I've been a frequent user of all the individual networks across the Optimism Superchain since their genesis blocks. I support the individual teams thereabouts. This is a genuinely well-meaning exploration—a short thought piece at best.
A Brief
I am usually a frequent user of all the emergent tech-stack both as
an artist with two decades in practice
an indie protocol researcher with a lowercase
rmainly focusing on the fee markets design, blockspace mechanisms, and orderflowa frequent DEX trader
a nerd into topics such as decentralized science (DeSci), new governance, and privacy by design
State of the Room
I occasionally get airdrops, too. A few previous airdrops have helped me pursue an autodidact career up until this block.
Since I am surrounded by many creatives who in actual have done considerable work in the realm of expanded art across crypto-economics-enabled ownership economies through new modes of art markets; I have also been constantly exchanging information regarding especially the economics side of the markets especially through late 2022 up to-day.
Many of these figures have recently been having hard times making the ends, except few commissions by ecosystem brands, and protocols; or, an unexpected secondary sale during times of narrative volatilities.
Let me tell you something: They always ask about any "alpha" regarding especially the DeFi layer, for they have long stopped hoping, or even at times caring, about the art markets with an onchain provenance—some even have lost the connection with their social graphs due to algorithmic Boötes of behavioral markets.
This is easy to discern if you keep reading the X posts by otherwise well-performing artists, too.
They are either pushed to extreme avant-garde infrastructure design by the charm of which only a handful intrigued well-doing—not even well-off—investors would be allured; or choose the bloated flow of low effort memetics projects which literally eat artists alive—hence, many of them are also working as designers yet have you recently checked any crypto-related UI?
A few fat protocols incentivizes well—yet 99% do not. Hence, we have clunky UI which claims to be better than perfectly working former UIs of protocols. You can
Overall, majority of artists' onchain gas expenditure when it comes rollups were at all times low especially during the year of 2023. Even I who frequently use these rollups could not burn that much ether thereabouts—either directly or via the collections that my address was the creator/ deployer of—because of a) the inability to access onchain money, b) groceries came first, c) it is so cheap there you would need to be minting serially/
I am a serial minter as a writer, artist, collector, and trader.
Optimism Airdrop Round 4
I was a recipient of OP tokens at the first two rounds, too:
Round 1: ~4K OP
Round 2: ~3
I have never been able to thank the teams though. Now that we share a common builder-oriented platform on Warpcast, I'd like to thank you all.
For reasons aforementioned, I was able to receive ~160 OP, having met the entire set of criteria. I understand that my gas expenditure was low, and I accept it, and it was a nice gesture overall to the mainly overlooked artist class who helped the markets re-invent themselves in 2021 and 2022 all the whilst contributing to the onchain cultural evolution.
However, I wonder about how many artists have been allocated in the 3K-6K OP range in this round. It is because I have been hearing from artists that they have indeed gotten low allocations because of the reasons abovementioned where I also keep encountering notable figures within influencer clusters randing from airdrop farming strategy alpha channel owners to others.
Now, I am yet to delve into an analysis of the addresses just to understand a few niché questions which I need to be answer for myself but I also wonder how well artists made today.
Hence, I created a simple Farcaster no-code poll frame over Supercast which I shared to the /art channel. I am leaving the Warpcast link below with a link to Supercast poll creation URL—please give honest feedback here:
