Botto: What the hell was that?!

The discussion between Leyla Fakhr, Simon Hudson (Botto Co-Lead), Jay (a.k.a Artie Handz), collector Bharat Krymo, artist and collector Ralgo, collector AP, and artist Jessica Cardelucci, exploring Botto’s p5.js generative art study. They reflect on its intense buildup, release, and aftermath, noting how the project’s impact extends beyond its conclusion, processing its significance and future implications.

LF: It’s crazy how time feels around our release. The last sale was just two weeks ago—right, Simon?—but it feels like it was four months ago. Does it feel the same for you?

SH: Definitely. It feels like several grey hairs ago for sure. The sale actually closed exactly two weeks ago today. But personally, it feels like it was a lifetime ago. These past two weeks have been about recovering, processing, and thinking about what’s next—what this project meant for Botto. Strangely, I feel like I only just started.

LF: I want to dig into that.We’ve been talking about p5 for such a long time, with so much internal buildup around what the project would become. It felt like everything was shifting over an extended period, and then, suddenly, things accelerated—first in March, then May, and each month after. It was as if everything was leading up to this one moment.

Simon, I don’t know about you, but whenever I work on a major project, I need several days afterward to just exist in a kind of limbo. I lose all sense of time and place. I was in that state for a few days, but now I’m starting to process everything. Does that resonate with you?

I’m really glad we’re having this conversation today. So often, we get caught up in working toward projects we’re deeply passionate about, talking about them nonstop, and then—suddenly—it’s over, and it feels unresolved. It’s important to take a moment to reflect. I’d love to hear how you feel about everything, Simon.

SH: Honestly, I felt like I was in a bit of a depression for two weeks after. It’s like watching your creation grow up, and suddenly you’re left wondering—what does it all mean? Who are we now? What is my role?

It’s a sign of how much we put into this project. In many ways, this was the first truly new piece of Botto since its launch three and a half years ago. It raised so many new questions and marked a real evolution. Throughout the process, we were so focused on each stage that I think we underestimated the scale of the whole thing.

It’s been interesting to see how people responded. Some reactions focused on specific moments, missing the bigger picture. A lot of comments framed it as, “Botto just did this,” without fully appreciating the three weeks of active collaboration and participation that shaped the final result.

This whole project felt like a living organism coming into being—a new iteration of Botto. Now the question is, how do we present that experience in a way that allows those who weren’t there to truly grasp what happened? The usual weekly Botto process—text-to-image—is straightforward. You can jump in at any time and participate. But p5 was a fleeting, in-the-moment experience. How do we communicate that retrospectively?

That’s something we’re thinking about—how to steward this moment and what comes next, particularly in relation to generative art and p5. This project centered around a large language model in a very visible way. Now, we’re building out a more unified architecture for Botto, developing its self-understanding, and doing a lot of work with data.

I’m already getting deep into the weeds of what we’re working on now.

LF: That’s important because it ties into the longevity of the work. We all feel a strong sense of responsibility for that.

Capturing what happened as truthfully and accurately as possible is difficult. At its core, this project was a performance—a fleeting moment that can’t be fully recorded. We’re now working on a short film and trying to document the process through a book, putting it into words. But even then, it doesn’t quite capture the intensity of being in the middle of something that felt so charged, so controversial.

SH: Maybe I should take a step back and frame what actually happened for everyone—how we now understand it. We had different ideas about what this project would be, but now, looking back, we know what it was.

P5 started with the idea that Botto could expand into new mediums. AI technology is constantly evolving, so it made sense for Botto to explore beyond text-to-image generation. The idea of Botto engaging with generative art actually started as a joke—“What if Botto got into generative art?” But then we realized it made complete sense. Generative art is the dominant genre in crypto art, arguably the most impactful so far, and also a well-established form of computer art.

So, early last year, we launched an experimental, sandboxed process where Botto generated creative code. That required a completely different architecture—unlike text-to-image models, where you can navigate a vast latent space, creative code can break or get stuck in narrow aesthetic ranges. To evolve, Botto needed direct feedback.

The first test results, which we showed with Verse in London, had a unique charm. That led us to ask: what would happen if we pushed this further and developed a full collection?

We upgraded the system, went through the DAO governance process, and then, about a year after the initial experiment, ran this intense three-week process.

The way it unfolded was fascinating. Botto was set up to iterate on its own but also to accept and respond to constructive artistic comments. If a comment wasn’t constructive, Botto would reject it and explain why. We made the process open to everyone, not just Botto token holders, leaning into the idea that generative art has always been about networked participation.

