Blockchain-based generative art is a major and important new art movement
On his LinkedIn page, Erick Calderon is still listed as the president of La Nova Tile Importers, which is "family owned and operated" and imports porcelain and ceramic tiles and slabs. In many ways, Calderon is still in the tile business, but now he uses code instead of clay to express his creativity, and his designs aren't in kitchens or offices, but in crypto wallets and virtual galleries in the metaverse. In 2022, Calderon's company, Art Blocks, made blockchain-based generative art a major and important new art movement. So far this year, both old and new collectors have spent more than $172 million on primary sales, and generative art is being shown in some of the best auction houses and galleries in the world. Also, many of the best Art Blocks projects have gone against the general trend that non-fungible tokens (NFT) aren't doing well and are getting cheaper. Some of the best investments in the NFT ecosystem have been Art Blocks drops in 2022. Profile picture (PFP) projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Doodles, and Moonbirds have seen their floor prices drop from their recent highs.
Snowfro is the artist name of Erick Calderon
Erick "Snowfro" Calderon has spent a lot of time on Art Blocks. Calderon learned to code when he was seven years old, and he has wanted to start his own business since he was in college. His artist name, "Snowfro," came from a college friend who gave it to him because of his distinctive hairstyle and the fact that he was starting a Snow Cone business at the University of Texas, which later became SnowFro Refreshments. Calderon got interested in the blockchain while he was running his tile business. He started with Bitcoin and then moved on to Ethereum, where he taught himself how to write smart contracts. In 2017, he saw a post on Reddit about a new project called CryptoPunks and started making a lot of Punks. As he looked into what made the 24-inch-by-24-inch pixel portraits so rare and how smart contracts let both the person who made the work and the person who sold it have a stake in it, the idea for Art Blocks came to him.
Art Blocks allows coders to create and sell their works directly to collectors
If you're not familiar with non-fungible tokens (NFT), you should know that Calderon's company, Art Blocks, which he started and runs as CEO, is a pretty big deal. On both the primary and secondary markets, Art Blocks art has sold for more than $1.4 billion, and it has been at the center of the recent generative art movement. An algorithm is what makes generative art. Even though the artists decide on the shapes, style, and color palette, the outputs are made to be unpredictable. This is what makes each version unique. Even though generative art has been around for a long time, the Art Blocks platform gives coders a place to make and sell their works directly to collectors. The number of people using the platform has grown a lot since it started two years ago.
Snowfro is one of the most well-known artists on Art Blocks. One of his 9,700 unique Chromie Squiggles would cost around $15,000 at the prices that are in place now. Chromie Squiggle #4697, which has very rare traits, was bought by a collector for almost $3 million in September 2021. Not a bad return on the collector's initial investment of 0.035 ETH, which was about $23 at the time. Snowfro isn't the only artist from Art Blocks whose work has sold for huge amounts of money. In October, Dmitri Cherniak's Ringers #109 sold for $7 million, and a number of Tyler Hobbs's Fidenza series sold for more than $700,000. When asked why generative art is so popular among crypto people, Calderon says, "I didn't expect it to be so native, it was such a niche thing. It was hard to imagine this product-market fit or this way of distributing things, where an artist can sell something to 1,000 unique people in five minutes. I didn't expect that many people to want it." Calderon said, "I didn't realize it might be the most compatible form of art on the blockchain until 100,000 smart contract tokens were made."
Art Blocks and Calderon are firmly on the side of the artist
Most of the talk about NFT in 2022 has been about artist royalties and whether buyers should be able to avoid them. Art Blocks and Calderon are firmly on the artist's side. "It's great that this way for artists to get their music out there has been found," he said. "We have a community of artists who are doing well and can quit their jobs to focus on art full-time. You also have collectors who buy art and can make money based on how good their eye is." Only Yuga Labs has paid artists more royalties than Art Blocks, which is over $82 million.
What gets Calderon excited about 2023? He wants to keep working toward the goal of making a place where artists and collectors can meet. Calderon said, "I can't say for sure what the future holds, but it seems like art can be a little less tied to the usual crypto macro. It was great to see that we had already broken free from the crypto macro. We were able to do this because we had a clear idea of what we wanted, which was to sell art, support artists, and connect with collectors in a way that this technology makes possible and does so very well. Art Blocks has also released Art Blocks Engine, which is a "white-labeled" back-end that lets creators, partners, and brands use NFTs to connect with their communities more deeply.
Selena Mattei