Dear Bankless Nation,

In an effort to bring you best of what the decentralized art space has to offer, Decentralized Arts (DA) is returning to its roots to showcase some of the brightest new NFT artists that are stepping into the great wide world of blockchain art. While we will continue to report on the latest and greatest in NFT utility as adoption continues to increase, we will be showcasing artists, collectors, and collectives that are making waves in this space in their own way.

To kick things off, Kouros shares a conversation with NFT collector extraordinaire Schmrypto, a collector “that has amassed over 4,000 pieces.” Schmrypto operates their own digital museum, with plans to release their own NFT projects in the near future. Dive in to the details just below the news.

nonsense takes us through the thick and thin of debrabdesign’s (Debra) trajectory in and out of art in DA’s first Artist Profile in quite some time. Learn how Debra’s passion for the environment led her to release her first independent NFT collection on Solana, and how she eventually found her way to Ethereum.

And as major alpha to our wonderful Bankless community, DA is proud to announce the return of weekly NFT drops! Beginning this week, DA will host a series of drops from the artists we profile as community exclusives. Read the detail and see the preview of this week’s drop in our release toward the end of this edition.

And through it all, The Rug gives us the keys to our crypto in this week’s mostly credible headline, Perchy tells a [mostly credible] tale in Chippi’s Corner, and our favorite chronotravelers, DustyEye, are back with the latest in Pluritime news.

Welcome to Decentralized Arts.

Contributors: BanklessDAO Writers Guild (Grendel, Kouros, Kaf, nonsensetwice, Frank America)

This is the official NFT newsletter of BanklessDAO. If you were a Premium Member of the Bankless Newsletter as of May 1st, 2021, you have been subscribed to this newsletter at launch. To unsubscribe, edit your settings here.

Curated NFT News

China Has Launched a National NFT Marketplace

On January 1st the China Digital Asset Trading Platform was launched. This is China’s first state-approved digital asset marketplace that supports secondary trading activities.

The platform runs on the China Cultural Protection Chain, a blockchain developed by Art Exhibitions China that aims to protect and promote China’s museums and antiquities sector.

As the name of its chain suggests, the platform will emphasize promoting China’s cultural heritage. It will have three major committees: regulatory, digital asset innovation, and metaverse application.

The platform can be expected to play a major role in the digitization of China’s cultural resources, which the central government has consistently emphasized in its metaverse initiatives.

This raises the question of whether this will lead to China finally approving the resale of digital assets, but this may be a long way off, since this platform does not feature cryptocurrencies nor is it connected to global blockchains that support NFT transactions.

NFT Art: A Collector’s Perspective

Interview with Schmrypto

By Kouros

Art collectors play an important role in the art market. After all, there wouldn’t be a market without collectors.

The other day I spoke to Schmrypto, an NFT collector that has amassed over 4,000 pieces, to learn more about himself and his projects.

K: How did you start collecting NFTs?

S: I started in May of '21 when I was dabbling in shitcoins and learned about NFTs with functionality. I had been familiar with CryptoPunks but didn't really understand the thesis yet, but the idea of NFTs that could be burned or augmented was intriguing so I dove in. I quickly gravitated to the 1/1 art space as well, as I have some background as a painter and the language and personalities were familiar.

K: What makes you buy a particular piece? Is it your love of art or from an investment point or a mix of both?

S: I often notice a piece for aesthetic reasons, and will often buy 1 or 2 pieces for that reason, but when I really stack an artist's work it's as much about the artist as the art. Is there someone who has been doing this for a while? All else being equal, someone who has been doing this ten years is less likely to quit tomorrow than someone who has been at it a year. Are they effective self-promoters? There's a unique combination of shamelessness and tact, pride and self-doubt, that makes for the best (read: most successful) artists. Are they unafraid of 'oversupply'? Show me an all-time great artist with a tiny portfolio; you can't.

K: How has the NFT scene changed in the last few months? Do you see a different attitude from artists?

S: Last few months have seen a definite improvement in sentiments, mirrored by improved volume and even the occasional floor price.

K: You also have a museum,  the Central Hall of Schmrypto's Museum of Anthropogenic Crypto Art (SMOACA). What kind of art is exhibited there and how is the museum divided?

S: Currently SMOACA is exclusively human-made art; 1/1s in the Temple, editions in the Courtyard. I'm in the process of curating additional spaces for AI 1/1s and editions that will constitute a sister museum: Schmrypto's Museum of Electronic Generative Modern Art.

K: What piece can you not avoid looking at in the museum?

