I. Project Introduction

Art Blocks is a first-of-its-kind platform focused on genuinely programmable, on-demand generative content that is stored immutably on the Ethereum Blockchain. It‘s typically programmed by p5.js which is a Javascript library with scripts stored on the chain. You pick a style that you like, pay for the work, and a randomly generated version of the content is created by an algorithm, which generates a unique artwork.

The first series of Art Blocks was the Chromie Squiggle series, which was created by platform founder Erick Calderon (Snowfro). It had a cap of 10,000 pieces but actually generated 9,675 pieces at an initial price of 0.035 ETH each. The NFTs in this series all look like these diagrams below, with simple lines and different attributes that yield different Generative Art.

It may seem like nothing, but their floor price has risen from an initial 0.035 to 10.4 ETH. In fact, Art Blocks has not dropped out of the top 10 of all NFT projects in terms of volume since its inception.

Website： https://www.artblocks.io/

Twitter： https://twitter.com/artblocks_io

Discord： https://discord.com/invite/artblocks

II. Project Details

2.1 What is Generative Art?

Art Blocks are essentially generated art with a unique style formed using code algorithms.

2.1.1 The History of Generative Art

In the early 1950s, Herbert Franke, a pioneer of generative art, conducted unique photographic experiments in his laboratory, where his work strayed into combinations of light, motion, and randomness. In “9 analogue graphics (1956/1957)”, Franke used a friend's computer to generate images on an oscilloscope and then shot images from a moving camera with the aperture open.

Later, Vera Molnár, one of the first artists to use computers in art, began to work on the theme of "disorder," and she often investigated variations of geometric shapes and lines. Her work was generated in the early programming languages Fortran and BASIC, and it was often displayed on raw printed paper.

As computers became more popular in the 1960s, more artists began experimenting at the intersection of computer science and art. New programming languages enabled artists to push the digital boundaries in interesting ways and redefine how computers could process ordered input into unique output.

At the same time, despite the growing influence of digital artworks, many digital art creators do not have the same earning potential as the creators of physical art creators. In history, the value of creative works has been embodied by material scarcity based on specific objects, which seems to run counter to generative art.

2.1.2 Blockchain-Based Generative Art Representation - CryptoPunks

In the last decade, blockchain has changed the game for digital assets. The success of Bitcoin has shown that digital scarcity is possible in the cryptocurrency space. And the arrival of the Ethereum smart contract ERC-721 extends the concept of digital scarcity beyond commodity currencies. It enables information about any digital good to be bound to a unique NFT.

Typically, most of the NFT avatars (PFPs) are generative art. A base template, a few unique elements, and a computer algorithm that combines these elements with the template in random permutations, quickly generate thousands and thousands of NFT avatars. Examples include Bored Ape, CryptoPunks, Doodles, etc.

The emergence of CryptoPunks has completely ignited blockchain-based generative art. Based on Larva Labs' groundbreaking algorithm, 10,000 unique, randomly generated, 24 × 24 pixel art images mix features such as species, hairstyles, and accessories to present human, zombie, ape, and alien forms. A random combination of visual outputs is then created.

2.1.3 The Birth of Art Blocks

The birth of Art Blocks has deep roots in CryptoPunks. Erick Calderon, a Mexico City-born generative artist and technologist, participated in the original CryptoPunks Claim campaign in 2017. In the early days, he personally owned over 60 CryptoPunks, including seven zombies, two apes, and one of nine aliens. He is known in the crypto community for his rare attribute of the Zombie Punk avatar.

After CryptoPunks was released, Erick Calderon kept asking himself several questions: Can there be a whole set of generative art, from the artist algorithm to each unique output that is 100% done on the chain? Is it possible that a kind of blockchain could be used as a creative process for artists, rather than a digital way of recording?

With these questions in mind, he has sold 15 of his most prized CryptoPunks to fund early development work. In November 2020, Erick Calderon launched Art Blocks which is different from other NFT trading platforms. A typical platform's NFT is linked to an already completed art (e.g., image, music, video, etc.). Art Blocks' NFT links to a piece of code. Each time a person views Art Blocks' artwork, it means that this code is re-run, generating the artwork instantly.

2.1.4 Two Representative Projects of Art Blocks

Chromie Squiggles, a generative project that Erick Calderon has been working on for years, became the first generative art project listed on Art Blocks (Art Blocks project #0).

In each unique Squiggle, there are the starting color, the rate of change of the gradient, the number of points, and some surprising properties that make some Chromie Squiggles rarer than others (such as "Super" Squiggles). When it comes to generative art, these controllable hex pairs are called parameters.

Squiggles were launched in November 2020, and Erick signed the series under his web name Snowfro and sold them for about $78 each. Within the first few hours, 200 pieces were sold.

Until today, the Squiggle series has created more than 9,000 similar colorful doodles.

Austin-based generative artist Tyler Hobbs brought a second influential series to Art Blocks, Fidenza. While the rise of Opensea, an NFT trading platform, turned the market for Art Blocks to a higher level.

Hobbs, a well-known generative artist, spent months tweaking the code to produce standards for his unique artworks. For example, Hobbs may have changed his code to reduce the appearance of the color red. This is because he believes that red does not fit into large shapes. So in this case blue usually becomes Hobbs' choice.

