Art Blocks & The Hunt For A Metaverse Picasso

NFT / Gaming · SEP 3RD, 2021

Jayden Andrew

Art Chromie Elevated

Archetype Art Fidenza
Blocks Squiggles Deconstructions

NFT / Gaming Ringers Subscapes Unigrids

DISCLOSURE: MEMBERS OF OUR TEAM HOLD ART BLOCKS NFTS SUCH AS

SQUIGGLES. THIS STATEMENT IS INTENDED TO DISCLOSE ANY CONFLICT OF
INTEREST AND SHOULD NOT BE MISCONSTRUED AS A RECOMMENDATION TO
PURCHASE ANY TOKEN. THIS CONTENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES
ONLY AND YOU SHOULD NOT MAKE DECISIONS BASED SOLELY ON IT. THIS IS
NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE.
Key Takeaways

Art Blocks sales have gone from virtually nil at the start of the summer to
regularly clearing days with 10,000 ETH of volume in the final weeks of
August.
Art Blocks collections fit into 3 categories – Curated, Playground and
Factory. Curated collections have consistently accounted for the majority of
total sales volume and their pieces have set record high prices. Fidenza,
Chromie Squiggle, and Ringers are the top curated collections by volume.
Last week, Three Arrows Capital purchased Ringers #879 for 1800 ETH,
making it the highest recorded sale of an Art Blocks piece to date. They also
purchased Fidenza #313 only a week prior for 1000 ETH.
Despite Art Blocks cementing itself as a premier platform in the NFT art
market, it’s starting to show signs of being over-heated. Soaring valuations,
people spending thousands of dollars in gas to mint a single piece, and
numerous listings on OpenSea selling at break even or for a sizable loss are
all indicators worth paying attention to.

Art Blocks is a generative art platform. Recently, it’s been making headlines with
some jaw-dropping sales, like the 1800 ETH sale of Ringers #879 to investors
Three Arrows Capital. Art Blocks gives creatives the opportunity to release their
generative art projects to a community of avid art and NFT enthusiasts. Not only
that, Art Blocks helps to facilitate a unique experience between artist and
collector, by allowing the latter to participate in the art generation process.

In recent weeks, Art Blocks has undergone an explosion of growth, buoyed by

the increased interest in the NFT market as a whole. In this report, we’ll
contextualize this growth and explore the top collections helping to drive it.

Art Blocks sales have gone from virtually nil at the start of the summer to regularly
clearing days with 10,000 ETH of volume in the final weeks of August. As seen in
the chart above, total volume can be broken up by and attributed to the three
types of collections – Curated, Playground and Factory.

Curated – Selected by the Art Blocks curation board. The purpose of the
curated category is to create a collection of art that best represents the
vision of Art Blocks. Total size and value of curated projects is tied to the
user base. This allows newcomers to participate in new releases as the Art
Blocks platform expands over time. Curated projects have an added layer
of scarcity when it comes to supply. The maximum number of full sets is
determined by the smallest collection.
Playground – Playground allows for more artistic freedom. The projects are
not curated and are not included in the “official” Art blocks collection.
Playground is not a free-for-all though. It’s limited to artists who have
contributed to the Curated category. An additional requirement is that
artists must only have one project on the go at a time. Furthermore, if an
 artist changes their project’s advertised supply, they are disqualified from
releasing another Playground project until they have successfully gone
through the curation process.
Factory – Unlike Curated and Playground collections, the Factory category
allows artists who do not want to go through the curation process to release
their art on the platform. These projects still embody the same Art Blocks
creativity and innovation you will find in the other categories, but with less
stringent rules for the artists to follow.

Curated collections have consistently accounted for the majority of daily sales
volumes over time, when compared to Playground and Factory projects. Beyond
total volume, this point also holds true when looking at the top 100 Art Block
sales by type, as seen below. It’s worth highlighting the X axis on that chart.
Notably, that all of the top 100 sales have taken place in the past month.

