A Year of Identities on the Blockchain

Happy Lunar New Year if you are reading this on the day. Is it just me or did the previous year seem to exist as 2 parallel realities? As most of the world was living in the Year of the Ox, the Year of the 0x was unfolding in the Metaverse.

While a lot of the world was STILL asking “what is a blockchain?".. PFP communities were busy running social experiments redefining how brands are created. Airdrops became a new form of guerrilla marketing. DAOs demonstrated how easy it is for strangers to self-assemble into value driven, goal oriented, collectives. DeFi ran a wild financial chemistry lab experimenting with new complex financial mechanisms (there have been explosions).

The very word 'currency' is undergoing the same paradigm distortion that the word 'channel' did when web2 made everyone a content creator.  The whole web3 space is like a primordial soup in the nascent stages of creating new cultural, possibly even societal, landscapes.

Everyone in the space, from the coders to the economists, from the pumpers to the dumpers, from the designers to the dreamers are literally making it up as they go along. This kind of unsupervised playground attracts adventurous spirits.

The Year of the 0x was also the year of individual identity. A new generation of artists entered the space, eager to generate value through self expression. What follows, is a piece of on-chain cultural journalism documenting some of the artist crypto class of 2021, whose work or presence felt impactful to me, and what I believe makes them significant in this moment in time.

The Death of the 360 Deal

When music finally floods the blockchain it will likely make visual art look like a niche community.  A whole new independent music industry is ready to explode. Fractionalising an NFT, a method in which people buy "shares" of a piece, allows artists to release work in a way that makes every track or music video its own kickstarter. Fans become stakeholders and the music is untethered from the industry machine.

Latasha and the Lyte Haus collective are the first example of this blueprint in action. Release by release they are building a musical movement from the ground up in front of our eyes.

Makdaverse, one of the first successful music pieces on the blockchain, has Latasha spitting bars as the camera pulls back to reveal she's enclosed in an ornamental frame.  The music video, a self aware NFT, declares itself iconic, knows its place in blockchain history, and confidently proclaims itself worthy to hang on a wall.

Rarity Traits

The original PFP community, the Cryptopunks, emerged on twitter as the NFT owners each started identifying as their highly prized punk. The resulting mixture of avatar, status symbol and investment, fuelled the creation of a whole new, community driven, brand industry.  As collectors and creators all saw an opportunity to line their pockets, a hype machine you could describe as Nasdaq meets Pokemon took the NFT spotlight away from 1/1 artists. For every bored ape that can now literally join a yacht club there's 10 other animals picking up job applications at McDonald's.

Meanwhile, Foodmasku, was busy releasing his own hilarious take on PFP avatars. Part performance art, part self portrait, his Delectables collection of food-masked characters, are each unique but part of his own avatar brand. Both funny and satirical, the collection is a great commentary of the PFP phenomenon.

Permissionless

Drift's vertigo-inducing photography is snapshots of the world we live in, taken from perspectives that can give you anxiety through the screen.

Not everything on the blockchain is some intentional meta commentary of the tech, or some pioneering business model.  Some of it is just dope. But I'll take a shot at weaving Drift's work into the fabric anyway. The permissionless nature of his photography is the permissionless nature of this new global marketplace.  Not asking, just doing and sending rule makers into tail spins.  Like the smart contracts themselves, as much as some authorities or institutions would like to, Drift wouldn’t turn off.

To read more about his journey in his true-to-form permissionless fashion, scale the article paywall and read his twitter thread.

The Leap Into the Unknown

“We are still early” is a common rallying cry in this space. Part cope, part truth, as more and more creators pack in, it can feel like “we are still early” enough to be too late.  The adventurous are taking a deep hit of that hopium and diving in regardless.

Efi Davies is a prominent figure in the hairdressing industry.  A globally renowned, award winning, avant garde hair artist, with curiosity and a willingness to step out of her comfort zone.

In her own words from her Rarible bio:

“here I stand as an unknown NFT artist … what an exciting and vulnerable place at the same time”

In a few years, when joining the blockchain is adapt or die the og explorers will look like visionaries.  But in the here and now it's a grind and starting at the bottom is a sobering reminder that this is a new world and a level playing field. Old rules don't apply.

Funny and self-deprecating on the timeline, Efi posts her rorschach-like hair pieces and is a constant reminder to keep pushing.

A Good Morning Goes a Long Way

Networks of value are self assembling in many different forms.  DAOs, PFP communities, Discords, or simply the twitter timeline.  The sense of communities forming is palpable.  The communities, fractal and kaleidoscopic in their overlap, are helping forge relationships across gender, race, cultures and disciplines.

There is room for everyone in the space. And some help carve out room for others. Glitchythiev could represent the inclusiveness of this community at this early stage.

His art is wild in contrast with his humility , humble aspirations and goals.  His daily GMs are part of his brand. And you can tell with the engagement he gets that he has created his own well intentioned community.  How did I find him? I didn't. He found me and his greeting came with an offer to join Foundation.  No rhyme or reason given.

Carpet bombing

This space favors the hustler.  You need to self promote to be heard and seen.  While most sat hoping for token airdrops, Supremeartdealer was busy airdropping his artwork with a - selling mixtapes out of the back of a car - energy.

His work and even his tweets are provocative, political, challenging and even incendiary. His NFTs deal with the experience of racism and at times even the theme of retribution. His 88 series, now almost sold out, comes with a pledge to reinvest in his local community in Memphis.

In a market where every idea can have a potential 'currency' attached to it, you get to see the true value of opinions.  This will become a primary aspect of the blockchain, which will undoubtedly reach even traditional politics. He represents the groundswell of individuals equipped with a whole new open marketplace and an appetite for change.

WTF is coming next ???

Congratulations on getting this far! You have a greater attention span than I would have had. If you are still reading, I invite you to help take a better class picture of 2021.  This narrow in view list completely misses the energy coming out of the 3rd world.  It only deals with art and misses community organising or environmentalism. It doesn't include the gamers, the non binary, the writers, the educators, the builders…

All you have to do is tweet the hashtag #theyearofthe0x and tag 1 or more artists, coders, writers, shitposters … whatever, that inspire you in this space. You can add a message, other hashtags that describe your scene or interests better,  an account address, an ens, anything.  I've created a simple twitter bot that will collect and save every tweet with the hashtag and will make all the data publicly available so anyone can download.

What's it for? No idea yet. maybe a resource for a future documentarian.   Maybe a tourist map of crypto. Maybe a distant future POAP airdrop like a yearbook picture. Hopefully more pieces like the one you just read. The data will be accessible on github for whoever wants to make something of it.

It would be good to get a better grass roots picture of the space than our limited twitter timelines allow and do it before the corporations start trying to turn the blockchain into a McDonald's drive thru.

The Chinese Year of the 0x ends, get ready for the Year of the Tiger.