Letters To Amy: Marfa 2025:

Last week I visited a small town in Texas called Marfa. You’ve probably heard of it. I never had. It’s more or less the gateway to the Big Bend National Park; a town of just under 1800 people in a county (Presidio) that holds around 6000. Including the neighboring counties of Brewster and Jeff Davis which are just as sparsely populated, their combined land mass is about the size of Indiana, if I’m not mistaken. The land is mostly desert ranch and mountains, very little water except the Rio Grande river which forms its western border. One hesitates to say it looks like eastern Oregon because well because of Oregon’s Texas-size mountains but I think you know what I mean when I say it, because all of our western deserts seem to share that wind-blown, water-parched look characteristic of over-grazed land; although, I must say it was surprisingly lush indicating recent rainfall and indeed, it began to rain while I was driving down out of the hills of Jeff Davis county from the Macdonald Observatory. There also weren’t a lot of cattle to be seen although the land is fenced and the roads liberally sprinkled with cattle buffers.

My visit to Marfa wasn’t exactly to sight-see but to attend a gathering celebrating digital art and the artists who make it. It was hosted by an organization called Art Blocks which has chosen Marfa as its locus. Marfa has a history and reputation as something of an artist’s enclave but it seems as though the Big Bend park and its environs may have been the initial impetus for locating there. Coincidence or not, near to Marfa is the sprawling grounds of a museum called the Chinati Foundation which was founded by an artist unknown to me, Donald Judd, who somehow appropriated an abandoned army base and transformed it into a series of art installations and the foundation itself which apparently are world famous. The founder of Art Blocks, a man who goes by the nom de guerre ‘Snowfro’, is a famous digital artist in his own right who built the artblocks.io website for the ‘minting,’ viewing, collecting and selling of what are known as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) which, if you are unfamiliar with them are basically JPEGs recorded on a blockchain (Ethereum). Suffice it to say they are digital images that are publicly available to copy and broadcast while you, or the controller of the image address on the blockchain, retain the property rights to the digital addresses they reside on. The value lies in this right to, or ‘ownership’ of, the blockchain address that holds the record of the image. It’s really easy to get caught up in the weeds with this stuff so most of us spend exactly no time trying to understand it. I’m sure you’ve heard of the absurd prices people have paid for “cryptopunks” and cartoon ape pictures and stuff like that, no? Well, beyond that madness there is an entire universe of serious and not so serious ‘artists’ creating digital artworks some of which have sold and will sell for hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. Anyway, that’s why I and hundreds (not yet thousands) of others went to Marfa for the weekend event.

I flew in to El Paso and rented a car in order to drive the couple hundred more miles to get to the middle of somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Driving there is quite surreal, and what I mean by this is that, while one is always aware he is in USA, at the same time it could be in the middle of Mexico. There is literally no way to get one’s bearings by cultural artifacts or technologies. The houses one passes on the way in the hamlet of Valentine are decaying adobe or pre-fabricated ‘trailer homes’ like something here or there but nowhere you’ve been before. Somebody, appreciating the absurd liminality has actually built a Prada shoes storefront along the highway that looks for all intents and purposes like a bonafide Prada shoe store. It’s absurdly perfect.

Thursday, set up day, had the town buzzing with activity as venues got constructed for the event, keeping in mind that ‘town’ is essentially three roads this way and four streets that, along which is a preternatural number of motels and hotels filling the warp and weft of the grid. Walking around to get a feel for the place brought me to a gent from there working on some electric bicycles. We chatted about his Motoguzzi and road trip taken from there to Alaska by way of Oregon and it made me very much want to do the same. He’s about my age which made the prospect all the more possible in my head, no matter how unlikely it is to happen. Still, it’s the stuff of dreams. Speaking with him, sizing up the man, assessing his existence in the context of the town brought me to the conclusion that Marfa is, for a certain kind, exactly the sort of place one should like to spend time in and possibly even to live for a while. Not sure that I am that sort of man, but damned sure I nearly am.

As intimated, Marfa is kind of like an old west rail town, think Yakima but much, much, smaller back to before the apples, cherries, and grapes took root, but which has been colonized by well-heeled artsy tourist-types who use it as their vacation home. So, while there are only 1800 people in Marfa and no real job base outside of government, for sale houses are listed at a half million dollars and more; some being cool old adobe homes that have been modernized, while most look like semi-disposable modern construction of unquestionably poor quality. The prices seem preposterous. No offense, but there are only 1800 people living there with no apparent industry for to pay a wage supporting a 400,000 dollar mortgage.

After people such as myself who had bought tickets to what is otherwise a free event, could check in and receive their name tag and bag of swag (collectibles, stickers, local product samples, a book and some cool wearables) the back yard of the Art Blocks adobe house located on the town’s main drag opened up with, I believe, Huapango norteno music played by a duo comprised of a bass-playing Anglo who happens to be running for county office and his Norteno compadre on guitar (Cafe con Leche, they joked), and an open bar. I met a man there, originally from South Africa, who owns an art gallery both in Marfa and in Austin and had one of those conversations both deep and casual depending, I guess, upon the ebb and flow of the background music. It were the kind of encounter one often has while traveling, and meaningful because, along with my previous chat about motorcycle road trips, it confirmed that Marfa attracts and retains the type of person and culture one is wistful for but it also made me invigorated and somehow optimistic about what life still has in store. There are places around the world that attract a sort, the sort who create a flavor enticing to the casual tourist who then spreads the word to others who come to taste of that heady brew. It felt I had a quick sip of it there in Marfa and, in doing so, got what it is that brought and brings the Snowfro’s the Robert Irwins, the Claes Oldenbergs and all the others back year after year to experience the ambrosia such a place magically produces.

Sensing this, no matter the outcome of the Art Blocks event, made the journey, time, and expense a worthwhile investment. Having said that, what these eminent digerati (some of the world’s most accomplished and respected digital artists attended this year’s event) served up was well beyond any expectations one had for what came to be. It is obvious the overwhelming number of the 800 or so people who attended were not operating on the same plane of touristic voyeurism as I. They came to connect meaningfully with fellow artists and enthusiasts that have an immediate, direct impact upon their professional lives, their art and appreciation of it. I don’t mean in a crass calculated way; although, doubtless some of this was present. What I saw was a crop of new and emerging artists (even established artists are new and emerging in this space) come together to share ideas, plan projects, seek and give inspiration, and make solid human connections with people they may have only ever interacted with or admired from afar, online. I heard more than once a person say to another that he couldn’t believe he was able to ‘get to know’ some iconic digital artist just by approaching him and striking up a convo. This event creates a kind of access point that can’t be paid for. One might say, at the risk of sounding corny, the artists and participants didn’t come to do business so much as they came to do Marfa. Obviously, the entire enterprise is meant to further the common enterprise, so one isn’t oblivious to the fact that some attendees came after spending much time and energy on projects which they hoped to launch, flog, or otherwise profit from during the course of this long weekend’s events.

I personally had three objectives. One was to see the works of a digital art pioneer by the name of Robert Mallary, not because of a familiarity or admiration for the art and artist but because of the man behind, and manner of, the resurrection of this artist’s career. For the past couplefew years a web3 personage known as ‘Schmrypto’ has been bruiting about the art and story of an artist who, once prominent in the art world, has faded into obscurity despite being a pioneer of the digital art genre which is become a vital element of the contemporary art scene. Generally, when hearing of a man who arguably was working ‘before his time’, it’s difficult to buy in to the narrative of forgotten genius because overuse has made it trite. While it sometimes works for a while, possibly due to novelty, the narrative usually fails as the thin gruel of reality becomes apparent. Case in point, contrast webvan with uber eats. One can hardly make the case for the genius of webvan despite the evident success of digitally powered food delivery services. In Mallary’s case one feared the worst and wished to see with his own eyes whether and how much worthwhile there is in these art works praised so avidly by Schmrypto. Thus, it was gratifying to see at Marfa not only how substantial Mallary’s career was, but also the depth of his talent as evinced by the works on display, many of which are suitable for a serious collection and even to museum accession. The only unanswered question is whether there remains a body of his work large enough for a gallery and museum network to engage with and build a following, which one believes is necessary for posterity and sustained popularity?

The second objective was to witness or even participate in the portraiture project of the artist Jiwa, an American based in Berlin, Germany who creates code from scratch resulting in dynamic generative pieces that dance around the phenomenological edges of the ‘deus ex machina’. Stipulating that his artwork is bounded by the code he has assembled and deployed, and is completely deterministic, the movement imbued in his latest Art Blocks release DDust raises the question how close are we to creating a kind of algorithmic general intelligence that ‘intends to make’ pleasing visuals? Is it possible to create digital art that is not randomly generated but obtains the ‘spark’ of (non)humanity? This, by the way, is not Jiwa’s stated intention, nor has he in any way indicated this is the direction he is taking his work, quite the contrary, to the best of my knowledge. Jiwa’s “featured artist” event was a clinic to ‘paint’ portraits of patrons who satt for them. This involved taking a digital photograph of the subject, uploading it to Jiwa’s computer allowing him to use that likeness to recreate another with his own program. The result is quite fantastic, being simultaneously like and nothing like the psychedelic posters of the 1960’s. Apropos to my earlier question, Jiwa is re-interpreting the subject’s photographic image through a program he built, the program itself interprets and re-interprets the inputs and ‘creates’ a new image. This isn’t crazy talk, by the way. As machines get closer and closer to mimicking the process of thought, at some point it raises questions of agency. One might argue that, stylistically, Jiwa’s work on some level approaches a liminality similar to travelling through culturally non-determinative Texas desert to Marfa. So many applied to have their portraits done that Jiwa labored nonstop for the entire time allotted and beyond, with people having their pictures taken and stored for ex post facto completion. It was a total success, and the project feels to have historic significance just based on the who’s who of those who sat for one: We’ll see.

