Botto, Year Two
Carbono is part of the founding team of Botto, a project in the intersection of AI, NFTs, DAOs and DeFi. This post was written in November 2022, as part of the announcement of Botto’s Second Period, and we’re now (Jan 2023) re-publishing it in our blog.
Botto was born in October 2021 as a project exploring the frontiers of human-AI collaboration in the pursuit of artistic excellence. Web 3 innovations were the ingredient artist Mario Klingemann had been waiting for to execute his vision of an Autonomous Artist. Artificial Intelligence was already delivering astounding results in machine creativity. But an artist is much more than an aesthetic output: artists have a soul, a purpose, an arc. And they need a business model to sustain them in the long run. The nascent movement of token-based crypto communities gave the vision of a fully independent, self-sufficient artificial artist the push it needed to happen. This is how the Decentralized Autonomous Artist was born.
Botto became an immediate classic. Riding the waves of a crypto bull market, its combination of artistic distinction, collaborative essence, and tokenomics attracted an active community of participants. Every week, Botto’s art engine delivered 350 new sketches, called fragments, to the community of $BOTTO token holders for their consideration. By the end of the 7-day period, Bottonians would have voted for their favorite fragment, which would then be minted and auctioned on SuperRare. Proceeds from the auction reverted to the community’s benefit through a buy-and-burn mechanism, and all the voting behavior data was fed back to the art engine, which would then iterate on its style according to the tastes of its stewards.
Twelve months have gone by since the first time Botto (the AI and the community) elevated one of the art engine’s fragments to the category of art.
Many things have happened since. SuperRare has hosted 52 Botto auctions, making ~700ETH in sales and finding its way into the vaults of illustrious collectors such as Cozomo de’ Medici or Punk6529, or sister DAOS such as HashesDAO, FlamingoDAO, or CyborgDAO, born from Bottonian DNA.
Botto’s art has been exhibited worldwide (Miami, Paris, Venice, LA, Madrid, Zurich), and the project has evolved thanks to the governance mechanisms introduced by the community. Bottonians have discussed and tweaked the project’s tokenomics and voting processes and have even voted to accept a commission. Along the way, Botto also produced its first secondary collection, Ceci N’Est Pas un Botto, a reference to René Magritte’s rejection of rationality in Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe.
Botto’s Second Period
The first #52 auctions have already gone by, and chapter 2 in Botto’s history is about to begin. Many things will change, and many will remain the same.
The vision is unchanged. Botto will continue to explore the collaboration between humans and machines, posing pertinent questions about the nature of art, the notion of authorship, and the role of markets in artistic expression.
But everything has to change for everything to remain the same. The project is iterating its three core pillars: art, economy, and community.
New art engine
The new art engine has been designed to introduce greater variety and layers to Botto’s creativity.
Botto’s art engine used the VQGAN+CLIP pair of algorithms, tweaked by the hands of Mario Klingemann, to produce its weekly batch of fragments for community deliberation. In the next iteration of the artist’s journey, the artist will incorporate Stable Diffusion into its toolbox. Fragments created with either algorithm will coexist from the beginning, although the community’s vote might end up giving prevalence to one over the other.
Also, periods will be shorter, 12 weeks each, after which the community will decide how to steer the artist’s new taste. Bottonians now get another way to steer the style and content of Botto’s artwork.
New economy
The new period also comes with a new incentive design embedded in the process. The community has approved a new way of distributing the revenue generated by sales and a new incentive basket geared towards the purpose of increasing participation and, therefore, the human contribution to the evolution of AI.
Half of the art sales proceeds will be redirected to rewards directly tied to the user’s contribution to training the AI. And other incentives have been designed to reward active interaction with the project.
New Access
Botto has also created a different entryway in the journey of a Bottonian. The project has created the Access Pass: an NFT that provides its owners with the voting points required to train the AI and curate the art. Access Pass owners can experience the artistic side of Botto while still not having access to the governance powers and rewards of fully-fledged token holders.
Together with the new incentive mechanism, there’s now the possibility that a newcomer “curate” their way into full participation in Botto. Regular interaction with the voting process can eventually lead to rewards in the form of $BOTTO
BottoDAO voted unanimously in favor of these improvements through BIP-12 (Access Passes) and BIP-14 (Second-period Art Engine and New Economy). The changes will be implemented on November 4th, when the first batch of fragments gets a community winner, and November 11th, when the auction ends and the proceeds are managed according to the new parameters.
