What is Art Blocks and how do you invest in generative art?
Data Source: Art Blocks Dashboard
Art Blocks is a platform that enables its users to mint what it calls “generative art.” Generative art refers to art that, in whole or in part, has been created with the use of an autonomous system.
In Art Blocks’ case, the autonomous system is their smart contracts on Ethereum.It curates and promotes selected creators and collections, enticing users to mint NFT collections that are vastly different from the goofy animal profile pics that have become so obsequious.
Since launching in November 2020, Art Blocks has helped bring several top NFT collections to life, including Findeza, Singularity, and Ringers.
Ringers, for example, now has a floor price of 55 ETHon OpenSea (that’s slightly over $100,000 as of Aug.18). When it debuted on Art Blocks on Jan 31st, 2021, each NFT on the Ringers project could be minted for 0.10 ETH, then $131 USD.
As we can see from the chart above, the Art Blocks collections have an average daily transaction volume of USD 1,455,000, making it one of the top NFTs volume-wise. In this article, we will cover:
The Different Collections
Creators can apply their projects to be featured in the Art Blocks Curated Collection. These applications are reviewed by a committee that judges if the project fits the protocol’s requirements.
The Playground is the place for new projects from the creators featured in the Curated Collection. The requirements on this one are lower, as it is meant to be an experimental place and for the evolution of previously curated projects.
The Factory is the place for creators that didn’t want to wait for the Curated selection process or choose to set different requirements for their project. They are still selected directly by Art Blocks as the platform aims to maintain its standards for technical quality and aesthetics.
The creator defines the mint price mechanism, the number of items, and other project features. Then, the Art Blocks platform takes care of the mint execution and promotion.
Factory Collection
One can think about the Factory collection as where the creators start interacting with the Art Blocks if they don’t want to wait for the committee review process to go directly to the Curated Collection. As creators experiment with their projects and receive feedback from the community, their ideas are polished for a future launch in the Curated collection.
One example of a creator that started on the Factory and now is being featured on Curated is Daniel Catt.
He has created four projects so far with Art Blocks. All his previous ones were launched on the Factory, and with a fixed value per mint: 0.128 ETH
When these collections hit the secondary market, the average sell value was higher than the mint one. On the collection below, the average sell price is 0.678 ETH, and the current floor price is 0.45 ETH.
And now that he has a new collection featured in the Curated collection, so the price of the previous ones can increase on the secondary market as investors visualize a possible valorization.
How to trade on Art Blocks
Art Block is one of the top NFTs collections when analyzing sales volume and market cap However, it is necessary to better understand the platform to successfully find the best opportunities inside of it.
As we saw in the previous sections, while the Factory has more experimentation and more projects, the Curated is the main collection. Therefore, being featured there increases the creator’s popularity. Shvembldr is a good example of the latter: He released 5 collections on Playground after being on Curated, with all of them being almost instantly sold out within minutes.
An investor/trader that takes the time to go through the projects on Factory, to check the Art Blocks Discord, and follow their announcement schedule, will be in a better place to find “tag along” opportunities (i.e. find collections that can/will be influenced by a new mint).
This piece is contributed by Footprint Analytics community.
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