The Fidenza series sold 999 pieces and was snapped up by eager buyers in just 28 minutes.

Now, the total volume of the series has reached 50,000 ETH, and the floor price has reached 92 ETH, giving the Fidenza series a market value of over $150 million at the current ETH price of around $1,700.

Art Blocks even caught the attention of Sotheby's, which sold 19 minted Art Blocks works from the Art Blocks Curated series of artists in June 2021. The auction ended up selling for $81,900.

To date, Art Blocks has hosted sales of generative artists' collections including Cherniak, Hobbs, Hideki Tsukamoto, and Stina Jones. Although they are not household names in the traditional art world, they have a large following in generative art. Some artists have even been creating since the 1960s, when most generative artists were scientists and engineers with access to early computers.

2.2 Mechanics of Art Blocks

Art Blocks' projects are divided into three categories.

• Curated Project: works in this series are carefully selected by Art Blocks' curatorial committee for inclusion in the curatorial collection.
• Playground Project: Artists whose work is selected for the Curated Project can deploy their later projects in the playground and conduct tests and experiments.
• Factory Project: more relaxed than Curate Project, artists or creative coders can create and generate their own artwork without the approval and selection of curatorial members.

As you can see, the three categories determine their rarity and price. On OpenSea, Art Blocks Curated currently has 58,551 pieces, with a minimum price of 0.34 ETH, Playground has 29,075 pieces, with a minimum price of 0.079 ETH, and Factory has 107,727 pieces, with a minimum price of 0.037 ETH. The lowest price is 0.037 ETH, so you can see the basic difference between the three.

When deploying projects on the Art Blocks platform, artists can modify scripts and settings to tweak their work until they feel satisfied, and finally lock the project to form a seed. Once the project is locked, the generated work is permanently frozen. And properties such as the maximum number of iterations, scripts, project name, artist name and generated hash value can never be changed. Only the description and iteration price can be changed after locking.

Although Art Blocks’ process of generating and viewing content is decentralized, the platform organization and operation is centralized.

2.3 Who's Buying Art Blocks

Three Arrows Capital

In August 2021, Three Arrows Capital, a well-known blockchain investor, spent 1,800 ETH, or about $5.8 million, to buy Ringers #879 NFT, which at the time became the most expensive Art Blocks work on the market.

In addition, Three Arrows Capital has a large collection of Art Blocks NFT, including no less than 10 items from the "Fidenza" series by generative artist Tyler Hobbs - each priced at up to 320 ETH (just over $1 million). A publicly known Opensea wallet address (0x2e675eeae4747c248bfddbafaa3a8a2fdddaa44b) shows Three Arrows Capital holding 109 Art Blocks NFTs, while another wallet address for the 1800 ETH purchase of Ringers #879 ( 0x75e1c2493136a2d62888615d53382ac3116861fe) holds 35 Art Blocks NFTs.

Vincent Van Dough

The NFT trader who goes by the pseudonym Vincent Van Dough is a mysterious collector. He at one point made multi-million dollar purchases in a very short period of time. And he also owns the oncyber.io online gallery where most of his Art Blocks NFT purchases are displayed.

Vincent Van Dough has also launched an NFT fund, Starry Night Capital, with Three Arrows Capital founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies. The fund's goal is to raise $100 million. The fund holds over 900 Art Blocks pieces.

Meet Charley

Meet Charley, the first collector to complete a full set of the first 100 Art Blocks projects. These assets have now exceeded at least 1,000 ETH, or about $3.5 million.

Mysterious Whale

On March 5, 2022, Art Blocks Ringers #376 was pocketed by the mysterious whale for 306.529WETH, valued at over $800,000.

III. Summary

The focus of Art Blocks is on artistic rather than social capital attributes, as relying on an algorithmically generated format, there are more factors to consider when selecting, especially the scarcity of the artwork. The number of PFP NFTs often depends on the initial community consensus, and as the number increases, the stronger the consensus required. The consensus of Art Blocks depends on the entire project, not a single series of artworks, and the overall consensus comes from the consensus of all the series.

The reason why Art Blocks exploded is that, firstly, it is on the trend of crazy development of NFT. Secondly, the community of Art Blocks is very active. They keep putting effort to do things online and offline, and they cooperate with traditional auction houses and art institutions, which makes Art Blocks become a brand. People subconsciously think that Art Blocks is high-quality artwork, and buyers become promoters, marketers, and advocates of the Art Blocks brand, creating an overall positive cycle where every time a new Art Blocks curated project is released, it is snapped up.

Art Blocks is one of the rare NFT projects with "crossover" attributes, which opens the door to the crypto world for those traditional art lovers. It provides a unique investment target for investors and speculators in the blockchain industry, which makes Art Blocks so unique. And as seen in a range of data, Art Blocks has certainly been successful in attracting fans of different attributes.

Whether people want to use Art Blocks as a mere speculative tool or just like artworks, this keeps Art Blocks growing and new money keeps coming in, thus maintaining the project's longevity and market fervor. That is why it has always been at the top of the NFT project ranking for a long time.