What is Art Blocks?

In June 2021, Sotheby sold 19 pieces from the Art Blocks platform for a total value of $81,000. This was not an isolated event for Art Blocks; by 2023, the fervor surrounding AI innovations impacted numerous AI sectors within the crypto market, propelling them to prominence.

As the application of AI became increasingly widespread, the generative art NFT platform Art Blocks, founded in 2020, once again captured the attention of many. Although Art Blocks was not a new AI-related project, it had achieved nearly $1 billion in total transaction volume by 2021. Despite the subsequent slump in the NFT market in 2022, Art Blocks maintained commendable momentum.

However, it is essential to clarify that Art Blocks, strictly speaking, is not akin to popular AI applications such as OpenAI. An early, apt description of the platform was an “automated vending machine for generative art.”

What is Art Blocks?

Art Blocks is an Ethereum-based generative art NFT platform, established in 2020 by artist Erick Calderon, with total sales reaching $1.3 billion by 2023.

Not only is Art Blocks the world’s first platform utilizing blockchain technology to address the circulation, provenance, and authenticity of billions of artworks, but it is also the premier global digital art exchange for artists.

Artists can create through digitized issuance, while participating users can engage in the ownership and trading of these artworks with minimal capital outlay. This enables artists’ works to circulate rapidly and transparently online via NFTs.

With the continuous expansion of artworks created using Art Blocks’ autonomous systems, the platform has evolved into the preferred destination for the creation, collection, and curation of NFT art. Focusing on programmable, generative content, Art Blocks produces immutable content on the Ethereum blockchain.

So, what is the most prominent feature of the artworks or NFTs generated by Art Blocks?

It is their unparalleled randomness, a process governed by a sequence of numbers stored on an Ethereum-based NFT. This numeric string dictates a range of attributes for the purchased artwork, ultimately yielding a truly unique piece.

Capitalizing on the characteristics of NFTs to facilitate artistic creation, Art Blocks’ emergence drew considerable attention within the industry. The random nature inherent in its generative artwork aligns with the broad aspirations and tastes of traditional artists, epitomizing a distinctive manifestation of creativity.

Categories of Art Blocks

Art Blocks has become a popular platform for avant-garde artists to create and display their masterpieces through a unique collaboration program. Enthusiasts and investors can access Art Blocks using their wallets, choosing and collecting their favorite art pieces by paying a certain amount of ETH to mint the corresponding NFTs.

As a platform dedicated to the art-focused NFT market, Art Blocks offers comprehensive review mechanisms and support services for various types of artistic creations.

Art Blocks organizes its NFT series into distinct categories, initially featuring Curated, Playground, and Factory. As the platform evolved, it broadened its offerings to include Exploration and the Art Block X Pace collaborative series.

The difference between these series is not in the style of NFT art but rather in the creators themselves. Curated is an incubation series initiated by Art Blocks, showcasing works by renowned artists that have undergone strict reviews, often achieving considerable artistic acclaim.

Playground, on the other hand, can be seen as a derivative project of Curated, presenting creations by artists already accepted into the Curated series. The primary distinction between the two lies in the level of scrutiny, with Playground allowing artists more creative freedom.

The Factory series showcases art by creators not yet admitted to the Curated series but still subject to specific review requirements. Artists launching works within the Factory series must wait until their first piece sells before introducing additional art pieces, essentially serving as a testing ground for emerging artists.

Exploration, launched in October 2022, concentrates on contemporary generative art, while Art Block X Pace signifies a new series in partnership with the Pace Gallery.

There is no strict separation between artists and regular users on the Art Blocks platform, as everything revolves around the attention and market feedback an artist’s generative art receives. Even ordinary individuals, with their unique taste and discernment, can create eye-catching art pieces within this creativity-driven platform.

Art Blocks defines generative art as “art created with a combination of randomness and planned code.” Artists are responsible for finding aesthetic appeal and inspiration, while the platform systematically transforms inspiration into visual art.

Fundamentally, Art Blocks’ generative art necessitates the involvement of both artists and collectors. Artists must adjust and deploy their generative art scripts on the platform, ensuring the output corresponds with the input hash value. The scripts store information on the Ethereum blockchain through Art Blocks.

