Mitchell Chan's Digital Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility (IKB) is a 2017 NFT project that would be mindblowing even if it was released today. It can be thought of as a digital homage to a famous conceptual artwork by Yves Klein. Homage is artistic tradition---Van Gogh’s beloved tributes to Hiroshige’s work were a way to honor and celebrate the connection he saw between Japanese art and Impressionism. Chan saw the striking connection between Yves Klein and NFTs and created IKB.

IKB draws on an exhibition by Yves Klein in 1958, in which patrons paid in pure gold to view empty spaces (Zones) that Yves imbued with the sensibility (but not the physical appearance) of the color blue. That an artist can “imbue” a space with their art was a radical concept in 1958, but here in 2021’s NFT Summer we are happy to let artists imbue even a digital space with value.[1] Digital Zones understood and predicted this in 2017 and it took the rest of us four years to get it.

In Klein’s 1958 exhibition, a collector who wished to purchase a Zone had to pay in solid gold. They were then issued a paper receipt to serve as proof of transaction. Klein also designed a ritual meant to empower the purchaser to obtain the true immaterial sense of the artwork, enabling the sensibility of the artwork to become part of the owner in a spiritual sense. During this ritual, the purchaser would burn this receipt and Klein would throw half the gold into the River Seine. There are three documented instances of this ritual being performed.

The 101 IKBs represent a fascinating extension of Klein’s ritual on-chain (including a smart contract function that will reproduce the effects of the ritual…) across 7 series, minted starting in 2017. There’s much more to this project than we can cover here--for instance, IKB’s contract is a very early instance of a bonding curve. But you can learn more about this fascinating series by reading the Blue Paper or watching this short video series.

Needless to say, we were floored to receive an offer for an IKB, a historic NFT and trade for Paperclip.

The ones that got away: Round 3 Edition

We received many other notable offers, and as in previous rounds, we were sad to part with all the NFTs that we couldn’t accept. As always, we weighed several factors in making a final decision on which trade to accept. We care about more than just the economic value of a trade; we value the culture, story, and journey of the NFT as well.

We only have time to highlight a few of our favorites, but you can check out the Round 3 offers to see them all. In no particular order, here is our homage to the ones that got away in Round 3:

• Our first Round 3 offer was for Hand by @aaraalto, which he created for the Break Free artwork from the Brain Vomit collection (@steven__rea). [discord link]

• @MPtherealMVP continues to show off her excellent taste, offering a SALT 60. The SALT series is a collection of 180 images, which revolve on a 180 day cycle. Each image is unique and no image appears simultaneously [twitter link]

• @billyrennekamp offered terra0 Flowertoken 14  [twitter link]. terra0 is a long-running experiment in self-owning resources, i.e. a forest that owns itself. The Flowertokens were 1/100 physical flowers that were grown on a livestream from Trust in Berlin in 2018. Viewers sponsored and speculated on individual flowers, watching them grow in real time. The Flowertokens were recently updated to modern NFT standards by way of an official wrapper contract, and the NFT (“Non-Fungible Token”) now represents a timelapse of each flower’s growth—the remains of a memory of a flower from 2018.

• @bitcoin4bernie offered us an incredible trip through history by offering 16 curio cards.  [twitter link]. Curio Cards is an online art show and permanent gallery that launched on May 9, 2017. It is the oldest known example on Ethereum of what is now called NFT Artwork, featuring 30 unique series of NFT cards from 7 different artists. [curio card docs]

• Esren offered  {PANOPTICON} 0x37cd9b9354 @divergence_art. po{a}w is fully interactive, generative artwork derived from proof of work. Token IDs seed an equation that precisely places millions of points, but aesthetically pleasing IDs are rare and must be found at random. Esren also offered FVCK_CRYSTAL// #3847  from a collection of 4169 precious stones designed by @fvckrender that will allow users to participate in future events, raffles, and exclusive areas of the FVCKRENDERVERSE. A trade representing innovation and the progression of the NFT space in exchange for a classic (our paperclip punk). [discord link]

• @FunkySapienX added Weird Whale 0  to his round 2 offer. @WeirdWhales is an NFT collection created by twelve-year-old programmer Benyamin, which was featured in The New York Times. [discord link]

• We got an offer for another @songadayman classic: That Didn't Work (Vitalik Buterin Remix) | Song A Day #4394 [discord link]

• A tribute to Art Blocks [discord link]

• @CliffVandercave offered a rare three-digit numbered square from @SuSquares, a series that includes the very first ERC-721 token ever, created by one of the authors of the ERC-721 standard, @fulldecent. [discord link] - here is what he is referencing

• ETHoard curated an incredible collection that “one way or another represents failure.” [discord link] Each of these NFTs is iconic… and also rejected, forgotten, or straight up banned. This one deserves its own blog post—so check out ETHoard’s discord post—but the short version is: a fake (or real?) Banksy, banned on OpenSea, an ArtBlocks project swept under the rug, an AI GAN’s chaotic pieces as it learns to paint, and finally a pixel on a map from 2016 that can’t even be traded (lol).

• We received offers for Yats (Five of a kind [discord link], Let’s Make a Deal [discord link]), Playing Arts Cards (7 of Spades and 5 of Hearts; [discord link]), a plot of prime real estate on the digital moon (!) [discord link]

• @blasteasy thought Paperclip should hold a literal moonshot and offered us Hurt Spyware Moonshot Bot. Moonshot Bots are issued on a bonding curve with a max supply of 303. The coolest part is 100% of MoonshotBot Minting Fees go to fund Ethereum Public Goods on Gitcoin Grants. [discord link]

• We also received an offer for Moon,which follows the current lunar phase, shifting every day, without using any external resource (it's 100% on chain) [twitter link]

• We always love the Blitmaps [discord link]

• @collinlafleche offered us a gorgeous Solvency #214, a limited edition series of WebGL artworks created by Ezra Miller. Each artwork is a unique, generative NFT with attributes determined based on randomly seeded values generated by the token hash of the NFT.

Each of these offers adds to the storied history of the PaperclipDAO, and we are honored to add our third trade to the history books. In Round 1, we picked the future; in Round 2, we looked back to the past. In Round 3, we honor the beautiful history of NFTs. You won’t believe what we’ve got in store for Round 4. 🖇🖇🖇🖇

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[1] It should be pretty evident by now that, say, an original 2017 Cryptopunk has something valuable imbued in it that a visually identical 2021 copy does not.

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Join the Discord, Follow our Twitter and smash that like button.

In 2005, blogger Kyle MacDonald started with a paperclip and traded it for a pen, the first in an incredible series of trades that ended with him trading for a house. Items he traded for along the way include a hand-sculpted doorknob, a snowmobile, a year’s rent in Phoenix, and an afternoon with musician Alice Cooper.

It’s an amazing story and even an archetypal one---an old Buddhist folk tale tells of a man who traded from a single piece of straw until he had a rice field. The Legend of Zelda’s “trade up” quests took inspiration from this classic story, as have others.

With the incredible diversity of NFTs available today a similarly magical tale is possible. So let’s create it. Come trade with us and let’s tell the story of some amazing NFTs along the way.

Today we are offering up our first trade which is, naturally, a paperclip. More specifically it’s a “$Paper/$Clip” NFT for a redeemed Uniswap position. You can see it here.

Here's how to trade with us:

1. Check our twitter @paperclipDAO for the pinned tweet telling you what NFT we're offering for trade.

2. Create an offer on Sudoswap to exchange your NFT for our NFT. Sudoswap will generate a trade link.

3. Tweet your trade link at @paperclipDAO, proposing the trade. $CLIP holders will then vote on whether or not to accept your trade.

4. If yes, we swap!

So about those $CLIP tokens... anyone who successfully trades with us gets $CLIP tokens so they can join the DAO and continue to create the story. The first to trade with us will get the most $CLIP, and as the story becomes richer and the NFTs more innately valuable the amount of $CLIP given will decline (in an interesting way perhaps…)

Where will this journey end? We think it might be cool to rescue an unobtainable NFT, maybe one from another dimension, and make it available to the community. But only time will tell.

Let’s start swapping and find out.