Another highly anticipated appearance was of Jack Butcher who, despite his already wide acclamation may yet be one of our most underrated, perhaps underestimated digital artists working today (I dare not use the word ‘ever’ because at some point one suspects a fuller appreciation is inevitable). The intentionality (however unplanned), creativity and execution of the man’s works (often made possible by the indefatigable coding savant Jalil.eth) is, to my knowledge, without peer. While Beeple’s individual intentionality (Beeple is the nom de guerre of an artist whose record breaking 69 million dollar digital art sale is unmatched) may be unrivaled in this space, likewise his world-class level of execution, the inventiveness of Jack Butcher’s evolving projects are on a level different from and beyond any other artist (or collective) working today. His Marfa project riffing on his Art Blocks release titled Gas Wars was unmitigated genius despite being nothing more than the shooting of foam-tipped darts at a paper target to create the visual effect of the ‘original’ digital images.

In the midst of these three events was a ton of other gatherings at formal and makeshift galleries sprinkled around the town throughout each day and evening. This is where human connection and broadly socializing played a big role, for the details of these events were not widely broadcast. Sadly, I was focused on the three events above and practically missed out on most every of the many things happening. Those I did attend were pretty cool, defo worthwhile, and all had copious amounts of complimentary food and drinks making them even more enjoyable. In retrospect a half-dozen events took place that one wishes he’d known about. This is the one bummer of what otherwise was an overwhelmingly positive experience and, truth be told, not being a fan of large social gatherings makes it easier to accept missing out. Another reason for missing them was desire to explore the outlying area. Choosing to attend Marfa on the spur of the moment caused me to make a panic decision about accommodations. Seeing people asking for tips on where to stay or whether anyone knew of places available made it seem like Marfa was full up. Booking at Homewood Suites 75 miles away was safe but inconvenient. It turns out the town of Alpine is less than 30 miles away and it too has a Homewood and a handful of other motels so not investigating this was a big error. Still, the commute was a great excuse to drive around the roads lying between Marfa and the hotel which are well-kept and empty, albeit narrow, such that it is possible to drive mindlessly for hundreds of miles gawking and gaping to one’s heart’s content. There isn’t much ‘there’ to see except to those who love landscapes. Nevertheless it is pretty cool to drive for miles at a stretch without encountering a single other vehicle; although the roads are not at all deserted; pull off to the side and someone is bound to pass within half an hour or so, except after nightfall. An anomaly on the roads is the occasional ‘High Water’ warning signs indicating 5 feet of depth or more. Yes, right in the middle of the desert there are dry washes that turn into raging torrents after a heavy downpour inundating depressions in the road. I found myself wishing to witness such an event. It must be fascinating. Another thing was the very large spiders one encounters from time to time. Thinking they were black widows I examined one, and found it to be a very attractive cream and chocolate colored fuzzy wuzzy. Its size reminded one of what we called ‘Camel Spiders’ in Oman but rather than looking sinister appeared rather cuddly if not quite cute. The only large mammals apparent were cattle despite the occasional Deer Crossing signs. A pleasant surprise was the large number of butterflies flitting about, mostly on the small side but often of great beauty. I saw a lizard or two, lots of huge grasshoppers or locusts, crickets, just one very large eagle, some crows, abundant doves, pigeons, and a handful of LBBs. The insect-splotched windscreen spoke of a plethora of unidentified flying insects but, on the whole, this desert was about as devoid of wildlife as one might expect, not to say it isn’t teeming with it, especially at night.

To sum up: Marfa is small yet the largest town around in sparsely populated remote west Texas abutting the Mexican border. It has a decades long tradition of attracting artists who have left and continue to leave their respective marks. Art Blocks is a project, now a C-corp, that was the inspiration of a single man, Erick ‘snowfro’ Calderon, that has spawned a significant digital art-based movement and now hosts perhaps the most influential annual gathering of digital artists in the world. Art Blocks Marfa brings together creators, collectors, investors, and so-called influencers from around the world over an extended weekend where new and old artworks are showcased and displayed; where social networking gatherings are held; where new friends and connections are made and old friendships and connections burnished. There is also an existing infrastructure or culture in Marfa that supports numerous non-digital artists who are unintegrated into the scene thus presenting huge opportunities for both communities. Three examples of this are the Ballroom Marfa which was converted to a small museum exhibition space with a changing roster. The exhibition during Art Blocks Marfa contained the single-best artwork I saw the whole time. Artist Narsiso Martinez is not well-known and sadly is likely to remain so. It’s a shame that some kind of digital partnership or cooperation is not in place to perhaps plug these artists into the digital world.

Another example is that right next door to where the Otherside Gallery held its major event (digital) is the atelier of Robert Arber who is a world-class traditional fine print maker (lithography, linocut, offset press, sculpture, etc.). He’s been working in the space since the 1980’s and has worked with some of the world’s most well-known contemporary artists. His place is a literal gem in the desert awaiting discovery by digital artists wishing to reach over the aisle to the traditional, physical art world. One great weakness of digital art is the present inability of collectors to easily display their work. Meanwhile, one of the biggest and most popular niches of digital art collecting is of so-called phygitals or physical manifestations of the creations that otherwise exist only as digital files. Moreover, many of the digital images people love, collect, and clamor for are well-suited to issuing as signed, limited edition, lithographs printed on the highest quality papers with the finest inks. The means to do so are right there in Marfa.

Finally, my newfound friend who owns two art galleries, but knows little about digital art was taking in the whole Marfa scene with approbation. In my experience more than 95% of working artists trying to make a name for themselves don’t know Thing One about art sales and how to make them happen yet here is a chap whom someone with hustle and sales skills could easily have approached with plans to bridge the gap between the digital world, which lacks abundant physical gallery representation, and the traditional gallery world lacking a good footing in the digital world. Marfa is a pregnant opportunity.

In November 2023 Jiwa released on Art Blocks an intriguing kinetic NFT art project titled AXO, “an abstraction of the human mental condition” expressed as pixels firing from code-generated “neurons”. Imagine a Tartan plaid pattern raveling and unravelling with apparent intention into an infinite array of well-ordered dots and lines but with occasional outbursts of frenetic energy akin to an ant colony’s response to invasive stimuli: https://www.artblocks.io/marketplace/collections/axo-by-jiwa

In addition to the kaleidoscopic beauty of an AXO its long play pattern sequences speak to the brevity of the majority of today’s kinetic NFT runtimes. Most kinetic NFTs, no matter how compelling the underlying narrative, when constrained to a 20 second loop quickly stale from repetition. AXO’s implied promise of infinity causes one to wonder if he has stumbled upon the fountain of eternal algorithmic youth.

Contra to the fear narrative around Artificial General Intelligence which boils down to computers ‘finding’ a way to become infinitely powerful, today’s kinetic NFTs are virtually static once they have become familiar and hence ‘safe’. This is a genuine problem. Even accepting that the illustrative, and (virtually static) generative art genres are largely undeveloped leaving a vast amount of virgin territory to be explored, one suspects most truly ground-breaking works will emerge from kinetic generative projects that elide the boundary between perception and reality challenging a basic precept of humanity, the ability to differentiate between the finite and infinity: Imagination.

Such works won’t emerge from a vacuum, however, and Jiwa’s explication and brief history of generative art:

makes it apparent he and other artists working today are doing so within a rich historical milieu that began a century ago. It is an artform that emerged first from pen lines upon paper; to written instructions or prompts that when followed become objects; to lines of code generating art outputs translated into traditional media; to algorithmic creations that live wholly within the machine.

His presentation came as a surprise to one conditioned to the likes of Bored Apes, Fidenzas, Chromie Squiggles and other projects frequently mentioned on Twitter (now X). While collectors don’t necessarily have a grounding in the history of digital art it nevertheless drives home the point that a world of digital art is not taking place exclusively on Twitter (now X) or indeed primarily in USA. One wonders whether this other world, perhaps the one inhabited by Jiwa, is actually where the most significant NFT are meant to be created? Jiwa answers this and more below in a set of questions posed to him shortly after the AXO release. In the time between then and this article Jiwa’s artistic and professional endeavours through his shared gallery and art project NTENT.ART has evolved and expanded to a remarkable degree into a large and widespread network flying just below the radar of many. This feels likely to change:

Thank you very much for agreeing to participate in this, jiwa.

Q1) I discovered your Axo project on Open Sea. Coincidentally, I had been searching for what, thanks to your video, I now know to be Live, Algorithmic, Long-form Generative artwork like these. I guess it was love at first sight because I bought two almost immediately, and then a third. In addition to being visually mesmerizing, they also appear to be infinitely and unpredictably changing. Is this so, or are they ultimately determinate?

Your NFT Berlin video presentation states that we are witness to a historic moment as Generative Art is now a significant art movement alongside, say, Classicism, Impressionism, Surrealism, etc., rather than being a brief chapter within a larger movement such as Pointillism is to Impressionism. You build a case by referring to four seminal artists who laid the ground work for Generative Art; artists I had never encountered before. A particular conceit is that I know a lot of art and artists, and almost always recognize the name of an artist even if I don’t know their art. This is because I was habituated to it from a young age. You describe yourself as having a surf/skate culture background and a degree from George Mason University in Information Systems. Not exactly fertile ground for becoming a leading proponent and practitioner of Generative Art, what?

I’d say surf + computers is very ripe ground for a life in art and code. Surf culture is all about being your weird self, being a bit of a maniac. Raw expression is artistic in nature, art is pervasive in the surf scene, a culture which feels in the moment and raw. Watch a good surf film, the graphics are wild, the music is killer, and there are alot of creative liberties being taken. Art is everywhere in the surf/skate scene.