When collectors decide to mint a piece from a specific series, they essentially receive a random hash value. The script executes this value, instantly generating a generative art piece corresponding to the hash value.

This collaborative approach to generative art, in which creators and collectors jointly contribute to the process, is a well-known characteristic of Art Blocks—an automated vending machine for randomized generative art pieces.

Behind the scenes, artists must fine-tune their scripts repeatedly to ensure that the unique and aesthetically pleasing pieces generated for multiple users during the minting process remain consistent. After all, entirely uncontrollable randomness may not yield art, as people generally seek pieces that align with their aesthetic preferences.

The Art Blocks Artist Community

Initially, Erick Calderon had a straightforward vision for Art Blocks. The platform aimed to facilitate art creation through blockchain technology and explore the AIGC domain.

However, the landscape shifted dramatically beyond expectations, as the crypto market experienced a concentrated explosion of NFTs between 2020 and 2021. An influx of funds entered the sector, and the platform’s early art pieces, characterized by their unique generative art classifications and aesthetic features, sold at exorbitant prices. Consequently, Art Blocks captured the attention of crypto market investors.

A confluence of factors contributed to the rapid development of Art Blocks post-launch, propelling its platform business to impressive heights. In August 2021, the platform recorded $70 million in transactions within a single month, showcasing the apex of crypto users’ passion for generative art and speculative interest. At that time, the secondary market trading volume for Art Blocks’ issued works reached $587 million, with over 10,000 buyers participating in the transactions. Nonetheless, the platform’s trading volume subsequently declined to $243 million in September and never surpassed $100 million thereafter.

The crypto market’s frigid climate in 2022 did not hinder Art Blocks’ business growth and expansion. As of December 1, 2022, Art Blocks boasted 229 artists, including 68 in the Curated series, 33 in Playground (Curated artists encompassing Playground), 167 in Factory (10 overlapping with Curated), 4 ArtBlock X Pace artists, and 2 Exploration artists. The platform issued 371 series, encompassing a total of 235,296 pieces, and attracted 36,523 individual collector addresses, with the overall transaction volume exceeding $1.3 billion.

Art Blocks has amassed a remarkable pool of artists and a vast number of generative art enthusiasts. Despite market turbulence and the mass exodus of speculative users, the quality of generative art pieces on Art Blocks is steadily increasing, a comprehensible trend considering the discerning tastes of generative art aficionados.

The platform’s five distinct art series classifications illuminate the unique allure of this community-driven platform comprised of artists. The differentiation between Art Blocks’ series is designed to balance the relationships among artists’ creative energies, artwork quality, platform thresholds, and collector expectations.

Curated showcases the world’s most preeminent generative art, with projects like Ringers, Fidenza, and Chimera forming part of this collection. To be considered for this series, artists must preload their scripts onto the Art Blocks testnet, with a committee assessing the generated samples.

The Art Blocks committee comprises individuals from various industries, boasting diverse experiences and perspectives, united by a common goal: discovering the world’s most intriguing and innovative generative art projects and incorporating them into Curated. Once an artist is successfully selected for Curated, they can release their work under the Playground series, which encourages uninhibited creativity and experimentation with different styles. Many of Art Blocks’ exceptional community experiences and works originate from Playground.

As Art Blocks continued to develop, the platform introduced additional series to broaden the boundaries of generative art categories. Artists releasing their work on Art Blocks typically possess a dedicated following, and generative art enthusiasts purchasing NFTs on the platform are akin to directly supporting an artist.

These artists are often well-known, with an extensive history of work. For Art Blocks, this is not merely an “artistic charity,” but rather an intentional effort to create a haven for artists to showcase their talents and creativity. This is evident in the platform’s sales strategy: artists receive 90% of the revenue from their first sale on Art Blocks, with the remaining 10% allocated to the platform itself.

Using the Fidenza collection as an example, the series premiered with 999 pieces, each selling for a price of 0.17 ETH. This generated nearly 170 ETH in sales and 17 ETH in revenue for Art Blocks.

Compared to the royalties earned from OpenSea transactions, the initial sales revenue might seem insignificant. However, on secondary markets like OpenSea, the value of Art Blocks’ works has skyrocketed from just a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands and even millions of dollars.

