Full Onchain NFTs — Experts Talk
Speaker 1 Hello, GM. GM. Charlie, can you hear me? Can everyone hear me? A 100%.
Charlie Where's the music, man? Like, I like, I need some music over here. Put the music on. Hold on. Loud and clear, though. Loud and clear. We're good. We're good.
Speaker 1 Perfect. Ella, can you hear me?
Ella Yeah. We're starting to get a bit weird there. I thought we'd all kind of died, you know, being sent to the burn address or something. Who knows?
Speaker 1 Yeah. I had that problem with my other account. So, yeah, I managed to disconnect. I will just cross the meeting from from this account. I mean, it's fine. So, well, I'm super excited for this for this space. It's actually a while that we don't do one, and it's a very, very interesting topic. I guess we will have a couple of experts on on the space with us, and then I I will have a lot of question myself, but I guess we will be accepting questions as well from from the audience. Charlie, do you want to officially start the the space?
Charlie Absolutely. Absolutely. Before we actually go with the the questions and and and concerns when it comes down to the full on chain, I just wanna put a quick introduction, to the panel. We got Ben Meadows, got Nate in the building, and we got Ali as well. We got Self Utopia and Ella also in the panel as well to help us with the questions and comments and things that are going to be when it comes down to full on chain. As a matter of fact, Ella is an expert also. I don't wanna say expert, but she knows
Ella I really am not. Oh my god.
Unattributed Let's not be good that. You are
Charlie well versed a little well versed than most of us when it comes down to full on chain NFT. So, dude, that also can help us navigate on this as well. So with that being said, I just wanna hear a little bit from, the Ben Meadows, Nate Ollie, and then we go from there. Ben, how you doing? GM GM.
Charlie Here and there. Yeah. But you're good to go. I can hear you clearly for now. Yes.
Ben For sure. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. I had a little trouble connecting. You know how Twitter gets. So, let's see. The first thing I will say about on chain NFTs is I've been playing around with it for, gosh, I don't know, a number of months now. I tried, I wanna say, late twenty twenty two, maybe very early twenty three. And one of the most interesting things is I didn't realize how expensive it was. Right? So I I had this image. I compressed it down. I thought I was ready to go, and it was gonna be, like, point three five e to meant it. And I said, oh my gosh. I'm not spending hundreds of dollars, you know, to to put it was a pic for my face. So to put that on chain forever, and I paused for a little bit and went back and experimented and learned a lot more.
So I would say probably the very first most interesting thing to talk about with an on chain NFTs is simply it's not cheap, so why would you spend all this money doing it? So that'd be my first comment. Awesome.
Charlie Look. This actually gave me 2021 vibes where people were spending hundreds of dollars just to mint a collection on OpenSea or on Foundation. So this should make a lot of sense when it comes down to the why you should be minting on chain, but we're gonna get there later on. I just wanna hear a little bit from Nate, and then from Nate also moving on to Ali as well, and then we go from there. Nate, go ahead.
Nate Hey there. Can you hear me okay?
Charlie 100%, man. How are doing, man? GM.
Nate Yeah. It's very much a GE. Yeah. It's 11PM in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. So
Nate maybe about forty five minutes or so.
Charlie Any comments when it comes down to on chain? Yes. Go ahead. Make
Nate sense. Yeah. Yes. So I've I sort of learned from from Ben quite a lot and from others who are involved in the process like him. And, yeah, I probably started doing it maybe about a a month ago. So when Flavio said we're experts, so I kinda had a bit of a bit of a giggle to myself there
Ollie because I'm nowhere near
Nate an expert in the process. I'm very new to it. I had a little bit of of success recently where my my on chain first piece was picked up by by PAC of all people, which was really, really cool and sort of set me on the path of trying some more.
Charlie Appreciate you. I'm actually liking this conversation, these comments right here because it's pretty vague. So we're gonna definitely dive in for the listeners on what is going on, what is on chain NFTs. So I'm actually glad that you actually bring in, bringing the entire subject just like this with those those comments. Same goes to you, Ali. GM, GM, GE, GA, wherever you are, any comments when it comes down to own chain NFTs?
Ollie Yeah. GM GM from for you guys. I'm I'm in The UK, so sort of heading towards the end of our day over here. But, yeah, just excited to get into it really. I know, you know, there's some questions that I've been mulling mulling these over, you know, leading up to this point. So excited to to get into it. But, yeah, experts is a funny title. You know? It's like, we're all kind of experts if we get involved in things that are kind of relatively sort of new and, and early. I mean, I I'm into my first on chain one of one back in early June this year. So I guess relatively early in, you know, obviously, on chain has been a thing for a long time. But, so as it started becoming more accessible with lower gas fees and tools that are available, to help do it. So, yeah, it's exciting to get into the, into the conversation. Epic.
Charlie Last but not least, I wanna hear a little bit from Ella as well and her experience and comments when it comes down to on chain as well.
Ella Well, most of my experience so far has been messing it up. It's all good, though. I mean, that's how you learn. Right? And it it's just really exciting to be part of something. For me, personally, I I really wanna get fully on chain. It's not something I properly understood until fully very, very, very, very recently. And, you know, I've been doing generative art on prohibition, looking at other platforms as well. But even when you look at these these generative art platforms, and, obviously, that's not for everybody because not everybody makes art with code. Even when you look at these platforms, the many of them use the Artblocks engine. That's not fully on chain because even though the script that produces the artwork is on chain, there are external dependencies that could potentially be lost or broken in the future.
So if you want to get fully on chain, you really have to do some homework and do some digging and that's kind of what I've been getting into over the past sort of few weeks. And yeah, I'm going to throw it out there for anyone who's thinking of trying it. Be absolutely sure before you mince something because, you know, if you make a mistake and you have to delete it,
Ella know, it's not great. So, yeah, I think on chain is very much about how can I put it? For me, the the attraction of the whole blockchain NFT thing was about having something that was left behind. You know? I've got my own personal reasons why that matters to me a lot. Hence, I got into NFTs as a way to store my artwork and hopefully, preserve it for the future. Very, very upset to find out, obviously, that when you're not properly on chain, you know, those guarantees are just a mirage, basically. But, obviously, we didn't come here to do personal stories. I just wanted to throw in that aside about making sure you know what you're doing before you try to mince something.
Charlie Absolutely. That's one of the best advices you can actually give. And personal stories are always welcome because that's how you learn from other people as well. So do not hesitate giving those personal stories. And, also, I just wanna just say hi to Self Utopia as well. He's gonna be helping us with the questioning when it comes down to this topic ahead. Self Utopia, GM, GM, GE, GA, GN, wherever you are, man. How are doing?
Speaker 5 GM, Charlie. GM to everybody that's here as speakers and our listeners. Hi, everybody. Welcome. Welcome. So as you know, I mean, again, I am no expert. I'm the question part of the equation today, and we have Ben, Nate, Ollie, Ella, all the who are all as the answer part of the equation. But, yeah, just to just to introduce what I have in mind as questions is basically when I knew that this space was scheduled by Flavio, I I started diving into on chain art and understanding different aspects of it so that I had a very informed and kind of an overview that if I personally wanna jump into it, so what it entails for me.