S: Too many to choose from, but if we're going only by a piece's power to hypnotize, then it's 'In Times Like These Just Don't' by @macomoroni

 K: You are also preparing a second museum dedicated to electronic generative art. Will this contain digital art that is not on-chain?

S: The AI/gen art museum I'm working on will only feature on-chain art, though I have distal plans for a physical museum to house my fairly large collection of vintage generative art from the mid-20th century.

K: When is this expected to open?

S: No expected dates yet, though I'm hoping to have the curation done on the new on-chain space in Q1, and we've got a lot of moving pieces in motion around the physical collection.

K: Are there any other plans you are working on?

S: I will mention that I have both a PFP project and a generative art project in the works that I think folks will enjoy, no hard dates on either but the PFP project is quite close.

K: Can you talk about the PFP project?

S: Sure, I don't want to give too much away before an official announcement, but I've worked with a very small team to put together a collection that I think people will really enjoy, with a drop mechanism we haven't really seen yet in the space. It's a project that mingles art and religion and nationalism in a way that's almost certain to get me some angry DMs, and they're SVGs, and that's about all I can say at this point. Very much a 'no roadmap, here for the art' sort of thing.

Nearly 2,000 units, starting price of about a dollar, and I'm bringing back the FOMO curve lol, one of the things I will get grumpy DMs about no doubt, but there's a method to my madness.

From DA we wish Schmrypto every success with his ventures.

The Rug

2023: The Year It Will Stay Mostly Where It Is

Brought to you by The Rug

Well after a long hard 2022, The Rug was happy to bring forth some not grainy JPG resolutions. Top ten list for 2023.

6. Make JPEGs great again
5. Start my own centralized crypto exchange with the motto, ‘Your keys, my crypto’

Collect this not so forward looking list as NFT on optimism.

Artist Profile: debrabdesign

by nonsense

Introduction

In Is Good Art Worth Minting on a Bad Blockchain, I discussed the setbacks in purchasing NFTs on unreliable blockchains. The primary motivating factor in producing the piece was addressing my dismay in discovering an incredible artist’s work released on the NFT platform Formfunction, which operates on the Solana blockchain. That artist is debrabdesign, whom we will refer to as Debra for the rest of this article, and that work is her F I E R C E series. Unwilling to be deterred in my desire to obtain a piece of her art, but also unwilling to purchase NFTs minted on Solana, I reached out to see if she had plans to release future work on a different blockchain. What resulted was a conversation around the work she’s completed, what she has planned, her idealogical rationale behind choosing Solana for her first series drop, and where she plans to turn to next.

Biography

As humans go, Debra is a complex human with many interests, though art has been a primary focus throughout most of her life. “I drew from as early as I can remember, but never ended up going to school for it,” she says of her interest.

During a recent Twitter Spaces event, Debra further opened up about her art influences and development. Growing up, her mother was very encouraging with regard to her art. While Debra didn’t go to school for drawing, she did spend time in class drawing caricatures of her teachers. She says of the process, “… creating characters, drawing emotion, is what I love the most.” Over the course of the conversation, she mentioned how much she loves Robin Hood, the kind of hero that gives back to the community. He’s the “best kind of hero,” she says.

When asked about her youth, she says, “I chose a different path back then, I studied music for a while, wanted to become a singer, travelled a ton working as a bartender on cruise ships, just to see the world.” Singing, it turns out, did not hold Debra’s attention the way drawing did. “I abandoned the singing career idea for ideological reasons and started drawing again … it felt amazing to express myself 'silently’.” She continued drawing and painting as a hobby while working as a bartender. This gave her the opportunity to develop her craft without having to rely on it to make a living. This changed, however, with the birth of her first child. She says,

when my first kid was born 5 years ago, I said to myself, I have to inspire this little person that she can do anything with her life when she grows up, I have to do something with my life that she will be proud of. So I started seriously working on a career as an artist. Got myself a drawing tablet and started freelancing, now here I am 5 years later dabbling in the NFT space … I want to see what I can achieve with my personal works.

Going all in on her art has brought her a number of commissioned opportunities, including work with the LazyLions and Wildcats NFT projects. In addition to these, Debra has released her first 1/1 NFT collection, F I E R C E, available on Formfunction, and has recently launched her second NFT collection, E L E M E N T S, on Foundation.

The story behind F I E R C E

To create F I E R C E, Debra used a mix of art, poetry, and quotations to convey a sense of strength and power in this series. When asked about the motivation underlying the creation of this collection, she says,

I had these sketches for years and only now I brought my favorites to life, and somehow they completed each other, like a puzzle. I dabble in many different styles and as a freelancer that's a bonus, but for a while I haven't felt like I truly know what my style is, until I dug up these old sketches, and voila. I kind of rediscovered myself with this series, and that's what really empowered me and inspired the theme.

