Sometimes artists join the web3/crypto space and do what they’ve been doing elsewhere, only in a new place for a little while. Usually their art practice is pretty advanced and they make a few digital pieces for one marketplace or another. The next leg up towards being a participant involves a few things: expanding beyond the first marketplace they understand how to use, and finding a voice and way of being in social media that doesn’t make them frustrated to the point of quitting. The fact that the social media aspect is so key annoys some people - but honestly that’s just the toughest of noogies - you can’t expect to have a digital presence without intentional action: you do not exist in virtual spaces automatically the way your body and art exists in the real world without showing it to people.

A lot of artists don’t bother with this second leg, and they stay at the first market they found any success in and mint there forever. Sometimes they throw a temper tantrum after a while when their endless posting about a new piece there received little traction (all their posts are usually about their newest piece, nothing else). Some artists take the leap of trying new platforms, but generally just make one or two things in the new place and lose heart when the platform itself doesn’t manifest an audience for them. Artists who are patient and engage will realize something: if you grow an audience, they follow you - and only a few collectors really invest their attention into a particular platform. Getting just a few people engaged from that small market-native audience helps grow your overall body of interested people that may then follow you elsewhere.

You don’t have to take a course on social media strategy to know some of the basics: consistency, variety, leveraging hashtags/meta strategies (e.g. using unique channels on Warpcast, hashtags on Twitter), and participating in what other people are doing is all key to growing a following. Artists who want to helicopter in and drop art and then leave will get discouraged - or worse - they will become tedious to the rest of us who don’t want to subscribe to advertisements with no substance. More advanced users will do the work of strategizing replies, follows, posting across channels. For some people like myself I tend to straddle the general and specific engagement strategies: aggressive growth strategies (I think) can cause burnout just as fast as the toe-dippers who lose patience. If you’re brand new, however, it couldn’t hurt to have a real plan: one of the real benefits of seniority is being able to afford being inefficient. Mainly: be interesting, don’t be always selling things, and also don’t avoid selling things, or the attention becomes a loop with no purpose. Make friends because you like people, not because you want to use their popularity.

With that advice and collection of observations out of the way - I wanted to highlight three artists I’ve seen in the space who have made a second-leg leap into being full-blown participants in interesting and engaging ways. Generally, you can tell how much an artist has really adopted the ethos of tokenized art by how many places and established forms their art has ventured into. They have a style, but have they moved beyond their favorite chain? They have a method, but have they also tried a generative version of their art? Sure they have an account, but do you actually find yourself reading their posts just to see what they are up to and not necessarily to buy something?

1. MEK.txt (@michaelmicasso, @michaelmicasso)

Michael Micasso (see mek.gallery) is incredibly interesting. A Peranakan Chinese artist living as a religious minority in Indonesia and a former member of the KMSR art collective, his style has a very unique perspective on western tradition woven into it. A remarkable clarity of thought and purpose comes from a professional artist who has had to pragmatically think through how he goes about making art, and art as a product and not just a flourish of the imagination. In a sense, all the things I talked about in the introduction to these artists are things MEK must have realized in the process of becoming a participant here: not allowing the natural distaste we all have for social media dictating our actions with algorithms to keep us from succeeding, forming regular practices, letting passion push us to create rather than distract. It means not letting it bother you what a square you have to be to consistently make art and follow-through to the point of having a delivered project.

I first discovered MEK in passing back in 2022 or so, seeing his brilliant dithered pixel work show up in OBJKT feeds on tezos. Each one that came through my feed of new art minted made me pause and admire it. You get the distinct feeling that this is not just an artist who makes whatever comes to mind, but that these works are the work of someone who feels themselves part of a tradition: it’s staggering the number of references in his art to classical latin themes, characters, figures - likewise greek or religious iconography. You could argue at least some of these are plays on a theme in the way that a virtuoso musician might make their own very idiosyncratic recording of a classic folk song or orchestral melody. The whole Archaics collection on Tezos is breathtaking in technique and composition.

The main vibe here is pixel/retro/dithering - a lot of it done manually in ways that are difficult to artfully reproduce with automatic processes. Aseprite makes a lot of these pieces come to life with flickering animations. The attention to detail is irreproachable. Let me take a moment to use MEK further as an example of an artist who embraces the “second leg up” I’ve been describing. His art is on Tezos (mainly, firstly) but he has several generative collections on fxhash, he has fantastic 1155 tokens on Solana, and work on Foundation and ETH L1 (as expensive as gas can be!). MEK has posted across marketplaces and chains and formats - all in what are developing as new “traditional” forms of NFT art. Again, MEK is trying different marketplaces where he can grow and move his audience, not just staying in familiar places.

Besides all that, MEK is also making what I’d consider the final leap into being a full-fledged participant in the space: building novel mechanisms in new places. His newest widget/toy/art is your.garden where users can create from his original wingding style glyphs little “gardens” - something completely unique and original and yet fitting in his overall style and ethos. In my opinion, it’s once we see artists making this last step into contributing new conceptual approaches that we’re following someone who is a web3 native, a tokenizing contributor, an artist that has become a crypto artist and not an artist dabbling in crypto.