But another interesting question that came up in my mind just now as Ella was sharing her experience was that when Manifold was introduced, it introduced a unique thing which was basically an ASCII signature which helped artists have their own unique thing in the smart contract, which identified that this is a smart contract unique to a specific artist and gave them the ability to identify with that. And Manifold also helped artists the ease of changing the descriptions of their artworks and of changing their artwork even after minting. But on on chain, it's, I think, the complete opposite as of now because the gas fees have been mentioned, and we have to be really careful because the whole image is directly minted on chain.
So I think some discussion on that side and also on the types of art that can be minted on chain is gonna be beneficial because we know that SVGs with lower anchor points made in Illustrator are easy, but things like AI art or photography, like Flavio had in his mind are I I I mean, I don't know how that can be compressed and to what extent it can be done. So all of that is swirling in my mind and hoping to have a really fruitful discussion today.
Charlie Awesome. Awesome. Hey. We're gonna let's go let's go back to the basics, man, before we actually go and do a deep dive on this. Definitely, when I ask Ben, Nate, Ali, Ella, for for this simple question, I have no idea what on chain NFTs are. So so for those that are actually listening as well and have no knowledge of what full on chain NFTs are, can you please explain what does it mean to have an NFE in full chain, full on chain, Ben?
Ben So I think the thing the very first thing to consider is that on chain and off chain is a scale. Right? It's like a sliding scale. It's not black or white. Some things generally not off chain or on chain. Generally, there there are some levels, and I alluded to it a little bit earlier with generative art and art blocks, and the idea that, you know, even though maybe the hash is on chain and the generated image, you know, some of the dependencies are stored off chain. So the first thing to understand, break it down back to kind of basics, is when you see an image on OpenSea, it could be any different level of on chain or off chain. So at the furthest level away from on chain, the only thing that would be on chain is the actual token. Right?
The NFT, the non fungible token, and it's pointing to something. And at the at the lowest level, the most off chain you could get, I would say, it's pointing to two things, the metadata and the image. Right? And the metadata could be, you know, whatever. This is a Bored Ape. It has brown fur. It's wearing hat. Right? And the metadata itself could actually it could be a pointer, pointing to, let's say, Amazon. And all that metadata is stored on a private server somewhere, and that can be changed fully off chain. And the image itself, the JPEG, is stored fully off chain. So So I'd say on one end of the scale, that's about as off chain as you can get. Fully on chain, about as far as you can get, would be the images stored as actual, like, encoded byte data, right, on the Ethereum blockchain, and you need no dependencies to to unwrap that data to view that image.
And that would be about as on chain as you can get. The metadata's on chain. Everything is stored on chain, and you don't need anything off to view that image. And then there's levels in between. Right? We can we can say, okay. Well, what if the metadata's on chain, right, fully on chain, and the image is stored on Amazon? Well, that's definitely fully off chain. Well, what if the data is stored on IPFS? Well, the interplanetary file system is more like a torrent than a blockchain. Right? And then some people say, well, what if it's stored on Arweave? Right? Arweave is a type of blockchain, but it's not stored on the blockchain that you're using to store the token on. Right? So in that way, it's it's more on chain than something stored on an Amazon, but it's not as on chain as if the image is stored.
And then you start getting to what we would consider kinda fully on chain. The SVG or the raster image, the JPEG or the PNG is stored on chain. The metadata is stored on chain. And then generative art gets a little bit more complicated because then we have to talk about is the hash stored on chain, is the image stored on chain, is the are all the dependencies stored on chain, to sort of recreate that image or some stored off chain? And there's both different kinds. So that's sort of the, you know, 120 overview of what does it mean to be on chain, off chain.
Charlie Anything to add to this, wonderful explanation from Ben, Nate. Do you have anything else to add into this as far as, like, what? It is full on chain, in your own words?
Nate No. Like like I said, I'm not an expert, and I also learned a lot from that now too. So thanks, Ben.
Charlie Ollie, go ahead. Anything else to add if you have anything?
Ollie I I had my notes, and as expected, I think Ben's pretty
Ollie there. I think the the scale thing is a really important thing to to understand. And, you know, it's I've seen different ways of it being kind of graded, and I've I've been involved in lots of conversations about whether, you know, one project, you know, where it falls on that kind of grading system. And, that's the the important thing. I think the the main differentiator is that on chain means that every part of the token including the image and and everything has zero dependencies on anything outside of the Ethereum network. What do you mean Anything else that's gone away.
Charlie What do you mean by dependencies when it comes down to on chain? Like, depending on what exactly?
Ollie So depending on external sources effectively. So if if anything in that token is kind of dependent on getting to something outside of the Ethereum network, then it's not on chain. It's not fully on chain at least. Because if that, you know, if that connection dies, if that service provider goes out of business, etcetera, then it it you know, part of that token is is lost. That's yeah. That's what I'd
Charlie say. Okay. So basically, fully on chain, meaning a basically, some sort of smart contract where you are actually, I don't wanna say guarantee, but that your actual work is going to prevail regardless of what happens
Ollie Yeah. In the chain. Exactly. Yeah. So, essentially, you know, my work Mint is fully on chain. The only way any part of that would become you know, cease to exist would be if the entire Ethereum network died.
Charlie Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Now we're getting somewhere now. Ben, go ahead. I know you open your mic real quick, and then we go with Ella.
Ben So real quick, a great example of dependencies also is this. Right? If you're looking at a static image, that it's far less, important, this idea of dependencies. Then if you have some interactivity, gen art would be a great example. I'm sure that's what Ella's about to talk about. I can give a a very specific example very quickly. So you can also have fully on chain art on other blockchains. Right? We're focused mostly on Ethereum, but I've done some work on Bitcoin. And for instance, I decided that I wanted to start putting compressed SVG files on Bitcoin. They're about 80% smaller. However, you can't view the compressed images natively. Right? They're they're compressed, and the browser doesn't know what to do with them. So I had to decide, and here's where our dependencies come in. I had to decide on some way to interpret and decompress these images, and I had a decision to make.
I could either do that on chain. Right? So in which case, I had to find a JavaScript decompression library on chain, incorporate it into the script in a way that it would work, in most browsers with content security policies and things like that. And I could choose to either do that on chain, or I could, not on Bitcoin necessarily because of the way recursion works, and it's all sort of a closed loop on purpose to make sure everything's stored on chain. But this could be the case on Ethereum. I could point to an off chain asset to decompress that image. Right? And in that way, it's a dependency. But what happens when that dependency breaks? Right? Websites break all the time, or there's an incompatibility with the version or so that would be an example of a dependency.
And you can choose whether you want to point to something on chain or off chain, on chain being more robust, but also generally more costly because you have to mentor and scribe. You have to get all that data for that library, for that dependency on chain, which can be quite expensive.
Charlie Yeah. I mean, it makes sense why it's expensive because you are actually paying for the longevity and and the, basically, the provenance of the actual item that you're actually putting on chain. Because at the end of the day, like, that's what you wanna do. You wanna actually preserve what you actually have done. So I can see why it's gonna cost you a little bit when it comes down to doing things that way. Ella, go ahead.
Ella Yeah. I just wanna say that the, the thread that I posted at the top is not my thread. It was posted, as a comment to me, on a discussion thread I started the other night. But the thread I posted at the top from Singular, has a pretty good breakdown of what the different levels of on chain and off chain actually are. And, yeah, most generative art via Artbox or the Artbox engine is what they would describe as being a tier three, which is on chain data with off chain dependencies, which we were just talking about. And then Ben was discussing what might be the next level, which is all data independencies completely on chain. There is another level as well, which is what they call tier five, and that is in chain.
And that means basically that the entire artwork is completed sorry, is produced completely from within the contract itself, completely from within the solidity code from the contract. And there are a few examples of that being done. Of course, solidity is not really a graphics language, so there are limitations with that. But there are some examples out there that exist. And if you want to see them, take a look at that thread. It's a real eye opener.
Charlie Yeah. As a matter of fact, I just wanna invite the listeners also that are actually interested on this topic to actually click on that singular post and actually bookmark it and save it and read it and take your time to read it and understand what is actually taking place with full on chain NFTs. Also, I just wanna say real quick that, Ella, your work that you actually have been posting so far is absolutely impressive. Just the joy that I have to, like, zoom in and look all the different, like, graphics. Like, it's crazy. So I can't wait for you to actually keep on doing them, and I keep actually minting them and listing them. So it's definitely definitely the next level in my opinion.
Speaker 1 So moving on, self utopia,
Speaker 1 have any other questions
Charlie concerning this topic? Because I got so many. Do you have anything in particular to actually keep the ball rolling?
Speaker 5 Yeah. Absolutely, Charlie. So, I mean, just now, I think the definition of what on chain actually means, especially on the spectrum of, let's say, zero to one and all the levels in between, that is absolutely revealing to me because I absolutely didn't know about that. But I would surely wanna understand where the from from the perspective of an average artist in the space who is just using the tools the general tools available, for example, for minting artwork on the Ethereum blockchain, whether it's making their own contract on Manifold or just doing some using some functionality like foundation has for foundation drops, for blind drops, using all these basic things that most of the artists use. So where does where do those things fall on this current spectrum?
And let's say if somebody an average artist wants to take the next step in terms of moving on to the next level towards being on chain, not, like, being towards the extreme end and covering all that distance, but maybe taking baby steps towards going there. So so what's the process to that? What does that look like?
Charlie And now I say, hey. Do you guys did did you just kill the space? Ben, is Ben here? Ben, let it go. There you go, Ben. Go ahead.
Ben Yep. I'll give a I'll give a quick opinion on this. So if somebody wants to understand, sort of, you know, as an artist. Right? You wanna make art. You probably aren't as technical as you know, I enjoy the technical side as much as the art. So if you go meant so I would say, okay. From an artist standpoint, to break it down very simply, there are also sort of levels of provenance and on chainness that matter. Right? So we'll talk a little bit about kinda off chain for a second. So if you, as an artist, meant on foundation to do a drop, that data is probably gonna be stored on IPFS, and it's also stored on foundation's contract, generally. So I would kinda put that at kind of the easiest level, but also probably the worst level from an artistic provenance standpoint.
I would say the next level up would be to use a manifold contract or a transient labs contract if you have access to that where it's your own contract. Right? So you could you can put your own symbol on it. It's yours. You control the contract. You can control what marketplaces it's indexed in. Generally, if it's Manifold, they're gonna use Rweave. Forget of transient. I think they might be using IPFS. But you control, a lot more of the contract at that point. Manifold, if you go into their documents, they actually have a section in the documents on how to mount on chain. You can do it directly through the contract on either scan. I would encourage you not to do that if you're an artist because you'll pay, I don't know, somewhere around 50 to 70% more than if you use, DIID's ETHICACS extension, short version.
There are also different places to store the data on Jane and Ethereum. I would say the most risky place to store it, not to offend anyone, is as call data, which is what ETHscriptions does. You may have seen that. I'm personally not comfortable with that method of storing data because long term, there is a planned upgrade to Ethereum known as the purge, where some of that call data would be purged out of the network. Next would be just sort of the standard method, the manifold, lists and their documentation. You go into Etherscan. You put a long URI string, essentially a data string. You turn the image into a string of numbers and data. That is resilient. That's on chain, but you're gonna pay a little more for it.
What DIID and actually Transient Labs, when they did their Ripcache release, did was they figured out a way to store on chain data known as s store two, DID's extension, the FX extension, which is very user friendly, works with manifold contracts, will save you a significant amount of money. So as an artist, I'd say lowest level, just meant it on a marketplace contract, OpenSea foundation that's not gonna be on chain. You're not even gonna own the contract. Next level up would be use a manifold contract. And if you're gonna use a manifold contract, use an extension to save you a bunch of money on gas when you store on chain. It is a little more technical. There's not, you know, sort of it's not as easy yet to store things on chain.
I think we're getting there, Manifold's in talks, to add that extension to their official extension store so that there'll be a nice, GUI for it, but we're not quite there yet.
Speaker 5 Thank you so much, Ben. Yeah. That that really explains, I mean, the gradation. So I think most of us are having a realization right now where we stand among those levels. And so so I think you you told us what the next step is, but then, again, I think, again, from from an average artist point of view, what is what is the thing that we look for in next steps in terms of the kind of art that we make? Because from a very overview level of the research that I did asking some different types of artists, I understood that and like you said, SVG images, which are mostly made in Adobe Illustrator, and, again, that's a vector based program. And raster based programs are gonna create heavier images, need compression after that, maybe difficult to do that.
So so is it the easiest for illustrators currently to move to that next level because they have access to a vector based program or and can export their artwork in terms of SVG images and can even modify their artwork in terms of the anchor points, and the design can be modified. And is it difficult for, let's say, AI artists like me or photographers or other kind of artists? So so what does that look like, and what do you think is the even the long term view in the space, where are we moving towards?
Ben Yeah. So I have worked with over on the Bitcoin side so you have to understand file sizes a little bit. On the Ethereum side, you you probably hundred, hundred and twenty kilobytes is gonna be kind of the ceiling, right, which is a pretty small file. Over on the Bitcoin side, you can get up to around 350 kilobytes. So size wise, that's still really small no matter what you're doing. Right? Even for an image, like a photograph, that's extremely small. So first of all, you're dealing with small file sizes, which one of the things that I have talked to artists about. I've had an artist send me a 30 megabyte file and go, I wanna put this on chain, and I'm going, look. I'm I am better than most people at compression, but you are going to lose something when you take that 30 megabyte, you know, hand drawn illustration or photograph and you get it down to, you know, even 300 kilobytes.
And so the first thing I tell artists is, you know, why do you want it on chain? On chain is awesome. There's more permanence, but it's expensive, and it has its own limitations. And not every piece of art is going to be able to be on chain. You know, I've got I've got images that are 32,000 by 24,000 pixels. That's never going to be on chain. I don't wanna say never. There are ways you could do it. You could you could upload little pieces of the image and then stitch them all back together using code. It would cost a fortune, thousands upon thousands of dollars. But one of the most important things as an artist is, yes, consider why you want it to be on chain and then consider the design constraints. And so you're correct.
SVGs in some ways are easier to put on chain because they're just you know, vector graphics are relational by nature. Right? So they're infinitely scalable. But how many layers, how many colors, how many points, how many paths directly influences the size of the image? So for me, personally, when I create on chain art, it doesn't look the same as some of my more complex non on chain art. Additionally, I personally find SVGs to be easier to work with both because they compress very well. They're easy to edit. They're infinitely scalable, so it doesn't really matter, you know, what size we're viewing it at today versus in twenty years, what resolution things will be at. You can using code, you can do some interesting interactive things with them also because there are paths and points, and it's very easy to tell it change this color, change the background after the fact.
As I think we talked about or now maybe it was StudioCathi, you can add, texture on the SVGs. Not everybody realizes that, but they don't have to look that very clean, way that you've seen most of the time. Raster images, there are a couple things that are difficult. Resolution, it's hard to keep the resolution high enough, because, you know, you think about as you as you go twice as wide, you're adding four times as many pixels. So it's very difficult to keep a high resolution. Also, you generally end up having to use dithering and some other tools and tricks to get the size down, which does give it generally a specific sort of look. So, yeah, I would say the number one and so what I will do oftentimes with, like, a piece of AI or or a photograph, I've got some threads about this.
I will take a photograph, and I will hand redraw it as an SVG, just because, you know, it'll look better. It'll be smaller. But so, yeah, I would my number one encouragement to an artist that wants to put their work on chain would be not every single one of your pieces is going to fit on chain, or look good on chain or look the same on chain, and that's not a bad thing. That's true of any artistic medium. Right? If you wanna take your photograph and turn it into an oil painting, some things are gonna change to do that, And the same is true of on chain. It's just another medium. I do think it's a great medium. It has more permanence than, you know, other mediums. But at the same time, I'm not an on chain maxi that says all art has to be on chain art.
Charlie And that's epic, man. I appreciate you for bringing that up. Permanence is probably your why when it comes down to on chain. And the same question goes to Ollie, Nate, and Ella. I just wanna ask Ollie, why are you minting on chain, and what are the pros and cons when it comes down to minting on chain?
Ollie Yeah. Thank you. So for me, I think initially it was it was something new and I wanted to kind of experiment and play around. I've minted some of my photography just kind of through manifold. And, you know, there'd been some interest, little interest, but I've I've seen some of the work that did and and other artist work we're doing. And I like the idea. Funnily enough, the one of the cons, I also see as being one of the pros, which is file size matters as as Ben pointed out. And, you know, the the challenge of turning, you know, a 25 megabyte, you know, 3,000 plus pixel, image into an on chain artwork at a reasonable resolution is a is a challenge. And as Ben said, it's, you know, finding the right image that has a good level of detail, but not too much that it just the file size is gonna be impossible to get to a reasonable level.
That for me has become kind of a creative challenge. And that's probably what I most enjoy about, you know, minting my work on chain is that it takes a long time to find an image that's gonna work as a good candidate. And then playing around with the the effect and, you know, the number of colors used and and actually even the, you know, down to the particular colors that are used, just to try and shave off, you know, a kilobyte or two to try and get it to a reasonable size. That's that's for me what what I find most, interesting about it.
Charlie Man, that's so there's so much to unpack when it comes to conversation with Ben and Ali. I definitely wanna hear from Nate as well when it comes down to why are you minting on chain, and what are the pros and cons when it comes down to this as well?
Nate Initially, it was curiosity. Like, I saw I saw Ben, Ollie, d I I d, and MIC, Art, doing it as well.
Speaker 5 And I was just really curious about it. Wanted to check
Nate it out for myself, so I decided to jump in and get involved. I didn't I just tried to share something. I don't know if it works or not because my my Twitter's been a bit chaotic. I shared one of my anime pieces, I think, which you might have seen already. It's quite quite different, and this kept us native resolution. It was only two colors to start with, and that's one fifteen hundred by 2,200 or something resolution and down to 18 kilobytes. And that's this AI art as well. There's some PNG. So there are ways to get things down to size depending on the art style you do, how many colors you have in it, and also the tools you use. There's all kinds of PNG compressors and JPEG compressors and is besides the dithering tools that are available.
Speaker 5 As for the the cons,
Nate the it's very expensive. That that one that I'm talking about cost me 18 kilobytes at $20.20 quay. It cost me 0.097 f, which is a lot less than the other guys are talking about, but it still hurts a bit when you don't make much to begin with.
Charlie that that that was actually a great a great con, man. It's money, man. I mean, let's be honest. It cost. So especially, like, when you're actually minting, those really high compressed files and you're still like, damn. Still not gonna pay that much for a 100 kilobyte Like yeah. It it just kinda, like, pushes you back, but you gotta understand. And the why you're doing it as well. And this is the reason why I just wanted to ask that question because not everybody will do or mint on chain as Ben was mentioning, but there has to be a reason why, the permanence and many other important reasons why you wanna do it. Ollie, go ahead.
Ollie Yeah. Thank you. I was just gonna say, I think, Nate raised a good point there, which is that one of the, you know, the primary cost being, or sorry, primary con being the cost does mean that, unfortunately, you know, artists who maybe haven't sold work before, they've sold work but, you know, relatively low amounts. The... You know, to just the minting cost alone causes it to become prohibitive to them to to mint, to sell. As an example, my first my first on chain one of one, I lost money on it because it cost me point one one five, I think, to mint, and it sold for... I listed it for the cost. It it... You know, the the cost to mint as a reserve, and it sold point one one one. So, you know, I lost a bit of money.
But for me, it was I, you know, I wasn't too worried about that because I felt I was doing something different. And it was it was important. And I like the piece. And and I was glad that it went, you know, into the hands of a a collector who enjoyed the piece. And, you know, since then, you know, as I suppose you build a bit more of a reputation and people become aware of your work, then, you know, you can start to hopefully, you know, sell things for more and and actually make a profit even if a small one on a piece. But that that cost still becomes quite a barrier to people.
Charlie Yeah. But at the same time, when you actually know your whys, I mean, you you gotta take that risk sometimes at the beginning and then after that, you keep going forward with that because you're actually gaining experience. And and once you gain that experience and you know exactly what you're doing, everything is gonna just fall in place eventually. Ella, anything else when it comes down to pros and cons and why actually you're starting on on on doing on chain NFTs as well? I definitely wanna know about this as well.
Ella I guess for me, it's about pushing the technology. I'm a massive, nerd. I love coding. I love generative art. And it's just a case of like, oh, this is cool. There's a new thing that goes beep. I need to I need to investigate it and make it go beep. But, yeah, I think what Oli was saying about the technical limitations actually being a really massive creative challenge, it forces you to think outside the box a little bit, and just kind of push the boundaries, kind of go into an arena where things are actually very, very difficult. You have to be serious if you wanna do this, because you're putting down a serious amount of money to mint. And okay. Take the piece I mentioned that I had to delete because it had a mistake.
Know, naught 0.06 is not a huge amount of money, but at the same time, it's enough that you have to think twice. I mean, something that makes me kind of sad, to be honest, and I'm not gonna win any friends here probably for saying this out loud. But sometimes when you look at foundation and you... Or even particularly object, actually, you look at object and there are people there that have just completely minted absolutely everything that they've got on their hard drive or it feels that way anyway. And you just sort of think part of the process... I mean, photographers understand this. You take a thousand pictures and you pick the best one. And I feel like as artists, we have to challenge ourselves to be the best that we can be.
And although it's painful to have to spend a lot of money minting and it can be annoying when you're butting up against these technical challenges and sometimes getting it wrong and making mistakes and, you know, getting yourself into a situation which is kind of a little bit awkward, a little bit difficult. I feel that that produces the best results in the long run. It forces you to be the best that you can be and really, how can I put it, work for your art? And that's not for everybody, and I'm sorry if I've offended anybody. You know? We've all minted things that we've looked back and thought, why did I mint that? You know? Not throwing any shade on anybody. But, yeah, just that seriousness of purpose and saying, this is what I'm about and this is forever, and I'm prepared to put my money where my mouth is.
I feel that that's that's a strong proposition for a collector. It's telling the collector that you are serious about yourself and your art and that you believe in what you've created. And I think that's a good story to tell.
Charlie Yeah. I like that spin that you made with that as far as, like, having a sense of pride of what you're actually putting in regardless of the price. Because if you're actually thinking about the price, you're like, man, I need to I need to freaking blow this out of the water. Because I'm not just gonna mint. This is just the mint. So I have to actually put a lot of thought process on this to make this actually go through. And if it doesn't happen, I still gonna be like, well, this is the work that I wanted to be there. So you're gonna have that sense of pride in there as... When when it comes down to that. And and you're not really throwing shade. I mean, people are going to actually learn from what they have done, and they're gonna move forward with that as well.
So it's always always a good thing to experiment and... But at the same time, to have a purpose of why you're doing it. And that's why it's very important to ask the whys and the pros and cons for those that are probably potentially interested on that. And with that, I want to let everyone know that bottom right corner, that blue... That purple thing with the common icon on it, if you got any questions, regarding this topic to the panel right now, you are more than free to ask all the appropriate questions. So we, the panel, in here, we can actually get to it and actually give you the... That peace of mind when it comes down to those questions and doubts that you have when it comes down to full on chain, because this is a very, I wanna say complex topic, but at the same time, it's really good to learn, if you actually wanna go that route as well.
You wanna have your options open. So with that being said, I don't know if Flavio got anything as far as, like, questions or comments of what this space is going on so far.
Speaker 1 Thanks, Charlie, for leading the space, and I think this is one of the most interesting spaces I've been on. I love photography, and I am thinking to mean something on chain. And, well, my biggest fear is about resolution as Ben or Ollie, I can't remember now, but they were saying that you lose a lot of resolution. But for example, I just pinned to this space post from Ben, and I was just look... Looking at that that photo of the room that is actually pretty good resolution if you look at it. And I was wondering how then you could get so good resolution with just 28 kilobyte.
Ben Yeah. So there's a couple of things to consider when it comes to file size with photos. I would say there's there's three things, maybe four. Anyway, you've got resolution. Right? Just sheer how many pixels are on it. Then you've got... How are those pixels coded? Right? And in this way, dithering can help us. It's just an algorithm, that sort of orders the pixels, you know, by color, by luminance against a grid, but it sort of simplifies how those pixels are ordered and arranged. Then there's compression. Right? There's different forms of compression. DNG has some native forms, you know, that use all sorts of different algorithms to essentially take the number of pixels, reduce that, crank it down, and then, you know, bring it back up when you're viewing it. And then there's number of colors. Right?
So if your photo has a ton of details and lines, a ton of colors, it's gonna be much harder to compress and dither, than something... One of the things that worked in that photograph, for instance, that you looked at was there were some nice blank walls and things. Right? If it was covered in foliage, you'd have too many lines and too much going on to compress that properly either using doddering or compression algorithms. But it's also relatively monochromatic. You know? It's it's mostly tans there. If that was bright and there was a thousand different colors and shades, that would also be much harder. So you still have to think about, for on chain artwork, specifically photography, how how you can reduce it down or not.
Nate I'd like to add to that particular picture in banking. Correct me if I'm wrong. It seems quite small in terms of the pixels. Right?
Ben Yeah. Correct. That one is very that one is very small. I have done a couple of larger ones. But like I said, one of the biggest issues when you start thinking about resolution is if you go from three sixty wide to... Or tall to seven twenty, you're not just gonna double the amount of pixels. You'll you'll quadruple them. And so, you know, that sort of logarithmic function when it comes to pixels and and size is something that starts becoming very difficult to manage if you're trying to keep the size of the photo down as absolutely small as possible because the cost to store data on chain is also a function of kilobytes times y. Right? So as gas goes up and as kilobytes go up, you kinda have to multiply the two to figure out what your cost is.
So, you know, if gas is twelve today and it was seven yesterday and this photo is 28 versus 60 kilobytes, it... The one that's 60 kilobytes is gonna cost a lot more than the one that's 28. So, and especially as gas goes up. So, yeah, file size is very important, not just from a technical limitation standpoint, but also from a cost effectiveness standpoint.
Nate Yeah. Certainly. My first piece that I sold to to PAC on chain, that was 28 kilobytes, and that cost me at seven glaze, 0.077, I think. So the second one, eighteen kilobytes cost me more because the glaze was higher. It's easier to have a higher resolution if you have much less colors like my my piece that's only black and white and very, very basic red colors as opposed to, like, the first one that I did that had a lot of pinks and blues and whites and variety of different things involved. So much easier to
Ollie compress. One one thing I've found as well with, talking about the resolution, you know, when when I first started, I kind of got it... I I kind of set the resolution to get it... The file size to a point where I was comfortable with it. And more recently, I've kind of noticed that, obviously, some of my earlier work has been kind of minted at, or created at different resolution. So now I'm kind of setting myself the the kind of target of if I can't mint a reasonable... You know, if I can't get the file to a reasonable size at, 1,200 by 800, then it's not gonna work, because I want to try and, you know, ensure that my pieces moving forward are all kind of uniform in resolution.
And again, that that in itself kind of sets a challenge to mean that some images that I would really like to mint on chain, I would have to reduce the resolution below kind of a point I'd be comfortable with. Therefore, it's not gonna be something I would meant on chain.
Charlie Ella, please go ahead.
Ella Yeah. I just wanna add a couple of specifics for people that are thinking of trying out this process of getting their files to a smaller size. Obviously, all the advice from Ben and Nate and Ollie there about getting the the amount of colors and the complexity of the image reduced as much as possible. But a simple thing, if you're exporting from Photoshop and you you select PNG, you have the option there to select a smaller PNG size. It's a little tick box option when you're exporting the file. And then from there, use online compression tools. I tried probably about five or six when I was experimenting. TinyPNG is the most efficient that I discovered out of the online tools. And then from there, there are other tricks you can do via one of the online dithering programs as well.
But just those simple steps exporting it as as a PNG under the smallest PNG option and then using tiny PNG. That will give you an idea of what's possible with that particular file. Again, just getting it as small as possible is a challenge in itself, but you'll get to a point where you can't go any smaller and you have to decide is this image suitable for this for this particular activity. And it comes back to that self curation thing that I was talking about before. You know, you have to be... You have to put a lot of work in and you have to be really, really certain about what you're doing. Do not be me. Do not mint something that's fucked up. I managed to mint something that displayed perfectly on my own computer, but I didn't test it in different environments.
So it was producing a garbled image in certain environments, which of course meant I had no choice but to burn the piece. But, you know, I'm quite happy to talk about that example because it's a great case study of how careful and thorough and methodical you have to be to get it right because otherwise, you're gonna be sad and disappointed and you're gonna waste your money. So it's worth talking about it so other people don't end up putting themselves in that situation.
Charlie And this gives me so much freaking 2021 vibes when it comes down to, man, you gotta be methodical how you spend your money because if you actually made a mistake, that's a lot of money you have to actually, you said, for either for burning, and you gotta start all over again. So you gotta be, like, super careful. So I appreciate you, Ella, for bringing that up. I just wanna bring something real quick as a photographer if I wanna get on chain. And I was actually listening to what's actually going on, what it take place when it comes down to the colors. But if I'm on actually being to, like, in the black and white scene, is that going to help me? Because there's only, like, two array of colors, which is black and white.
Is that going to actually put me out there when it comes down to, like, the compression, issues that I can actually bring it down is going to be a lot lower when it comes down to the gas fees? What do you guys think about this?
Ben So it will depend on if you're... So black and white is not black and white. Right? It's grayscale. And so it really is going to depend on how many, how many shades you have. Right? So, I mean, it's still... If you have a thousand shades of gray in that photo, you're still gonna have trouble. If it's truly black and white or you can limit it to five or 10 shades, that's going to help. And for me, what I wanted to say real quickly in response to Ella and that question is that's one of the reasons I have done every single on chain meant I've done on Ethereum at least has been an SVG. And part of the reason I've done that is it makes you think about colors. You know? Even when I take a photograph and I redraw it, you know, it makes me look at the gradients.
And and, you know, I might think that photo looks simple, but in reality, I would need 30 shades in a gradient to to achieve the same thing. The other thing that I will say that I like, responding to Ali a little bit about SVGs and the reason I work in them is I feel like it future proofs my work a little bit for on chain. If I'm looking at something that have permanence and lasts for a very long time, I don't have to worry about resolution. I don't have to worry that we're gonna have eight k displays or 16 k virtual reality headsets someday. Those SVGs will continue to scale, in a way that those raster images... Don't get me wrong. We'll come up with algorithms and ways to increase them. I actually tried to do some on chain upscaling on Bitcoin.
I wrote the land cause three algorithm in HTML, tried to put it on chain. The browsers weren't beefy enough to do the upscaling fast enough, but they will be down the road. So I'm sure we will come up with some tricks, Ali, to upscale some of those pieces. But that's one of the reasons, also, to Ella's point, that I like playing with SVG is I I have actually inscribed one on Bitcoin incorrectly where the display didn't look right. The scaling wasn't right. The view box size wasn't right. And over there, all I did was I then, inscribed or minted another piece with some code to fix it. And so in that way, there was an on chain pointer that was pointing to the original screwed up image and fixing it. So it was still fully on chain. All the dependencies were on chain.
That would have been much harder to do with the raster image just the way, you can program an SVG. So, anyway, you can certainly get as technical as you want with this. But I would also say as an artist experiment, have fun. Don't worry so much about the technicals because there's things I've learned today that I would have done differently with my first piece six, eight months ago.
Charlie Yeah. I mean, you're totally right, man. I think... Actually got into the details when it comes down to the images and the actual gradients. There's so many shades of gray when it comes out to black and white photography that it will make it really kind of difficult to actually navigate that aspect to actually lower it to the point that you want it to be for... To be affordable because you don't wanna actually break your bank as well. I mean, if you want, might as well be my guest.
Charlie have a question from the audience, especially from PopPunk. Appreciate you for being here, PopPunk. He got a question, and the question is the following. Is full on chain done much besides on ETH and Bitcoin? Any answers on this?
Nate Gonna take this opportunity to duck out because it's twelve it's 12AM here. It's very late, and tomorrow's the busiest workday of the week. So much love. Thanks for having me. Pop, I hope you get the answer to your question that you're after, and I'll see you guys again later.
Charlie My love to you, Nate. Rest well, and appreciate you for being in the space, man. Definitely see you on the next one for sure. Definitely, hopefully, that coffee or whatever you drink is not affecting your sleep. Okay. Go rest, man. But when it comes Yeah, man. Yeah. For sure. Ben.
Ben So I have looked in I have looked into this a little bit. Obviously, you know, I've done some on chain work in Ethereum. I've done quite a bit on Bitcoin, even going so far as, you know, some new ways of doing things over there. It's a newer it's a newer on chain ecosystem. On Tezos, I have been asked the question. I've looked into it. I've tried it. So almost everything on Tezos, if it's not generative art, is stored on IPFS. It uses a different contract language, and I have not been able to find any good tools or guides on on chain minting on Tezos. I haven't had the time to dive into it try and figure it out myself, but I can say it is not big on Tezos, at least. On Solana, I do not know the answer to that, although I do not think it's very big over there either.
Although, I will have to look into that. And then on, what else have I looked at? So I have looked at layer twos, which is sort of funny. Right? Because a layer two by nature, isn't necessarily expected to have the same permanence as the layer one. But I just wanted to do it for fun as an experiment. And so I actually tried to, Mint online on Optimism a few months back. It didn't work because their gas and block size settings are slightly different. Again, layer twos make, some different compromises with regards to block size and speed and as a layer one does, and so the transaction kept failing. Me and DID actually talked about it. I talked to some other guys, that do a lot of on chain work, and we looked at it, and we decided that if we changed up the code a little bit, it would be possible to do.
It would even be possible to port some of the existing on chain tools over to a layer two. But I just didn't do it because at some level, it was a fun technical challenge, but I didn't necessarily have two days to spend on that fun technical challenge. So to answer your question, Pop, no. I think Ethereum, Bitcoin are kind of the big two with on chain NFTs. I'm sure there is some edge work being done on other chains, but by and large, Ethereum and and Bitcoin are where it's at for on chain, which kinda makes sense. That's that's the two chains that you know, if on chain is there for permanence, what's your two biggest, most permanent chains? Layer one Ethereum and and layer one Bitcoin.
Charlie That makes sense the way you put it like that. When I was actually asking questions when I joined Teslas, one of the questions that I had was, there's any sort sort of smart contracts when it comes on that you guys are working on for Teslas. And they were saying, like, due to lack of funding as of the moment, they are actually working on it. They have have those things in mind, but it's not something that is actually current, that is actually working on it's a work in progress, I will say. So but they are thinking about it. They're actually trying to implement these things into that chain in particular. I don't know about the ones that you mentioned as well, but I'm pretty sure once, Bitcoin and Ethereum, they actually take place and they actually become more, I will say, stable or more, stable when it comes down to doing this type of practices.
I'm pretty sure all the chains are gonna follow, and they're gonna provide better solutions when it comes down to cost, and things like that. It just kinda, like it makes sense the way you explained as well, Ben. Like, they have to be the pioneers. They gotta start it up, make the initiative, and then everybody else is going to follow follow suit and try to actually improve or make it better. With that being said, when it comes down to being a pioneer and improving, this type of, improving this type of services. Do you think, Ben, Ollie, Ella, that collectors are more interested or attracted by on chain NFTs?
Ella Depends on the collector, doesn't it? I mean, some people really are collecting for the love of art, like, because they just love what the artwork they see in front of them. And they don't they don't care if it's on Tezos or ETH or Bitcoin or whatever. They just want that piece of art and, you know, they might download a high res file, have it printed. They might choose to put it up on a digital display. They might store the file locally. They might do all kinds of things to, you know, to to to have that artwork displayed in their home or in their gallery, on cyber, you know, or or on the wall of their house, whatever. Certainly, it's interesting when you start looking at things from a museum perspective.
I read a couple of really interesting articles about people who are looking at digital art literally from the point of view of building out a collection for a museum, which is expected to stand, you know, for for decades if not hundreds of years. You know? And they're looking at ways where they can preserve art, whether that's fully on chain or, you know, via IPFS or whatever. There are some museums that are even looking into, like, running their own nodes. You know? So they've got a backup of the blockchain because you've gotta have a backup of a backup of a backup. So that's the very, very, very extreme end of the use cases. But, actually, when it comes down to people who are just buying art in the space, it boils down to what they want. You know? There's as many different attitudes out there as there are people.
And I've as yet not sold an on chain on NFT, so I can't speak specifically about my own case, but I'll concede the mic to somebody that can.
Charlie Yeah. Ben Ben or Ollie, do you think that, collectors are actually interested in this type of, technology when it comes down to on chain? What do you what do you believe, Ali?
Ollie I think, again, as as Ella mentioned, it it depends on the collector. I would say that when I first started minting back in June, I think it was probably less so. I don't you know, I I was kind of rapping on about the fact that, you know, these were being minted fully on chain. And if I compare it to now when you put a post out, the amount of questions you get from people about, oh, you know, what makes it fully on chain? And there's a lot of questions and curiosity from people. I think it's certainly the and it's not necessarily that the collectors have sort of changed, but because there's been a bit more limelight shown, I guess, on on chain over the last kind of few weeks to sort of month or so that collectors are starting to take a bit more note perhaps and and thinking that if they don't already have sort of some pieces, they're starting to look at acquiring, you know, fully on chain pieces to have in their collection.
Charlie Great. Great. And what about you, Ben? What are your thoughts on this?
Ben Yeah. I think there's two things. Number one is what does the collector value. Right? I mean, you know, oil painting doesn't have the greatest permanence in the world. It could it could burn. It could get damaged. It could get so it depends on what they value. Right? If they truly just care about the image and they love super complex images, maybe Unchained's not for them. So number one, it depends on the collector. Number two, think the biggest impediment is, and Ali touched on this, it's education. Right? Bankless, which I generally like Bankless. They do a good newsletter. They do a good podcast. They put out an interesting piece on what it means, for on chain art to be on chain art the other day, and I didn't particularly like their grading system.
They had some interesting points, but it also wasn't as clear as the post we've got, penned to the space right now nor was it as accurate. And so I think a lot of people just don't know what it is, and they certainly don't understand sort of the scale, You know, what's the best? What's the worst? Why would I want that? Why is it more permanent? And so I would say that's probably the number one biggest impediment right now, to people seeking out on chain NFTs is is how do they know it's an on chain NFT? Right? If you go look at my on chain collect and on foundation, it says it's on chain. But if you don't know what you're looking for, and me and Nate have talked about this in the past, he said, how do I know it's on chain?
And I said, well, you can depend on on chainchecker.xyz by Tokenfox. Great tool. Or you can go to Etherscan. You can look at not the NFT, but the transaction I did to create the NFT. Then you can go down, decompile the code, and you can see, is the image a pointer, or is it a bunch of byte code? And he kinda said, that's a little complex. I don't expect anybody to do that. And so I would say that's probably the other thing is, you know, it's not like Foundation's grading the NFT, and says this one's fully on chain. And so until we get a little further, along and not just in terms of tools to create on chain art, but also to verify and to view it, I think that's going to be an impediment, and by nature will cause that collector base to be a little bit smaller.
Charlie Yeah. I'm actually glad that you guys mentioned that as well because I remember back in when all these, like, smart contracts started coming out, like, Manifold, ThirdWeb, etcetera, I remember collectors were asking specifically, hey. This NFT on on a smart contract. And most of the people that didn't know how to actually start their smart contracts kinda were kinda like, kinda it's kinda not. And it's on the marketplace only. And now it kinda, like, it gave some type some sort of edge for those that actually knew how to put them on smart contracts. So it kinda, like, gave them that, I will say, that advantage. Like, okay. Letting know collectors like, hey. My stuff is on also on smart contract. So kinda like that peace of mind.
So I can see that the full on chain happening in the future where it's gonna give that peace of mind to those collectors that are gonna be like, oh, is there's actually more layers into this than just being on IPFS. So so I can see that happening. But, actually, I'm glad that you guys are bringing this up as well, letting people know that it depends. It depends on what the collector is looking for and what type of invest investment they're gonna make on that artist on on what they have and what type of services they are providing, whether it's on smart contract or full on chain. So I'm actually glad that you guys brought that up. There's a lot of there are a couple questions rolling in from the bubble, so I appreciate you guys for actually bringing those questions. Very interesting ones as well.
So I'm actually glad to recouple those as well. The first question that I'm going to read is from assertivebetamax.e. He says, how does fees work for generative pieces, please? Is there an initial cost and then buyers pay minting fees as they buy their unique copy? Thank you. So what what I believe in this question and what I'm actually when I read it is, like, if the actual collector is going to pay the piece after he purchases, like, the gas, or is it going to be the artist actually paying the fee? I think we already answered that. Correct? It's like we have to actually do the main thing and listing ourselves. Correct?
Ben So, to give a quick answer, you know, generative pieces are a little bit different. Right? You have a library, generally, like a p5.js library that's stored sometimes on chain, sometimes off chain as Ella alluded to earlier with Art Blocks. But you have a a you know, with a generative piece, you are you are using a random seed along with a relatively well, it depends how robust the code is, and then you're getting an output from that. So fees work very differently for an on chain generative piece, and I'll let Ella talk more about that than they do with what we're talking about where you're minting something, you know, a piece of art fully on chain. So there is some nuance there. But, generally, you know, you have to remember a generative piece is a one of one of m. And so there's some economies of scale there that you're gaining.
It's much cheaper in that way to match each individual one of one addition on a generative piece than a one of one. And then, you know, we can also talk about there there are on chain eleven fifty five additions, and then there's on chain seven twenty one one of ones. And, you know, it is much cheaper to do additions on chain than a one of one. So there there is some nuance there, but Ella Ella, go ahead.
Ella Thank you so much. Yeah. Ezzesi, I know you're a generative artist, Also doing generative music, is super super cool because who's even doing that. So nice to see you in the space. Okay. So in terms of generative stuff, most generative platforms let's take FX hash and highlight, for example. There you upload all your code as a package, and then it goes usually onto Arweave or IPFS or something like that. So really speaking, it's not properly on chain. You've also then got Artblocks, which is slightly better in terms of being on chain if you regard that as better. But there you've got dependencies to the libraries that are accessed through the Artblocks engine. If you wanna look for fully on chain generative art, have a look at autoglyphs, which is linked to in threads that I've pinged at the top from Singular.
That's very much worth looking at because they managed to get everything fully on chain for that. And the way they did it, and it's ASCII art which obviously interests me greatly. But when you dig into it, each of those glyphs, they haven't actually used text characters. They've used, basic shapes like ellipses and lines, which obviously you then don't run into the problem that hit me, was around fonts and characters displaying differently in different browsers. So it's very difficult to do. And also each glyph ended up being, I think, over 300 kilobytes, because it's all kind of hard coded in in a way that means the appearance of it is completely immutable. So, yeah, very expensive to, mint and produce. But autoglyphs is a fully on chain generative project. So take a look at the Lava Labs website to sort of dig into that.
And if you have a look at the, source code in the console, you'll be able to pick up quite a bit there about how they've constructed it and how they've achieved that.
Charlie Appreciate your answers, Ella and Ben. There's another question that we have rolling in by compact.test.e. It says, don't s SVGs rely on an interpreted within the browser to be displayed correctly, it is a standard that could change in the future, and the SVG will look wrong or not be compatible with future devices at all? Pretty loaded question. Ben, go ahead.
Ben So, I mean yeah. That is true in the sense that I mean, when we're talking about permanence and immutability, right, we are talking about digital data. Right? So solidity could change. Ethereum could change. Contracts could change. The way data in contracts is viewed could change. Heck, the ASCII art could change someday, in the way that that's interpreted and viewed on a computer. That that is true. You know? We're we're not talking about physical objects. And so the way you experience this art, of course, you know, a JPEG, a PNG, these are all standards that could change. And an SVG, exactly the same as a standard that could change. And so, yes, in in that way, we are talking about digital data on a blockchain, on a computer, none of which existed a 150 ago. And so, yes, in some sense, you use a browser or an image viewer or, you know, even ASCII art. You you you have to use something to interpret and view it. And so, yes, that is a fair
Ben When we're talking about immutability, permanence, blockchains, we're not talking about the pyramids. You know, we're not talking about a physical structure. We are talking about, you know, ones and zeros and code, and something that's going to exist digitally. Now do I think that every SVG image on Earth will be not viewable in the future or JPEGs or PNGs or no. I I don't think that's likely to happen. I think it's more likely that the blockchain would cease to exist before, you know, the technology to view standard image standards doesn't exist. But, sure, it's a possibility.
Charlie Great. Great. Ella, go ahead, please.
Ella Yeah. I just wanted to add one more thing, and then I absolutely have to cut and run. I'm I'm way over my time. If you're looking at doing generative art specifically on chain, as in fully on chain, without having any of these external dependencies, there is a git book that you can look at. It was created by Tokenfox and some other people, but it's called scripty.sol. And what it does is it allows you to access certain libraries like p five JS or three JS from within contracts that are already minted to the Ethereum blockchain. So you're actually if you know what you're doing, you can actually set up your projects so that you could have a fully generative project that was fully on chain. So look for scripty.sol, and the get book is available publicly.
Ben L I forgot about that. That's great. There's something similar on Bitcoin where you can look at common libraries that have already been described on Bitcoin. So you're not you're not doing double work, but I I had forgotten about that. That's great.
Charlie Yeah. I appreciate you for your knowledge, Ella and Ben as well, and for the questions as well on the bubble. Due to time and, of course, our guests are actually having all the responsibilities, we're going to be winding down, closing with some closing comments. First of all, I wanna ask Ben first, and then we go with Ella When it comes down to this last question, if someone is actually interested on Maintain for the first time full on chain, is what is your recommendation? And there's any guide somewhere for this. Ben.
Ben I don't know right now of a really good I I did in the comments. I listed manifolds guide. It leaves some to be desired. I would say almost every guide right now leaves something to be desired just because, like I said, there's intricacies around SVGs, raster images. Ella's talked about generative art. Do you meant as a seven twenty one, a one of one. Do you meant as eleven fifty five as an addition? If so, how? So I would say, you know, do you use an extension? Do you not use an extension to meta? I I think everything right now does leave something to be desired. I haven't seen a good comprehensive guide. At the same time, if anybody's interested in getting started, feel free to shoot me a DM, and I'm happy to say, hey. Here's five links that'll help you. What's your arc?
Kinda what direction are you going? I'm always happy to help. Take a couple of minutes and at least send you some resources, point you in the right direction, but I do not know of a great comprehensive guide right now.
Charlie Well, you are the guide. You already you already volunteered. No. Don't don't be flooding Ben with DMs now, man. Just take your time. Just come up with some good questions as well because probably he's busy. Matt busy all the time. So, Ella, same question goes to you. When it comes down to recommendations, if I'm actually, the audience or myself is actually thinking about maintaining for the first time, what are the guidelines that you actually suggest when it comes down to this?
Ella First things first, and I'll be quick because I really am literally putting my coat on to run out the door. Firstly, go back to what Ben said. Think about really why you want to do this. Like, really be sure that you're prepared to do this. Really believe in your art that you want to mint and be certain as Ollie said that it it's technically suitable and that you can get the image to the required size. Don't get all dreamy and think you're gonna mint something that's 32 megabytes. It is never gonna happen. There is a limit probably of about a 132 kilobytes, and that's if you're prepared to pay, like, an insane amount of money to mint it. So be comfortable with what you're doing. Be sure about why you wanna do it, and be sure with what you wanna do.
And then from there, take it slowly, take your time, go step by step, and talk to people. I'll answer questions if I can. You know, I've been completely open about the fact that I've hit challenges myself. You know, it's not necessarily an error free process. It's not necessarily easy, and you can't do it for cheap, even though you can do it a bit cheaper with the manifold extension that we talked about earlier in the space. But, anyway, just be sure that it's for you because there's absolutely Thing wrong with using Arweave or IPFS or any other solution, if that's right for you and your use case. Don't be caught up in the fad and feel that you have to throw a lot of money at this just because everyone else is doing it. Be sure it's for you.
Charlie I appreciate you for the advice and recommendation, Ben and Ella. You guys have been real. It's been a pleasure actually hosting the space alongside the Builders Dow and Self Utopia in the building. Appreciate you guys for your questions. Very, very, very complex questions, which I actually love to actually analyze because I have no idea what full on chain was. I already knew about ordinals. I knew things that were happening on the Bitcoin side of things, but I never knew that what was happening on the ETH
Charlie So now with this understanding, now it just makes it even easier to navigate and to consider if that's something that you wanna make as far as making a move on that and why. And this is the reason why I wanna stress that enough, like the why or why you're doing it, the permanence, the the importance of it, the being part of history, being one of the first ones, etcetera. Whatever your reason might be that you wanna do that as well and invest on it as well because it's not cheap. So you gotta figure it out what to do, how to do it, to actually make it sing make it actually memorable for you and for those that are actually supporting you as well. Any last words, Builders' Dow, Flavio, when it comes down to this topic? And, basically, just get us ready to go.
Speaker 1 Thanks, Charlie. Well, just want to thank, Ben, Ella, Soft, yourself, Oli to being on the space. It's it's has been very, very helpful, and I learned a lot as as yourself. As well, we have a chat in our Discord dedicated to this to this topic. So it's one of the most active right now because it's it's a really interesting topic, and we will continue probably the conversation there. But, also, I want to thank all the audience here for being present, for listening, for asking question. We will do, much more spaces next year dedicated to those kind of topics. And and the bit that we are currently working on, on the road map for 2024, There are gonna be a lot of, new things coming, and we are really exciting. Really excited for that. So, nothing.
Just continue to follow us, and, hopefully, we will continue to provide good content to everyone and helpful content as well. Thanks, and goodbye, guys. See you soon.