Words contribute to each piece, adding the final touch that allows them to step fully into themselves: “I have an idea of what I want to express with a certain piece, but as I draw it evolves more. Once it's finished, I add the words, to make it complete.”

F I E R C E is a five piece set of 1/1 NFTs, four of which are still available on Formfunction.xyz.

The Environmental Dilemma of Producing Art on the Blockchain

Formfunction.xyz is an NFT platform that operates on the Solana blockchain, and finding Debra’s work on this platform inspired the op-ed mentioned at the beginning of this article. Debra had this to say when asked about her decision to mint her work on Solana: 

I researched a lot on which Blockchains are environmentally friendly as it is very important to me. It breaks my heart to see what we've done to our planet in just the last 100 years. And it never feels enough to just recycle, go zero plastic or eat vegan, you know... I get very emotional thinking about what kind of world my kids will live in when they grow up. Tezos was my other choice, but I really didn't know much about it, and wanted to reach a wider audience with my art … I believed I could better do with Solana.

Environmental considerations are one of a few issues preventing many artists from adopting blockchain technology and producing decentralized art. And while this may not be the de facto reason an artist chooses not to participate in web3, it is a main concern among many artists. The vitriol with which traditional artists approach web3 aside, environmental concerns are warranted as we, collectively as a human species, continue to recognize the debilitating changes occurring on our planet as a result of our technological advances.

With the advent of Bitcoin, it seemed that there was little to be done about the concerns of environmental impact with regard to blockchain technology. Bitcoin operates on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which focuses on energy consumption through processor-intensive computation that unlock blocks on the blockchain. Rather than seek to address the environmental impact incurred by mining bitcoin, the Bitcoin community doubled down on PoW. In 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto addressed these concerns, stating:

It's the same situation as gold and gold mining.  The marginal cost of gold mining tends to stay near the price of gold.  Gold mining is a waste, but that waste is far less than the utility of having gold available as a medium of exchange.

I think the case will be the same for Bitcoin.  The utility of the exchanges made possible by Bitcoin will far exceed the cost of electricity used.  Therefore, not having Bitcoin would be the net waste.

Other blockchains followed suit, as creators forked Bitcoin to modify the code to suit their desires or created new blockchains from scratch. However, the environmental concerns weren’t going away, and a new solution was needed if blockchain technology was going to see mass adoption. As a response, the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism was developed, minimizing the level of energy consumption when compared to PoW blockchains. The first PoS blockchain was born in 2012 with Peercoin, according to the Motley Fool. Other PoS blockchains soon followed.

Ethereum operated as a PoW blockchain since its inception, only recently making the switch to PoS after two years of focused transitional work. Making the transition from PoW to PoS was no simple task. According to DefiLlama, Ethereum holds just over 100 billion USD in total value locked (TVL), including stablecoins. That’s a fuck ton of value to lose if things go wrong in the transition. To address the challenge, the Ethereum community developed the Beacon chain, which was a PoS version of Ethereum, and carefully integrated the Beacon chain into the Ethereum ecosystem, eventually replacing and becoming the main chain in what is now popularly referred to as “The Merge.”

The Merge, while being no simple matter in terms of operation, is also no simple matter in terms of its environmental impact. Decrypt reports that the Merge reduces Ethereum’s environmental impact dramatically, potentially making the blockchain up to 99% more energy efficient than its prior PoW instance. Artists looking for a home in web3, and deeply concerned about environmental impact, now have many more options and far more exposure to collectors with Ethereum operating as a PoS blockchain.

With the Merge complete, Debra had more options on where to release her next collection, E L E M E N T S. She’s found a new home on Foundation. And the timing couldn’t be more perfect: E L E M E N T S is a collection focused around awareness of the current climate dilemma.

E L E M E N T S

As the name implies, E L E M E N T S represents the four main elements of the Earth: fire, water, air, and earth. The underlying theme speaks to climate crisis and how we ought to be more mindful about our daily activities with regard to our own individual impact:

So I was reading the news a few months ago about all the floods, and what are they [sic] predicting for 2050, what cities will be disappearing under water if we don't do something about climate change … and then this picture flashed before me, that I will not be able to take my kids there when they grow up, or show them those places, and my mind just got so dark thinking about all these things, I really got emotional. … And what if my family was the one forced out of our home due to those floods and extreme weather conditions. And it does get really hopeless when you think about it, because as an individual there is only so much I can do to lower my carbon footprint or have any kind of impact in what the future will look like for this planet.