Curated Art Blocks projects are clearly the most sought after type at the moment
according to marketplace data. With this in mind, let’s remove the Playground
and Factory types from the chart above, to zoom in on the Curated collections
attaining these lofty values.
The recent sale of Ringers #879 for 1800 ETH marked the highest Art Blocks sale
of all time. The piece was purchased by Three Arrows Capital, adding to their
already impressive NFT collection. This Ringers sale proceeded another all time
high purchase of Fidenza #313 only a week prior, selling for 1000 ETH to the
same investors.

Fidenza, Chromie Squiggle and Ringers take the top spots in terms of total sales
volume. The fact Fidenza leads total sales is made even more impressive when
you consider the relative recency of its launch compared to the others (i.e. this
summer vs ~Q1 2021). Now, we would be remiss to talk about these collections
without giving you a preview of what they actually look like. This is a post about
art after all. Let’s dive into those top collections to discuss what makes them
appealing in the eyes of speculators and art connoisseurs.

Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs is the first significant collection in which every individual
piece can be perceived as a highly sought after work of art. It has unique
aesthetic appeal and a high degree of complexity. The project has even caught
the eye of investors such as Zhu Su of Three Arrows Capital, if you recall the
1,000 ETH purchase mentioned earlier. Fidenza has gone from an average mint
price of 0.193 ETH, to a 25 day average sale price of over 250 ETH in a relatively
short span of time.
Chromie Squiggle, arguably the most recognizable Art Blocks project. It was
created by Snowfro, the founder of Art Blocks, and is collection #0. Chromie
Squiggle is, in the words of Snowfro, “Simple and easily identifiable, each
squiggle embodies the soul of the Art Blocks platform. Consider each my
personal signature as an artist, developer, and tinkerer.” It embodies the idea that
there is beauty in simplicity. Chromie Squiggles have gone from an average mint
price of only 0.045 ETH, to a current 25 day average sale price of ~20 ETH, having
recently seen a high of over 40 ETH. Importantly, Chromie Squiggles do have the
largest supply of the collections in focus, with a max supply of 10,000 relative to
the sub-1000 NFT supplies of the others.

Dmitri describes Ringers as an idea that stemmed from his curiosity of the many
different ways a string could wrap around an assortment of pegs. There are more
possible configurations than the number of atoms in the universe, yet only 1,000
exist. Ringers was the first project with that many permutations. The simultaneous
simplicity and endless possibility of Ringers is what captivated the art
community. Ringers has gone from an average mint price of 0.16 ETH, to a
current 25 day average sale price of over 250 ETH.
Kjetil Golid’s Archetype imbues the randomness inherent in generative art, with
the use of structured repetitive patterns. It strikes a balance between chaos and
order. Archetype has gone from an average mint price of 0.264 ETH, to a current
25 day average sale price just north of 60 ETH.

The final collection in our spotlight, Subscapes, answers the question – “what if
3D landscapes were art?”. In terms of valuations, the project has climbed from an
average mint price of 0.241 ETH, to a current 25 day average sale price of over
~70 ETH.
Closing Thoughts

Despite Art Blocks cementing itself as a premier platform in the NFT art market,
it’s starting to show signs of being over-heated. Soaring valuations, people
spending thousands of dollars in gas to mint a single piece, and numerous listings
on OpenSea selling at break even or for a sizable loss are all indicators worth
paying attention to. Speculators in crypto are used to riding the price
rollercoaster but it remains to be seen how these assets would fair in a serious
downturn, given the impact non-fungibility could have on liquidity. On the other
hand, long-term oriented collectors who genuinely appreciate the art may be
unfazed if a near-term pullback were to occur. They weren’t planning on selling
this soon anyway.

As the first generative art platform to gain significant attention in both the crypto
and art worlds, it isn’t far fetched to say – Art Blocks is here to stay. Whether or
not that Fidenza you mortgaged your house to buy has staying power though is
anyone’s guess. In the future, will people look back on these collections with
reverence the same way we do works of art from the renaissance? Or will they
simply be one of many on-chain artifacts forgotten by the collective metaverse
mindshare?