value of these coins can be excavated when the events on the chain are tracked to their source. Casey Rodarmor is currently working on a scheme called ordinals, where satoshis are numbered and tracked across transactions. Time will tell how early ordinals are viewed by collectors.

Disclaimer: As of this writing, I don’t own any fungible collectibles in my collection of 80+ NFTs.

Namecoin NFTs

Debate on Namecoin NFTs focuses on another aspect of non-fungible tokens: The token.

Namecoin NFTs are the first NFTs. Minted on April 21st, 2011; the simple text “d/bitcoin” domain name became the first NFT.

Namecoin assets are non-fungible and they are ownable, transferable tokens. There is no debate on this definition specifically. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, referred to Namecoin NFTs on the first page of the Ethereum whitepaper (he used the term “non-fungible assets” but bear in mind that the term “NFT” was only adopted in 2017).

The fact that Namecoin NFTs are the first NFTs is largely accepted. The bigger debate is about their expiration. Yes, the ownership of Namecoin assets expires after ~9 months if the owner does not renew them.

Some argue that if you have to renew your ownership, this feels like renting and does not represent real ownership which is what web3 is about.

This analogy would be false, as Namecoin NFTs provide the owner with complete control. Unlike renting, the decision to continue the ownership solely relies on the owners themselves. The renewal is akin to paying an extremely low infrastructure tax to the miners for the maintenance of the network (not unlike the tax you pay for the house you own, which would be taken away from you if you don’t pay it). As of this writing, 50 years of renewals cost ~$1.

But the bigger question on Namecoin assets is about the provenance because there is an ongoing debate about the age of Namecoin assets whose ownership expired and then got re-registered (To be clear, there are Namecoin NFTs from 2011 that never expired. This debate does not apply to them).

Namecoin NFT Provenance - Technical

What happens to Namecoin assets when the name ownership expires and gets re-registered after a while?

Namecoin is designed around names, but when a name gets registered the first time, it is represented by a particular identifier (UTXO design) to allow its trading. The chain of these identifiers (UTXOs) can be considered a special coin, which we will call a “colored coin” in this article. Rhea Myers extensively wrote about Namecoin’s UTXO design here.

When a Namecoin domain expires, the UTXO becomes unspendable. In practice, it is often called “burnt” (in reality it is simply unspendable), because when the domain name is re-registered later, a new UTXO chain starts. This would mean that when a name ownership expires, the chain of events where that domain was represented breaks. During the re-registration, the Namecoin protocol does not make a distinction between a never-used domain name and a previously expired domain name. This fact may support the argument that the expiration is philosophically burning the original token.

On the other hand, as mentioned before, Namecoin is designed around names. Names are unique identifiers themselves and they function that way immutably in a cryptographically secured blockchain. The history of the unique name, previous updates, and transactions remain on-chain, as is the case with blockchains.

The aforementioned “UTXO chains” are actually formed of individual UTXO stations. Each UTXO has an address and domain names are attached to these UTXOs. When Bob makes a standard domain name transfer to Alice, a 0.01NMC is spent on Bob’s side where the domain name is attached, and a new 0.01NMC is created on Alice’s side where the domain name is attached. The thing that physically (for lack of a better term) moves from one address to another during a typical transfer is the domain name, not UTXOs. The design choice of a typical domain name transfer supports the argument that the domain name is the unique identifier and the token, and it never burns even after expiration.

In fact, the treatment of names as unique identifiers is visible directly in Namecoin’s consensus code.

If the names are the primary identifiers of the blockchain, the only way to interpret the blockchain data is by using that entity to track its provenance.

This name-first design can be seen not only in the consensus code and in the ecosystem’s block explorers, but also in functions to utilize the domain names. There’s a built-in RPC method (not in the protocol, but on every software around it) since the beginning of Namecoin called name_show which returns the information about the domain name even during the expired period. This function does not return anything for never-registered domains.

In fact, an expired domain can still be functional. When expired, Namecoin Core will still have the name and return its local state with name_show (just indicating the expired status). If the resolver setup accepts it, the domain will still work. Similarly, expired “id/” names in Namecoin still work as logins, which indicates the usefulness of the name_show function.

Another built-in RCP method since the early days is name_history. This function allows pulling all the metadata and history of a domain name. The existence of this function also indicates the intentions behind Namecoin design: The domain name’s history will always come with the domain name itself, so the domain name itself has a provenance.