Debra’s concerns are valid, particular the consideration of the extent of our influence as individuals. However, it takes the effort of every one of us as individuals to enact the kind of change we want to see. Debra’s message with this collection is similar to that of her F I E R C E: each one of us are empowered to make a difference, regardless of how big that difference is.

My most peaceful moments in life (I guess peaceful is not the right word, more like recharging, refreshing, empowering) were always the ones I had just between me and nature. Walking, running, sitting under a tree sketching while the wind blows my hair around. And I'm sure we all have that special connection to nature. … This will be kind of the statement for the collection: Nature can live without us, WE cannot survive without her!

This idea that we cannot live without nature is not new, though it doesn’t seem to be widely accepted. Charles Eisenstein discusses this at length in his Ascent of Humanity, where he explores how we have developed our societies around the idea of Us vs. Nature, and argues this will prove to be destructive for both Nature AND Us. And the reality is, we’re seeing that now. Debra addresses tumultuous changes seasons have taken, saying, “I live in Athens, Greece at the moment, and the summer this year was so crazy that sometimes it was dangerous to go outside—of course not just here—and it didn't snow here for decades and now the winter has meter high snows, so seeing it on a daily basis is eye opening as well.”

This falls in line with Debra’s drawing practices. While she does strong commissioned work, as seen by her work with LazyLions and Wildcats, her independent collections take a far different approach:

It is one thing to work as a freelance illustrator and another to create art that comes from the heart. When I draw for myself, I want it to have meaning, not just draw a pretty picture people will say, 'oh that looks nice' to. I wish that it will make someone think, maybe take there [sic] thoughts or imaginations to a different level, inspire them somehow. And then that comes down to, what drives me, what fuels me, what motivates me. 

As a result, E L E M E N T S is steeped in meaning. The collection is comprised of 6 1/1 pieces, and 2 high quality gifs, each representing one of the four elements.

As mentioned above, Debra is now on Foundation, and this is where you can find the E L E M E N T S collection. This is breakthrough in a number of ways. First of all, debrabdesign’s work is now available on a blockchain that celebrates consistent up-time, compared to her work on that other blockchain. And second of all, she’s producing work on a blockchain that now aligns with her art, passion, and motivations. Dive in to her art, pick up one of her pieces if they speak to you, then ask yourself: what other ways can you address minimizing your own carbon footprint? What are some small changes you can make day-to-day that will be beneficial for our environment?

d’Art Drops

Introducing weekly NFT art drops for the Bankless community, brought to you by Decentralized Arts.

Every four weeks, DA will be dropping art in collaboration with an NFT artist: one new piece will be featured each week and made available during the BanklessDAO Community Call, for a collection of four pieces per artist. Pieces will be available in editions of 100 for .02 ETH, with 10% of sales returned to the DAO. Pricing is subject to change as we progress through the drops and find the sweet spot to support the artists we feature while making these accessible to our community. Keep an eye on this space, as we’ll be releasing each week’s alpha.

For the next four weeks, we’ll be featuring work by the talented debrabdesign. This week’s drop, “Bloom,” is a perspective of the damage done by the current financial system and what a bankless world may come to mean. The piece is mixed media, including elements of photography and digital art. Attend the BanklessDAO community call this week for announcement of the drop:

Chippi Corner

By Perchy

MINUTES OF PLURITIME

by DustyEye

For those who have specific questions about the Pluritime concept and the possibility of moving within its infinite narrative corridors, 888 numbered tickets are available.

Each contains 16 minutes of storytelling. Once used, it will be duly signed and stamped.

At the launch price of 50 Ukron at Art Mall, via Torino 64, Milan (or ping Decentralized Arts on Twitter)

______________________

WEB: www.DustyEye.com
IG: @DustyEye_DE
TWITTER: @Dusty_Eye

Meme

A small joke contributed by The Rug.

PostScript & Acknowledgements

Decentralized Arts is written and produced by a small team of contributors who are passionate about art, both visual and written, and its growing place in crypto and NFTs. With each edition, we aim to bring you not only the most current and relevant news in the NFT space, but also explorations in what it means for our culture and societies for this market to continue to grow and expand. When everyone is an owner of art, we all gain a deeper appreciation for it.

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please share it with someone who you think will appreciate the content. We also welcome suggestions via our feedback form.

With great appreciation for you, we thank you for reading and subscribing to Decentralized Arts.

Cordially,

Grendel, Kouros, Kaf, nonsensetwice, and Frank America