Artblocks - just blocks of art right?
As the VCs, hedge funds and like come for our art, here's a rundown of Artblocks
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So Artblocks have been on a tear recently, vaulting dramatically in price. Some of the most famous/popular pieces flew under the radar just 3 months ago. I wanted to give a brief explanation of Artblocks now that it seems the funds such as Three Arrows Capital (3AC) have been buying Artblocks and just released this announcement:
Vincent Van Dough is one of the most prolific NFT collectors and he is joining forces with 3AC. Spells danger for all Artblocks that are listed!
Enjoy!
- NFT Slate contributor Bluecane
Artblocks was launched in November 2020, a platform focused on programmable generative art content stored on Ethereum.
On Artblocks, artists would upload their generative script on the Ethereum blockchain and when anyone mints anything, the algorithm or script is run creating a unique seed for the minter.
Because the art is generative and the seed unique, the artist nor the minter knows exactly what their art will look like before its made. This leads to random minters getting super rare Artblocks, some that have sold for over one million dollars (300 ETH).
From the initial sale, Artblocks takes 10% of the purchase price. Creators get 5% on secondary sales & Artblocks collects 2.5% on secondary sales, so if you sell an Artblocks on Opensea you are looking at 10% going to different parties.
Artblocks Curated -
Artblocks Curated is decided by a curation board. These collections are very scrutinized to make sure they fit in the vision of Artblocks. They are released on a schedule that allows collectors to collect a meaningful amount of generative art from Artblocks. Getting a fully curated set is highly sought out, for the 2020 sets, only 200 full sets can ever exist and for 2021 only 369 sets can ever exist.
Here is the Chromie Squiggle the profile picture for all Artblocks pages on Opensea, if that tells you how important it is to them. This project was done by Snowfro, the Founder of Artblocks himself.
The craziest thing about Artblocks is how cheap it has been to mint some of the pieces worth so much in ETH. Look below at an article by Gmoney on the price of a Chromie Squiggle back in February. The floor today is right around 12 ETH so about a 100x from February.
Artblocks Playground -
This collection is for artists/creators that have previously released something on Curated and want to release a new project on Playground without the same curation as Artblocks Curated. This is a great way for collectors to get art from some of their favorite artists if they are priced out of Curated. Some of the coolest art I’ve seen has come out of Playground, I really do believe this is an awesome idea.
Some of my favorites are below:
Rinascita by Stefan Contiero - https://opensea.io/assets/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/121000914
Ecumenopolis by Joshua Bagley https://opensea.io/assets/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/119000368
Artblocks Factory -
Art Blocks Factory is for artists who do not want to wait for Curation Board approval to launch their generative art projects. The requirements are relaxed compared to Curated, the drops must still reflect the spirit and standards of the Artblocks community.
There are definitely some gems here in Artblocks Factory. This is a great place for artists to start and a couple of these works have been meme’d to high prominence.
If you want Artblocks exposure, this may be a great place to look. One thing about NFTs is traffic is important, if someone comes by your “store” a lot, there’s a good chance demand for that product will always be there. This is the power of Artblocks, there will always be (for the immediate future) eyes on Artblocks projects. I’d say Artblocks factory is much more liquid than other lesser known art at the moment until Opensea/competing platform changes their search algorithm.
The two Artblocks Factory drops with the most memes and some of the highest valuations are Dino Pals & Sail-o-bots (Sea Hams). One of the major reasons for this is the VincentVanDough that I screengrabbed earlier. A brief check of his Twitter profile can show you why -
We have Dino Pals in his profile picture and Sail-o-bots (Seahams) in his cover photo. No the robots don’t come attached to the Seahams usually.
We are in such a small market for Artblocks that one collector can meme something into high levels of popularity. It’s not just him though, Bob Laxative and many others have come to adore the Dino Pals and Sea Hams. There’s lots of other great art in Artblocks Factory & I suggest you go check it out, I can’t write about everything!
Closing Thoughts
Artblocks has become the gold standard for generative art with crypto. As others try to emulate Artblocks such as Frakt or Playground Sol on Solana, we will see if they have success.
Artblocks has recently increased their minimum mint price for Curated pieces because so many people would just mint to flip. The new minimum floor to mint Artblocks Curated is 5 Ethereum. If you have that much ETH, go ahead, there are some great pieces!
I like a lot of the playground & Factory, as things progress, for the right mint, would love to try to get a curated piece!
Other articles to check out about Artblocks:
Old Gmoney article back in February about ArtBlocks - https://www.one37pm.com/nft/art/art-blocks-nft-platform-to-know
Artblocks About page - https://artblocks.io/learn
Artblocks written interview - https://thedefiant.io/artblocks/
Artblocks Discord - https://discord.gg/VGX9fyhWBn
⚠️ DISCLAIMER: Investing into NFTs comes with inherent risk including technical risk, human error, platform failure and more. At certain points throughout this post, we might get commission for promoting certain projects, if this is the case we will always make sure it is clear. We are strictly an educational content platform, nothing we offer is financial advice. We are not professionals or licensed advisors.
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