In the late eighteenth century across Western Europe, an exciting new phenomenon was sweeping the land - Musikalisches Wurfelspiel - musical dice games. Composers would create several short musical pieces, which would each be numbered individually. Then, the players of the game, not composers themselves but upper-middle class enjoyers of the arts, would roll dice to determine the order in which the composition would be played back. Maybe a 2-6-1, or a 3-3-2. The resulting novel works were created by an independent system that used the artist’s work, but that the players of the game actually executed. This pleased the artist, whose work was extended and modified, giving it new life, as well as the players of the game who fancied themselves as co-creators of the works. This is one of the earliest examples of generative arts - loosely defined as an automated system created by an artist that outputs unique work.
It wasn’t until the advent of computers in the 1960s that pioneering artists such as Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnar first brought generative systems to the visual medium - writing computer code that created unpredictable outputs based on the inputs provided.
Computers making pictures - is that art? Well, are charcoal cave drawings art? Is painting art? Is photography art? Are digital assets art? In short, yes. Art is art. The tools used to create it don’t matter for work to be defined as art. And generative art is no different - artists / programmers / whoever wants to, they build a system that generates work based on certain parameters that they have developed and fine-tuned over months, years or even decades.
In the summer of 2021, generative art on the Ethereum blockchain was growing in popularity, and one set in particular was gaining notoriety. Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza, a set of 999 unique generative art NFTs was undergoing price discovery. Originally, the project minted (sold out) at 0.17 ETH (appx $425 at the time) about 15 minutes after the project went on sale on June 11th, 2021. Previous drops on the Art Blocks platform, where Fidenza was created, had an average mint price of 0.1 ETH, but due to increasing demand for Art Blocks pieces, including from collectors, flippers and botters, the price was potentially set higher to try and filter out the profit-first buyers. Some early collectors balked at the relatively high mint price.
The NFT market was heating up, and earlier drops on Art Blocks were increasing in price on the secondary market. This was driven primarily by early speculators buying the pieces on secondary and instantly re-listing them at higher prices. To be clear, there were also more collectors coming on board, those who appreciated the art, the artist, the tech, or the community, but they were usually outnumbered by the flippers (crypto investors, online gamblers, sneaker heads, etc). Of course, these labels are not absolute - some collectors turned into flippers and some flippers turned into collectors - “come for the flip, stay for the art” was a common refrain in the Discord.
Over the next few weeks after launch, Fidenza gained in popularity - collectors started to develop some consensus that the art was “good” - visually appealing, a diverse algorithm that created almost 1,000 unique outputs that held their cohesion as a set, appreciation for Hobbs, his exploration of this style over the years, as well as his other previous work, etc. Flippers also enjoyed early success. Works minted at 0.17 ETH were flipped for 0.4 ETH (100% gain!), then flipped again for 1-2 ETH and so on. Word was getting out that the project was successful.
By mid-July 2021, there were standing 11 ETH bids on all Fidenzas, meaning that someone was willing to pay 11 ETH (about $25k at the time) for any one piece, but sales had slowed at that price. Owners were holding out for 15 ETH and up, depending on the quality / rarity / aesthetics of their piece. Some people were flooring their pieces - listing at the lowest for sale price in order to sell the artwork and cash out (sorry, “acquire liquidity”). Others were listing at vanity prices - numbers so high that they never intended it to sell, but they wanted the market to know how they valued the work. The listing feed in the Art Blocks Discord, which showed all of the pieces being put up for sale, was a great place to see prices coming in in real time.
And that’s what I was doing during my lunch break on July 21st - eating a sandwich in my home office, watching the listing feed when something strange popped up:
Prices were all over the map, so nothing had surprised me thus far. But this listing was clearly….something. A rare “White Mono” Fidenza for 5eth (White Mono simply means there is white & one other color - only 37 out of the 999 pieces have this trait).
This was a wonderful Fidenza.
This listing was for 5eth.
There were standing bids on all Fidenzas for 11eth.
The floor price was 15eth.
I couldn’t buy it fast enough.
Surprisingly, I had some ETH in my wallet - a situation I rarely found myself in. I clicked the link in the listing feed extra hard, as if that would speed things up. I had to grab it before someone else did. I hammered the buy button on OpenSea and turned the gas all the way up (gas is the fee that goes to the validator for performing & prioritizing transactions). The system started spinning, and I held my breath. Then, I got the confirmation that the transaction had gone through. I had secured this beautiful piece, fairly, on the open market at a very discounted price. A steal.
My heart was pounding - the adrenaline was definitely pumping. I still couldn’t believe that that had happened. I headed to the one place where I knew my reality would be confirmed - Block Talk, the collectors channel on the Art Blocks Discord, which features a feed of all sales of Art Blocks pieces mixed in with collector discussions. There was always a delay of a minute or two - the OpenSea API would have to send out the sale, and the Art Blocks bot would have to pick it up. I jumped back into Block Talk to see if anyone had noticed. Someone had:
I was still sort of confused, and didn’t fully grasp what had happened:
Other folks on the chat were confused, as they hadn’t seen the transaction. But then it came through and people quickly saw what we were talking about:
It was confirmed on the blockchain, and now the social proof had come through. This beautiful piece was mine. I loved and appreciated the collection, and was so excited to get such a rare and interesting one. I was already thinking of how it would look in my living room, right over the sofa. Of course I was going to buy the largest available signed print from the artist, pay way too much to get it framed with museum glass and enjoy it every day. I could see it in my head, and it was glorious. I had not yet stopped to consider why the owner had sold it for 5e. Maybe he needed the money? Maybe he wasn’t following the market and just sold it without researching anything? I wasn’t thinking about that at all. But others in the Discord were:
It was clear. The owner had minted the Fidenza, and initially listed it for 100e. It was not selling at 100e, so he lowered the price to 50e. Or at least he meant to lower the price to 50e, but instead set it at 5. Two things happened that lead to him listing for 5e.
One, the OpenSea UI around this time was experiencing stickiness issues - numbers that were typed in on a users keyboard but were not populating in the website UI. I had personally experienced it, as had others. He typed in 50, but the zero didn’t make it into the listing - just the five. He probably noticed the error after he had already signed and approved the listing.
Then, in a panic, he went back to the listing page and canceled the listing. But here’s the thing - when you lower the price on an NFT on OpenSea, you were actually creating a whole new separate listing. So he now had two listings of this one NFT, one at 100e and one at 5e. He had canceled the listing for 100e, but he had not yet canceled the listing for 5e. And that was the listing that I saw pop up in the Discord Listing Feed, and that was the listing I bought. One person’s steal is another person’s down bad. And he was down bad:
He had meant to list the piece for $125,000 but instead listed it for $12,500. The mistake was confirmed. He showed up in the discord and was trying to understand if there was any way to get his NFT back, or at least accept what had happened.
And he knew what happened. He had signed & approved a transaction that listed his NFT at 5e, and it had sold at that price. The market worked. And that was the cold, harsh truth that initially confronted him in the discord.
Now Dan & dbochman are both good & incredibly nice people, and they weren’t being rude - just highlighting the other side of the self-sovereignty of the blockchain space. A valid offer was signed and posted, and a valid sale went through.
Now I had a decision to make. I had “stolen” this piece. I could have very easily signed out of Discord, closed my computer and never heard from the original owner again. But I would have known, and the print, the piece I had already envisioned sitting in my house, would have been a constant reminder that I had taken it unfairly. That I had benefited from someone else's mistake. I couldn't imagine how bad he felt, and I knew if I was in the same situation, I would have been sick. So there was no choice in my mind - I had to send it back:
I hit ctrl+Z on the heist, sold it back to the original owner in a private sale with a small increase to cover fees, and tried to figure out how I was going to account for this in my taxes. The Art Blocks community, one of the more supportive & friendly communities that I’ve been a part of online, was pleased with my decision. Fairness had prevailed in the dark forest of the ethereum network and all was right with the world.
Now I always believed that particular Fidenza was worth way more than 50e in the long run. In fact, the average of the sale prices of the four most recently sold White Monos is about 142eth ($335k). However, he was looking for liquidity, so he put it on a descending price auction starting at 50e & it sold five days after I bought it to the pseudonymous collector Vincent Van Dough. Van Dough took the Art Blocks & Generative Art spaces by storm in the summer of 2021 by spending millions & millions of dollars on his self-described “land grab” of historical, generative blockchain art work. This Fidenza still sits in his collection today.
I liked and appreciated Fidenzas from the day they were created (I am in no way unique in this), and I still have three in my collection. The launch & weeks following were a great time to be in the Art Blocks Discord - talking about the work, watching collectors like Van Dough and Bonafidehan build & curate collections of the Fidenzas that spoke to them. Seeing this relatively small niche platform grow in popularity was an exciting time for me, and for many others (but not for everyone - some early collectors left or turned their attention elsewhere as the space changed and financial speculation started taking over).
If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to check out Art Blocks or other art platforms and see what jumps out at you - the visuals, the history, the technology, the community. Networked digital art truly is the art of the next century, and there is so much out there worth exploring. If you’re going to collect, the best advice I can give is to buy what you like, at a price you can afford, and write it’s value off at zero in your mind. Enjoy the work, find the community that champions it, and reach out to the artist. There is so much beauty out there. Go and experience it.