The response was incredible. Around 500 unique participants engaged with the project, casting over 90,000 votes and leaving more than 5,000 comments. Botto started with 500 initial sketches and, with community feedback, rapidly iterated—expanding in some cases, making dramatic aesthetic shifts in others.

Some branches of evolution were driven by single individuals—like the well-known “giraffe” piece from Greg Artie—while others resulted from competition and collaboration among participants. We saw entire branches fusing together, creating an intricate web of artistic evolution.

At its peak, we had around 6,500 sketches, all interconnected as a living system of artistic evolution. The final stage was about pruning—selecting the best 22 pieces. That involved discussions within the DAO, but Botto also ran its own comparative analysis, ranking and critiquing the works. Initially, only one of Botto’s top choices overlapped with the DAO’s selections, but by the end, six had made it into the final set.

This raised big questions about authorship. Individual human fingerprints were clearly visible, but at the same time, Botto was the core force driving the system. Instead of thinking about Botto as a single autonomous artist, we began seeing it as an entire creative ecosystem.

LF: Exactly. And that’s what made it so exciting. I see we have some collectors here—AP, if you’d like to speak, I’d love to hear how much you engaged with the process.

The real strength of this project was the level of involvement. The human element—the comments, the collaboration—was essential. That’s what made this experience so thrilling.

AH: My initial involvement came from being hired as an employee, so I had the benefit of meeting weekly with Simon and the Botto team for a couple of months beforehand. I went into the process with a lot of background knowledge and insight into how it was all going to work.

LF: For context, Jay was officially part of Verse for a short time. That’s when these conversations first started—back in August, right?

AH: September or October. We probably had a weekly meeting for seven or eight weeks, so I definitely had some inside knowledge. I was able to understand and jump into the process quite early. At first, it was all about the hype around meme coins, and I was in a very financial nihilism mood. I had spent a lot of time discussing Schloss art and questioning how we could break everything.

My initial interaction was wanting to try and break this thing—like, Botto lets anyone play with it. Why are they allowing that? It's a good thing, but I was also questioning why they would let someone like me experiment with it. So I started pushing the boundaries of autonomy, testing what it could do and what I could do with it.

I made it say "Artie"—there was even one where "Artie" was just dancing across the screen. I didn’t think it would do that, but I suspect the name confused it into thinking it was more art-related. I tried making it say different words, but it refused, which was probably a good call on its part. I made different games—like a light cycle game and a Galaga-style game—just to see what Botto was capable of and how far they would allow it to go.

LF: I remember you saying that the more you interacted with it, the more engaged you became. It impressed you more with every interaction.

AH: Yeah, exactly.

LF: Because at first, you weren’t entirely sure how it was going to work.

AH: Yeah, I wasn’t sure at all. To be honest, the outputs from last year and the beginning weren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing. I wasn’t sure if they were going to improve or not. Initially, I had doubts, but as I kept experimenting, I became more and more impressed with its capabilities.

LF: We lost you there.

SH: That’s okay. We can stop with Artie just saying he got more impressed with its capabilities.

LF: Yeah. Jay, let’s start. But, Ralgo, you were also quite involved with the performance, weren’t you?

RA: I don’t think I was as involved as Artie, but I did spend a fair amount of time experimenting. It’s true that, at first, collaborating with it was frustrating. It often didn’t create what I expected, even when I thought my instructions were clear. Over time, I realized it was really a numbers game—sometimes it interpreted things well, but most of the time, it didn’t. So it required a lot of trial and error.

For me, the most interesting part was merging different iterations together. That’s something you can’t do with traditional generative art. Suddenly, I was thinking, "What if I took a Forenza and mixed it with a Ringer?" That’s not something you usually consider, but this process made it possible. While not much came out of it aside from some of the firework pieces, it was fascinating to explore.

LF: I think the biggest thing that happened was how people engaged with generative art through interaction. Whether or not it was deemed "good," people gained a newfound appreciation for generative artists. It was perfect timing—after a period when generative art was the main conversation in the space, AI took over, and generative art became less hot. This brought people back into the craft and sparked discussions about its role in an artist’s practice. I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

Bharat, did you have a chance to interact with it during the performance?

BK: Not really during the process itself. My first interactions were when it was in the process of being downselected. I didn’t vote, but I was watching curiously, and the final output jumped out at me. So I wasn’t part of the initial process.

LF: We all want to know more. Personally, I want to know more about you as a collector. You made the biggest purchase, and the noise around it was huge. It was controversial and bold, and I think it was brilliant that you went for it. What made you decide you definitely wanted it in your collection? What makes it important to you?