Like surfing, coding has always felt a bit renegade to me. In a digital world, it really can provide freedom. I’ve always liked to draw and paint, but when I learned to code, everything else pushed to the back burner. Once you’re fluent, it just sucks you in. For art creation specifically, a freedom that code/computers provide is save/edit/delete. You can always save where you are, and keep pushing a work. Push push push. Where as you can’t take paint strokes back on a painting, you can create, change, delete, and really experiment with digital work.

As per Axo being deterministic, each time it loads, at a given height and width, it plays exactly the same each time. Though for the duration you are viewing that iteration, each work keeps evolving as long as your watch it.

Q2) How, or why exactly did this come about? What was the impetus? Put another way, you are a self-avowed “social activist” and [] placing an artform within a historical framework is certainly a political act at the very least. One suspects this is an important element of your world view. Can you step outside of yourself and tell us what you are doing?

Like many in my generation, I care about evolving the collective mindset. I’ve learned the only way to do that is to first work on yourself, which is also the same path that leads to contentment and personal happiness. We are also a very anxious generation. It feels often we are always searching for something else, but the truth is, we are enough, and we can feel good, in a general sense. This in turn allows us to spread positive vibes to everyone we come in contact with, improving the network.

On the other side, I was also raised with a certain disregard for the rules. Luckily later this manifested more as a disregard for convention, rather than reckless abandon which at a time would not have been unlikely. This made things like surfing, activism, and even crypto come naturally, challenging the current state of things, looking for a better, more connected path.

Q3: A casual internet search of your name places you in Australia but you actually live in Germany, yes? During the 1970’s the bands Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk were creating sounds that eventually came to be called electronica. I would argue they, and other bands from the so-called Kraut Rock movement such as Holger Czukay’s CAN couldn’t or wouldn’t have made such music anywhere else. Do you feel the same about the art you are making and encountering where you are? German society is positively hide-bound as regards [its] obedience to protocol, and a history of producing world changing works of art and literature. Does the Germanic mindset or culture have a unique perspective or special affinity for the creation of a certain kind of Generative Art?

Berlin is home to the weird and obsure, so its not surprising there’s been a very early interest or even love for digital art here compared to most areas of the world. DAM (Digital Art Museum) Projects run by Wolf Lieser has been around since the 90’s and has likely the world’s most complete library of computer arts books nestled in a lounge on the basement floor. Also, Creative Code Berlin, a meet up for creative coders to share their work, run by Raphael d’Coorville, has been running for more than 10 years.

Berlin is of course known for its techno scene, and there are many opportunities for coders to work with performing musicians in adding visuals to a DJ set. I found my way to Berlin simply through circumstance, and being home to the weird and niche, where code based art still nicely fits, it suits me well and I have shown / sold works at a few galleries/exhibitions around the city. Berlin is a beautiful city with loads of green space, rivers and lakes, and certainly warrants a trip as long as it’s in the summer. The winters are long, damp, dark and dreary, though for me, its an opportunity to lock in and do my work.

Q4: About Axo. “Each work has neurons. Each neuron has a nucleus at its source and fires electrical signals searching for synaptic connections.” Can you easily describe what these elements are and how they work, together or apart?

Further, there is a list of key commands for interacting with the algorithm which I really like, and intriguingly we find the following “Each axo can be connected with and influence other works in the collection.”

Q4a: What is going on here, please? Is it along lines of what you did in your F*ck Putin series, or is this something that happens at a meetup or online between Axo owners, and if so, who, what, when, where? Pray tell.

Each animated pixel is an electrical signal. You’ll notice each of these signals comes from and returns to an initial square of pixels, that’s the nucleus. These together make up a neuron, and a work can have one or many neurons. An Axo with an “Epsilon” trait has only one large neuron for instance, the others have more. You’ll also notice at times animated pixels slowdown and even change color when they cross another’s nucleus. This signifies a connection. The interactive controls as you mentioned allow a viewer to control the state of the artwork, and make the system more “aware” or even “freakout”. Each Axo runs through these states on its own, though the viewer can also initiate these states directly, just as each person has the ability to exert control over their own energy. It may seem that life happens to us, but you can choose to be more aware, you can choose to be happier, or you can choose to be miserable.

Axos can also form networks. Getting Axos to interact with one another requires a bit of code. As a starter, I’ve included a template at https://axo.ntent.art under the network tab. Essentially each Axo is a node on a network, and the energy of one affects the energy of the others. I kept this piece programmable so maybe I or others could create / implement independent network theories, potentially with hundreds of Axos. I may one day create a UI so anyone connect them, though for now it’s a feature nestled deep in the code.

Thanks, jiwa. [].

One of the highest conceptual hurdles Bitcoin (BTC) must leap before being accepted as fungible value may not be the obvious usual suspects; neither the blockchain technology itself, nor the convoluted key and wallet system. Nope, what a ‘normie’ wrestles with most is the lack of a physical unit denoting nominal value. Yup, the lack of a talisman or physical coin, such as we’ve been familiar with our entire lives acts against the human instinct to perceive value, and why not? Physical units of money (value expression) have been with us since the dawn of human history and, who knows, may even have been used to pay the first fees of the world’s oldest profession?

Even those who believe universal BTC adoption is a foregone conclusion likely expect the uptake process to be slow. Using credit card adoption as the matrix, we could easily be looking at a twenty year runway. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, credit cards first emerged in 1958 but usage only took off in 1979 when a new security protocol was implemented that greatly reduced non-payment fraud. Nevertheless, electronic credit methods were looked upon with a jaundiced eye by those raised in the house of parochial credit right up until the 1990’s when points program gamification and new borrowing features finally made credit card usage ubiquitous. These credit products are based upon a mere promise to pay and primarily electronic in nature are nonetheless thought of by consumers and corporations alike as intangible representations of tangible dollar pricing power. Although the entire string of purchase, sale, and settlement transactions may occur in the ether, to consumers and in the eyes of the law it is good old-fashioned money underlying the exchange.

This is not the case with BTC at present which is viewed with skepticism, disdain, and ignorance by most in the general population, and it’s no wonder. Stripping out the lurid claims that BTC is a confidence game or tool made for criminals, it is difficult to describe monetary Bitcoin to a lay person in less than 30 seconds. For example, here is a down and dirty description of gold: Gold is a rare, nearly indestructible precious metal that has been used for thousands of years as money, as jewellery, and to make valuable objects denoting status and honor. It is easily and legally exchanged for other forms of money in virtually every country in the world. Many nations hold gold to underpin the value of their national treasuries. In contrast, here’s a response from an AI service (large language model) tasked with describing BTC: Bitcoin is a digital, decentralized currency that enables direct and secure peer-to-peer transactions without the need for intermediaries like banks. Created in 2008, it operates on a secure and transparent ledger called the blockchain, which records and verifies all transactions.

The latter is an objectively meaningless statement that requires some prior knowledge of the underlying technology to make sense. Bitcoin’s greatest strength is also what makes it most objectionable: BTC is a string of characters that, when properly decoded, purport to represent a tangible value. As such, the following vague but remarkably on point definition is more easily understood: Bitcoin is Magical Internet Money. If you think about it this says in five words what Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper, did in around 3192 words. Ignoring the complicated mathematics and algebra underpinning the protocol, tangible value exists so long as people believe that an ever-changing string of characters can be used as a method of keeping track of earlier strings of characters compiled in ledger form. Under the circumstances one shouldn’t be surprised if BTC does need a generation or more to become universally adopted.

Imagine how much easier it would be if one could hand over a coin-like token ‘containing’ 0.1 BTC and say to the recipient “This is worth X dollars”. Any neophyte will immediately grasp the concept that bitcoin is as valuable as money albeit with a bunch of questions about how to extract and use that value.

Objects like this already exist. Due to its numismatic nature, BTC caught the attention of coin collectors and gold bugs earlier than about anybody outside of the original cypherpunk community that gave birth to it. The former because collecting money-like tokens called ‘exonumia’ is a centuries old practice. The latter were attracted to the “electronic gold” narrative about bitcoin. Hence the problem of bitcoin ephemerality was almost immediately solved because numismatists and gold bugs are, above all, collectors of objects.

According to ‘Encyclopedia of Physical Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies’, a resident of Utah named Mike Caldwell was the first to create physical bitcoin tokens which he formally announced on September 6, 2011. These approximately 28.5mm diameter brass tokens, to which a hologram sticker obscuring the private key is attached, contained one BTC. Removing the hologram exposes the private key for accessing the BTC wallet. He continued to mint so-called Casacius Physical Bitcoin in a variety of forms and denominations up until 2013. By then, dozens of similar products had been issued by others such as the pictured Lealana token, in denominations ranging from 10,000 bits (there are one million bits, or satoshis, in a bitcoin) to 10,000 BTC. This first burst of activity, which might be termed the Golden Age of physical bitcoin lasted until around 2014 when various forces converged to put an end to them. As the value of BTC rose in value from pocket change to thousands of dollars most of these ‘coins’ were cashed in by removing the holographic sticker to reveal the private key and then withdrawing the cached BTC. The high price also gave rise to scammers who found various ways to cheat collectors of physical BTC. Regulatory grey area concerns about money issuance in contravention of national laws also gave issuers pause so when the price of BTC crashed, the issuance of physical bitcoin slowly petered out. In the meantime, because these tokens are legitimately collectible as exonumia people began submitting them to traditional coin grading services such as the Profession Coin Grading Service (PCGS). While it is possible to buy ungraded or “raw” physical bitcoin tokens from this era, it is the professionally graded ones that are particularly relevant to the thesis of this article. To wit, the easiest, most effective way to convince a novice of the monetary value of BTC is to have it in the form of a physical token that has been professionally certified by a major coin grading company such as PCGS or Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC).

