On 24 July, we launched “10K Drop”, the third series of NFTs based on the [aside] protocol in collaboration with Rhea Myers. This release had the following feature: all purchased NFTs are 'locked' at mint time and will be 'unlocked' when ETH reach $10,000.

Before delving deeper into the specifics of this drop, let's recall that [aside] is a protocol that enables the immobilization of any NFT on the Ethereum blockchain and conditions its release to external phenomena, whether natural (weather, earthquake, storm), astral (solar eruption, planetary transit), economic (inflation, deflation), financial (stock market), demographic, or social. Once locked, these NFTs remain non-transferable for a dedicated period of time or until a specific real-world event happens, therefore restricting the tradability of the artwork by tying its commercial becoming to the outside world.

10K Drop

10K Drop is a series of 10,000 PFP character images released as a cultural event. The number 10,000 and the format of a series of characters generated programmatically from a library of visual elements is taken from the first collection of this kind, the Cryptopunks by Larva Labs which released in June 2017. Successful releases provide community, inspiration, and wealth. Unsuccessful ones provide embarrassment and loss. Buying early rides one of these waves. Waiting to see how a series performs reduces risk but also reduces reward. For every Bored Apes, there are a dozen Disinterested Dogs.

Buying an individual token in such a series became known as “aping in”. Going further and buying all of the cheapest available NFTs in a series is known as “sweeping the floor”. This desire for belongings and belonging, for ownership, that grows in and around successful 10K Drops is both driven and frustrated by the fact that other people also own tokens in the series. Without that ownership, the market could not establish the value that makes the series valuable and desirable. With it, an individual’s ownership of the series can never be complete.

10K Drop is an artistic fulfilment of this desire. Each individual NFT in the series is a generatively created drop of 10 Ks, viewable as a live animation or as a high-quality static image. Each is 'locked' until the price of Ethereum also becomes 10K - 10,000 US dollars. This is a 10 K drop that will release, or drop, at 10K, a 10K drop squared. In this it produces an experience of total ownership that is increased rather than being frustrated or reduced by other collectors also owning a token in the same series. This is a familiar strategy from Rhea's previous projects

*Tokens Equal Text* and Black Friday Sale, illustrate a more complex visual aesthetic applied to the moment of NFTs entry into mainstream cultural consciousness in order to enable us to reflect on the desires that they produce and frustrate as a reflection of more general property relations.

How it works

Each NFT created by Rhea Myers will be 'locked' at the time of minting and 'unlocked' once ETH reaches $10,000 using the [aside] protocol, which is itself linked to Chainlink's ETH/USD price feed.

If Ethereum reaches $10,000, all NFTs will be unlocked, meaning they will become saleable, exchangeable, or burnable. That’s it.

Chainlink Data Feeds provides data that is aggregated from many sources by a decentralized set of independent node operators. ETH/USD price feed is updated by multiple, independent Chainlink oracle operators and is built and funded by the community of users who rely on accurate, up-to-date data in their smart contracts.

The use of Chainlink data feeds is currently one of the most secure and decentralized ways to access the ETH/USD price feed.

Call me crazy but I had this vision

Some may see the "ETH to 10K" narrative as the speculative obsession of a degenerated crowd solely focused on profit generation, which might hold some truth and is characteristic of a finance world that spends most of its existence pulling an uncertain future into the present.

However, ETH's value, like any value, is also a point of reference around which an abstract community forms — communities that couldn't exist without shared trust, which gives value to the assets they refer to and by which the communities exist.

By utilizing the [aside] protocol to create a series of artworks that become sellable only when ETH reaches $10K, Rhea Myers has create a series that acts as a marker of this shared trust — a banner for a community shaped by its belief in ETH's value. This community's confidence in the future value of ETH demonstrates the confidence it has in itself.