As mentioned in the introduction of this article, “token” is an abstract term. In Namecoin’s context, it is better to offer all interpretations of the terms “token” and “asset”.

Interpretation 1: “The token is the colored coin, and that is the asset. Names may be unique but they are cryptographically represented by tokens and only that representation matters. Since a re-registered name is assigned to an entirely new colored coin, the provenance from the earlier UTXO chain is broken, therefore this is a new asset and cannot claim historical value.”

Interpretation 2: “The token is the name, and that is the asset. Namecoin is designed around names where names are the main unique identifiers. This is supported by the technical design when you do a typical name transfer or assign a value field to the name. These are all visible on-chain. Further, when the name expires, the data of the name remains on the blockchain. If the blockchain is designed around names and their whole history is on-chain, when the name is re-registered you are simply reactivating the old token, therefore provenance is not broken.”

Interpretation 3: “The token is the colored coin because it is a cryptographic representation of the name. But the main collectible asset is the name itself and these names have their own provenance because Namecoin is designed around names as unique identifiers. A name’s history and UTXO assignments are all visible on-chain. This is further proven by the existence of name_show and name_history RPC methods. Therefore when the name is re-registered, the new colored coin (UTXO chain) can be assumed as a new NFT, but it represents the old decentralized collectible asset which was intact and ownable since its birth.”

This third interpretation separates the record into multiple parts:

• Cryptographic token

• Cryptographic asset

• Off-chain asset (For the cases when there is a reference to an external asset, such as Twitter Eggs, Blockheads, Quantum, etc.. Does not exist for Punycodes, Damselfly, Identities, Bit Domains)

According to interpretation #3, if “NFT” is a cryptographic receipt of ownership, then re-registered Namecoin NFTs are “new” receipts of ownership for the “old” blockchain assets. If you recently re-registered a Namecoin name; you minted a new token to own an old asset. Not a tribute, not a replica; but the actual, old, collectible asset.

Disclaimer: As of this writing, I own 11 Namecoin assets in my collection of 80+ NFTs. Those who like collecting Namecoin NFTs mostly accept interpretation #2, and those who disagree mostly accept interpretation #1. I am more inclined to accept interpretation #3. It fits my understanding of “unique identifiers” for objects in data tables (I’m a data scientist IRL) and how the history of a Namecoin name is determined. To be clear, this interpretation is not in favor of my assets if I want to strictly call them “old NFTs”, but it is in favor of my assets if I am happy to call them “old blockchain collectibles”.

The argument made in this article is that meanings matter, not terms. For collectors and decentralization enthusiasts, what matters is “owning collectible things in a decentralized way”. An expired Namecoin name (ignoring token or asset definitions for a second) physically exists on a decentralized blockchain at least as historical data with its own provenance, even when expired. That data can be owned in a decentralized way. This is what makes it a decentralized collectible.

Part of the debate specifically arises from the term “non-fungible token” itself, which should not limit us if we are aware of the point of NFTs.

So far, the focus has been technical, but there is more at play when we consider the ethical, philosophical, and legal angles. These angles are more subjective but they are worth talking about.

Namecoin NFT Provenance - Ethical & Philosophical

The 2021 NFT bull run convinced a lot of web3 participants that web3 is a paradigm shift and that the ownership philosophy will never be the same. Proponents of this view are strictly pro-CC0, accept the blockchain as the ultimate source of truth, and care much less about the arguments outside the blockchain (even legal arguments).

Critics of this view argue that blockchains can bring a lot of value to creators and collectors but physical, ethical, and universal truths cannot be ignored.

The conflict between Larva Labs vs v1Punks reflects these two distinct opinions. Larva Labs as the original creator of the CryptoPunks had long argued that the buggy v1 contract did not represent their genuine artworks (artist declaration & intention). In contrast, v1Punks owners argued that blockchain timestamp reflected that v1s are the original punks.

A similar debate is occurring for Namecoin NFTs too, but it gets even more philosophical for Namecoin art NFTs.

Ignoring blockchain technicals; if an artwork is created on Namecoin by a creator, then expires, and then gets re-registered by the same artist, philosophically speaking the provenance remains.

