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JUL 2024

Rhea Myers

10K Drop

210 artworks

Nguyen Wahed, Georg Bak

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.

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JUN 2024

Rhea Myers

Portents

Unique

GrailersDAO, Singular

WHITE PAPER Portents: Proof of prophecy on the Bitcoin blockchain Abstract We propose a scheme for encoding references to Ordinals in Bitcoin block hashes as they are mined. We then demonstrate how to search the existing Bitcoin blockchain for such references. Since any references that are found predate the possibility of their existence, their existence would function as proof of future events. This is prophecy, which is to say time travel. Having established the import of the discovery of these portents, we explain strategies that we may pursue to make ourselves worthy of them. Theory Proof of existence \[1], in which the cryptographic hash of a digital file is encoded into a transaction published on the Bitcoin \[2] blockchain, has existed since 2013. Ordinal Theory \[3], which assigns significance to individual satoshis in transactions, has existed since 2023. It should be impossible to prove that something exists before it exists, otherwise that proof could be forged. When that proof happens regardless we call it prophecy. Were a Bitcoin block to refer to an Ordinal before that Ordinal existed, this would amount to a prophecy. Were it to do so before Ordinal Theory existed, this would be an even stronger prophecy. But where to place this proof in a block in an indelible and undeniable way? The obvious location is the Bitcoin block hash, and within that the obvious location is at the end of the hash. This makes the hash a vanity reference to the Ordinal, and shows that the placement was intentional. Evidence Such hashes have been found \[4]. The computational power required to create them must have been phenomenal, or alternatively they may have been created by breaking the SHA-256 hashing algorithm. In either case they present a warning from the future, and represent a double-loop of time: firstly knowledge of the future and the existence of Ordinals, and secondly the ability to apply future knowledge and power to the past. An explanation of what the creators of these prophecies of the arrival of Ordinals intended might be found encoded elsewhere in the hashes or Merkle trees of the blocks they used. Or they may reveal whatever they have committed themselves to by doing so at some time closer to their own. Perhaps no explanation will come. But that doesn’t mean it is not worthwhile to seek it. Program Portents are these signs of the coming of an Ordinal or Ordinals. To understand them fully we must do three things: -We must identify each new portent as its block is mined. -We must understand the meaning of each Portent by analyzing the block and Ordinal that it refers to. -We must produce our own Portents to converge our timeline with that of the creators of Portents. By doing so we make ourselves worthy of these Portents and fulfill their prophecy. References \[1] https://proofofexistence.com/ \[2] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf \[3] https://docs.ordinals.com/ \[4] block-lsbs-ordinals-matches.csv Source files can be found here.

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