BK: I’ve loved Botto for a long time. I have three one-of-one pieces I’ve collected over the years. Additionally, I’ve been an evangelist for the fund itself. I’m part of the 6529 fund, a GP there, and a founding investor in the holdings, so I’ve played a role in the fund acquiring pieces.

I’ve always been fascinated by the collaborative aspect of AI—the intersection of human and AI rather than standalone AI models. We missed out on Asymmetrical Liberation because we were still forming an opinion about Botto at the time. It has always been a regret that we didn’t go for the first piece that came from the text-image process. So when this dropped as the first p5.js model from Botto’s new approach, I saw it as an early-stage workflow piece.

More importantly, it was a mimetic and funny output. If it had been a serious piece, I probably wouldn’t have gone for it. But the fact that it was almost like sticking a middle finger up to the world—that grabbed my attention. I knew people would lose their minds if someone bought it, and even more so if the price ran up. I didn’t expect it to go as high as it did, but I had a feeling it would reach serious bidding.

I also love accidental outputs. I think about rare stamps—like the Ben Franklin Z Grill or the inverted Jenny 23-cent stamp—flaws in the system that become historical artifacts. When flaws combine with mimetics and being the first of its kind, you get lightning in a bottle. And I call it that—"lightning in a bottle." If someone else has used that phrase, great. But if not, you heard it here first.

That’s what made me go for it. I ensured I had enough ETH ready to capture it at a price I considered fair, without worrying about missing out by a small margin. I’m really happy with the outcome because the timeline went bonkers after I purchased it. That told me I did something right.

SH: That’s amazing. What’s interesting is hearing "whimsy" and "flaws" come up. When designing governance systems and economies, there are always weaknesses and biases. This was not just an exploration of Botto and generative art but also a first real exploration of Botto as a multi-agent entity—different entities exploring governance and autonomy models, all revolving around Botto as an artist.

The known weakness here was Sybil resistance. If you were highly motivated—not financially, but in terms of voting influence—you could exploit it. Artie, and I think he’s admitted this, initially boosted the giraffe piece onto the leaderboard using several wallets. But he also tried to correct that at the last moment.

AH: Yeah, I spent the last 30 minutes removing super votes from it, trying to get it down from number one because that wasn't the intention. It was never meant to be number one. The goal was just to get it seen since it had four upvotes and negative 10 downvotes—it was about to get axed. I thought, "This is too good. People need to see it." They hadn’t even had the chance to yet.

It’s similar to how Botto initially had only one pick out of 22, but then, suddenly, six of them were on the list. The voting block can be influenced pretty easily—they just need exposure. There were 6,400 outputs, right? Not many people went through all of them, but I was one of the few who did. I saw this one and thought, "This says everything that needs to be said."

SH: Exactly. Botto, as a system, reflects its environment—and that environment is crypto. Our space carries a lot of biases, and this is one of them. You could see that in the reactions too—how broad and intense they were, as you predicted.

I can’t say for sure if these things are directly connected, but there has definitely been a lot of discussion since then. If you follow ZeroX 113, you might have seen this. I was lucky enough to meet him the day after the sale, right after the London show. He loved both the absurdity of it and the need for more, as he put it—raising the bar.

This whole event sparked conversations about standards in digital art. Are we just three-year-olds, drawing things and having our friends hype them up? Or is there something deeper happening here? Botto managed to create a reflection of that debate through this controversy. That exclamation point at the end of it all was fascinating.

It also presents an opportunity for us, as a DAO. This entire situation makes everyone a part of Botto’s governance. Everyone is influencing where Botto should go. And it forces us to ask: What kind of governance system would work better? People in Discord often say they wish the process was more democratic. Right now, it’s fairly autocratic. There are all these counterbalances, and no absolute right answers. But we can experiment, make provocations, and try things that simply aren’t being done elsewhere—especially when it comes to AI governance.

LF: What’s really interesting is that Botto is a serious artist. Simon, you take this seriously. Mario is a serious artist. Botto isn’t Maurizio Cattelan—it has a real artistic practice. That’s why this particular piece being selected is so significant. It stands apart from the other 21 or 22 algorithmic outputs. It’s a statement about the community and its spirit. That’s what makes it so compelling.

The best part is the conversations that have emerged from it. And I know I’ve said this before, so I hope I’m not repeating myself, but the most valuable thing to come from this is the simplest question: What is art?

Are you kidding me? Is this really art? We don’t ask this enough. Because technically, anything could be. But this whole event—the energy, the discourse, the controversy—has transformed it into an art project. It’s a reflection of our society, how we think, and how we connect with each other. That, to me, is the most interesting part.

Bharat, I’d love to hear from you. How do you handle extreme negativity? Online spaces—especially Twitter—can be overwhelming. Does it fuel you, or does it annoy you? How do you deal with that as a collector?