This is fairly agreed on; but what if an artwork is created on Namecoin by a creator, then expires, and then gets re-registered by someone else? Here the camps are again split with different interpretations.

Interpretation 1 arguments:

• Philosophically, the link between the artist’s hand and the work is broken, therefore the re-registration by another person cannot claim philosophical provenance.

• It is unethical to squat someone else’s work and sell it.

Interpretation 2 arguments:

• Namecoin provides 100% ownership and it is up to the owner to prolong the ownership or not. Philosophically, if the artist does not prolong their ownership, they are making a conscious decision to leave their artwork in public for anyone to claim.

• If the claimers did the marketing around the work and increased its recognition, it is ethical for them to benefit financially.

It gets more complicated when the artwork is not on-chain like Punycodes or Damselfly but instead linked to a file in an external server where the original creator has control. Because in this case, we are already taking off-chain information into account. What is the asset? Is it the off-chain file, is it the domain name to which the link is attached, or is it the colored coin that corresponds to the domain name?

The philosophical and legal side of the debate turned into a lawsuit for Kevin McCoy’s Quantum where there are even more interpretations than the ones outlined above. The wording used in the initial minted NFT and the sale of the Quantum re-minted on Ethereum make this specific debate even more complex. Due to this complexity and lack of legal knowledge on my part, I will not go into further detail on Quantum in this article.

Compromise on Ethical Provenance?

Perhaps there is a way to achieve ethical provenance. Recently Punycodes community (a fairly large one thanks to the fair distribution during rediscovery) was able to find the original creator of 966 Punycodes. The creator was a known artist, halluciphile, who had also created (or contributed to) 15 Rare Pepes, 12 Mafia Wars, 7 Bitcorns, and 19 Kaliedoscopes in the past. Punycodes community rallied around the artist and gave him a warm welcome. Punycodes DAO immediately made halluciphile a DAO member (membership cost ~1E at the time), gifted multiple Punycodes from DAO wallet, and committed to assigning a substantial part of the royalties when Punycodes own vault contract would go live on Ethereum (this is dependent on the development work of a 3rd party service called Emblem Vault). Meanwhile, halluciphile expressed happiness that his work found a new life with a large community.

Following this feel-good story, Punycodes announced a manifesto:

If an original creator of a historical Punycode ever proves that they're the original creator via the wallet verification message process, Punycodes DAO commits to doing its best to ensure that the original creator receives value. An example of this could be to receive a substantial part of the royalties forever if & when Emblem Vault launches individual contracts for historical collections. Another example could be gifting Punycode assets to the original creator from the DAO wallet, as per the DAO vote (depending on the creator's contribution to the collection).

Similar manifesto announcements are being planned by other Namecoin communities too. Perhaps by combining the works of the original creators and marketing efforts of the larger communities, Namecoin NFTs can find peace from an ethical and philosophical perspective too.

Collectible Value

The final debate in the historical NFT space seems to be around how much historical NFTs “should be valued”. This is often financially motivated, speculative, and subjective, so I prefer not to get into the details. Here I will list some fundamentals and metrics people seem to prioritize (while not necessarily corresponding to financial value):

• Timestamp: The unchangeable, objective data on the blockchain.

• Scarcity: The number of assets within a collection or an edition.

• Creativity: Artistic and conceptual intentions.

• Technical achievements: Technical efforts that push the boundaries of the NFT space.

• Blockchain they’re minted on: For NFTs that require interoperability and composability (such as gaming NFTs), the chain an NFT is minted on can be critical. This is less relevant for historical NFTs but decentralization still matters, as long as maximalism does not blind us. It is important to note that we have seen several examples of significant NFTs making chains more mainstream and relevant, so perhaps the significance of the NFT itself may be much more important than the chain it’s minted on.

Conclusion

Debates of semi-fungibility, collectibility, or ownership expiration are less meaningful and more semantic, considering how arbitrarily we landed on the term “NFTs”. As mentioned in the first section of this article, the spirit of the entire NFT movement is “decentralized collectibility”. As long as a collectible asset satisfies the criteria of “being ownable in a decentralized way”, they qualify and contribute to the NFT movement.

One can only hope that with mass adoption, we can move on from the confusing “NFT” term to a less confusing “Decentralized Digital Collectibles” or “Blockchain Collectibles”.

