Art x Blockchain — Digitally Created Scarcity is Boring.

[An Open Letter to Digital Artists, new to the Ethereum Ecosystem]

If your only selling proposition is that you are providing exclusive ownership [NFTs] via blockchain transaction ledger, I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.

Please Consider the Following:

Who is buying your memes on Memefactory.io?

When you upload unique High Resolution work to Opensea, MakersPlace, KnownOrigin, or even create your own shop on Pixura — where is that buyer traffic being directed from?

The majority of that traffic is internal, within the blockchain community.

Artists are also flooding social media channels with a lower resolution files of that same image. Many new explorers of this space appear to be relying on High Resolution and Digital Scarcity, and Novelty.

Everybody sees it, but only you own it.

Boring.

KYC Registration, Expensive Mistakes on Coinbase, Purchasing ETH, and then transfering into a Metamask wallet are a daunting prospect for new adopters — even after watching the latest PBS Special on NFTs.

Your customers are most likely, the people who already went through the onboarding process, and figured out that they can collect the Kitties and Punks, which have come to represent the pioneering of a new Technology.

People want a souvenir.

But why should they want YOUR souvenir?

What unique value are you offering that is only accessible to people who own your Tokenized Art Asset?

What form of connection, prestige, challenge, education or experience are you offering to people who buy into your NFT that sets its value above and beyond a certificate of authenticity?

How do we attract new people into this space, so that they are excited about a legitimate creative business application of blockchain technology in addition to speculative investing?

Something with a bit more depth than the number of tokens you decided to mint when you created your latest meme.

.:.

Meet 0x-Chan — an anthropomorphic representation of the Ethereum Blockchain.

0x-Chan

Here are 10 reasons why 0x-Chan is more interesting than your latest digitally scarce meme:

Sex and Nudity is awesome.

I’m an NSFW artist, so I paint naked bodies, and sex comics. I was under the impression that the blockchain community took pride in its resistance to censorship, but I’m seeing precious little NSFW art in this space. Art is my primary skill focus.

There are some incredible artists [both NSFW and SFW] out there who are going to come into this space and make your pixel punks and pepe memes look outdated. Right now, this space is dominated by anarcho-hackers, speculative investors, and entrepreneurs. You need more artists. 0x-Chan is part of a Larger Cultural Reservoir.

The kitties and punks managed to create their own cultural reservoir, and memefactory is busy trying to hump the Pepes, Elons and Yangs. 0x-Chan is joining the ranks of the other Crypto-Waifus, in the same format of previous anthropomorphized characters. 0x-Chan is Decentralized in Design.

What if your skin color, hair style, accessories, personality, body type, imagination is different than mine?

I think your Ethereum OC ought to be able to look different than mine as well. 0x-Chan doesn’t have a canon appearance yet, so that means clients and artists can each contribute to the collective of character designs that fall within the 0x-Chan Classification. 0x-Chan is Open Source. [Creative Commons INTL 4.0]

This means that companies and people and collectors and artists are all free to use these designs, build upon them, and share with one another, and create value with them in commercial projects — provided they share an attribution link from the artist whose work they are using.

I love the Creative Commons experiment, and I’m interested in seeing how this plays out as more value is created within the commons. A lot of projects are doing incredibly inspiring things within the commons in the blockchain communities and I want #SEXPOP and 0x-Chan to contribute toward that culture. Each 0x-Chan Design that I produce will be assigned a Unique NFT, using #SEXPOP Tokens.

If you’re interested in owning the name of your tokens, as well as your artwork, I’d recommend exploring Pixura, as they enable you to mint your own ERC-721 tokens within your own project name. I believe Mintable also allows you to define your own token names, though I believe that Pixura has a more unified and independent approach.

When you use projects like Memefactory.io or MakersPlace, you will be minting tokens within their project umbrella.

You’ll need to experiment with the functionality that each system presents. But as far as securing one of a kind digital value for my 1/1 character tokens, I will be using #SEXPOP on Pixura. 0x-Chan will be a character in an original comic series that explores Cryptocurrency projects within a Cyberpunk Sex Comic.

The project will be called HODL Me, and one of the first interactions I see happening is between 0x-Chan and Golem ❤. Ought to be a fun way to promote and educate about projects that I find compelling while providing an outlet for research that I’m already doing on these projects. 0x-Chan #SEXPOP Token Holders will be able to commission 1–3 page sex comics from me.

These comics will be based on the theme [Halloween Witches! Etc.] or the Cryptocurrency I am exploring for that campaign. So, when I announce a theme that tickles your fancy, you can commission a 1–3 page comic where your original character can perform on the stage of a brief comic.

Each of these comics will be collected and released in mini-thematic anthologies. — So, all of the HODL Me: Golem projects will be released together, and all of the Witchy Halloween Projects will be released together as well. Other artists will be able to contribute to both the pool of Original Character Designs, and to receive comic commissions using 0x-Chan Designs, due to the CCBY4.0 Licensing.

I started a NSFW Comics Art Collective using the Colony.io dApp. That collective is called #SEXPOP.

Artists who join #SEXPOP will be supported within a collective environment, and we can all build these characters and comics together.

The consequence of this will be more community among all members and clients / audience members within the collective. Collectors will be able to trade with other Collectors, or join forces for collaborative, multi-partner comic commissions.

Meaning, if you and your IRL Partner want to each get an avatar, and then have me paint a comic of them fucking, we can totally do that. I didn’t have to know how to Code in order to design this system. This isn’t just an idea of mine — It’s happening right now.

Design your own 0x-Chan Here.

[Current Experiment ends on Sept 16th 2019.]

I wanted to share this information with you to promote my latest campaign, but in addition to that, I wanted to compile a portion of my research and conclusions into a single post to share with the other artists who are potentially exploring the possibilities of the Blockchain Space.

This article is already long enough, but if you want to discuss collaboration or if you think I missed something, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for reading — hope you found the collection of materials and ideas to be useful.

Kyle Jacobs [Root]

http://patreon.com/rootdraws

email: rootdraws@gmail.com