Generative Art Summer 🎨
New mints, new platforms, new upgrades, oh my!
Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, and more!
Dear Bankless Nation,
Blockchain-based generative art.
These types of NFT collections have their artwork and metadata generated at the time of mint, with each token bearing a unique output from the underlying code.
Popularized on Ethereum by projects like Autoglyphs and Art Blocks, generative art’s now among the most teeming creative domains in the NFT world.
For today's post, let’s get you caught up on some of the latest developments from this crossroads of blockchain x gen art!
-WMP
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New Frontiers in Generative Art!
Themes and Variations released 🎉
Vera Molnár, a 99-year-old legendary trailblazer of computer and generative art, just completed her “first and only” generative NFT collection, Themes and Variations.
The series, a run of 500 1/1/X works released in collaboration with artist Martin Grasser, explores the letters “N,” “F,” and “T” as pure abstract forms and were dropped via Dutch Auction sales to kick off the launch of Sotheby’s Gen Art Program, which will host two to three major mints per year going forward.
Notably, both Themes and Variations and Sotheby’s Gen Art Program are underpinned by Art Blocks Engine, a white-label minting service developed by the Art Blocks team. The service will continue to serve as a foundational pillar in the auction house’s plans to bridge the traditional art and digital art worlds!
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Prohibition’s inaugural drops 🎨
Speaking of Art Blocks Engine, another newly launched effort that relies on this service is Prohibition.art.
Steered by Jordan Lyall and Venture Punk and deployed on the Arbitrum L2, the platform offers an avenue for creators to release and collectors to collect generative art in much more affordable fashion compared to Ethereum.
For example, CodeTrip — the 9th collection released on Prohibition — is an interactive, onchain, procedurally-generated driving game, and it cost only ~$200 worth of ETH to upload and store on Arbitrum, while this same deployment would’ve been around 150x times more expensive on Ethereum!
Keep an eye out here, as the final two drops from the inaugural wave of Prohibition launch artists — Trees of Eufloria by Sillytuna and Infinite Branches by dav — are being released tomorrow, July 28th.
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Highlight launches a gen art platform 🧑🎨️
Highlight, a tech stack for onchain creatives, just launched its own generative art platform. The infra is designed to let artists keep 100% of their sales, use dynamic data inputs, curate specific outputs, own their smart contracts, and mint on Ethereum and L2s.
Dynamic data’s sure to be a big attraction, as Highlight’s open system will allow artists to bring their collections to life with over 10 real-time inputs like block hashes, transaction hashes, gas used, wallet addresses, token IDs, and more. Notably, the platform supports Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Zora Network, plus the Base testnet, so there’s already a wide range of minting options too.
The genesis generative mint on Highlight is Sum by Duane King, an unlimited supply collection that offers a “data portrait of a person at a specific time and place” via their Ethereum account. Each mint costs 0.0005 ETH (plus a 0.0008 ETH Highlight mint fee).
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fxhash 2.0 is coming ⤴️
In another significant move, fxhash — the leading gen art platform on Tezos — recently announced a major expansion with the upcoming planned release of fxhash 2.0. The upgrade will integrate Ethereum and onchain minting, so artists on the platform will soon be able to choose between Ethereum and Tezos and on- or offchain minting as they please.
Beyond these core updates, the 2.0 update will also see the fxhash platform redesigned UX-wise with a focus on providing a seamless multichain experience. As things stand, the release is planned for the “Fall/Winter 2023” period, so it’s tentatively just around the corner at this point.
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Action steps
Explore generative art: Watch out for new Prohibition and Highlight mints 👀
Catch up on my previous write-up: Axie Infinity’s AXP Evolution 💠
Author Bio
William M. Peaster is the creator of Metaversal — a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also a senior writer for the main Bankless newsletter.
A Bankless Citizen ⚑ turned $264 into $6,077 last year. A 22x ROI 🚀 in a bear market!
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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here.
Thinking I must be the biggest idiot but I would like to make an NFT from art I have done on Midjourney and can't seem to find a simple walkthrough. Any direction you can give?