Special thanks to Rhea Myers, XCPinata, Daniel Kraft, Casey Rodarmor, Doggfather, and many others who provided feedback and contributions while I was working on this article.

If you’d like to learn more about these early collectibles, I highly suggest 0xSchatz’s oldnft.com website. I have no financial or administrative relation to the website, I only provided feedback & data to 0xSchatz when asked.

Intro

Punycodes (2011) were rediscovered in early February 2022. At the time of writing this article, Punycodes is still known as the first art NFT collection. Due to its significance, the collection saw a significant sales volume upon its discovery and its community grew rapidly within only a few weeks.

Punycode NFTs are natively on Namecoin blockchain, however the most commonly used blockchain for trading and web3 applications (such as 3d galleries, metaverse experiences, and more) is Ethereum. Therefore, most Punycode owners prefer bringing their Punycodes into Ethereum using Emblem Vault.

What is Emblem Vault?

An Emblem Vault is a unique token that enables the transfer of entire Multicoin Wallets by “vaulting” the native asset into a specific address on the native chain and creating a non-fungible token in another chain. Currently it is possible to vault assets from Namecoin, Counterparty, Dogeparty, Bitcoin, Tezos (and some more) and bring them into Ethereum, Polygon, BSC and Fantom.

https://circuitsofvalue.com/

How to Bring a Punycode to Ethereum

Step 1: Make sure you have at least 15 $COVAL in your wallet (this is the vaulting fee Emblem Vault charges). You can buy $COVAL here.

Step 1: Go to https://emblem.finance/, connect your wallet and click “Create”.

Step 2: Click "Next" to create a public vault

Step 3: You need to add a “Title” and a “Description” for your vault.

There is an easy way to get this information. Visit OUR TEMPLATE GENERATOR.

Note: This template generator can only be used with Punycodes collection.

Step 3.1: In the search bar, write your Punycode's domain name in the full format (e.g. “*d/*xn--57h”) and click “Generate”.

Step 3.2: Copy the title and paste it into the title section of your vault.

Step 3.3: Copy the description and paste it into the description section of your vault.

Step 3.4: Right click & save the image on your computer (we will be using this later)

Step 3.5: Now that your vault has a name and description, you can click “Next”.

Step 4: Your vault needs an image!

Step 4.1: Under the Display Type, change the selection from “Embed (url)” to “Image (upload)”. Your view should change to this:

Step 4.2: Click “Choose file” and select the image you saved from Step 3.4.

Step 4.3: Click “DO IT” and confirm the action in your wallet. You may want to wait for low gas to complete this action (or edit your max fee to a low value and let it ride.

NOW YOUR VAULT IS READY. But it’s empty, it doesn’t actually have your Punycode in it.

Step 5: Now we need to send our Punycode from our NMC wallet to our vault’s NMC address.

Step 5.1: Scroll all the way down on your vault, and you’ll see a bunch of chain names under the vault. Click “NMC” there.

Step 5.2: Clicking NMC should display your vault’s Namecoin address. Copy it.

Step 5.3: Now open your Namecoin wallet (most commonly used wallet is Electrum). Go to “Manage Names” tab, click on the domain you wish to vault and click “Configure Name” button.

Step 5.4: In the prompted box, add your vault’s NMC address you copied in Step 5.2 into the “Transfer to” field. Leave the “Data” field empty. And press OK.

NOTE: Your asset should be transferred within 10 to 120 minutes.

Optional / Recommended Step 6: Since Namecoin is designed as a DNS, the NFT ownership typically would expire within 9 months. They are easy to renew, but there is an even easier way to ensure renewals. If you send 2 $NMC to your vault’s NMC address, Emblem Vault will automatically renew your asset for 100+ years.

Potential issues with vaulting

These issues are not likely but can happen. If you’re having trouble, see if below applies to you.

1) Even if the asset is sent to Emblem Vault, you may not be seeing it in the Emblem Vault app.

In this case, you may need to refresh the balances in emblem.finance to see your asset there

2) Even though you have the asset visible in Emblem Vault’s app, the vault on OpenSea may look empty.

In this case, click “refresh metadata” on the OpenSea asset page.

If you’re having problems, feel free to join our Discord and ask Punycodes community for help.

Join the Punycodes Discord Server!

Punycodes from 2011 :) | 577 members

https://discord.com