Through contractual agreements, the artists and Art Blocks receive fees for each resale of a Fidenza piece. The standard fee structure allocates 2.5% to Art Blocks and 5% to the artist.

With a cumulative trading volume of over 40,000 ETH on OpenSea for the Fidenza collection, Art Blocks has amassed more than 1,000 ETH in royalties, while the collection’s creator, Tyler Hobbs, has earned over 2,000 ETH. Despite a significant decline in the value of ETH, this remains an impressive fortune.

Art Blocks has generated substantial and unexpected financial gains for its artists. However, perhaps even more important to them is the platform’s promotion of generative art creation and its open and liberal attitude. Inextricably linked to founder Erick Calderon’s identity as an artist, Art Blocks can be viewed as a unique community consisting of a group of generative art creators.

Art Blocks Development Review

Generative art, a longstanding artistic discipline, captivates its audience with its unique aesthetic appeal rooted in controlled randomness. Artists cannot predict the outcomes of their code-generated works, and executing the same code twice may produce vastly different pieces. However, they can maintain specific characteristics and aesthetics by controlling the overall framework of randomness.

Historically, generative art has mirrored the artistic trends of the 20th century, with numerous artists persistently pursuing the beauty found in geometric shapes and abstract elements. In large part, generative art aims to visually represent this allure.

The 1960s saw the emergence of generative art, primarily due to the increased complexity and scale introduced by the use of computers in artistic creation. However, until the 1980s, generative art remained a niche field as computers had not yet become ubiquitous.

The launch of the drawing software Processing in 2001 transformed this landscape, offering a more visually-oriented programming language that was both flexible and user-friendly. The popularization of personal computers and Processing subsequently fueled the rapid development of generative art in the 2010s.

At that time, Processing swiftly became the preferred creative platform for leading generative artists and found its way into university classrooms, allowing thousands of students to create generative art without needing to become computer experts, thus significantly lowering the entry barrier.

For generative artists, the advent of NFTs and associated trading platforms marked another crucial milestone. Before this, computer-generated art was prevalent, but the mediums for showcasing and selling works remained traditional, particularly for paintings.

After Ethereum introduced the ERC721 standard for NFTs, NFT trading platforms catering to top artists began to appear in 2017. Only invited artists could release works on platforms such as SuperRare and Nifty Gateway, with generative artists being the primary invitees.

As Ethereum’s price and ecosystem expanded, an increasing number of artists started to plan their careers around “generative art NFTs,” releasing their works in NFT format and broadening their influence through Twitter and Discord.

While platforms like SuperRare did enhance the market influence of generative artists to a certain extent, they did not seamlessly integrate generative art with blockchain technology. Art Blocks, which emerged in 2020, changed this.

Art Blocks CEO Erick Calderon started investing in BTC and Ethereum in 2016. In 2017, he became a collector of CryptoPunks NFTs, 24x24 pixel NFTs generated directly by algorithms without pre-made layers, setting them apart from mainstream NFT avatar projects in terms of creative approach. This was the precise reason Erick spent $35 on gas to mint them.

At the time, most NFT avatar projects created dozens of pre-made images for each body part, which were then randomly assembled during the minting process. In contrast, CryptoPunks only had code prior to minting.

Inspired by this, Erick Calderon developed an online platform for creators, resembling a generative art vending machine. Collectors would purchase on-the-spot creations, and the platform would manage the production, sale, and storage of the artwork. This marked the inception of Art Blocks.

In subsequent times, Erick Calderon himself became one of the first users of Art Blocks. On Black Friday 2020, Erick launched his first public sale, featuring his Chromie Squiggle, Jeff’s Construction Token, and Erick’s sculptor brother Daniel’s Genesis by DCA series. Ultimately, Art Blocks sold 500 pieces in just two hours.

The iconic doodles of Chromie Squiggle have essentially become synonymous with Art Blocks. Erick seems to have intentionally adopted the CryptoPunks strategy, setting the minting cost at zero and requiring users to only cover gas fees. Amidst the NFT boom of 2021, the average price of these doodles skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the sellout of Art Blocks’ releases turned into a predictable event.

