FUCK YOUs are on chain — here’s what that means
A non-technical writeup of how “on chain” NFT art works
If you’ve spent any time fucking around with NFTs then you know that their permanence on the Ethereum blockchain is a huge part of their appeal. If the blockchain says that you own an NFT then goddammit you own it.
But when it comes to the images and other media that go with your NFTs not all NFTs offer such a guarantee of permanence. To understand why it helps to understand a little more about what NFTs are:
NFTs are code
Your NFT is essentially a block of code that explains what the NFT is, what you can do with it, and who it belongs to.
As long as the blockchain exists then that code exists.
Digital art is also code
All media displayed on the internet are also code that your computer reads, translates, and then displays on your screen. For this article I’m going to focus on images specifically, but you should know that not all NFTs use images. Many use videos, sound, and other media types.
With images, JPG is one file type for storing the code that you’re probably familiar with. PNG is another. You can open a .jpg or .png in a code editor and you’ll be able to see the code that makes the image exist.
Or you can open it in an image program or on a webpage and the code will be translated into the picture so you’ll only see the picture, no code.
For a lot of NFTs the image code isn’t on the blockchain
All NFT code has to be on the blockchain. If it’s not then it’s not an NFT. But for the image that goes with an NFT very few projects actually store the image code on the blockchain.
Instead the image is often stored on the regular internet. The NFT will have a link in it that points to where the image is on the internet:
If the image ever moves from its current location then the NFT will have a link that points to nothing. You will own the NFT but no one will be able to see the image that it proves you own.
To reduce the risk of that happening a lot of NFT projects use systems like IPFS to store the images. IPFS is a peer-to-peer network for storing images that NFTs point to. It has a whole system built out for managing the links NFTs have to the images as well as ensuring that images can’t just disappear or get deleted.
It’s an amazing tool for helping NFTs to not get disconnected from their images. But the images still aren’t on the blockchain.
Other projects use other tools like Amazon Web Services or Google Photos to store images. It’s less clear how long those images will stay there. The creator could stop paying for the service, or the service could decide to stop hosting the images.
For some NFTs the image code IS on the blockchain aka “on chain”
When art is on the blockchain itself and not the regular internet it’s referred to as “on chain.”
The reason a lot of NFT projects don’t put their images on chain is that anything you upload to the blockchain costs gas to upload and image files can be enormous. The more you want to upload the more gas you have to pay and the longer it will take. It’s almost an impossible feat to upload more than a couple .jpgs or .pngs to the blockchain for an NFT project.
Projects like ArtBlocks (and FUCK YOUS) invest a ton of time, talent, and money into creating images in very small image formats like SVGs that CAN be put onto the blockchain.
We’ve created our own process for super-optimizing our art using SVGs. This allows us to turn what would be 230 MB of regular image files into just 57 KB of SVGs. This fits much better on the blockchain.
This is also why ArtBlocks and our own pieces tend to be more abstract. Circles, squiggles and other shapes are a lot more economical in their code. They use less image code overall.
Anything realistic looking needs lots of details that these economical formats like SVG simply can’t achieve (although you’ll notice the FUCK YOUs have elements that look hand-drawn. We’ve achieved this with SVGs. It was fucking hard, dude).
On chain art can do crazy shit that off chain art can’t do
The huge benefit of using on chain art is that the art can be dynamic. Formats that are good for on chain like SVG have interesting capabilities like the ability to be updated or changed. You could turn a circle, for example, into a square with just a small change to the SVG code.
You can also start to do crazy stuff like letting NFT owners swap one element in their picture for another, or even letting them rewrite text inside the image.
And of course SVGs are infinitely scalable without getting that fuzzy pixellated look. You could put a FUCK YOU on a 50-foot led billboard and it’s going to look as good as it looks on your tiny mobile phone screen.
On chain art will exist as long as the blockchain
With on chain images you’ll never have to worry about your image getting lost. As long as the blockchain exists, your image will too.
Why FUCK YOUs are on chain
We are huge fans of on chain art. There’s an art form to making art that actually works on the blockchain. We like the challenge.
We also like the possibilities. We want to do the crazy shit. We wanna see what YOU little fuckers will come up with. It will take some time to make all these possibilities a reality but we’ve laid the foundation for it by using on chain art.
If you have any questions about on chain art or why we’re using it, ask them in the comments below or Tweet us at @fuckyousNFT. See ya fucking later!
Icons in this post are “Bro’s ‘Anti Icons Set’” by Andrew Brow. Licensed under CC BY 4.0