The ‘slabbed’ bitcoin token has the same immediacy as a ‘raw’ token and the professional encapsulation ensures the loaded value of BTC is untampered with (the public key address can be checked on any bitcoin blockchain explorer). The capsule is also a great way to store or “stack” bitcoin because it is small enough for easy storage and large enough so it is unlikely to be inadvertently thrown away by a family member. The professionally graded physical bitcoin tokens are also easily bought and sold in dollars through an auction house such as Stacksbowers.com, and most legitimate coin shops. Granted, there is a markup added to auction and retail purchases over and above any rarity premium attached, but this actually is an impetus for people to learn how to transact bitcoin wholly online. One might think of physical bitcoin as a gateway drug, perhaps.

Another arguably less costly way to acquire physical cryptocurrency is through Ballet.com; a company with links to Charlie Lee, the creator of the Litecoin cryptocurrency. Ballet sells 39mm copper physical bitcoin tokens containing .001 BTC. They also sell pre-loaded physicals in a variety of denominations and cryptocurrencies that look and feel exactly like a regular credit card. At the time of publishing this article the .001 BTC copper ‘coin’ can legally be purchased in 25 of the United States for $95 each. These items, in themselves, have the possibility of becoming collectibles as bitcoin and cryptocurrencies age and mature.

One of the most exhilarating and spectacular phenomena to come from blockchain technology is the explosion of creative energy going into tokenized artwork creating a new generation of art creators, collectors and purveyors. Digital Art has proliferated to such an extent that it has the ability to disrupt the regular workings of chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum when popular collections mint. As active code is increasingly integrated into artworks the question of whether blockchain-based art is become an entirely new art genre must arise. It is a question posed to the subject of this article, Nick Sheehy (https://www.nicksheehy.com/, @showchicken on X) whose views on this are trenchant because he holds the rarified status of successful working artist.

While it is possible the newly emerged web3 artists were here working quietly amongst us the whole time and web3 unlocked the means to present their works to the world, it is more likely the easy ability with which a person, or AI agent, can create or generate mint-ready digital artworks explains the flood of NFT artwork we see in our Twitter feeds (now X) and on popular social media platforms. In effect these emanations are from a tech savvy populace newly convinced it has the bona fides to become professional artists.

In an ideal world, distinguishing between artists who’ve dedicated years perfecting their craft and creative neophytes issuing ubiquitous digital artworks with an eye toward a career making art serves no purpose to the casual or even serious art consumer. To those of you who don’t, this Q&A is worthwhile because Nick Sheehy occupies a most difficult terrain, that of the artist making fine art for art’s sake. He’s an artist who relies upon mastery of the brush, pencil, and computer to lay down lines, colors, and figures that inspire love and appreciation in and of themselves. Many artworks employ latent meaning and symbology like a crutch or cover to excuse poor execution in the guise of meaningful art. Nick doesn’t rely upon symbolism or story-telling to coax his audience into affirming his world but encourages them to draw their own conclusions. Nor does he paint the cute and cuddly; lustrous buxom; hallway homey; or any of the other ennui inducing fast food decorative art we endlessly encounter. Instead, he has chosen to paint and pencil with a goal of perfect presentation. His imagery is, frankly, weird but weird and wonderful, and meticulously performed. For you, this Q&A serves to textualize the artist alone.

To others, those of us who care to distinguish between practiced professionalism artfully employed, and the talented amateurs dreaming of being full-time artists, this is the manual Nick used to develop his art and career, which to an aspiring artist is as spun gold. From desire to impetus to execution and development, this article provides aspirants the map of a plausible, tested way forward in the art world. Any professional in the art world knows the difficulty of getting ‘discovered’ and attaining gallery representation. Most of us likely think it is something that happens because one’s art is ‘that good.’ Sadly, it’s almost never the case, it being extraordinarily difficult to get a foot in the door of a physical gallery; the plethora of nearly free web3 minting and sales platforms notwithstanding. In Mr. Sheehy’s description it seems far, far easier than it must have been, but accepting his was a nearly organic process of drawing, painting, thinking, and representing, one may conclude that the necessary ingredients for his good fortune were some of the following: 1) a dedication to the practice of drawing and painting, in Nick’s case by adhering to a strict work schedule of painting for a set amount of time each day; 2) a clear-eyed appreciation of his strengths, his aesthetic values, and his will to apply them without pandering to an imagined audience; 3) an ability and willingness to learn and employ new media and techniques in his finished work; 4) an ability to comprehend and meet the professional needs of his gallery clientele.

Thank you, Nick for agreeing to do this. I hope this line of inquiry doesn’t feel odd. I found those previous interviews of yours not only answered all of my immediate questions, but also did a great job of describing your approach to your work, the way you think, your inspirations, etc. The fact that you are a long-established, working artist makes you something of an anomaly in the land of artists. It seems like that getting into even one gallery, never mind multiple galleries around the world is literally extraordinary. (https://beautifulbizarre.net/2020/07/06/nick-sheehy-interview/, https://www.squidfaceandthemeddler.com/nick-sheehy/)

Q1) If you don’t mind, for the benefit of aspiring artists, how did you do it and how long did it take to get into your first gallery? Also, wondering whether you believe your gallery-based collectors and your internet collectors are a cohesive demographic or completely different from each other?

It was a slow build over many years. I didn’t set out with the intention of being a painter with work hanging in a gallery. After leaving art school, I spent a lot of time figuring out what I wanted to do; exploring more ‘employable’ creative directions, such as illustration, character design, concept work, design, etc. If I had been more deliberate from the beginning then perhaps I would have got to where I was going a little sooner.

When all the bumpy diversions are smoothed out, my path looks like this: regularly posting sketches/drawings/paintings to social media. Slowly building an audience and gathering a network of artist friends. This in turn, develops into invitations to group shows/events. After a while the momentum builds, your audience grows, your network of artist friends extends to include folk that run galleries, or publish magazines, or commission work for brands, etc.

Over time you’ve amassed a decent body of work, your skills are honing, your visual language expanding. More interesting projects come your way. And then a gallery takes notice, recognizing an artist who has developed something interesting while demonstrating the discipline it takes to meet an exhibition deadline.

I had my first solo show in 2015. And that kickstarted a fairly consistent pattern of contributing to group or solo shows across USA, Australia, and Europe.

When I first stepped into NFT land, I thought I needed to treat gallery collectors and web3 collectors as very different beasts. There’s certainly a divergence in values, appetites, and behaviours. But over time, I’ve found that it’s not something I need to be too concerned with when it comes to the visuals of the work. Trying to second guess what might sell and to who, is a battle I rarely win. It’s better to make the work you want to make. In the end, both groups like weird shit… it’s more the delivery mechanism that you need to consider.

—

Your work from 2010 to now has undergone a pretty dramatic metamorphosis, from being perhaps purely illustrative to more “sculptural” and literal, meaning that it has gone from the appearance of having a story to tell to a kind of still life portraiture. What hasn’t seemed to change is that your images remain, apart from bird being bird, non-representational or message-laden. By your own admission, you assign minimal ulterior meaning to your creations and leave it to the observer to create narrative.

Q2) If you’re familiar with the ‘grotesques’ that appear upon the great European gothic Cathedrals, or the occasionally bizarre imagery that decorates the pages of illuminated and illustrated medieval manuscripts, do you feel any affinity with either of them?

Definitely. Medieval imagery, Japanese woodcuts, folk art, indigenous art, etc are all big influences. I love the power of imagery and symbolism in these genres. I also like the instructional aspect to this type of art. Maybe my work has a touch of the same.

The shift into a more still-life aesthetic came about because I wanted to achieve a look of matter-of-factness with the weird stuff that is happening in my work. I’m trying to portray something odd and otherworldly, but in a way that seems everyday and banal. I want people to feel that these beasts exist and the happenings are a-happening.

—

Q3) You mentioned that the “Low Brow” art movement had a big effect upon you.

What is low brow art and why or how does it speak to you? What about it engages, or is expressed in, your artwork?

I left art school thinking I didn’t really have anything “important” to say in my work. I was holding on to a narrow mindset that art was about heavy stuff. But I wasn’t interested in taking the themes in my work that seriously, so I channeled my creativity via other outlets.

Low Brow was an important mental shift for me. It was a place where any creative form could be celebrated as art: Illustration, graffiti, comics, etc. It opened my eyes to the appetite for the weird shit I was producing at the time. There are galleries and collectors willing to hang graphite drawings of mutant skull characters riding fish.

As tastes continue to widen, I doubt the term is required. But it was a useful hook for me at a time when I didn’t know how or where to channel my energies.

—

Q4) How does the creation of JPEG art stack up, procedurally, to the drawings and acrylic paintings you do? In particular, how does creating graphics for NFTs either restrict or expand the ways you present art to the world? Could you, for instance, have painted a chromed ‘saltie’ similar to that in your recent NFT drop?

I want to keep the aesthetic consistent across digital and physical pieces. But digital painting is way more forgiving, and physical painting has more technical challenges. I try to learn from each medium and see what I can transfer to the other. For example: I want my digital pieces to retain the look of brush strokes, and not be too polished or perfect. Working digitally allows for more experimentation when it comes to colour and light effects. Hopefully these experiments started to permeate into my acrylic paintings.

If I had painted the chrome croc in acrylics, it would have taken me twice as long and have ended up half as good. I’ve only been using paint for a few years now. I’m still learning.

I have ambitions to incorporate animation or generative qualities into future work. So that might start to complicate my process.

