In 2017, John Watkinson and Matt Hall developed a random pixelated character generator. Enthusiastic about the blockchain and its characters, they released 10,000 into the world. These quirky characters became known as CryptoPunks. Collectors snagged them up creating a community of collectors.
To get one, they simply needed to pay a gas fee, literally pennies at the time, on the Ethereum blockchain. This fee incentivizes computers to process and validate the transactions. As Blockchain art became more and more popular, these CryptoPunks gained value.
Now if you want to get your hands on a CryptoPunk, you’d need to dish out more than 27 ETH (> $58, 000 as of April 28th). In their lifetime, CryptoPunks generated more than $400 million in sales. CryptoPunks is one of the earliest successful Non-FungibleTokens (NFTs). These are tokens on the blockchain that are unique. Basically, no two tokens are alike.
As we can see from the popularity of marketplaces like OpenSea and NBA TopShot, unique collectibles are in hot demand. I was introduced to the wonderful world of generative art through Kevin Rose’s Modern Finance podcast. Each piece of generative art is a piece of code or an algorithm.
When you pay the gas fees, they mint one iteration of the code. This means that you get a brand new, unique piece of 3-D art. There’s no limit to the creativity of these sets. Some artists have taken to creating unique beats, images, or even planets. Yes, planets.
Imagine you could directly pay an artist to create a unique piece of art. When you look to buy generative art, you don’t see the piece that you’ll buy. You see a short text description from the author and you view previous creations.
The generative art isn’t created until you click a button to mint a new piece. Think of it like commissioning an artist to create a picture or song for you. Except the art is almost immediately generated for you to own and interact with.
The art is created from a set of programmed instructions. These instructions will run, randomizing variables and creating a unique piece. While CryptoPunks were 2-D pixelated characters, generative art can be anything. Each time you mint an object, the blockchain creates a seed. This is an immutable has a hexadecimal hash string. The letters and numbers in these strings will determine different features of the generative art.
Galaxiss generates planets by creating different terrains, biomes and clouds. Each planet comes with a plane. You can toggle and view the world as someone on this virtual plane would. These 3-D worlds allow you to interact with them and explore them. Other projects generate unique music or beats. You can simply connect your MetaMask wallet on Art Blocks and mint your very own planet!
Imagination is the limit for generative art. I minted a planet through Galaxiss on the Art Blocks platform. Art Blocks curates different artists, like a gallery. When you pay the gas fee to mint an NFT, it creates an ERC721-compliant NFT. You can store your new art piece on MetaMask, like other Ethereum tokens. You can also list it on a marketplace like OpenSea.
How do we price art? Often, how much people want to pay for it determines the price. I see it as a way to diversify my Ethereum investments (and also own a planet). If you like a piece of art, you like the artist and its platform, why not buy it?
Other aspects of each type of generative art also control its rarity. For example, some of the planets created on Galaxiss have rare features (i.e. helicopters). In CryptoPunks, some attributes are part of their subset, like the Zombie Punks. All these factors further affect the price of your art.
Though CryptoPunks skyrocketed in value, we can’t predict with other generative art will follow the same course. What is promising is a whole host of open-world games being created on the Blockchain. Many of these games will allow you to buy NFTs to use in-game and between games. Some of these worlds are even selling land that the owners can later monetize.
Like other early forms of technology, aspects of blockchain mining are resource-intensive. However, Art Blocks has taken the initiative to use a ‘proof of stake’ rather than a ‘proof of work’ system. Miners are rewarded with transaction fees rather than block rewards. This means it’s a lot less computationally intensive.
Art Blocks is also aware that in the future, we will be generating more and more blockchain art. They emphasize how they will continue operating sustainably in the future:
Art Blocks has started building a portfolio of carbon offset initiatives that will allow is to help lessen the negative impacts our technology is having on our planet now, but our intention is to make it part of our culture and continue to regularly retire carbon credits even after Ethereum transitions to a purely proof of stake validation model.
Not only do you support an awesome artist, but you also support an eco-conscious platform.
Coinsmart. Beste Bitcoin-Börse in Europa
Source: https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-i-bought-a-planet-on-the-blockchain-e2698de4adbb?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency