About Art Blocks NFT collection

What is the Art Blocks NFT project? It is both a platform and an NFT collection. Basically, Art Block is a platform where people can buy programmable on-demand art. You just pick the style you like, pay for it, and you’ll get a unique piece of art in that style.

How does it work?

Each artist writes a generative script (most usually using the p5js JavaScript library). That script is then stored on the Ethereum blockchain. When someone wants to buy art from the projects, they buy an NFT first.

When they buy the NFT, there is a unique seed inside of it that will control certain variables in the generative script. Those variables impact how the art will look like. For example, one variable can be color, one can be radius, one can be shape, etc.

Chromie Squiggle is one of the collections on the Art Blocks platform. This specific Squiggle’s seed is “0x11ac128f8b54949c12d04102cfc01960fc496813cbc3495bf77aeed738579738”. It doesn’t look like anything at first, but each character in it represents something. This seed comes from the automatic random generation that happens during the minting process.

Basically, after minting, you’ll get a unique piece of art based on that seed. If “variable” is not a familiar word to you, think of them as properties. Each generative script on Art Blocks defines certain properties. In this case, squiggle has these properties:

However, it’s important to say that collections on Art Blocks are nothing alike. Some are animations, some are static images, some are round, some are 3D objects, others are boxes, etc. That’s the beauty of a generative project, the artist will define some basic parameters, but the final outcome will be random for everyone.

Art Style

It is impossible to define the art style of the Art Blocks collection. The only thing all NFTs on the Art Blocks have in common is that they are created with a generative script. However, the art can differ very much as you can see on the images down below.

As you can see, these two images are completely different. That’s why it’s nearly impossible to tell what is the art style of Art Blocks. What about two images in the same collection, how similar are they? Let’s take a look.

We’ll compare two NFTs from the “Fidenza” collection published on this platform.

As you can see, both of these two NFTs have similar color patterns and similar shapes. However, they are clearly not a copy-paste, and you can definitely see they have a similar style.

Fidenza #313 was sold for 1,000 ETH which was approximately $3.3 million at that time.

However, not every NFT collection published to the Art Blocks platform is automatically a part of the “curated” collection. You might be wondering what’s the curated collection about?

Basically, these are the collections approved by the curation board. If the curation board likes the collection, it becomes a part of the official Art Blocks “curated” collection. Once a collection is a part of the “curated” collection, you can find it on OpenSea and other secondary marketplaces.

About author

Erick Calderon is the founder and the main person behind the Art Blocks platform. Believe it or not, Erick was in the ceramic tile business before starting this business. Although, he did code as a hobby.

It all started when Erick found out he can write a code that will generate art pieces. That was the first time he came across generative art. Upon reading about NFTs on Reddit, he read a thread by the creators of CryptoPunks who asked people to “mint” their project for free.

Erick had minted a few CryptoPunks and not even the regular ones, but the zombie ones which are pretty rare. However, he ended up selling those punks for $200 each to pay developers for his marketplace idea.

Little did he know that those punks will be worth millions, but he still ended up making millions on his platform, so it’s a win after all.

Since then, many blockchain experts have joined the Art Blocks team. The platform was crafted to perfection, and that’s why it’s one of the most valuable NFT platforms in the world.

What blockchain is Art Blocks collection on?

Art Blocks collection is on the Ethereum blockchain. Every collection that’s a part of their “curated” collection is also on Ethereum. Even though Ethereum is attractive for blockchain developers because of how simple it is to write a smart contract, transaction fees are too high.

That’s why we feel this is a downside to Art Blocks at this moment. Perhaps when Ethereum 2.0 is out, the transaction fees will be much lower. Still, the majority of art that’s published on Art Blocks costs at least a few thousand, so $50 transaction fees may not be that big of importance.

What wallet you can use with Art Blocks?

If you are minting directly on the website you can only use MetaMask. We don’t like that as some users who don’t have MetaMask will have to create a new wallet just so they can mint on the official website.

However, if you are buying an NFT from the Art Blocks Curated collection on a secondary marketplace such as OpenSea, you can use multiple different wallets.

How to buy Art Blocks NFT?

As we have previously stated, there are two ways you can buy an Art Blocks NFT. The first one is to buy it directly from the website, and the second is to buy from a secondary marketplace.

Regardless of where you purchase, the steps are very similar:

Now you’ll be able to see your NFT on the Art Blocks platform. However, you can also your wallet to sign in to OpenSea and you’ll see your NFT there as well.

Art Blocks platform selling format is a dutch auction. In case you don’t know what is a dutch action, let us help you out.

The Dutch auction is a bit different than your classic auction. The price starts high and drops in defined time and price intervals until it reaches a resting price.

For example, the highest price of an NFT is set to be $15,000. Until someone bids, the price will drop by $1,000 every 10 minutes until it reaches the reserve price of $3,000.

As soon as someone bids on the auction, they win the NFT. There is no bidding competition like in the other auction formats. The first person that places a bid is the winner.

Does the Art Blocks collection have any utility?

Since the Art Blocks platform is fully focused on art, that’s the main utility. There isn’t any complex utility like some other NFT collections have. However, creators can always add utility through external websites or even custom contracts.

Considering the number of projects that have been added to the Curated collection, we wouldn’t be surprised if we see some complex utility in the future.

In case you are interested in utility, make sure you check our “Best NFT Utility” ranking.