S2E8 - Snowfro Founder of Art Blocks and Creator of the Chromie Squiggle

S2E8 features Erick Calderon, also known as Snowfro!

Erick is the creator of the Chromie Squiggle and the founder of Art Blocks, which has set the gold standard for how on-chain art is created.

In this episode, Nifty talks with Erick about the now-complete Chromie Squiggle collection, his experiences working with color and light that inspired the Squiggle, his family’s artistic background, how claiming CryptoPunks led to the creation of Art Blocks, and his passion for racing cars.

Prefer video? Watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@squiggledao

The sponsor of this episode is NFTfi. NFTfi is the most battle-tested and secure lending and liquidity protocol for NFTs. Since launching in 2020, NFTfi has had over 60,000 loans with zero security incidents. Try lending today: https://nftfi.com/

Guest
Erick Calderon: https://twitter.com/ArtOnBlockchain

Host
Nifty Fifty: https://twitter.com/NiftyFiftyETH

SquiggleDAO
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Transcript

Nifty (00:01)
Welcome to the SquiggleDao podcast. This is Nifty and our guest today is none other than Erick Calderon, also known as Snowfro. Erick is the creator of the Chromie Squiggle and the founder of Artblocks, which has set the gold standard for how on chain art is created. As the Chromie Squiggle signature says, he's an artist, developer and tinkerer. It's an honor to have him with us today. Erick, welcome to the podcast.

Erick (00:23)
Thanks, Nifty. It's a huge honor for me to be here today as well.

Nifty (00:27)
So Erick, are we going to see you racing a car wrapped in Squiggles anytime soon?

Erick (00:33)
I sure hope so. I've got a couple more things I need to do to my little race car and then finally wrap it. Which is terrifying because you when you race cars you get fender benders all the time so I feel like I'm just wrapping it so that I can eventually have to re -wrap it but yeah no I'd love to do that.

Nifty (00:48)
Just so you know, the DAO is eager to support, sponsor, put some Squiggles. We're here for that. Cheer from the sidelines. So how do you feel now the Chrome Squiggle Collection is finally complete after almost four years since Minting opened or six years since you started working on it?

Erick (00:55)
awesome.

Come on down.

It's surreal. mean, I feel like it was really exciting to meet the last one. And then there was like this empty feeling for a couple of days after that, just knowing that that was complete. There's some really interesting aspects from the blockchain component that, for example, that first smart contract that only stores the three projects that were released on day one is now complete as well. It's not just the ChromieSquiggle project, but it's also that first contract. And that contract can be put in a sort of archival mode.

which, you know, because there's no more minting ever to be done on that smart contract. And I think it just kind of goes to show into kind of the permanence of what we're doing that like that contract is also now complete. But yeah, it's a, it's a big relief. Just kind of, you know, during the, the, time after I paused it and, know, the value of kind of normally Squiggles went up over that time, I started feeling this intense amount of

Concern and pressure about potentially being compromised and somebody being able to go in there and mint Squiggles Obviously we then created some pretty crazy security stuff with a multi sig Shout out to the multi squigs multi sig signers that supported, you know minting squigs for With me over that time period. But yeah, it's just it's closure. It's it's nice. It feels like can move on to To other fun stuff that we can do with the Squiggles now that we know that the entire collection is complete

Nifty (02:34)
Definitely from the community and myself, mixed emotions. Like it's good to finally see the collection complete, but also we are gonna miss those minting moments.

Erick (02:43)
Yeah, I agree.

Nifty (02:45)
So the creation of the Squiggle always reminds me of that Steve Jobs quote of that you cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards because a whole life of experiences working with color and light need to happen for the Squiggle to become a reality. Could you describe the key experiences that led to the Squiggle?

Erick (03:07)
Yeah, there's a really beautiful exhibition that's actually coming up here with the Museum of Art and Light that's going to actually be a really nice way of putting it all together and bringing it all together because you're going to see all of this journey from my first projection mapping piece, which is going to be installed through some of the physical sculptures. Actually, my appreciation for gradients and for trying to understand smooth transition of color actually started from

my experience being in the ceramic tile business where I was known as the person to go to if you needed to make a gradient out of tile. And when we make gradients out of pixels, it's very easy to do that because pixels are tiny and creating smooth gradients with pixels is relatively straightforward. But when you get something as big as a one inch by one inch tile, making a very smooth gradient starts getting a lot more complex. so I'd been a resource for interior designers and architects to be able to help them.

create these gradients and I did it enough to where I started creating some formulas in my head as to how to do it in a way that A, simplified it. When I first started, I literally just would place colored pieces until it felt like a smooth gradient and eventually started creating some math and formulas for spread, depending on the length of the wall and how many colors it would be, I'd have to kind of figure out some math to make it happen. So that's kind of where my appreciation for gradients and color started. Also being in the ceramic tile business, I always

appreciated the colorful side of that business. And then my first implementation of that outside of my design world life was in the world of projection mapping, which is kind my first artistic endeavor, where I was creating these lightscapes where I was smoothly gradating from one color to the next, but by projecting colorful light onto three -dimensional objects.

got a little bit tired with the hassles of setting up a projector and migrated from there to actually hand painting individual blocks of color, kind of going back towards the ceramic tile gradient motif, but being able to control color more granularly by mixing paint color. So I would start with red, yellow, and blue paint. And from that, I would generate 33 individual colors of paint that gradated from each of those pieces, each of those colors. And then I would paint individual blocks and assemble them into a...

gradient. And that kind of along the way, I did a Kickstarter campaign with an LED bracelet that also kind of generated these very smooth color gradients. was a programmable Arduino based bracelet that anybody could create their own gradients. we put the standard thing when it turned on was just essentially the Chromie Squiggle colors rotating around the bracelet. And yeah, that

has found its way into just about every artwork I've done. The 100 Untitled Spaces project that came after the ChromieSquiggle incorporated a gradient effect that I had been working on actually prior to finalizing the ChromieSquiggle. Did some fun stuff on testnet with voxels and cryptovoxels called geodes, for example, that also utilize this kind of blocky tiled gradient but in 3D form. The ChromieSquiggle, while it was just a proof of concept,

it ended up absorbing everything that I had been doing up until that point. And yeah, looking back, it's easy to connect the dots, but at the time it would have been hard to kind of deliberately say that this is a culmination of all of that other

Nifty (06:41)
And adding to that, we're going to be adding those collections, those pieces to the video. And two things. one, we've collaborated with a few graffiti artists to do the Squiggle, and it really is difficult to do a gradient with paint. Really needs a master to do it. And two, I loved those Sebbo lights. We should bring them back.

Erick (07:05)
We should. swear I would never do a physical digital like electronic again, but if the Squiggle that wants to do it, sure. Yeah, let's do it.

Nifty (07:12)
We are also dealing with the real world and the shipping, the suppliers.

Erick (07:19)
The warranties, that's the thing people expected to work for 10 years, but it's a flexible circuit, you know, so.

Nifty (07:26)
Yeah. So it's clear that art has always been a big part of your life, not only in the last years, but also since an early age, since art runs deep in your family. Can you share some of your early experiences with art and your family artistic background?

Erick (07:42)
Yeah, so, you know, my grandfather was an artist by trade. That was his profession. And I think, you know, he was a big inspiration for myself, but also even bigger inspiration to my brother, Daniel, who at a very early age demonstrated a desire to be an artist and had and continues to have just like an innate skill with drawing and painting and sculpting and truly

Truly an exceptional artist. I grew up surrounded by my brother drawing and painting and just blowing my family away with the things that he was doing. an early age, well, early age, middle school, I started studying photography and I...

I guess that was, photography obviously is an art form, but when I was doing photography back in the day, I didn't necessarily see it as an art form. I saw it more as a documentation form. I never thought of myself as an artist when I was doing photography, but obviously there's a lot of art processes or thoughts that go into that. Meanwhile, my brother was kind of getting into sculpting and really refining his skills in sketching.

But yeah, that was the extent of my surrounding myself with art. I it was in my house and my family. My sister's also actually pretty good with a pencil and drawing. Never really aspired to be an artist growing up. I just never thought that was in the cards for me because I consistently compared myself to my brother who truly just kind of had that natural ability. But then when I got into, I guess after college,

I started tinkering and messing around and playing with color and playing with, in the design business to some degree, interior designers, I look at them as artists. They create beautiful spaces, sanctuaries for people. I met my wife when I was 30, roughly. And I just remember, she's an architect, she's a very creative person and I attribute a pretty big unlock to her. think in meeting her and having more artistic and...

design conversations, I feel like it kind of unlocked a side of me that made me actually want to produce things as artworks for the first time. And that's when I started, you messing around with projection mapping and these 3D blocks. And, you know, that's kind of when I actually decided I wanted to make things that people would have in their house to kind of, you make them smile or to make them think about, you know, about the world in a different way.

Nifty (10:25)
that. In 2017 you had this incredible moment claiming punks when everything clicked for you. This was the flux capacitor moment when the idea of our blocks began to take shape. Can you take us back to that moment when everything clicked for you?

Erick (10:40)
Yeah, I had been tinkering with the Ethereum blockchain. I'd been trying everything that was available at the time, every app, dApp, every way that you could interact. There was a social media platform that was also a wallet and you had to sync your wallet. I mean, it was just a very different time. And I would be on Reddit regularly engaging with the Ethereum community. There was a couple of different subreddits there, one was r/Ethereum and one was r/ethdev and regularly kind of found links there.

I got scammed out of a bunch of ICO stuff at the time as well, I mean, it's just anything that came around, but I was so fascinated by the technology and it was such a small community that just about anything that came out, I interacted with. And one of those was the CryptoPunks, right? So they posted on Reddit and said, hey, we did this weird little thing. And at this point I had been programming art, creative coding for a little while and very deep in blockchain and trying to understand all the different ways that blockchain could affect.

society and they kind of created this light bulb moment for me of digital ownership, which I to this day is driven just about everything that I've been doing over last seven years, almost eight years. But in the process of claiming my punks, you know, I was very early to claiming punks and I had the ability to claim what I wanted to claim. I claimed a bunch of zombies. In fact, I claimed all zombies except for one that I thought kind of looked like my wife. And I claim that one as well. And I just, in that moment,

you know, with the, with my background in creative coding, with my understanding of blockchain technology, I just had this thought that, there's probably a way to do this where I don't get to go and pick what I want because it is very much favors the people that were there first. And instead look at a democratized way of, of, of distributing generative content. know, the, the crypto punks project is a, a, is a generative piece. It's, it's a, it's an algorithm that generated all the punks and they kind of

did some curation after to make sure there was no doubles and to kind of refine the collection, but they didn't draw every single one. So I saw this opportunity to kind of combine everything that had been leading up to that. And it was in the claiming of the CryptoPunks that I thought initially about the concept of art blocks as a way of distributing, releasing creative content, creative coding content using this awesome innovation that is the blockchain.

Nifty (13:04)
And you were already working with generative coding for the tile industry or that was later?

Erick (13:11)
Yeah. mean, in the, in there was the, the, request for mosaics got to a point where I was writing. I mean, I wouldn't have looked at it as creative coding at the time, but I was writing algorithms to help streamline the process, you know, to the point where I was, you know, I would be able to, and a lot of this was in Python, just like in the, the, in the command line, I would input a dimensions and the size of the tile and how many colors, and it would kind of spit out a bunch of numbers and information for us to be able to assemble these gradients.

I was doing creative coding when it came to projection mapping. So when I discovered projection mapping, I was excited about being able to make, you know, if you've seen these big spectacles where a building looks like it's crumbling because, you know, light is projected onto it. That's what got me excited about it. And then I bought a projector and I started kind of researching software and was messing around with TouchDesigner and VBBB and realized that there's a big element to this, which was a 3D animation that I had zero experience with. it was...

It just felt very much out of my reach. And so, but I was still really excited about projection mapping. So I instead decided to start writing my own custom algorithms to accomplish the projection mapping. So instead of being limited to kind of the standard things you see in the music industry, where there's a cube and you project animations onto that cube, I just kind of rethought projection mapping as a standalone app. And in fact, released an app with a awesome Japanese developer back in...

think 2012 called the Light Art app that was available on the app store to kind of not only to facilitate my projection mapping, but to facilitate it for other people. And so that's really where I started coding with the intention of creating art and combining the experiences I had with making mosaics and the experiences that I had with just creative coding or desire to kind of create art.

as a whole.

Nifty (15:10)
that was really everything clicking for you because you had the experience and all the pieces and suddenly the punks bringing everything together

Erick (15:19)
yeah.

Nifty (15:20)
one of my favorite times in the space was when I just discovered NFTs in February 2021. I always say that it was Valentine's weekend because I remember my fiance was not happy of me spending the whole weekend on the Discord and Twitter. And I spent the following months reading for a few hours a day or many hours a day the whole Punks Discord. And probably not everyone knows that you spent two years as a mod there, onboarding hundreds of people to not only to Punks, but also to NFTs in general.

Erick (15:31)
Thank

Nifty (15:50)
How was your experience of that Discord at the time?

Erick (15:53)
I mean, I also got in trouble with my wife pretty regularly because she'd be like, are you back in that chat again? I don't know. I was so fascinated with this on so many different levels. I when I claimed punks, I had zero inkling of thinking that anybody would ever want to pay for these, first of all. It was just like claiming a fun little collectible thing.

I've always collected things in my life, not necessarily with the intention of reselling them, but just because I have this obsession with collecting. And as people started coming, cause I mean, when I joined the punks Discord, I don't know how many people were there, but I'd say it'd be less than 20, maybe 30. It was just a very small group of people and it was more just troubleshooting. And even as much as I understood how to use the blockchain, even I didn't understand fully what I was doing. And I was like pinging Matt and John being like, Hey, where's my gas refund? I mean, it's just, you know, these are, these are simple questions.

But I found myself just so excited on so many levels, at the artistic side, on the distribution side, on the ownership side, that I stayed in there. this is also the beginning of a massive transition from spending a lot of time in Slack in 2017, in the kind of shitcoin world, which was what actually brought me into crypto and kind of got me more actively involved in individual projects. The first...

project or the first, my first thing that drew me to Discord was actually the CryptoPunks Discord. So it was the only Discord I was in for a really long time. And it, it, it, was really dead at the beginning. I mean, people didn't really know what to do, but then Matt and John started adding more features to the site. And then all of a sudden bids started coming in and people, like a lot of us in there were like, wait, people actually want to buy these things. And so then little by little people would trickle in and they'd ask all sorts of questions. You can only imagine.

what kinds of questions people ask. And was the whole range of like, well, why does anybody care about these things? Or even just coming in to yell about how stupid this was or how stupid NFTs were. We didn't even initially in the early days, even call them NFTs, right? Like they, it wasn't until the Crypto Kitties were released that they kind of established more of the non -fungible token terminology. And yeah, it was spent years.

just always with that Discord with notifications on on my phone. Anytime somebody came into that Discord and started asking a question, I was really excited to answer the question. And I think there's, you know, in life in general, if you are willing to teach something or educate people, you become more versed in that topic. That's an experience I've had my whole life. you know, the more you're willing to help other people, the more of an expert you become and the more of a pitfalls you see and the more of the

Nifty (18:19)
you

Erick (18:44)
the also just the motivation you see I would get so much joy out of helping people have that light bulb moment for the first time when they came in oftentimes on a tear of how stupid this was and just kind of being able to give it it sometimes it took an hour sometimes it took a couple weeks but people would be like I get it now and that is super fulfilling so I spent my first couple years doing that and arguing with people and you know oftentimes telling people you know especially coming out of the 2017 kind of

know, altcoin world that unlike all these projects in crypto that were always saying, here's our roadmap and never completing the roadmap to be clear. I don't know that any project ever actually hit a third of their milestones. Here was a project in the crypto ecosystem that was done. It was, it was inherently complete. And I very much appreciated that Matt and John kept updating the website and kind of adding features. But from a, from a crypto perspective, from a blockchain perspective, the project was done.

And there was something really special about that because even though the project was done, people kept coming in and the more people that came in, the more demand there was for these things, which then caused the price to go up, which caused more people to hear about it, which caused more people to come in. And while the prices were relatively affordable, like in the 20 to $200 range, people kept their cool. Things then got out of control when prices for crypto points started getting into the five, 10, $15 ,000 range.

People were spending meaningful money and they were expecting meaningful things in return. there was this level of expectation that the creators of the CryptoPunks were going to be a certain amount of engaged on the project. I enjoyed actually just being able to be like, guys, this project is done. There's nothing else here. Now it's just, it's now up to the community how this project moves forward to some extent. And the CryptoPunks Discord grew from a few dozen to a few hundred to a few thousand to...

a place where, I mean, I would say for a year, not more than 10 seconds would pass without somebody saying something in there. When I first kind of got in there, you could have two weeks without somebody saying a word in that Discord. And it just feels good to be part of something like that and just to kind of watch it evolve and feel like you're a steward for not just the project itself, but for the technology that supported it.

Nifty (21:06)
Some lesson that I've learned as well is that when people yell or laugh at an idea, some of those are really good ideas. Not all, but it's good to put a little bit of research because some of those might be the good ones in the future. Another one from the CryptoPunks Discord, and we go to the Squiggle. I'm dying to discuss the Squiggle with you. But in May 2020, I have a message from you saying, willing to trade 12 zombies for an alien, which I was doing the numbers and the deal.

It's pretty fair, even up to these numbers, given the recent sales of aliens and zombies. The trade didn't happen, but it would have allowed you to complete a full set of pangs together with your MiBits and Autoglyph sets. What can you share your approach to collecting in sets and what drives you to complete these collections?

Erick (21:53)
Yeah, made a lot of crazy offers. remember, I mean, I was desperate. I mean, that's another reason why I stuck around the Discord is because I was like, one day somebody's going to list an alien for a really low price because they're, especially during like the times when things were really quiet and I would never forgive myself if I wasn't there to pick it up. but interestingly, the aliens weren't lit, I think maybe a year and a half, two years passed between any transactions involving aliens and

I remember one was listed for sale for like 1 ,000 ETH when ETH was $200 and thinking, well, that's ridiculous. Like, who's ever going to pay that? And now looking back, like, gosh, that would have been a really sweet deal. Yeah, 2019, I met Matt and John from Marvel Labs at the first NFT NYC. And it was just really weird after having been

purely digital in this ecosystem to fly to New York and actually engage with other human beings. And while I already had a tremendous amount of conviction, my conviction 10x from there after having met them and having not just met them, but other people, know, Ben from Cryptovoxels, you know, had these shirts made for like myself and like 10 other Cryptovoxels community members. And we all wore them and got to know each other when we were at the conference. And

When I came back from that, I came back with this crazy idea that I wanted to have a full set of crypto punks, which at some point might've felt a little bit unachievable. But then I started doing the math and, you know, looked at my savings, which probably shouldn't have messed with, but I guess it worked out for the best and decided that I wanted to buy it. understanding how transparent things are in crypto, you have to be really delicate about that because if people got the sense that I was trying to collect a full set, they can, you know, in some cases there was some punks that

were simply not for sale, like some attributes that were not for sale, or somewhere that would only be one for sale or two for sale. And people can see what you're doing and potentially snipe it and then try to extort you for even more money. So I created a bunch of different wallets so that I could kind of acquire these and then transfer them all into the same wallet. That wasn't the beginning of my collecting. I've been collecting and kind of almost OCD level trying to collect.

full sets of things my whole life. And that's just the way that I am. I'm obsessive about having completeness. that then migrated and really kind of played into my collecting of ArtBlocks works and also in kind of how I created features for ArtBlocks initially. It wasn't meant necessarily to kind of create mania around rarities being more valuable than others, but it was about being able to have an achievable

full set when a Chromie's Kruegel was 20 bucks, the idea that somebody would be able to like try to open enough packs of cards to have a full set of Chromie's Kruegel wasn't an unreasonable thing. It would have maybe been a couple hundred bucks. so, yeah, so the, you know, collecting full sets for me has always been important. And that then carried on into the Autoglyphs, which, you know, was also a pretty painful process to get that full set of Autoglyphs, both full set of Autoglyphs and a full set of punks involved.

trading with Larva Labs doing OTC trades with them, which was pretty awesome. And then finally, the full MiBit set, MiBits, they don't get enough love, and they deserve a lot more love. And that, to me, felt like the culmination of this, what I call the Larva Labs set, of course, missing the alien, which maybe one day, I don't know.

Nifty (25:23)
Hmm.

But you own a percentage of an alien, so...

Erick (25:43)
I have 10 % of an alien, so I have them displayed, printed and framed in my house and there's an asterisk on the alien. It's what it is that I only own 10 % of it.

Nifty (25:49)
There was someone on Twitter that was just showing he was owning partially a bank and was just showing like a third of the face or something. So what I wanted to say regarding MiBits, I heard you talking about the MiBits and the details even in the inside of the MiBits that the code is showing like all the stomach and even some of them have pieces of

Erick (25:58)
I'm gonna do that with the alien.

Nifty (26:18)
other baby MiBits or something like that. I don't know if it's true, but I think it's like the attention to detail in that collection is pretty crazy if that's true.

Erick (26:27)
Yeah, it's crazy attention to detail. It's just a really fun collection. They expanded it from 10 to 20 ,000 because there was more people around to buy them. yeah, think there will be a time, I think, when that becomes the only way accessibly to own. I mean, it really is right now. They're pretty accessible right now to own a piece of a lot of the Labs piece. I'm really excited that UGA Labs is kind of incorporating it into games.

into their platform, think that they will do a great job.

Nifty (27:02)
So let's go and focus a little bit on the Squiggle. You spent two years working on the code before releasing it. And as you were mentioning, you were thinking about the set possibilities. It really shows, I've spent a lot of time analyzing the collection, the metadata, everything. And it really shows the work that this collection has compared to others. You released it on 2020 and you've shared, for example, that the RIPT was a happy accident tinkering with the code. Can you share any other highlights or?

of creating or discovering the different types and spectrums.

Erick (27:35)
Yeah, mean, happy accidents, think, are, I mean, I don't know, maybe some generative artists don't ever have happy accidents, but I assume that a lot of what we see out there in the generative space is a happy accident. yeah, I mean, tinkering with the slinky variant kind of led towards me making a mistake on the formula, on the math, and that turning into a ribbed, which started shielding the slinky instead of showing the entire Squiggle.

the, the Bold, a little bit less of a happy accident. The Bold was actually one of the reasons that I started getting even more excited about the Squiggle. In fact, if you look at early, early examples of the Squiggle, they look like spaghetti. one time I just randomly decided to kind of make the circles really big. And I really liked the way that the Bold looked. The Bold came before the Normal Squiggle. In other words, like I was just messing around with the circle size. And the first thing I did was make it really big. I was like, that's super cool, but it just

felt like, you know, chunky and like it deserved to be a little bit more unique and special. So, you know, I remember making the circle size, you know, a couple points bigger and just looking at them for a really long time and then settling on the standard size. The normal size circle is like what you see today. So the Bold kind of led to the final width of a Normal Squiggle today.

The Fuzzy was kind of a combination of a happy accident. It was just tinkering with spatial points, and just you have the baseline for where the point stands, and then where the next point can be in relation to it. I was just kind of messing around with that, and thought that came out pretty nice. Also, discovering alpha and understanding how you can kind of play with layers. And then I think from there, it's just the variance, and the variance are ...

Nifty (29:17)
Really nice.

Erick (29:28)
kind of a happy accident. I definitely never intentionally said, okay, now we're gonna have variants. But in exploring the code, as you run the code, as a generative artist, you run the code over and over and over. And in exploring that code, I would all of a sudden see that it would trigger both the slinky and the hyper. And you'd be like, okay, cool. Like, you can have a hyper slinky. I think what's interesting is that the hyper pipe is something that is so uncommon.

that in all of my exploration of the algorithm, I never ran across it. So it's just not something that even came to mind until it was minting, until the project was minting. And I think somebody asked when we're gonna see a hyper pipe on Twitter. And I was like, my gosh, I guess it's technically possible. And then shortly after that, a hyper pipe was minted. And then people, of course, like with Squiggles, people like to get into the math and people started doing the math and said, it's actually...

probable that you're gonna get multiple hyperpipes over the course of 10 ,000, something that I just had never even.

Nifty (30:27)
That's crazy. if I've done my research correctly, the original hypers were so colorful that they looked gray, right?

Erick (30:37)
Yeah, the original Hypers, essentially every step was the next color and it just kind of created its way itself out. But no, if you look very closely, if you zoom in on it, you see every single color. Trying to come up with a color spread of 0 .5 for the Hyper, which is what it ended up being, a balance between making sure that it was clearly different from all the other Squiggles.

Nifty (30:50)
color.

Erick (31:06)
but not so much that it turned into the gray noodle effect from the past. the, I actually, interestingly, the hyper existed in the 2018 version of the ChromieSquiggle, but it was also a rare one. And when I created the 2000 ChromieSquiggles for my interior design clients, I think out of the 2000, I think there was like five or six hypers. And I remember thinking as I was packaging them into the frames thinking,

this person got like a pretty rare one, but knowing that they would not care or even realize or even have an understanding of the fact that it was a rare one. And I actually, gosh, I would love to know where those are today. I don't know who got each one, but there's a few people out there with these like acrylic frames with the original hyper. And I feel like that's a pretty special physical piece to have. If anyone ever runs across it, I don't see it.

Nifty (31:59)
the present I've seen pictures and what I've heard you say in other interviews is that only 14 people claimed the token that led to Squiggle and one got a hyper so that's pretty lucky

Erick (32:11)
So yeah, I I need to go back to that spreadsheet, but I have a spreadsheet of all the email addresses and Ethereum addresses. And then the airdrop transaction where I kind of did a purchase to function to all of them. I think one of

Nifty (32:24)
That's super cool.

Squiggles are one of the few pieces of art where you can interact with it, make the move, change the background color, etc. What was your thought process behind that?

Erick (32:38)
Well, changing the background color, think probably comes from being in the design world and understanding that people have, you know, some people want a bathroom with white tile and some people want a bathroom with black tile and gray tile and everything in between. Also, you know, white is kind of the typical background for artwork, but on a computer screen or on a television, black is just less assaulting on your eyes. And it comes from, A, being able to demonstrate that it is a live algorithm.

being able to offer those kind of Easter eggs is just an example. I think a lot of time passed within the broader ecosystem before people realized that you could animate the Squiggle, that you could change the background color. But that is such an important part of demonstrating live code running in the browser. And that was the intention as well. It's A, being able to give people a little bit of customization, B, giving someone like a little Easter egg. I've always been all about Easter eggs. When I was a kid, any game that came out, I was on forums and

know, BBS, you know, like dial up things and you would be able to find Easter eggs for video games. I mean, sometimes you'd find them on your own, but you'd be able to discover them. And, you know, I made it a point to go and look for Easter eggs and all the video games that I played as a kid. And these are like, I mean, I'm talking like early nineties, video games, late eighties. And so again, I, you know, I thought it'd be pretty fun to add some Easter eggs to the ChromySquiggle and making those Easter eggs functional. So being able to change the background color to me.

was a functional element to let the Chromie Squiggle to be able to say, as an artist, am acknowledging and that, or not acknowledging, I am stating as an artist that I accept the Chromie Squiggle in its official form as any of these backgrounds being an official Chromie Squiggle. So the white is the default, and that's what you're going to see the most of. But any of the 10 background colors of the Chromie Squiggle are official background colors for the Chromie Squiggle.

That just goes to demonstrate what you can do when you have an algorithm for art instead of just the static output that comes up.

Nifty (34:43)
And that has led to really cool traits or combination of traits where ripped merge with the background color, like a few of them, we call them harmonics, and that looks crazy beautiful.

Erick (34:51)
Yeah.

Love the harmonics.

Nifty (34:58)
Yeah. And one more thing I wanted to say that not everyone knows, some people are surprised when I mentioned, is that all our blocks pieces, when you render them using the Ethereum blockchain, are resolution agnostics. So no matter the size, no matter future screens, they always are going to display perfectly.

Erick (35:18)
Yeah, I mean, that was also when, okay. So when thinking about our blocks, initially, there was a lot of things going through my head. Number one, we were storing things on IPFS, which is totally fine. In fact, CryptoPunks, I think were just stored in a GitHub repo. don't even think they were stored. I don't know if IPFS was, I can't even remember, but I remember there was a hash in the GitHub repo that represented the image for the CryptoPunks. So understanding that storage on the blockchain is very, very expensive and understanding that creative coding is something that

running live in the browser code that's stored on the blockchain immediately unlock this idea that you do not have to settle for whatever the resolution of screens is today. The CryptoPunks project eventually was made in SVG form. And so it didn't really matter. SVG is a resolution agnostic as well, which I think is really exciting. That's how they're displayed on the CryptoPunks website. But it felt really interesting to me.

didn't feel that this would be applicable for a long time after launching our blocks that people would be really concerned about whether their image was able to be scaled up. There was a really awesome event that we did with Samsung in 2022, I wanna say, where Samsung invited us in New York during NFT week to come in and take over a three story screen that they had. And that three story screen had a much bigger resolution than any screen that we'd ever had.

anything for. And it gave us our first opportunity to demonstrate what you could do with a resolution agnostic algorithm in that instead of having to upscale, whether with AI or with some kind of algorithm, or to have a blurry image, or to have to make the image smaller than the capability of the screen, we were able to display these pieces in their full resolution on a three -story screen. And there's been a few different examples of things that have happened since then where that really

that really shines and that really will come into play when we're looking at functional 8K screens, 16K screens, and 124K screens, I guess, in the future. And as we build more and more of these LED walls, that scalability just kind of becomes, it's not a matter of making smaller and smaller processors, it's just building bigger and bigger walls. So really excited that technology, that was not just added as a...

as a technology for Artblocks, but also became a pretty strong rule that I would have with artists to make sure that their artwork was scalable as they released work. It led to quite a bit of friction because it's not something artists had ever really kind of had to think about. But I think that's part of what, you know, that set of standards is part of what makes the Artblocks product, you know, just a premium generative product.

Nifty (38:08)
High quality and makes them future proof. So I saw those pieces in the Samsung three story screen and it blew my mind. And some collections that may be in your phone or your computer are not really that attention grabbing when you see them in huge size, it completely changed the game.

Erick (38:26)
Bye.

Totally agree, yeah.

Nifty (38:31)
So at the beginning, my favorite the Squiggles were clean, colorful normals, but ribs have been slowly growing on me as they have an amazing variation from some that are completely blacked out to some that are dark, but really transparent and colorful. Have ribs always been your favorite type or has also been an evolution for you?

Erick (38:52)
I when I stumbled across the Ribbed, I was like, this is cool. Because I think that sometimes, well, I mean, we can get a little deep here, but I feel like in life, oftentimes, it's really hard to be colorful all the time. Like it's unbearable. feel like, you know, I'm pretty hyper, or especially growing up, I was always kind of like an annoying kind of Hyper person that was always like bubbly and excited and cheering people up. And I think that

most humans probably can't handle or don't want to be surrounded by that. so I remember, and similarly with light projection, light pieces, in early 2000s and even in the 2010 range, you'd see a lot of LED -based installations that would just cycle through color. But I always thought it was cool because we're seeing technological art pieces, but also sometimes seeing that full color spectrum was just too much.

I got really excited about this shielding of the Squiggle in a way that says, look, inside, I'm a colorful and happy person, but understanding that society kind of can't handle that level of intensity all the time, I felt like the ribbed, it struck a chord for me on so many different levels on a philosophical level in that it kind of represents who most humans are anyways. It's relatively guarded, but we're all beautiful inside and we're all colorful inside.

It became more symbolic than any of the other Chromie Squiggles for me. To this day, when I see them, they always kind of give me a little bit of an extra rush. And I'd say to this day, they're still my favorite type of

Nifty (40:35)
Same is happening and with that metaphor, think the love and the provenance is growing and I'm appreciating them more and more. Let's talk about Marfa because it holds a special place in your heart. You even, as a fun fact, sold a zombie to buy the Artblocks Marfa house. And now we are approaching the fourth Artblocks Weekender. What does Marfa mean to you?

Erick (41:00)
Yeah, fourth ArtBlocks weekend. That's insane. Yeah, I mean, was originally went to Marfa with my wife when she was going back to work after having our first kiddo. And it was kind of a dual agreement. I wanted to go to Big Bend National Park and she wanted to go to Marfa. And she was also excited about Big Bend and I was also excited about Marfa. So we kind of made the trek to West Texas, which is pretty far drive from Houston, nine hours. And then

I loved Big Bend, I mean, I've always loved Big Ben. I've been there before, but then we got to Marfa and I just kind of like, had, it felt like I was on an alien planet. It just felt different. Just visually. It felt like I was in a different place and I just fell in love with the landscape, fell in love with like the town and you know, met a bunch of people in the town that were just really kind and generous with their time. And yeah, I remember driving away from Marfa and being like, I want to do something here at some point. I know it's really far away. It's a

pain in the butt to get here. In fact, it almost reinforces how beautiful it is when you have this forced decompression of going from city life to something like Marfa, where it's just kind of so remote and the middle of nowhere. I think that added to the beauty and the appeal to me. And then also discovering Donald Judd's work in Marfa, which I thought was so impactful in...

number one, in the amount of space that it was able to have in Marfa, because at Marfa there's just a bunch of room to do stuff. But also the kind of iterative nature of the work really impacted me, especially as I started thinking through what Artblocks was and what I was excited about Artblocks and thinking about his projects, for example, 100 Untitled Boxes and Milled Aluminum that...

have constraints. They're all the same shape and size, but they all have different features about them. So they feel like a, obviously not generative, he very deliberately made every one of those boxes, but it just kind of demonstrated how one individual box was part of this bigger set and felt like it was part of a cohesive set. so there was a lot of motivation, or guess validation for some of the ideas that I had for our blocks in exploring Donald Joe's work as a

as an artist and also as a, just in how he kind of looked at the world. And yeah, I mean, all of a sudden Artblocks kind of started getting busy. I mean, it was a hobby. I didn't expect it to kind of ever get me where and, you know, a few months after launching Artblocks, I was like, well, man, it seems like people kind of care about this. I'd love to kind of find a place to show it. And of course, I guess I could have bought something like a space in Houston and displayed it, but it didn't feel

I don't know, just, I mean, I don't know. I probably would have gotten a lot more attention and exposure in Houston, but there was something about being able to do something in Marfa, fulfilling that dream of mine from that first time I went out there to kind of establishing, put some roots in Marfa. And so, yeah, we bought the house. It's a lovely little place in downtown Marfa and have little by little kind of turned it into an exhibition center. The idea was not to make it a gallery where you sell anything. There's never been anything for sale at the Art Blocks house in Marfa.

It's more just to show and share the art and the story of art blocks and the story of the artists that have been at that point, especially had been creating with code for a really long time, but never really had a great platform to share it other than Instagram. And so yeah, the fact that we're approaching our fourth Marfa is completely mind blowing to me. The fun stuff that SquiggleDow has in store is equally mind blowing to me. Really excited about that.

Nifty (44:42)
Hmm

Erick (44:46)
And I can't wait to see everybody out there. And I always like to acknowledge the fact that there's a lot of people that would want to go that can't make it. It's just a big pain. a little, it's expensive. So we are always thinking about those people as well, even if they can't make it.

Nifty (45:01)
And I wanted to say you were saying that maybe more attention if you were in Houston, but I think Marfa makes everything more special. And I've been in other conferences and my favorite by far is Marfa. always tell people the trip is not easy, but it's completely worth it. Like the quality conversations and quality time doesn't compare to any other.

Erick (45:24)
it your travel time?

Nifty (45:26)
I don't even know. just know last year I took four flights. I spent one night on an airport and then I drove a car to Marfa from El Paso. This year is a little bit better. It's just three flights plus the car. But I don't even know the hours. I just know that it's the day after my birthday, by the way. So the three flights are gonna happen on my birthday this year.

Erick (45:31)
my god.

Yeah.

Thank

my God.

my gosh, well, we'll have to celebrate. Yeah, I know. mean, it makes it even more meaningful for me that people are willing to travel from all over the world to come and see it. And I mean, it's a filter. It definitely is a filter because it's so hard to get to. I recognize that there's a lot of different components to what has made ArtBlock successful and the ChromieSquiggle successful. And it's different personas within this ecosystem with different goals.

I recognize the value of each individual that has participated, whether you're a true collector and patron to a pure flipper and speculator, everybody has played a part in what has occurred over the last few years. But it does feel like the conversations in MARFA were more focused around art, more focused around the technology, the innovation, the community, the putting a face to a name in a place that was meaningful. And I continue to be shocked at how many people travel out there.

But yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that's made this whole experience so meaningful for me.

Nifty (47:00)
That's, in my opinion, is going to be the Omaha for the Warren Buffett followers. It's going to be the same in a couple of years. So if not already. So one of our big initiatives at the Squiggle Dow is to support your incredible work in getting Squills into more museums. You've managed to include pieces like 9999 at LACMA recently, 9945 at the Museum of Art and Light. You were mentioning earlier several pieces in the Center for Art and Media in Germany.

Erick (47:09)
It's awesome.

Nifty (47:31)
the one at the Moody Center for the Arts that also has a sky space by James Turrell. Can you share how it feels to see your art placed in such prestigious institutions?

Erick (47:41)
I mean, it's surreal, I never ever in my life would have thought that this would be the case. Everything from my hometown kind of, you know, museum to across the world in Germany. I'm excited. I'm very proud. I'm very humbled, but I'm also really excited for the Squiggle holders. I mean, I think this isn't just Squiggles, I mean, this is, you know, there's a lot of digital artworks and generative artworks that are being collected by by institutions.

But I remember when the Pompidou announced their acquisition. And I think I tweeted out and said, 5 ,000 people in the world today now own artwork that is collected by a major art institution. 5 ,000 more people than before. And a lot of that is because of the generative nature, right? Like you have

Yes, if it's normal edition of 10 of the same piece, you are also a collector of that same work. But when you have something that's generative, you own a piece of that same collection that is in museums. And the more museums, the more and the more artworks, especially the more different collections that are collected, the more impactful that is for all the people that have stuck around. There's an incredible I mean, just from being here in 2017.

through 2020, was like pretty dark times pretty often in the Twitter world and in the Discord space. when things get rough financially, people get really aggressive and mean and upset and do and say things they probably don't mean. And I feel like we're kind of going through a similar thing. at the time, it's like back in 2017, there was a lot of times where I was like, this is just gonna fall apart. I mean, we all believed in it. We were all excited about it, but.

it didn't have a grounding of people beyond the people that were already participating in it. And I think, you know, we take for granted so many things in this ecosystem. And I think one of the things that we really don't even give enough credit to is that, you know,

there was a time where a lot of this could have been a flash in the pan. There was a time where you could say, just like any other technology that comes and goes, this was a flash in the pan. And every time a museum takes a step in exhibiting or collecting any work within our ecosystem, they are securing what we've done and all the efforts and all the travel and all the whatever into not being a flash in the pan. And whereas in the last cycle,

It was really just this community and we had to kind of band together and keep ourselves motivated and excited. In this cycle, things are bad, but look, museums are collecting the work and they're exhibiting the work and they're joining Twitter spaces to talk about the work, which is just completely baffling to me. And it's only been three years. And while it feels really slow for us, this is actually happening at lightning. Lightning speed is the institutional adoption of what we're doing. And it's just a recognition that the people that are participating in this ecosystem.

are no longer being viewed just as crypto artists or just as technologists, but as artists. And it's a recognition that the collectors in this ecosystem are not just participating in a casino, but they're participating in collecting contemporary art that the museum is recognizing as being contemporary art and the art of the times. I think it's really powerful. I think it's one of those things that helps get us out of bed when times are tough, because times have been pretty tough in the last couple of years.

And I do think we take it for granted. And I think, you there's an opportunity to kind of reflect on just how incredibly different things are today from where they were in 2019 and 2020 and kind of the depths of that bear market. And just know that we have so much more of a platform as an ecosystem, collectors and artists as well, than we had back then. And the future, feel like, is really bright. It just might take a little bit longer than a lot of people want.

it to take.

Nifty (51:50)
100%. And now that we are interacting with some museums, we must say that the decision is not easy to acquire a piece to their collections, even if the piece is donated, they don't care. And to incorporate the piece into a collection or exhibit the piece is another step. it's really, they are really thoughtful about what they include into their collections.

Erick (52:14)
Yeah, think, you know, and I appreciate that you guys have been very thoughtful about how you engage with the institution. Yeah, never in my wildest dreams would I have assumed or thought that, you know, and I know we have a couple more museum announcements to make, you know, here in the next few months and just super, super excited. And I appreciate the fact that the DAO is documenting that, you know, and kind of keeping track of the museums that are holding ChromieSquiggles. The more museums that hold ChromieSquiggles, you know,

Squiggles off the market, which is, I guess, it never hurts, although with 10 ,000 Squiggles, that may seem insignificant. But I sure hope that it gives people that have been participating in the Chromie Squiggle project with conviction in support of the project from supporting me as an artist and as a creator, but also the project itself, conviction in the work and just some validation that they weren't just lunatics buying these little rainbow lines.

Nifty (53:11)
The beautiful thing is that the day that a museum is announced, one could think that 2 ,000, 3 ,000 people are a little bit happier because of that piece of news or sharing that good news. So that's the multiplier of the community that makes everything more enjoyable, more fun. That's really cool. Happens with punks, happens with Squiggles.

Erick (53:31)
Exactly, I totally agree.

Nifty (53:34)
So we have a few minutes left. Let's go into one of my favorite sections, the rapid fire. I always like to say questions are rapid fire, answers don't need to be. The first one, you are a car enthusiast and you've mentioned that you like vintage BMWs like the ones from the 80s and 90s. What's your dream car?

Erick (53:43)
Hahaha.

I have two dream cars. have one that may be accessible and then one that I'll never ever, ever have. But my accessible dream car, which is getting less accessible every day is a 1988 BMW M3. You know, they come up for sale here and there. If they're in really good shape, they're just so unbelievably expensive, but I think worth every penny. The maybe unobtainium dream car, the Alien, would be a 1970s BMW M1, which only

think only 200 of them were ever made or brought to the US market. And I think that's just one of those things that I just will never get my hands on. They can be upwards of a million dollars. And the other side of that is I don't want to drive a car that costs a million dollars because I'd be worried about dings and getting into an accident. So I wouldn't really enjoy it as much as I would enjoy mid -80s M3. And sometimes you see some M3s that are in pretty rough shape that start

to become maybe affordable, like in the 30s or 40s, thousands dollars range. And you think, gosh, that may never be a collector car, but I'd be able to drive it and not worry about hurting it anymore and really enjoy it. And I am a car enthusiast, not just to look at them. I really enjoy driving and I think it'd be really fun to drive an M3 around.

Nifty (55:12)
I am the same, I don't wanna just have a car like sitting there, it doesn't make any sense. Let's use it, car, whatever it is, let's use it and enjoy it. You are an OG Punk claimer, Mod, you have an almost full Punks set, do you have a favorite Punk?

Erick (55:33)
At this point, #1478, which is my Zombie Crypto Punk, is my favorite. I remember when I set that Punk, was kind of, I literally was coding till three, four, five in the morning every single night. My eyes were red. My wife was like, man, you need to go to bed earlier. And I remember thinking one day that I was going to buy the twin of that Punk without the Zombie and turn to that Punk. didn't happen.

Yeah, that is that's my favorite. The other one is the Orange Side. I've always really liked the Orange Side Punk. It reminds me of someone that's really special to me in my life. And it was also a really fun chase to get it. At the time, they were very inaccessible and very rare.

Nifty (56:21)
and can you share a little bit more about the chase?

Erick (56:25)
Well, I think there was none available in the market. And so it was kind of one of those things that kept bringing me to the Discord and bringing me to the CryptoPunk site. I just remember the integration of the marketplace listings and bidding into the Discord was such like an unlock. just, it was insane. Like it was, it was just kind of bringing together this feed of activity and it gave people things to talk about, which was really, I mean, it just, and,

Yeah, I think that's the punk that I traded Larva Labs for so that I could get that full set. think if it wasn't the last one, it was the second to last punk I acquired as part of the full attribute set.

Nifty (57:09)
Super cool. And great that Matt and John were open to help you. That's a really nice story. You've mentioned, we've talked about favorite car, favorite bank, we have to talk about favorite Squiggle. You've mentioned before that the grayed out drift showing the yellow terminal, 32 .59, we are gonna display it here. But do you have any other favorite Squiggle?

Erick (57:33)
Yeah,

I remember, I mean, This goes to being obsessed with like collecting. I remember in the first couple of weeks, I made a decision that I wanted Squiggle number 1981, because that was my birth year. I don't know why it was so important. And I remember that I was driving, I was getting in my car when Squiggle like #1970 was minted and I was like, crap, like, you know, I really want that Squiggle. And I remember pulling into my driveway and then,

sending like seven transactions just to make sure I got it within that range and landing it and Coincidentally, it it has one of maybe my favorite shape of a Squiggle. It looks like a candy that you could pull on it and it would just kind of unravel and it has a really nice rainbow to it and so, you know, that's one of my favorite Squiggles, the the the other one I'd kind of add to that is the the one that we used for Art Blocks' logo

I went through all of the Squiggles that I owned at the time and I identified that one as the most clearly identifiable Squiggle with the most spacing and the simple humps and stuff. And I really love that Squiggle, but I don't own it.

Nifty (58:53)
That's like 1981, it's a beautiful piece. And I know more people were chasing those like birth dates, 2000s, the late 1980s, 1990s numbers. So you were competing with, think G Moni mentioned and a few others. So competition was fierce. So what are some of the biggest lessons from ArtBlocks now that you've probably gone through a full cycle?

Erick (59:08)
Thank

I think the biggest lesson and I'd say, I say this kind of regularly in public to hopefully kind of let other founders know. think the biggest lesson is that you, at any moment, anything that you put out into this weird little world that we're in can go viral and explode. whereas I do believe that at the time I did not know what I was getting myself into, had no idea what to expect from the moment.

I started developing Artblocks to the moment I released it. Now you just kind of have to know that if you're putting something out into the crypto space, it may take over your life for good or for bad. And you are making that commitment in exchange for the attention that comes from the Web3 space. And that doesn't just apply to Artblocks as a platform. I think that applies to me and others as artists and how we engage with the ecosystem. You can...

say, hey, I just want to make art and I want to sell art and I don't want to deal with like all the, you know, rabid intensity of like the web three space. And yeah, you can do that. You can mint your work and then you can go sell it through a gallery. But like the moment you tweet about it, the moment you share it with this space, you're kind of signing a social contract that you're going to engage with the space and the way that the space expects for you to, if you don't want that, which oftentimes comes with the space, buying your work.

sometimes buying your work for a high price because there's less supply than there is demand. If you don't want to make that commitment, I think, you know, there's different ways to sell your art that are different than our standards that are out there today within the crypto ecosystem. And I think that's maybe my biggest learning point. The other thing I think that's just so critical is thinking that, and this is just really important for me as a, being an art focused platform is, you know, I've always stuck to the

initial vision of our blocks of being all about the art supporting artists, you know, igniting a curiosity within collectors, but understanding that there are different playbooks that can be played during the NFT cycles, right? Like, I imagine that in the mania days of art blocks, if we were, for example, we have this new beautiful curated release that's coming up in the next in the next few weeks and the amount of

effort that's going into that project from, you know, micro site for minting it and the marketing and like all of the, there's just a tremendous amount of work that's going into that project. And I, I, I, that's what is not only what the artist deserves, but also what is necessary in this ecosystem to kind of capture attention. It's just a really rough time out there. And I imagine that we had, if we had applied that

insane level of like support during the mania. You know, it was already mania, right? So like the projects that sold out for like five ETH additions of a thousand, you know, just crazy times without any marketing support, rather than like tweeting about the next project, thinking about what it would have been like. And we were seeing that happen at the time. People were like more marketing, more marketing. I'm like, no, like it's already too intense. Like, so

Nifty (1:02:45)
you

Erick (1:02:46)
I, it took for me to go through the full cycle to understand, and wreck and a, be grateful that we did not grow marketing so much on our blocks in those early days that we were starting to like produce at that level of marketing. Cause it would have just caused even more mania and even more FOMO. but understanding that there's different cycles in crypto. And I think that platforms need to engage differently. you know, I, I don't think our blocks gets enough.

credit for the insane reduction of cadence of like an official Arplox drop to essentially zero. That comes with side effects. Like when you stop releasing projects, it also gets quieter. But it doesn't do the artists any justice if there's not a market to buy the stuff. And while it would have been great to be able to slow down a little bit earlier because the market was kind of falling apart, you also can't like.

take back your commitment to release projects that you've already committed with artists six months in advance. And so it was a slow process, but it was a necessary process. Artblocks is a company and that company at some point needs to make money. And when we're not releasing artworks, we're not making money, but it's an acknowledgement of the state of the ecosystem to sell less things into this ecosystem because collectors are exhausted and fatigued. And a lot of us have kind of run out of money.

artists, know, when royalties were happening regularly, when there was activity, the market was also more lively because artists were rolling the royalties they were making, not all of them, but a lot of them back into supporting other artists and supporting other projects. And I think people take for granted how much liquidity came from artists that were happy to be making these royalties and put it back into the ecosystem and expand their collection of other artists' work. And so when the market is kind of in the...

in the pits of despair that it is today, which is pretty rough. But again, like I mentioned earlier, we have some really beautiful things coming with museum acquisitions and exhibitions and this new curated project, which is a really new direction for art blocks in general. Yeah, I feel like there's just a really huge opportunity to learn and then also to tell a human story from the beginnings of, you know.

thinking through our blogs, then launching our blogs, what's happened with the Chromius Quiggle. I think there's a really interesting story here that can at least educate future founders and people that are interested in operating this ecosystem so they're not caught off guard by the insanity that can very well result from.

Nifty (1:05:22)
Heck, that can happen. Yeah, 100%. So you've mentioned that there is an Arblox QDated release coming soon. Excited to see that one. What's next for Arblox after the sound acquisition? Anything that you can share?

Erick (1:05:36)
Well, I mean, you know, the, the curator release is going to have a very important component, which is a physical component that's artistic and made by the artist. And, you know, I, I, I've been kind of preaching for the last two years at conferences about, how important it is to kind of reach outside of the web three audience. Like we, we, it is impossible to have a sustainable business within the web three audience, unless you are willing to put yourself out there like a casino or, like a purely speculative thing.

When you go as far out of your way as possible to try to not make our product speculative, but instead to be a facilitating of releasing of generative content. It's hard to be sustainable, especially in a model like this. At the same time, you know, the vast majority of the world is not spending as much time on Twitter and Discord as we are. The vast majority of the world is not collecting digital objects yet. And I think that

when the vast majority of the world understands how incredible this technology is for ownership and for provenance and for authenticity and for durability, I think they'll be excited about it. But I don't think they're going to be excited about buying ETH, sending it to Metamask and executing a smart contract transaction in the middle of a Dutch auction that's highly anticipated with a bunch of degents. Like I just don't see that coming to life. you know, a lot of what we're doing in our blocks, both curated and on the platform side is really trying to think through how we can speak the language outside of

We will always be here for the Web3 community and you'll always be able to acquire works, you know, in this typical fashion. My hope is that more and more people get onboarded into Web3 and start participating. But I think for the, what's best for the platform, sustainably wise, what's best for the artist and what's best for the collectors is getting people from outside to come in. And I don't think enough platforms are focusing enough on that because it...

For a while there, was just too easy to just sell within this ecosystem. But I've been out there preaching for two years that this is the only way that we are going to succeed as an ecosystem is to make what we're doing desirable and compelling to an audience outside of Web3. And a lot of the initiatives I have with our blogs and with Generative Goods is to really try to address those markets and to facilitate ownership beyond having to execute a transaction. So we're going to keep pushing and keep digging in. It's hard.

It's really hard work and it does not have a clear path to profitability, which is hard for a company that's a startup still and within this ecosystem. But it's kind of a bet that we're making that this is going to be the path towards a sustainable organization. And we're excited about it.

Nifty (1:08:13)
and makes total sense growing the pie is the way to go. And you were saying there is no clear path to profitability. We feel similar in SquiggleDAO. And I think we are writing the roadmap. So probably roadmap is not the word for it, but we are writing the rules for how to make a sustainable profitable business in Web3. So not an easy one.

Erick (1:08:37)
Not at all. I mean, think we all are in Web3 right now as we are flying by the seat of our pants as we always have been, but it's a lot easier in terms of morale and excitement when there's money coming in and when there's not money coming in, it's like everything becomes more scrutinized. And I think that's important. I think that's just part of the growing process. yeah, other than some infrastructure plays, I think it's really hard to think about an example of a truly sustainable business model in Web3 that's not highly speculative.

I know it can be done. I know it can exist. It's just going to take some time and probably we're going to have to reduce some barriers to entry for both artists and collectors to participate.

Nifty (1:09:17)
So what about you? What's next for you?

Erick (1:09:21)
I'm focusing a lot of my time on generative goods. We have some really exciting releases and projects coming up. We're making some pretty big progress with this idea of extracting or abstracting the hurdles for participating in the NFT ecosystem and giving people things that they can do with their NFT.

really excited about some releases. got some cool partnerships. one was announced yesterday. We're doing an event with Rivian and Millscale in a couple of weeks. And we'll be present at Roundtop. We might get to do some stuff with Ledger here in October. yeah, we got some fun stuff planned. So really excited about that. not just, know, Generative Goods is substantially owned by ArtBlocks. So it's essentially ArtBlocks. And I see Generative Goods as this little playground

for ideas and things that if we can demonstrate value and if we can demonstrate success with these concepts can be integrated into Artblocks and can be ways that artists and collectors can participate in at least with what Generative Goods is doing is trying to abstract that requirement of having to like download a wallet with MetaMask. So really excited working really closely with gifted .art, working really closely with IYK. These are platforms that have kind of unlocked.

the onboarding of people without having to understand what a seed phrase is. And yeah, just super excited about that. And then on a personal level, just really excited to spend more and more time on the racetrack. It's really hard to find the time to go on the racetrack. And then also the travel season is starting. So, you I just spent three months in Houston without leaving, other than family vacation after, you know, like 25 conferences last year.

Nifty (1:11:11)
Wow.

Erick (1:11:16)
So, but that's all about to come to an end here in the next couple of weeks. And I have a pretty hectic fall travel schedule. So on the bright side, I get to see people in person. It's been a long time that I haven't seen any of my friends and collectors from within web three, but yeah, I'll probably start gaining weight again.

Nifty (1:11:35)
I was saying wow, because I know how hectic is your travel schedule. it's great to hear that you've spent three months charging batteries with family. Two more before we finish. one that I'm really curious about to hear your answer. You have more opportunities and inbound requests that you can fulfill. How do you filter?

Erick (1:11:57)
Actually, I started just saying no across the board. mean, I've I've and obviously as the market has slowed down, the inbound has slowed down a lot as well, which yeah, it's bittersweet in some ways because in some ways it's like, gosh, maybe maybe one day I should have said yes to some of these things. But I basically say no across the board. I I kind of have this this this idea that one day I'll get to make a new artwork.

project, like we're doing really fun stuff with generative goods and it's artistic content and it's all about generative and physicals. But I have a concept for what my next kind of generative release would be. And I'm really excited about it. And it really ties stuff together. It involves projection mapping. And I guess I want to do it so bad that anytime I think about opportunities that come around, I think, well, is this going to delay? I mean, I don't even think I can get started on that until

2025 at this point, it'd probably take me a year to develop it. But is this going to cause me to delay that? Because I do.

value my position at Artblocks and like within this ecosystem and I appreciate the opportunity that that's come with, but I also value making stuff and releasing creative work and I miss it and I think every now and then when we talk about recharging batteries that you also need to recharge your creative batteries and like I'm desperate to kind of get into that. So saying no as much as possible and trying to work with as many people that can help support anything that does come in.

to be able to maybe one day get to release a project on our blocks again, which I think would be really fun.

Nifty (1:13:32)
I think the audience and myself are getting excited. And last one, you've had tremendous success in your career already. What motivates you to continue?

Erick (1:13:46)
Well, I guess there's a few prongs to that. I think maybe the community of creators and collectors are probably the single biggest, I mean, it's just a huge number of people. they, know, a lot of people in this ecosystem seem to appreciate what I have to say and respect what I have to say.

That's not necessarily something that I had in my life prior to ArtBlocks. I always have had a lot to say and try to be and do good. I did great with the tile business, but it was maybe, I don't know, 500 people that I interacted with on regular basis, tens of thousands of people. so the community is really what...

is a big motivating factor trying to do what's best for our blocks and try to keep that team going and motivated and excited and such a heart. It's just really hard to do that. And then my family, you know, I do feel like I've missed out on a lot of my kids growing up. My kids are six and eight now. And when I started our blocks, my kids were two and four. you know, big motivation is just

doing this for them and trying to make sure that they have a sustainable future as well. And also we get to spend time together. So those are the two things that really kind of push me forward is the people that are within the Web3 space and then the people in my family.

Nifty (1:15:20)
Beautiful. Erick, anything else you'd like to share?

Erick (1:15:24)
Now just infinite gratitude for the Squiggle, though, for you as the world's foremost expert in the crony Squiggle. Above my expertise, I'm pretty sure. just these podcasts, just the pure, true love and passion for this thing I created, I'm just so grateful for. Thank you.

Nifty (1:15:49)
I just want to take a moment to thank you for joining us today as well. Your insights, perspective have been really valuable and I know our community will really appreciate everything you've shared. It's been a real honor to have you on the pod today. Thank you, Erick.

Erick (1:16:06)
Thank you and thank you, Skriggle .community. Love you guys.

Nifty (1:16:09)
So you can follow Erick on Twitter at artonblockchain. Erick, thank you so much.

Erick (1:16:15)
Thank you.