(Image from crunchbase.com)

The evolution of Art Blocks is deeply intertwined with the support of the generative art community. The platform’s team has grown from a mere two individuals to a group of over 20, primarily consisting of those passionate about generative art. Jeff Davis, a respected figure in the generative art scene, joined as Chief Creative Officer. Art Blocks secured $6 million in funding from True Ventures and Galaxy, which substantially enhanced the platform’s subsequent development.

In March 2021, Curated was established, supported by several a16z General Partners, with a $30 million fund dedicated to investing in NFT artworks. Curated intended to allocate half of its capital to blue-chip NFTs, particularly those from Art Blocks.

Art Blocks’ milestone as a blue-chip NFT investment target occurred in August 2021, when the platform’s trading volume reached its peak. Renowned Crypto VC, Three Arrows Capital, launched Starry Night Capital, entering the NFT investment sphere. Their first investment consisted of three Art Blocks pieces—Ringer, Fidenza, and Subscape—totaling 614 ETH, valued at $2 million at the time.

Clearly, Art Blocks’ journey has been driven by the support and expectations of various stakeholders, as generative art and the NFT space share a strong inherent compatibility.

The impact of AI developments

It is undeniable that the development of AI-generated creative content (AIGC) has exceeded many people’s expectations. Naturally, this trend has also influenced Art Blocks’ commitment to generative artwork.

Contrary to popular belief, Art Blocks functions on a fundamentally different premise compared to image-generating AI like OpenAI. Art Blocks produces a limited number of art pieces within a framework established by artists, while mainstream AI applications generate images by searching through extensive collections of previous works based on input commands, providing a sense of direction.

The most significant similarity between the two lies in their controlled randomness; commands with explicit direction generally yield stylistically comparable results. However, Art Blocks relies on an artist-created framework, and the resulting artworks exhibit more of the artist’s unique characteristics and style, while AI-generated content displays a wider and more complex range.

It is worth mentioning that current AI applications inherently involve intricate copyright disputes. In contrast, Art Blocks, built on blockchain technology, does not face this issue. This distinction is one reason many generative art creators remain uninterested in AI.

For the average user, it is easy to mistakenly classify Art Blocks as a type of AI, a perception that is not entirely accurate. At its core, Art Blocks is a form of generative art created within a controlled scope and could be considered an application of AIGC in a broader sense.

The widespread adoption of AI has undoubtedly inspired Art Blocks. If they can integrate relevant technologies with their existing platform mechanisms, the variety and stylistic features of the art on the platform will become even more diverse and rich.

Many investors have recognized this potential, which is why Art Blocks gained considerable attention when the AI sector was in high demand in the cryptocurrency market. However, this is a short-term external influence. To determine whether AI will impact Art Blocks’ long-term development, ongoing monitoring is essential.

Conclusion

An examination of Art Blocks’ evolution sheds light on recent shifts in the NFT market and the trajectory of generative art’s integration with blockchain technology.

A primary concern for Art Blocks, as reflected by the founder’s perspective as an artist, is discerning whether genuine art enthusiasts or profit-seeking NFT speculators are primarily pursuing Art Blocks’ offerings.

This dilemma continues as Art Blocks’ ongoing development increasingly resembles an NFT trading platform, where the external focus on artistic creations is overshadowed by a fixation on price fluctuations and investment transactions.

The speculative undercurrents become apparent in the substantial appreciation of works initially launched on various platforms, only becoming evident during the 2021 NFT market boom.

Erick, the founder, disapproves of this speculative mania, once commenting:

The explosion is captivating but far more frightening than enthralling. The momentum is admirable, but it feels like someone taking your child and using them in unforeseen ways.

Nonetheless, the alarming aspect is primarily directed at artists, as Erick believes that rare works auctioned for millions or even tens of millions of dollars are, to a certain extent, justifiable. Such pieces deserve a place in contemporary art museums alongside other masterpieces. However, the widespread speculative activity in the NFT market perplexes Erick.

Some speculators might appreciate the beauty of Art Blocks’ works upon acquisition and choose to hold them long-term. Others, on the other hand, might feel compelled to “hold long-term” while waiting for the next selling cycle due to waning secondary market enthusiasm.

Striking a balance between rationality and emotion, art and commerce, is essential for a platform like Art Blocks that merges generative art with NFT sales. Preserving its original essence can only be accomplished through a sustained, equilibrium-seeking development.