What is EulerBeats?
About EulerBeats origination & history, collections — Genesis, Enigma & Futura and how it is significant for the future of music NFT experiments?
Getting one’s mind around NFTs can be difficult enough. We’ve grown accustomed to perceiving digital stuff in a specific manner, and this new technology has a way of altering our entire perspective on things. But, once we make that conceptual leap, we rapidly see that the existing forms and applications of NFTs are only scraping the surface. The majority of the time, we observe NFTs in their most fundamental and static configurations.
EulerBeats is an NFT initiative that is pushing the boundaries of this potential and directing us in the right direction for where these powerful new technologies may go.
Simply said, EulerBeats is a collection of distinct audio-visual NFTs. First collection from this project was named ‘Genesis LPs’, consisting of 27 different audio NFTs. Each item is composed of a one-of-a-kind digital artwork printed onto a spinning vinyl record that plays music. Each NFT’s artwork and soundtrack are produced algorithmically. The technique used to create these pieces is based on a math function developed by Leonhard Euler, a notable 18th-century mathematician.
Using metadata from the actual purchase transaction and Euler’s function, each output is a piece of artwork with distinct colors, forms, and noises — all of which give each piece a unique sense of rarity. This suggests that the original buyers of the 27 Genesis LPs had a hand in the design of the NFT artwork. The generative art details, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. The EulerBeats project might serve as a historical case study, demonstrating how tremendous the potential for NFTs actually is.
History of EulerBeats
When you interact with the EulerBeats project, you are instantly thrown into an experiment that nudges its way into various disciplines of study, including music theory, math, tokenomics, blockchain technology, and more. Most NFTs today are a static transfer of digital art ownership; however, this initiative brings NFTs to life.
Treum.io, a ConsenSys-backed firm founded in 2016, is a pioneer in the blockchain field. The Treum team has a proven track record of launching some epic blockchain firsts, including but not limited to implementing the first non-financial use case for tracking oil samples for BHP Billiton, bait-to-plate tracking of yellowfin tuna from Fiji to New York with WWF, and live auction of tokenized Game Worn Jerseys for the Sacramento Kings.
Euler’s musical mathematics reflects his love of music. He wanted to use math to locate and explain harmony in music. He thought it was feasible to measure the “degree of agreeableness that may be expressed as sweetness, charm, or tunefulness.” The relationship between arithmetic, physics, music, and art is inextricably linked. They bundled math, art, music, royalties, quick liquidity, and scarcity into an NFT initiative called EulerBeats.
EulerBeats Enigma
Original EulerBeats Enigmas are ultra-rare NFTs limited to 27 pieces, completing the opposite half of the EulerBeats ‘Genesis LP’ record. At the moment of generation, the token seed was produced on-chain. The seed and token generation method used the creator’s wallet address and the block hash as inputs. The art + music generating script then utilizes the seed to generate the 27 Enigma tokens. Like with the Genesis release, the project crew could not see the image + rhythm before the tokens’ minted. The price of each of the 25 Enigma original tokens were determined by the highest winning bid in an OpenSea auction. The Originals were auctioned off in an English-style auction lasting 48 hours, with 5-minute extensions granted if fresh bids are received inside the last 5 minutes of the auction. The floor for tokens will be set at 2.71Ξ. One of the remaining 27 is designated for donation to a DAO, while the other is designated for the EulerBeats Project team.
EulerBeats Futura
Futura is EulerBeats’ third NFT release. It builds on the legacy of the first two EulerBeats sets, Genesis and Enigma, by preserving a piece of unique generative music + art approach at its core and bringing a new collection to the EulerBeats brand.
Futura is what you’d want if you could fly through an NFT. The album explores the limits of 3D generating art and sound. The shape is a geometric representation of a Möbius strip. In a tribute to Euler, the graphics feature a non-orientable surface with a zero Euler characteristic. In layman’s terms, there is no inner or outside identification of the surface.
With 10 handpicked Futura Master NFTs and a series of unique generative Mixes, Futura music will usher in remix culture. These mixes will lend themselves to remixing, and the contracts will allow royalties back to the original producers (the drummer, guitarist, etc.)
Futura is made up of the following NFTs:
- 8080 Futura Mix NFTs were produced at random, the 8080 number was inspired by the famous 808 Drum machine. These NFTs will be provably unique, random combinations of generative music and graphics generated by the EulerBeats team utilizing a set of original musical building blocks.
- The EulerBeats crew handcrafted 10 limited edition Futura Master NFTs to serve as the official artist statement and creative introduction for Futura.
- Holders of Mix NFTs will develop Remix NFTs. Holders will be able to pick musical qualities from any Futura Mix they own to create new, unique Remix NFTs via a pleasant and engaging internet front end. Remixes themselves will be able to be further remixed via the same mechanism.
How to buy EulerBeats NFTs?
EulerBeats takes an innovative method to mint, ownership, and royalties.
There are only 27 original EulerBeats, similar to a master recording, the original, official recording of a song in the traditional music industry. From there, anybody may purchase an EulerBeats print, which serves as a reproduction of the original in the same way that purchasing a CD does.
Each new print of a specific original in circulation is priced using a bonding curve.
8% of the purchase price of an EulerBeats print goes to the original EulerBeats owner, 2% goes to the project, and 90% is held as a refundable reserve if the print is ever burned. Anyone can purchase the EulerBeats collection on Opensea.io .
The future of EulerBeats
NFTs connects to copies of Kings of Leon’s recent album, When You See Yourself, and NFTs have also been sold by Grimes, Rico Nasty, Aphex Twin, Jacques Greene, 3lau, Yaeji, Mura Masa, and Toro Y Moi. The enthusiasm has come backlash: some artists have sworn off Ethereum-based NFTs outright, citing environmental concerns.
Another area where the EulerBeats project pushes the boundaries of NFT technology is a much-needed one: on-chain royalties. As previously stated, the earnings from print sales are divided among the burn fund (90%), the original LP owner (8%), and the project’s core staff (2%).
The flow of these royalty is explicitly encoded into the NFT smart contracts. That is, while selling a print, no one party has to do anything to ensure that the splits are distributed to the appropriate rights holders.
We can extrapolate and see how this technology will affect almost every business.
Resources
https://eulerbeats.gitbook.io/eulerbeats-docs/
https://eulerbeats.gitbook.io/eulerbeats-docs/genesis
https://eulerbeats.gitbook.io/eulerbeats-docs/enigma
https://eulerbeats.gitbook.io/eulerbeats-docs/futura