It’s not just that I would recommend MEK as an artist based on his previous work - but I can wholeheartedly recommend following him as someone who is a positive contributor to the space both in quality of art and his ability to envision new things in new places - all while having one foot in the flowing waters of tradition that informs his work.

2. elle (@riotgoools, @riotgools)

Whatever your hot take is on the whole milady/remilia phenomenon, one of the major strengths of that community is creating derivative projects that sustain and contribute to the overall culture rather than dilute it. To stand out within that competitive world is difficult, but elle created Very Internet Person - my personal favorite Milady-related PFP project that takes the neochibi mood and translates it to iterative pixel art that looks seamless and (IMO) more cohesive than the original collection. VIP are not - by elle’s description - derivatives, but are a secret third thing where the Milady PFPs have their own (layer 2?) profile pictures. In elle’s words, these are a pixel contribution to the milady “chaotic mystery” aesthetic.

That this collection that caught my attention, though, is just part of a fully robust engagement with the space that elle takes on. The riotgoools website is a real vibe - as is the veryinter.net/person/ site - all of it showcasing the kind of feverish creation, memory, evoking method that nostalgic web-based art in the present does so well when a high-effort artist dumps their creative energy into it. This is a part of the engagement, as well - the front-end and the delivery of these tokenized works isn’t an afterthought: it’s an entire experience, and all of it is linked and dances its way through internet subcultures, edgy NEET lounges - thriving in corners of the internet in the way that art thrives in the real world in some of the sketchiest alleys and modes that only a consummate maven would know about.

This is not me projecting on the artwork, either - elle also writes and explains all of this tipping her hand as a thoughtful artist and not just a lunatic creator. Again you can see the earmarks I’ve been describing for a true crypto artist: open editions in a novel printout format on Zora, Goools on tezos, participating in an ASCII exhibition, even a very cool collection on Fantom called Goool Bands - generally trying things out in different places. Not being content with the first attempt to understand how to do things here.

The main reason she’s included here, though, is that besides just having demonstrated the ability to do a generative/iterative project, finer 1/1 work, and showing versatility in chains and markets elle is actively imagining new internet spaces that recall the wild and wooly days before the flattening influence of the web2 paradigm. User created sites, spaces, and nooks that embrace all the weird and wonderful possibilities of a user-centric internet. In a word: a return to self-expression as a mainstay of internet culture and not being crammed into Wordpress templates or secondhand formats or even worse, the sterilized anodyne canon of acceptable self-expression that the internet of yesteryear dictated to us. elle is someone to keep an eye on just because she seems uniquely tuned in to a very vibrant pulse of chaotic mystery energy that she channels into genuinely good art and novel mediums.

3. julierose (@crystalspaceship, @crystalspaceshp)

Julie Rose (see julierose.co) has been moving in the same orbits that I have been for a few years now, and I’ve seen a ton of work come from her that dazzled me both in the commitment to an aesthetic and the diversity she’s managed to press out of that aesthetic. Without knowing her well on a personal level, she comes across in the way that an older sibling does who knows the sort of art and design she’s about and can rattle off a dozen references to artists and designers she admires. Her feed on Warpcast has been great to see all the fantastic pieces she shares from artists of the last 60 years or so - almost all of which you can detect influences of in her own work. In my own words, I would describe her style as a kind of whimsical 1960s/1970’s abstract revival. It feels very contemporary while also being tied to the aesthetic from that era that proved so timeless in VHS collections and posters and t-shirts people held onto as valuable vintage.

Julierose is yet another one of these artists that came to the fork of burnout or expansion and chose to keep learning, keep trying new things. A subscription (the newest thing!), art on Tezos and ETH L1, 1/1 style work in addition to branching out into generative/iterative processes. Exploring the new traditional formats and trying new ones. Not to absolutely beat this point to a pulp - but julierose is in this list because she participates:

All of her work is just so damn satisfying to look at. Some artists like myself have really divergent styles and techniques and we struggle to have a cohesive style - others like julierose have a style that is so polished that it floats effortlessly into different final executions with apparent ease.

This is all great, but following julierose on social media is its own reward because she retweets/recasts so much good art - she shares great designs with artist names and dates, shows interesting behind-the-scenes sketches of stuff she has yet to finish. Her social media timeline is interesting for its own sake, and isn’t just a perpetual feed of advertisements.

This is the final point I’ve been really at pains to illustrate - in each of the three artists I talked about here they have been absolute paragons of several ways of being that I think are the way forward for crypto art:

• They try new things across chains and marketplaces and bring their audience.

• They are willing to lean into new established “traditional” NFT art formats.

• Presentation isn’t an afterthought.

• They have a stream of culture that informs their work.

• They try the newest ways of doing things and when those don’t exist, they build their own.

These are totally made up by me, but maybe a part of the new energy of crypto art is just having faith in the stuff you made up that you think is backed by serious consideration, informed by art you’ve seen being practiced rather than just in theory. These three artists are all immensely talented and, in my opinion, represent the crypto-art paradigm being established by active participants in the space. There are some artists featured at major events or in galleries and parties, but I think the future is really the digitally native types that are fully comfortable with their work embracing the digital-only ethos and the mood of internet as a place to live (at least part-time).