To keep up with this adventure, join our Discord and follow us on Twitter.

We weighed several factors in making a final decision on which trade to accept. We care about more than just the economic value of a trade; we value the culture, story, and journey of the NFT as well. In Round 1, we picked the future. But the past always has a way of coming back around… And the 2 (ok 1.02) historic LarvaLabs NFTs we acquired bridge the past to the future beautifully.

This decision wasn’t easy; we received incredible offers and, as in Round 1, were sad to part with all the memorable NFTs that we couldn’t accept. Check out the full Round 2 offer thread to see all the amazing offers.

We only have time to highlight a few of our favorites. In no particular order, here is our homage to the ones that got away in Round 2:

• Several offers paid homage to @paperclipDAO. To immortalize the Parallel Trade from @bitcoinPalmer, urukai (discord link) created 2 Proof of Beauty $HASH pieces: One that represents the tx from Palmer to Planck ($HASH sent to Palmer in tx - 0x9d685696e1401a38eee957665f57a720212b409b373c8fe275608309c44da9cb) and a second that represents the tx from Planck to the PaperclipDAO address. What an awesome gesture! We were also offered a $CLIP Kitty by AnimalTPFR (discord link).

• We received several offers for Blitmaps, a really cool community started by Dom Hofmann. Blitmaps and their metadata are stored and processed entirely on-chain. There are 100 originals, created by 17 artists, which the community mixed to make 1,600 siblings — unique pieces that combine the composition of one original with the palette of another. We were offered a sibling: Pale Tower Warm Vibe (from avilés) and an original (!!!) #35 - Candy from itzler (discord link). Naturally, this was a finalist.

• Granolah offered Ghxst 006 (discord link), one of the original 6! Ghxsts is an NFT project designed and created by NFT artist, GxngYxng. Each item in the collection is hand-drawn and released one at a time in random order. There are currently 101 Ghxsts, 42 Immxrtals, 50 Demxns, 12 Zxdiacs, 25 Alixns, and 9 Sirxns. Granolah later upped his offer to include 3 cool cats as well.

• OhhShiny offered us Bored Ape 636, a zombie and dmt (and also our first BAYC offer!) The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs double as a PFP and a Yacht Club membership (aka a swamp club for Apes). We received a few other offers for PFPs: Sisyphus offered a crowned Pudgy Penguin and state (discord link) offered a bundle of a classy pengu & classy meeb.

• We already mentioned our beloved CryptoPunk #3744 but we also received an incredible offer from Andy8052 for 80,000 $DEAD tokens (currently valued at $200,000) which represent 6.66% of Zombie Punk #2066, (link to discord).

• Mr. bulldops offered the 0xmons Dza (discord link), a Lovecraftian “pixel monster” generated by a neural net. Though we find it hard to believe that the artist behind this amazing project is the same 0xmons who created our beloved sudoswap, we have been assured this is actually the case.

• We were also offered a FuckinTroll, a Shiny Nyan Cat (discord link), several Treeverse plots, and a few RTFKT NFTs. FunkySapienX offered an incredible completed Budweiser Tom Sachs Rocket (discord link) as part of his proposed trade.

  

• We were offered several other ParallelNFT cards, which were tempting as always.

• A very fun offer was a pair of very clever ENS domains, twenti.eth and thirti.eth.

• We were offered a Gods Unchained Genesis Card, the 1st NFT Digital album KINGS OF LEON x YELLOWHEART NFTS, a membership-token to the Elektra DAO, a collaboration of musicians using the blockchain to create a community, and Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 of the Elektra Story: a story in the form of NFTs.

• Cliff Vandercave made an offer for a POAP token of a Rare Pepe created by Matt Furie himself, limited to about 500 participants who attended the event in the Metaverse. Cliff proposed that this swap would represent a unique intersection of PaperclipDAO, Parallel, Matt Furie, POAP, Metaverse DAO, and Cryptovoxels, forming a beautiful bond of NFT history (discord link).

Each of these offers adds to the storied history of the PaperclipDAO and we couldn’t be more excited to add our second trade to the history books. In Round 2, we looked to the past, what does the future hold for Round 3? 🖇🖇