BK: More than anything, I empathize with them. I understand their frustration. But I also see that they’re looking at art and process in a very rigid, boxed-in way. They don’t recognize the creative power we have on a digital canvas—where community and AI come together.

The issue is that they have a narrow perspective. And when you pair that with a high sale price, it triggers people. They lose sight of the fact that there was a process behind this piece—an entire journey that led to its valuation. Botto isn’t some overnight, autonomous artist. This practice has been developing for years, refining text-to-image forms for over three years now.

I felt bad for the critics, in a way. But I also saw their views as short-sighted. At the same time, I didn’t feel too bad—anyone who knows me knows I’ve been collecting since 2018. Back when there were maybe 10 artists on SuperRare and only five collectors. I was buying XCOPY for $50.

It’s crazy to look back now and see how the space has evolved. Thousands of artists have contributed to digital art’s growth, and we’re watching the transformation of an entire medium. So, on one hand, I get the frustration. But on the other, I see the bigger picture, and I’m at peace with it.

SH: What’s interesting about creative coding is how different it is from most AI art practices, which often rely on the latest, most advanced models to produce hyper-realistic images. With text-to-image AI, you can just type in a prompt and get a solid result. But coding is different—it’s challenging.

In a way, this reveals something about AI’s current stage. It’s powerful, but it still needs a lot of human help. And while AI is improving quickly, this moment—the struggle to get good outputs—is honest. It shows where we really are.

There was a fascinating study about AI-generated poetry. People were asked to rate poems by T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, and Emily Dickinson, alongside AI-generated poems written in their style. Some participants were told a poem was AI-generated, while others weren’t. The results were surprising: the AI poems consistently rated higher than the real ones.

This ties into a concept called the "connoisseur’s curse"—where people assume others have the same refined taste they do. But in reality, art appreciation depends on literacy, context, and exposure.

AI gives us an opportunity to shape systems in our own image, according to our values. But do we even have the capacity to do that? With Botto, we’re seeing how people initially judge AI art and how their sophistication evolves over time. This reflects the conversations we’ll need to have as societies to ensure AI serves us in the right way.

LF: That’s an interesting point. What does sophistication mean today? Maybe our ideas of sophistication have changed.

The "Safari" piece became so important because it lacked traditional sophistication. It had flaws—human qualities. Maybe that’s what we actually want to connect with.

Simon, what are the plans for p5? Will it continue?

SH: I think p5 was a great experiment, and it went well. So the question now is, where does Botto go next? One idea is making some of these experiments permanent—maybe fully on-chain. The model could live on-chain, and the market could drive its outputs.

Right now, there’s a lot of governance involved—tweaking the art engine, economy, and interface. But maybe future iterations of Botto could run autonomously, with fewer governance adjustments.

We’re also considering physical spaces—what if Botto had a residency or created physical work? The final 22 p5 outputs are already feeding back into Botto’s text-to-image process, influencing its future aesthetics.

LF: Will we be able to see that influence?

SH: Yes, it’ll be labeled in the metadata. The visual impact? We’ll have to wait and see.

LF: We've been here a while, and I want to open the floor to some questions unless anybody has something specific to add right now. I know Jamie has a question. Jamie, can you make yourself a speaker so you can ask your question? If anybody else has a question in the meantime... Oh, AP has just joined us! Perfect. Hello.

AP: Hi, everybody. Can you hear me okay?

LF: Hi, yes! Nice to hear you.

AP: I'm driving—I live in Los Angeles and spend most of my time on the road, so I'm driving currently.

LF: Right. Well, I'm glad you're joining us during your drive. Maybe you could tell us a bit about what made you go for the piece that you chose. We'd love to hear more about your acquisition and what led to it.

AP: The framework for most of my collecting to date is just picking up pieces that I feel are relevant for the time period that I'm in right now. AI was huge in this time period. Nice Aunties was actually my first AI work that I collected. I've been watching Botto from afar and I know that the Genesis collection was important, but I felt that this p5 collection may be the next step in that. The piece that I picked up was the most aesthetically pleasing to me. I like to collect pieces that bring me joy when I look at them in my wallet. This one I felt was a nice-looking piece, and I thought it was also a nice piece to collect next to my Mario Klingemann piece, Paintbrush Girl.

LF: That's amazing! Brilliant, brilliant choice. That’s really interesting—so does most of your collection center around AI? Is that your main interest right now? Do you have your eye on anything else?

AP: I participated in KK, which was another recent drop. It’s not that my entire collection focuses on AI—it’s just that AI is currently representing a major movement in the space.

