10K Drop #122

On 24 July, we launch 10K Drop, the third collection of NFTs based on the [aside] protocol in collaboration with Rhea Myers. This drop has the following feature: all purchased NFTs will be locked at mint time and will be unlocked when ETH reaches $10,000.

[aside] is a protocol that enables the immobilization of any NFT on the Ethereum blockchain and conditions its release to external phenomena, whether natural (weather, earthquake, storm), astral (solar eruption, planetary transit), economic (inflation, deflation), financial (stock market), demographic, or social. Once locked, these NFTs remain non-transferable for a dedicated period of time or until a specific real-world event happens, therefore restricting the tradability of the artwork by tying its commercial becoming to the outside world.

A 10K Drop is an NFT collection of ten thousand PFP character images released as a cultural event. The number ten thousand and the format of a series of characters generated programmatically from a library of visual elements is taken from the first collection of this kind, the Cryptopunks by Larva Labs which dropped in June 2017. Successful drops provide community, inspiration, and wealth. Unsuccessful ones provide embarrassment and loss. Buying early rides one of these waves. Waiting to see how a collection performed reduces risk but also reduces reward. For every Bored Apes, a dozen Disinterested Dogs.

Buying an individual token in such a collection became known as “aping in”. Going further and buying all of the cheapest available NFTs in a collection is known as “sweeping the floor”. This desire for belongings and belonging, for ownership, that grows in and around successful 10K Drops is both driven and frustrated by the fact that other people also own tokens in the collection. Without that ownership, the market could not establish the value that makes the collection valuable and desirable. With it, an individual’s ownership of the collection can never be complete.

10K Drop is an artistic fulfilment of this desire. Each individual NFT in the collection is a generatively created drop of 10 Ks, viewable as a live animation or as a high-quality static image. It is locked until the price of Ethereum also becomes 10K - ten thousand US dollars. This is a 10 K drop that will drop at 10K, a 10K drop squared. In this it produces an experience of total ownership that is increased rather than being frustrated or reduced by other collectors also owning a token in the same series. This is a familiar strategy from my previous projects Tokens Equal Text and Black Friday Sale, with a more complex visual aesthetic applied to the moment of NFTs entry into mainstream cultural consciousness in order to enable us to reflect on the desires that they produce and frustrate as a reflection of more general property relations.

All NFTs will be locked for a maximum of 10 years (until 24 July 2034 | timeStamp= 2037312000). Date after which they will all be unlocked.