—

Q5) Is NFT artwork just a different medium for your art, or do you consider it an entirely different genre?

For me, it’s just a different medium. Historically I’ve only cared about the final images I make, not necessarily the wider context of the medium I’m using. But I’m starting to think beyond that, and trying to work out how I can explore digital concepts through my work without uprooting my native themes and context too much. I’m exploring the use of more machined-looking items in my digital pieces, reference to materials and technology, etc. I look forward to seeing how that evolves.

—

The portrait is a visually arresting composition harkening to the best of Chuck Close’s ground-breaking “pixelated” portrait paintings that beautifully conveys the mystery and elegance of ZachXBT’s powers of investigation. https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/zachxbt---crypto-portraits-45106

It joined an under-appreciated set of similarly constructed portraits of interesting crypto characters which he published as SuperRare editions. The set is one of a handful of NFT projects issued by this outspoken and peripatetic web3 artist; the body of which may be viewed at the Second Realm: https://www.secondrealm.com.

Like many in this space, Mr. Rhodes appears to have come to art from a tech-based career and adopts a persona different from that, and perhaps even the one he lives in real life “irl” within this second realm. To an observer, it seems the dualism of Eric as man and the Second Realm of Eric as artist causes the variety of ideas and expressions found in his oeuvre to not adhere to each other in an easily comprehensible manner. From creating an electronic portrait in a semi-classical manner for ZachXBT; or helping to mainstream the practice of “memefying” crypto’s most iconic set of them all, the Crypto Punks through his Unofficial Punks project; or creating a counter-culture counter-culture trend of JPEG Trash Art; to espousing deeply personal images derived from passages in a years old journal; to hosting topical podcast shows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG3Z1AE93Xk), Mr. Rhodes has created an array of seemingly discrete, unrelated images resistant to a simple intellectual trope. In the following email Q&A exchange we find an artist using artificially intelligent media to attempt to heal the gap in meaning between feeling and intention that often resolves in alienation.

Ultimately why this discussion is interesting is there exists a vast body of artists working today who are clearly frustrated that their efforts are met with a blind eye. Leaving aside the questions of what is art; fine art vs. decorative art; and what makes certain art great; one of the least well understood but crucial elements of crafting a body of work is the amount of effort and intentionality required to create images other people want to be a part of through ownership or communitas. The artist here shares valuable insights into this process. As such, you are encouraged to look closely at the dates his projects were created, the references they make to historical artists and perhaps marvel at his prescience, while appreciating the high level at which Mr. Rhodes works.

— Reading your personal biography and looking at your NFT oeuvre, superficially the first thing that jumped out was a seeming lifelong sense of alienation from something. Upon reflection though, isn’t it really more like a forest and trees situation creating the feeling that your description of the forest (personal worldview) is getting lost for the trees.’ Lost in the forest’, an illustrated journal by Eric P. Rhodes

My creative process is never prompt-initiated. By that I mean, I trust my intuition and explore things I’m interested in often without knowing why or questioning why. And it’s only until after I’ve completed the exploration do the meaning and narratives take shape. And often only after I’ve had time to sit with the outputs. Once it took an entire year for me to see the meaning behind a collection I created.

So yeah; I think it is a “forest for the trees” situation due to the organic and chaotic nature of my practice. Sometimes I’m responding to cultural issues, personal issues, the community, or my internal struggles.

That said; I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere most of my life. So that’s also clearly coming through if you’re picking up on that broadly.

Q1:

Fragments of the Unspoken. I think most ppl would wrestle with bringing to life thoughts they wrote about in the past unless the events triggering them were traumatic, tumultuous or had left scars in some way.

Ever since I broke my silence about my anxiety and depression some years ago. And ended up getting medicinal and therapeutic help for them. I found my voice and my identity. I’m very comfortable putting my old words out there because they seem like someone entirely different now. And I find it empowering personally to share these parts of my life. I don’t feel like I need to hide that aspect of my life anymore.

What was the purpose of referring to those journal entries?

I was curious about how the AI would interpret the words visually. Like holding up a mirror back at me. Or maybe some validation that the words and the place they were created in were indeed what I expected.

The images were created using AI prompts. Did you use actual language from your journals; did you describe to the AI the feelings you think you had?

I created a visual aesthetic prompt and used that for each piece. The only thing that changes are the words from my journal.

Was this an attempt to use AI as an agent, or was it an experiment to see if it would conjure up images you thought [you] already had?

To me, AI is just a tool in my creative process. I had no idea what images the AI would create. But the prompt is how I would visually describe the Second Realm. My hope was that it would come close to what I imagined I would make by hand. I was surprised by the results. I explored a few more entries. And I loved what was being generated. I do a lot of explorations where I bring two or more unrelated things to see what comes out of it, most never see the light of day. This one did.

Q2:

The forest and trees analogy seems relevant because, while it is difficult to apply an adherent style to your artwork, there is a political bent in projects such as the ‘Trash Art’ and ‘Alt-Punks’ (and iterations), for example.

What, exactly is the point you are making? Ideological, obviously, but to which ideology do they speak and to what end? What is the important point you make?

Visual art is a powerful and resonant communication device. And the act of being an artist and creating art is seen by some as an act of defiance of their status quo.

On the surface both seemed to be about remixing and it was but only as a tool used to complete my act of defiance. I had to be smarter and know more about the copyright, IP, and trademark rules they thought I was breaking in order for them to be outraged enough to respond. That said, for me the main point was always about breaking down walled gardens that demanded we conform to an arbitrary set of rules ultimately designed to keep people out in order to participate in a community that espoused decentralization. It seemed the irony had been completely lost on them, and I felt like it was my duty as an artist to find a clever way to expose it to them. Looking back, TrashArt gave me an opportunity to understand how their hive mind works. And Alt-punks became my opus. That said, Unofficial Punks was never meant to be more than just a few 1/1s. But so many other artists became inspired by it that they started to create their own alt punks. My act of defiance (remixing cryptopunks) seemed to give other artists permission to make their own. And of course the holders of OG punks thought it would devalue their punks. And that really set the sta[g]e for the movement that only grew from there.

Q3: At the risk of coloring your answer to Q2 by handing you the issue of High Art vs. Low Art, your Crypto Portraits series is a collection that almost perfectly bridges the gap between the sacred and the profane. The artist Chuck Close comes to mind immediately, of course but unlike his wont, you’ve made some pointed authorial choices about whom you portrayed, can you describe your editorial process, and why you applied these particular aesthetics to your portraits. IOW, why did you forgo all of the glitch art, lazer-eyed diamond hands silliness in favor of a Fine Art approach?

Chuck Close was absolutely an inspiration for this. But long before I created Crypto Portraits, I did some explorations that I never released using AI and tech. I called it sculpting with tech. But my main purpose for writing this up was to question whether lifting up the curtain on the tools used is like a magician telling the audience how the trick works: https://www.secondrealm.com/exploring/death-goats

I’ll let you make the decision on whether you think it’s High Art or Low Art now that you know the ingredients behind the artwork. I experimented with some other image aesthetics (see death goats above) and Brutalist dystopia: https://www.secondrealm.com/brutalist-dystopia before I landed on the more traditional fragmented image in the style of Close. The fragmented image style really seemed to lend itself nicely to portraiture as did the color pallet I was using from Concentric.

Q3a: Please briefly describe how ‘concentric’ and ‘pepe69’ were employed to create these images.

In short, it’s a combination of javascript and photoshop. The javascript randomly assigns which circle element is used from each layer. This really began in 2021 with my first concentric series that was inspired by Milton Glaser, Hilma af Klint, and Wasilly Kandinsky. One of those explorations that I never intended to publish, but like so much that I did. Here’s a brief description of it all. https://www.secondrealm.com/nft-art/concentric

After this series, I’ve simply used the same code and changed each layer for the color and tone I was going for. I’ve also created 1000 gray tones. And I used this approach for the Concentric Ordinals Collection as well, but I took that collection a little bit deeper in terms of the inspiration behind it: https://www.secondrealm.com/concentric-ordinals

Q4: In that vein, it could be argued that ‘The Lover’s Demise’ may be a modern imagination of a scene out of The Tale of Genji’. Have you ever incorporated works of literature or evocations of historical events and if not, has it ever occurred to you to do so?

No; I’ve never really thought of doing that. But I read a lot of nonfiction and almost always they help shape my worldview. Which means they inevitably make their way into my work, but not with any specific intention.

Part II: Request for clarification: I do have one question though relating to Q2. I’m afraid I don’t know what the controversy was, exactly, and who ‘they’ are (seems like two sets of theys?). Can you [give a] brief sketch of the controversy, plz?

For Trash Art, it was the SuperRare leadership and the whale collectors who were leveraging their buying power to get SR team to ban art and artists they deemed were not worthy of the platform anymore. here’s a short history of that: https://www.ericprhodes.com/p/a-short-history-of-nft-trash-art

For Alt-punks, it was people owned by CryptoPunks. At the time most of the alpha was being driven by the people in that discord. They used their influence and buying power. I hadn’t intended to ruffle their feathers, but once the altpunks starting being minted, they lashed out at us and called us frauds, money grabbers, and thieves. it would take some time, but eventually the market decided that remixes and derivatives became the norm.

In the midst of the crypto bear market especially, there is plethora of knowledgeable participants weighing in on what makes a successful NFT project and how to establish these elements. Broad consensus is that two minimum requirements are strong leadership and an active, committed community. Without saying this goes without saying, these requirements are almost too obvious to take at face value; for, surely there are many projects with both leadership and community that are destined to fail, if they have not already done so. Also, it is difficult to say exactly what is a successful NFT project. Presently most of us equate success with “number go up” or increase in price, because this is an easily grasped metric and also because the sector is nascent and we are just learning the ways NFT projects succeed

These next few papers will discuss projects possessing different degrees of community participation and leadership style seeking to shed light on why it is difficult to predict what will make an NFT project succeed.

DutchtideStudios emanates from the Netherlands with an expressed vision of “bringing Japan and the Netherlands together under the Dutchtide brand.” The MidnightBreeze (MB) collection (https://opensea.io/collection/midnightbreeze) dropped in December 2021, consisting of 6969 individually crafted depictions of Japanese-style roadside buildings whose cool, somewhat pastel colors exude an aura of quiescent eeriness. While the style is somewhat evocative of late 19th/early 20th c. Japanese wood block prints, the infusion of a modern Dutch aesthetic places them outside of an entirely Japanese civilization. Apparent stillness notwithstanding, these vignettes pulse with an underlying tension of imminent, perhaps violent, action. The question of when is posed no less by the apparently empty vehicles idling outside dusky buildings, as by the occasional presence of ghostly players, pussyfooting felines, errant pandas, and fantastic creatures looming diaphanously in the background.

Compositionally, the simple precision of straight lines and soft edges makes it easy to imagine this is the assemblage of an intelligent machine but the precise rendering has all been done by Dutchtide himself. One may observe this by attending live sessions on Discord (https://Discord.gg/ZZf9rgDg), where the artist painstakingly crafts the very images we shall soon make use of and may even own.

This intersection of the artist and his audience brings an immediacy to the project that is highly unusual in any artistic space. As to NFT spaces, one needs spend little time in web3 Discord channels to be familiar with the incessant complaints and inquiries about floor price, sales activity, token value, and the lack of or need for token utility. Genuinely active and interesting Discord channels that rise above this baseline activity are exceptional and rare, and indicative of quality projects. MidnightBreeze’s engaged, and welcoming community is especially notable because this is an NFT project without a monetary (ERC20) token: It has no tokenomics. Furthermore, its rectangular NFT isn’t well-suited for use as a profile picture because it hasn’t a single focal point. One expects a dearth of buzzworthy features to be a buzzkill, but that isn’t so with MidnightBreeze. The somewhat counter-intuitive sales pitch of zero utility and zero tokenomics works in MB’s favor as it renders moot the need for incessant discussion around these most exhausting of topics. Similarly, MB’s posture of atmospheric quietude is belied by a rich vein of sophisticated content that goes beyond mere visual aesthetics.

A refreshingly utilitarian aspect of this is one’s ability to obtain high quality art prints from the collection, limited to one printing of each individual property. The prints are available in two sizes, with the printing and packaging personally overseen by the team (Dutchtide does the artwork solo, but has a handful of helpers who execute tasks as needed to keep the operation rolling). Interestingly, the right to print from these images is governed by whether or not a print has already been ordered. There is a limit of one printing of each image regardless of whether or not one owns the underlying NFT.

The original MidnightBreeze drop is Version One of the project. Version Two, which is being created in the Discord ‘Live Vibes’ sessions is an unfolding mystery. To help propel the narrative NFT holders may cast daily votes for their favorite Breezes on the MB website. These votes are tallied and new chapters unlock as tally requirements are met. With items and elements embedded in MB’s underlying narrative being revealed during the Live Vibes and through unlocks of new chapters, the project marches toward the release of V2 and the ability for some property holders to create their own narratives which will presumably affect the ultimate direction and impact of the momentous events yet to be revealed.

That being said, do the monetary aspects of MB measure up to success? Presently, in January 2023, the floor price of MBs is right around .3 ETH. Since issue, the rough trading range of these properties has been between .2 and .4 ETH with particularly desirable pieces selling in excess of 1 ETH. As of January 10, a total of 3,755 ETH has been spent on OpenSea for the purchase and sale of properties, and it is not uncommon for a half-dozen or more pieces to trade in a single day. While MB’s Discord channel is rich with commentary about recent sales, it is usually about which elements caused pieces to fetch particularly high prices, and done out of interest, and information sharing; there being an implicit agreement that the scope and quality of the project make it inevitable the collecting public will wake up to it. OpenSea lists 3051 owners, with 44% of MB’s stored in unique wallet addresses. A cursory perusal of owner wallets finds many containing multiple properties, begging the question how many of these wallets belong to single entities? It seems likely that ownership is more concentrated than OS’s 44% unique ownership count. Mass acquisition of project assets is a widespread phenomenon in web3. This is doubtless done for a number of reasons. The most obvious is speculative accumulation, indicating strong conviction about a project’s ultimate success. Another reason is that interested actors accumulate large holdings by “sweeping the floor” in order to combat price erosion. Accepting that either occur, the directional tendency of the floor price is perhaps the fairest way to judge monetary success. On this basis, the average price of MidnightBreeze properties, while below the crypto mania peak of early 2022, appears to be gradually climbing while sales steadily increase. What is apparent to an interested observer is that despite concentration of pieces in some wallets, many acquisitions appear to be due to a love of the artwork. In other words, many buyers are ‘collectors’ in the traditional sense.

Here we have a project that lacks traditional ‘leadership’ as that position is occupied by an artist pursuing his own vision, come what may; a Discord community that numerically represents a tiny fraction of the total holders (if the published 44%, or 3051 unique owners number is used), albeit one that is hyper-engaged; and a project utterly lacking in hype marketing and tokenponzinomicals; and yet.

Conclusion: MidnightBreeze is helping to define what is a successful web3 NFT project.

It’s a pretty interesting time right now for web3 gaming and the reason is that all the really big web3 games in existence exist in name only while gamedevs are madly assembling code for to produce playable, purpose-built platforms. A lot of promises have been made, a lot of money has changed hands, a lot of intellectual capital has been expended on a slew of games yet to be released. This doesn’t mean there aren’t any games to play. It is just that, apart from Axie and a small handful of others there really isn’t much available to the web3 audience. That is, except for the Wax platform (Wax).

An analogy to Wax from a bygone era is AOL’s electronic biome. Like AOL’s huge walled off society, Wax has as many as 30,000 different projects, all existing on its proprietary Eosio-based blockchain (to avoid AOL’s fate the wax team has seriously undertaken the task of bringing cross-chain compatibility to Wax).

In a recent series of articles (https://medium.com/@wax-io/a-brief-history-of-wax-nfts-96417bac8a8b) Wax claims it has as many as thirteen million unique wallet accounts and to have posted over fifteen million transactions in a single day which may explain the frequent service slowdowns it is known for. Nonetheless, Wax is a big deal. Wax is likely to become the first web3 gaming experience for a ton of people not just because it already is. The real reasons are that it already is loaded with a ton of games; it’s super easy to sign up to and start play; it has above average player support through a super active discord channel (https://discord.com/channels/785124017430331392/@home) and hosts pretty much the only going games in town. Yes, there are some random and not so random other games out there to play but they typically require a higher level of crypto sophistication than the average new person has. Newbies will also hear about Wax from media sources and youtube influencers for tradable NFT being sold by brands like Funko, Mattel and Major League Baseball.

If you’ve read the earlier smallforest paper on P2E games, you’ll know pretty much what to expect when you get to Wax, as most of the NFT are made for game formats with the lottery pack sales mechanic coupled to click farming. While none of these games can be remotely described as action games, the rhythms created by the repetitive actions required to stay on top of such games can be rather satisfying, and when these are mixed with the market economics and horse trading that goes on in the buying and selling of NFT, the games make excellent pastimes even if nobody is getting rich at this time.

Most of the games, frankly are struggling due to low prices and bear market sentiment putting a damper on new entrant enthusiasm. In some sense the bear market is making the gamedevs work even harder to add value to their games by rolling out new mechanics and game play. A couple of years ago, when the market was flush, the new game drops created a frenzy of activity as players competed to get on whitelists with permissions to buy new game NFT packs and then afterwards to buy and sell them as FOMO and hype waxed and waned during market pulses. Now there is a feeling almost of exhaustion as the existing players are asked to buy more of the latest drops without a flush of eager new players coming in to absorb supply (earlier players typically get perks such as early access to sales drops).

For those who are already in the Wax system or are brave enough to enter it, the present low price environment is actually a fantastic low cost opportunity for people to not just learn how the economics of P2E games works, but also to learn about some of the more sophisticated elements of cryptocurrency trading. This is because Wax is set up so that not only does it host games and NFT markets, it also plays host to some cryptocurrency exchanges that cater specifically to the game tokens issued by these Wax-hosted games. So, while the Wax token once briefly traded for as high as US$.90, it presently trades in the four to five cent range. Other game tokens on Wax have enjoyed a similar trajectory and many typically trade for miniscule fractions of a cent. Why this is good is that the exchanges that host them such as Alcor exchange (https://wax.alcor.exchange/) and Taco Swap (https://swap.tacocrypto.io/swap), allow people to participate in liquidity pools and token staking in ways that are identical to the defi exchanges for much higher priced assets such as ETH. These minor exchanges provide a truly world class trading experience even though they are trading in tokens that, in most cases, trade in micro-cent denominations. Apart from whether it is a good idea for most people to engage in this kind of financial trading, the Wax environment, while as risky as any other that offers access to such exchanges, is at least priced so that aspiring traders can learn whether they have the chops for it while risking small amounts of money. Now may actually be the best time to make such experiments as increased regulation from the world’s governments is inevitable which is likely to raise bars to entry excluding all but the most wealthy from trying their hand at participating in liquidity pools, staking and even the trading of cryptocurrencies.

Everyone is anxious for the cryptobull to resume and bring hordes of new players eager to add their money to the pool. While the timing is impossible to predict, and some games will go under before then, players and builders are speaking with growing confidence that another bull is surely coming soon and that Wax will help to lead the way in onboarding this horde of new players to web3.

Despite, or because of, the meteoric rise and fall of click-based games such as Axie Infinity hundreds of web3 games presently exist or are in development as we enter 2023. Although a lot of the games today were heavily influenced by the turn-based click farming mechanics of Axie, some gamedevs are applying a little spin to make them feel more like games than grinds.

One of the biggest game platforms to make a splash in 2022 is Illuvium. It famously had an NFT land sale that raised US$70 million. What makes this even more noteworthy is that the sale occurred well into the present cryptobear market. The timing could not have been better as shortly afterward its game tokens and land assets began to fall in value along with everything else in crypto. The broader crypto market crash played a major role, but there were other factors too. The biggest may be that the original game used a blueprint roughly based on the Axie model but with world class computer art rendering and a state of the art gaming machine (Unreal Engine) to power an immersive world. One that turns the necessary click farming aspects of web3 into more of an adventure or Easter egg hunt where players walk, run, jump or fly around the map in search of harvestable game rewards. These rewards are used to build, improve or even capture the gaming characters used in the RNG battles. The result is a Pokemon-like blockchain game with the added elements of developable land, monetary tokens, and actual ownership of game characters.

General consensus then was that this is a good formula for a blockbuster game; a belief grounded in the fact of the $70 million land sale.

However, the plunging crypto market hastened a process that seemed likely to happen to most web3 games anyway even if not in quite so violent a manner. The deeply flawed token ponzinomicals underlying these games made it inevitable they could not continue to grow, or even sustain themselves, without a steady infusion of new player money. The cryptobear made existing players poorer, and it scared off many new entrants which decimated the numbers of daily users. This led to that, and all of a sudden it was apparent that most users of these games were there primarily for financial gain rather than for the game play. Click farming’s halcyon days are now well in the past with no serious prospect of returning to their former glory, and the chorus promising an influx of new players to these games is smaller and less vocal by the day.

When the market collapsed, Illuvum’s devs took a hard look at their own model and made serious adjustments to adapt to an environment sceptical of clickfarming. Traditional web2 games are funded either through subscription or game purchases; even the supposedly Free to Play (F2P) games rely upon people buying enhancements. Web3 games, lacking a subscription model and constrained by the ability to sell an asset just once (subsequent sales’ royalties may provide ongoing income) must obtain funding through the game’s economic structure. As noted in an earlier paper, this can come from NFT pack sales amounting to lotteries of a large number of relatively valueless NFT with a few desirable NFT mixed in. Another source of funds is creating financial contracts for staking player acquired tokens. This practice won’t be held legal in USA and it is only a matter of time before it is abandoned. Another critical source is whales making large investments to get a favorable position in the earnings pyramid. Meanwhile, click farming and game rewards causes the token float to increase which puts downward pressure on token value. The method for hiding this inflation is to lock up large numbers of tokens in staking pools which, even if not illegal, only pushes out the day of reckoning that inflation-caused debasement always brings.

In Illuvium’s case, the devs decided to adopt a solution similar to the elegant yet revolutionary one pioneered by the game platform WelcometoNor.com. A later paper will address Nor’s game plaform, but suffice it to say that what Illuvium, has done is to add an ability to the game platform to host game championships of games from outside of Illuvium. They are designing the game to add platform interoperability. Doing this enables Illuvium to not only generate revenue from ticket, broadcast, and advertising sales, but also add to its base of money-paying players. In contrast to Nor, it doesn’t appear as though this was part of the original plan for the game. It appears that the design shift or midcourse correction caught the team out over their skis, causing community concern about the direction and progress of the game and its ability to raise additional funding.

At present, the game is in advanced private Beta testing mode with no announced date for public beta. The governance structure of Illuvium is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), but the game is completely centralized as the devs build it out so the DAO has no actual oversight power. Nevertheless, the player community which probably accounts for the majority of the DAO has pressed for a greater say in the direction and progress of the game. It doesn’t appear to be crisis mode, but definitely everyone worries about Illuvium’s immediate future. At this point, the game seems large enough to weather the storm, and the game play leaks make it look like it will be a lot of fun to people who like treasure hunts and serendipity games, which is a lot of people. It is easy to imagine, assuming the crypto market recovers, that in a year or so Illuvium will release into a reasonably healthy market. It has a good look, and people really do like turn-based RNG fighting games so there is every reason to believe it should have a successful launch. The questions that remain are how well the integration of outside games into Illuvium’s arenas will go, and whether Illuvium can attract long term players happy to spend their time and money on the platform. It seems implausible that USA is going to allow web3 games to pay interest on token staking contracts, making it unlikely that customary token ponzinomicals can be used to disguise debasement through inflation. It will be interesting to see what the team comes up with to address this issue. It’s entirely possible there is some imaginative solution that hasn’t been unveiled yet. Until then, the question of where the money comes from must be solved. Illuvium’s late tack toward hosting arena games seems like it could cause integration issues when it attempts to accommodate disparate platforms. It also begs the question of which and how many games actually awaiting arena space on a web3 gaming platform? The answers to these questions will determine Illuvium’s long term prospects.

To review, Illuvium is one of the largest of the new crop of web3 blockchain games. Its original premise was to build a bigger, sexier Axie Infinity-type game with a layer of landownership added to critter ownership. A midcourse correction became necessary because the typical token ponzinomical structure is no longer a viable means of generating ongoing funding. This new layer consisting of game arenas for to be used by games created outside of the Illuvium platform itself is unproven ground and because this program was not a part of the original calculus for the game it seems like more of a bolt on than a logical progression from what was originally envisioned. The next year will be critical in determining whether Illuvium has a winning strategy. Whether it has the chops to play the long game, it seems likely that launch frenzy will create an opportunity for some lucky chancers and some early whales to enjoy at least initial success. Much remains to be seen.

Broadly speaking, the public’s lack of familiarity with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology; a notoriously difficult user interface experience; and absence of plausibly fool-proof protections from commonplace phishing attacks has kept a lid on things. The reality is that high hopes ran well ahead of present circumstances and nothing illustrates this better than the ridiculously complicated wallet seed phrase needed for password/private key recovery and the requirement of storing it in a so-called “paper wallet” which is nothing more than words written on a scrap of paper.

As to the gaming industry specifically, the major impediment to web3 adoption is that gaming companies, in whom the real money and power lies, are not rushing to incorporate web3 technology into their platforms. While a respectable number of people have acquired nonfungible JPEG tokens both to use as PFP and as game pieces in yet unbuilt game platforms, actual progress on developing the types of games that inhabit web2 has been painfully slow because of the reasons above and also due to limitations in how blockchain technology itself is being addressed. Were it not for the stupendous success of a single web3 game it is plausible to imagine that web3 gaming would be stalled awaiting a practical use case.

Axie Infinity came out of nowhere in 2018 creating hundreds of millions of dollars of on-chain activity seemingly in the blink of an eye, setting the standard for subsequent games of this ilk. In addition to Axie’s first mover advantage, its game play is well-suited to the present limitations of blockchain gaming. Even the fastest of blockchains are presently too slow for an action game to be played entirely on-chain because web3 requires confirmation of a player’s moves in a smart contract. In a first person shooter (FPS) where dozens of trigger pulls occur in the span of seconds killing numerous foes it is impractical to record the results of each trigger pull on the blockchain in this way. The genius of Axie Infinity was to employ a turn-based format using cartoonish creatures evoking Japanimation ala Pokemon; a game familiar to millions. Axie’s cuteish characters are imbued with certain traits giving them the ability to do battle or breed offspring using an odds-based random number generator (RNG) logarithm to determine outcomes. Much of its game activity is facilitated by fungible tokens used not just to buy and sell axies but also as financial instruments to make time deposits for yield (staking). The convergence of these money-making vectors lit a fire whose flames were fanned by the bull market hype then permeating the entire crypto space. The resulting mania created millionaires of early players who merely had to purchase a critter and click away in a quest for points and lucky results from the RNG machine. Axie became a huge phenomenon in the Philippines whose average annual salary is less than USD 3300, or around $275 per month. Filipinos, enticed by the eyepopping amounts of easy money to be had, were attracted by the hundreds of thousands, helping to drive the price of in-game assets to nose bleed levels. As more people of lesser means sought entry to the game, large guilds were formed to pay people trivial amounts for performing the repetitive click-based tasks this type of turn-based web3 game requires. At its height, because so much money was being generated, commentators seriously speculated that games like Axie Infinity would contribute significantly to the national economies of poor nations, as citizens who began renting their labor to click farms levered up to higher paid, higher skilled technology jobs. Little of this came to pass partly because the crypto bubble burst and partly because of the pernicious economics of this particular P2E gaming model, whose pyramidical structure is common to multi-level marketing schemes. Nevertheless, thousands of game developers and investors have piled into the space resulting in a scourge of click-based gaming structures, almost all of which are presently struggling just to survive in the bear market environment of 2022.

The fundamental problem with click-based games is that they require a lot of money to build, run, and maintain but they don’t require any special skill to play making gameplay relatively meaningless. The games have varying narratives but share the same dynamics. There is a game map containing all kinds of different assets that players harvest, create, find, or build using game pieces with different attributes of varying degrees, such as speed, distance, capacity, endurance, luck, etc. These game pieces are typically acquired in packs containing multiple cards that must be opened to reveal their contents. These packs usually contain enough game elements to ensure a player can participate in the game, but the quality of the assets are determined by an odds-based algorithm that functions much like a lottery. Once the packs have been opened, their contents can be used or sold in markets such as NeftyBlocks or Atomic Hub, for example (if the game is part of the Wax ecosystem which hosts games built by independent gamecos). The gambling element entices most players to take a chance on buying multiple packs in the hopes of receiving rarities which can immediately be used in game or sold, (flipped). Once a player has the requisite NFT assets to play, nothing else is required except the repetitive clicking that comprises game play. An imaginary game, AlphaAtlantis, may consist of islands with buildable ports and factories that are served by ships and submarines that harvest the ocean’s resources such as fish, metals, and sunken treasure. The game mechanic may require a player to click on a ship’s home port to activate a trawler that is click-sent to trawl a school of fish. The operation consumes X resources and gathers Y resources which can be converted at the home port for a fee that goes to the port’s owner. Expand this to hundreds of islands and thousands of vessels and a large amount of actions are performed, either consuming or creating resources. From time to time, the game devs will announce a new pack sale containing new assets or enhancements to existing assets which should create a virtuous circle of increasing wealth creation. The problem is that, rather than being a circle, it is actually more like a funnel that sends funds to the game devs and venture investors. This is typically done by what are called “whales” who, in return for spending large amounts of money are given game tokens at a discount, for instance, or better access to the most desirable, revenue-producing properties. Later players who are often unwilling or unable to invest large amounts of money, known as “minnows,” are enticed to play by the lure of earning tokens just from clicking through tasks and the prospect of pulling unusually valuable NFT from game packs. The system is dependent upon a steady stream of new entrants willing to spend a little money and a lot of time grinding through the game mechanics. The problem is that, in order to attract new players and keep the whales from cashing out of the game potentially crashing the economy, the game devs must constantly add new elements, the idea being that they enhance the value of the overall game.

Often it has the opposite effect of diminishing the earnings and value of existing assets as new money rushes into the new features at the expense of the old. The whales are then compelled to continue to pour money into the game just to maintain their positions. Meanwhile, click farming rewards causes token supply inflation putting downward pressure on individual token value. This combination of the endless introduction of new assets and an expanding token supply eventually leads not only to exhaustion of the whales but making the game unattractive to new entrants who are more likely to look for a fresh game that hasn’t been fully exploited. When fresh capital inflows cease and whales try to cash out game asset values drop precipitously ravaging the economy, leaving behind people who are so far underwater they can only attempt to grind their way to solvency and hope for a new game mechanic to bring a flush of new capital. This rarely happens, by the way, as exemplified by the once highflying game of Axie Infinity whose game devs, have been working furiously to re-engineer the game to make it both more fun to play and to reverse its implosion.

Axie exemplifies contemporary web3 gaming by both setting the standard for early ponzinomical click farm games and suffering an existential crisis when the mania around it died resulting in a collapse. The solution its devs are attempting to implement is not likely to be successful, barring another radical makeover. This is because of the money-devouring ponzinomical ‘No-Skill-Required’ click farming structure it appears mired in.

While there remains a plethora of click farms in existence, and many presently being developed despite the grim environment they face, the crisis has caused game devs to take a hard look at that model and some to begin building new projects that approach web3 gaming differently. While it is still early in the process, some of these games appear to have prospects worthy of discussion in subsequent papers.

According to the DataProt website electronic games, or video games, are played by around three and a quarter billion people via cell phone, PC/Mac gaming, and consoles such as the Play Station, et al. These are presently all web2 games; web1 includes console arcade games that are usually not connected to the internet.

Games are accessed by subscription, purchase, or are free to play with the option to pay for items and benefits to improve game play; although, about half the people use only cellphones to play, these games are less germane to this discussion than desktop and console gaming are: Relevant web2 games are the likes of Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft and Dota. In other words, action packed, fully immersive, time-sucking fun virtual worlds that cause people to play for hours a day sometimes for years on end acquiring game attributes that enhance powers and presentation.

Opening an online account means a player’s personal details and gameplay history including attributes such as skins, armor, weapons, etc. are stored and managed on the game company (gameco) servers. Acquiring skill and in-game attributes requires a commitment of time and labor equivalent to a part-time, or even full-time job. While most of these are earned by ‘grinding’ or obsessive play, gamecos encourage players to make credit card purchases to speed up the process. Whether bought or earned, these ostensibly owned items are actually just temporary credits that go away when the underlying game account is closed. In other words, a player can spend years acquiring attributes only to have them disappear when his account is permanently closed. Importantly, gameco terms of service almost always prohibit the transfer or sale of attributes unless through an official game store. While games often have active grey markets, they are fraught with the danger of scams and account closure if the gameco detects a violation of its terms of service.

Setting aside the lack of material ownership, some gamer purists also dislike that acquiring items affects game dynamics by causing players to think in terms of maximizing yields rather than, arguably, pure game playing. The ability to purchase enhancements also gives an immediate advantage to those who buy them over those who can’t or don’t pay to play with store-bought glory.

Web2 gaming is a healthy thriving industry that generates billions of dollars annually in return for a steady stream of the highest quality, best designed and fun to play games that money can buy. Nevertheless, there is a significant minority of gamers who believe they are entitled to own what they have purchased or earned through keen game play. Many of these players could, if they were able to own and sell the fruits of their labor, become career gamers. The industry presently supports a small number of professional eSports tournament players, but it is dwarfed by the number of players around the world who for financial reasons haven’t had the means to compete at these rarified levels. With the web3 monetizing mechanism, a slew of players will leverage their skills to earn income and even compete professionally.

Web3 uses blockchain technology to add actual ownership of game items to the web2 gaming experience. What a blockchain does for games is take the player account attributes traditional web2 gamecos store on their own servers and publishes, or stores, this information on a public blockchain. This converts the heretofore internal database of player accounts into digital assets by placing them in a wallet, or account, on a blockchain where the contents of that wallet are accessible only to the person who owns the key (password) to it even while its contents are viewable/verifiable, by anyone.

What is a blockchain, one wonders? It’s pretty simple. The block part of the blockchain is a group of data compiled into a ‘block’ of pre-determined size. At its simplest, a block can be a series of letters, symbols and numbers chosen at random to fill a pre-determined block size. Once the block is full, its contents are broadcast to a network of computers, or nodes, that certify and secure it by publishing it to a public network where this information can be queried, but not changed. Once a block has been compiled, verified and published, the next block of data is compiled, verified and appended to the earlier block resulting in a ‘chain’ of blocks or blockchain. The public, immutable, characteristics of the blockchain are what enable parties to create tokens, which are merely a record of some digital item(s) recorded on the blockchain. Hence the aphorism that a cryptocurrency token can be created out of thin air. Fungible tokens are all alike and can be infinitely exchanged one for another just like a dollar bill. Blockchains such as Ethereum allow the creation of nonfungible tokens (NFT) which are similar to fungible tokens but can be attached to a unique digital image (JPEG) and even executable code known as smart contracts rendering each token unique and thus not fungible.

As it relates to games, these blocks of data are records that may contain transactions such as the creation and assignment of a JPEG won in a game, or record of a purchase and sale of an item from one player to another. For example, a gamer slays the dragon and is rewarded with holy grail, the underlying smart contract will take the NFT or token amount of the holy grail from the wallet or account where it resides and assign it to the wallet of the winning player. It is essentially moving data in a database from one column and assigning it to another, and because this information is public and unchangeable (immutable) it serves as proof of ownership. The smart contract mechanism ascertains that account A approves transferring x$ of value to account B and account B approves transferring item x to account A in a simultaneous transaction of purchase and sale, taking action predicated upon elements of the contract being met, i.e. the owner of wallet A has the requisite number of fungible tokens and wallet B has the requisite NFT. The wallet is an address on a blockchain that can accept the rights to digital items such as NFTs even if the JPEG data does not also reside on that blockchain. For instance, the amount of data comprising a JPEG is large making it expensive to store on a blockchain such as Ethereum due to block size limitation, the more data, the more expensive the transaction because multiple parties bid for the right to have their transactions immediately included in a block. This results in the practice of storing NFT data in a sidechain, or on cloud servers, even of those belonging to the game that generated the NFT. When this occurs, the item residing on the blockchain to which your wallet connects is not the actual JPEG but a link to the block of data comprising the JPEG wherever it is stored. Although this is a topic for another day, offchain storage practices do pose a risk of loss if the server or cloud storage service holding the data goes dark.

Web3 gaming is distinguished from web2 gaming by the creation of property in the form of NFT and other tokens that can exist outside the game platform where they were created. The web2 video gaming industry creates billions of dollars of annual revenue. Many, if not most, current players of these games either have no opinion about web3 games and ownership, or view them negatively. In other words, the appeal of ownership is not universal. The reasons for this, apart from ignorance, is that the present slow speed of verifying the blockchain makes it impractical for real-time game play in a fast moving First Person Shooter (FPS). For instance, the web2 practice of running the game and storing data on gameco servers is the only practical way to operate most of today’s action games. Another reason for web2 gamer disdain is that present web3 games are of a certain type of turn-based gaming used in a manner called “Play to Earn” (P2E) which tend to be predatory, exploitive and little fun to play. The logic of web3 gaming where NFT and fungible tokens are well-suited to a kind of click-based, mechanistic labor system that rewards repetitive tasks has attracted a growing body of game developers, investors and game players who believe that personal ownership of digital assets will create a gaming industry many times greater than the present web2 game industry despite web3’s present limitations. Asset ownership leads to direct monetization opportunities for players in an industry heretofore restricted to gamecos. Partly because of this, industry revenue is projected to double or triple by 2030 when web2 action games transition to blockchain-based web3 games with digital asset ownership, as well as the creation of a slew of new web3 bespoke platforms and games. Time permitting, in future papers we’ll examine some of the present blockchain gaming models, discuss their flaws, and identify some possible solutions to the problems inherent in using emergent blockchain technology in web3 games.