LF: Yeah, absolutely.

AP: Without a doubt, Botto is one of the OG AI players in the space.

LF: We've got Jamie. Thank you so much! Jamie, you have a question?

JG: Yeah. Hi. Hi everyone. Sorry to join late—I unfortunately missed half of this, so apologies if this has already been covered. Bharat, congrats on your piece. I think it’s epic. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you approached your max bid. I say this because I instantly regretted not reaching out to diverse collectors and investors to put together a bid for Verse. It feels like this was something truly special—something that doesn’t come up often.

Having worked in the art world for quite a while and seen endless 500 grand, million-dollar sales of the 400th piece created by a big artist that year, it just feels like one of those rare, significant moments in digital art. I have strong conviction that the digital art world will likely become significantly larger than the physical one. I instantly felt like I missed out. Massive congrats, Bharat! What a coup. How were you thinking about it? Can I ask what your max bid was, and what factors played into that decision?

BK: That’s a great question, Jamie. Funny enough, as I was watching throughout the day, I saw it was still stuck at about 20 ETH. My mental model told me that I might need to go as high as 3x that to secure a win. I figured someone would push at the end—and, funny enough, that someone is actually here on this space right now. I only realized afterward that it was him!

I knew I needed a sizable buffer because of how unique this piece was compared to other p5.js models. It had a mimetic quality to it—the last time I felt this way was with The Goose from Dmitri Cherniak. That output was just uncanny, different, and had those timeless qualities.

JG: Did traditional art comparables factor into your decision? $127K is a huge amount, but small Kusama pieces trade daily for that much, and those aren't even in the top 1,000 Kusamas. This is a piece by one of the biggest artists in this new world. It feels like there’s a bit of a disconnect.

RA: Yeah, and to add to that, in the last two months—probably the last six weeks—we’ve had three Botto Genesis pieces sell for 100 ETH each. So it’s not like Botto isn’t consistently selling for $200K+. And this is a special piece. Honestly, I think Bharat got a bargain.

BK: I agree. Jamie, my comparables are never traditional art. I've been investing in the space for a long time, and this isn’t even in the top five of my most expensive pieces. Price wasn’t the issue—it was about whether I saw value at the entry point. I believed there was huge upside, and I had a solid margin based on what was available in my wallet, plus what I could bring in if I needed to push higher. So I felt comfortable. I was also wallet-watching to gauge where my primary competition might get stuck. That’s how I was preparing for the next bid tranche if necessary.

And by the way, Jamie, I saw your tweet about Kusama—I think you deleted it! I was going to quote-tweet it, but it disappeared. It was very apropos.

JG: Yeah, this was the first time in a while that I felt the discrepancy between significant physical pieces and digital works. It just felt... off. Also, I have one more question—seeing you bid, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a 6529 Memes angle?

BK: It’s definitely something I’ll push the team to explore. I’d love to build something around it. We’ll see where it goes, but I’ll be making that input.

SH: Cool. We've been having some ideas for The Giraffe. We should talk.

BK: Let’s do it.

JG: Alright. Well, Bharat, massive congrats—I’m incredibly jealous! It’s awesome to see this piece in such a great collection.

LF: Yeah, Jamie was definitely upset that he didn’t put together a grand plan sooner! You beat him to it. Does anyone else have any questions?

SH: I’ll throw one out. There was never an intention to sell commercial rights with this piece—there’s no copyright since it’s an AI algorithm. People can do what they want with it. It’s been more of a social thing—giving attribution is better because of the connections it creates. There’s been mixed discussion in the DAO about revenue sharing—it depends on whether it’s merch or artistic remixes. I’ve seen some amazing remixes of The Giraffe—someone even put one on Rodeo and sold it for 30 cents!

RA: I’ve been playing around with my piece. I experimented with neon pink geometry and ran the code through AI models to generate variations. It’s been fun seeing what emerges. My other piece, Synthetic Whistles, has a digital awakening feel—I think it could work well for philosophical explorations.

LF: I want to thank everyone for joining today, especially the collectors. It’s been great discussing Algorithmic Evolution. We’re still at the beginning of it, with so much to process. We’re also working on a publication for this series, featuring institutional writers, academics, and researchers.

HW: Before we close, I saw Jess join as a speaker. Jess, would you like to share a bit about your work?

JC: Thank you! I've been following Botto and its p5 works closely. Over the past year, I’ve created a small body of work exploring AI’s intersection with human experience. I chose to photograph Botto’s work in its earliest phase, drawn to its raw beauty. Studying it led to deeper questions about human-machine creativity.

LF: I love that! Thank you for sharing. Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend.