Speaker A: Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a special interview episode. We're joined today by ajberni, and call him Adam, I guess, on this episode for a little more familiarity. And of course, Trinity. I realize we always kind of rush over everyone saying hi, so let's say hello. What's going on, Adam? How's it going, Trinity?

Speaker B: Hey, thanks for having me. It's going good.

Speaker C: Yeah, we've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. Glad you finally made it.

Speaker B: Yeah, me too. Me too.

Speaker A: It's been cooking for a minute. It's really exciting to have Adam on to talk about Tender with us and Kind of go through the whole history of it, which of course means we're going to do our usual Tender disclaimer. Both Trinity and I have been a part of the Tender group for a while now, you know, working on writing, doing some behind-the-scenes stuff. And so yeah, usual disclaimers that come with that. If for whatever reason this episode feels too shilly to you, just know that that's not our intention. We want everyone to just kind of like learn about Tender, understand who Adam is, and And share the love and what we're trying to do in generative art here. So I feel like that's a good disclaimer. What do you guys think?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And if it does feel shilly, yell at us on Twitter. We are very open and receptive to feedback and yelling.

Speaker A: Or yell at Adam. Maybe it's his fault. Who knows?

Speaker B: You can yell at me. I, it's, I kind of laugh whenever, whenever there's the possibility that Tender can be shilling, cuz I feel like we're just out there talking about great art and kind of trying to push without too much agenda, but I guess we have a pass now and we're selling something. So I understand that's out there, but the MO is the same. We're trying to help grow generative art and pull together a community to help support that effort. So shilling or no shilling, I think it's all good intentions.

Speaker C: I'm trying to think back when I first heard about Tender and when we first kind of connected, the 3 of us. That must have been way back in February, March. Somewhere around then.

Speaker B: Yeah, probably January or February. I mean, when you heard about Tender, it was probably about 2 weeks after I heard about Tender. It was a very quick process to get Tender up and running. And it was one of these ideas that I think had gestated just a little bit with me, having spent some time in #price-discussion and just gotten completely obsessed with fx hash. And I I think as soon as I realized there's a space, there's a potential need for something that aggregated a curated view of all the projects that were out there, and I guess at the time there was about 8,000 of them. As soon as I had that realization, it just started building. So I have a background in digital products and it was pretty seamless to put something together in a couple of weeks and get it out there. So that was a really fun process and really fun to kind of see the initial reception to it.

Speaker A: I think I first heard about it through DMs from you, Adam. And I remember, I think maybe you DM'd both me and Trinity, like around the same time, like, I'm working on this thing. Can you guys take a look at it? And you must have been, you must have heard the podcast or something. 'Cause otherwise I'm not sure how you would've come to us necessarily. But I think I was like, Trinity, did you hear from this guy, ajberni, about this thing? And you're like, yeah, he's building some curation thing. And I was like, good luck, dude. In my mind, I was just kind of like, yeah, whatever. Like, I was like, we'll see what happens here. Like, I had no idea who you were or anything about it, but, you know, slowly getting more involved, obviously, and like coming inside and seeing what you were all about, it was super exciting. But you've already started answering the first question, of course, which is to kind of introduce yourself and give us some of your background and history in art, in generative art. You know, how did you come to Tezos and NFTs in general? And just, yeah, if you want to expand, Adam, on like who you are and how that has led to Tender, I think that would be a great introduction.

Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, I mean, I have a, I have a deep background in art. I've always been very active in the arts. I grew up with a lot of exposure and a lot of continuous practices in the arts. I was running my school Darkroom. I was doing web design in the late '90s. I went to art school to focus on graphic design, um, more of a traditional education. And meanwhile, I was pushing my own digital design practice. I've always kind of been deep in the space in a lot of different ways. After school, I had a creative agency with 2 partners and we did a lot of digital work, a lot of branding, and just kind of kept up my own artistic practice on the side. A lot of photography, painting, all different media, but it's really kind of my own personal thing. I never made a, you know, a career out of it or any big push to show it off, which I think was healthy for me to have a personal practice that's just outside of my professional creativity. But I think once I was exposed to some of the things happening in generative art recently in the last, you know, year and a half, and then seeing fx hash, I just felt a lot of things clicking together at once. The background in digital products and just the love I've had for the fxhash platform from the beginning, my art background, some of the experience I've had with artists in the space from, you know, decades ago, seeing James Patterson releasing stuff on fxhash and, you know, the genesis of a lot of the early digital artists from the '90s. It's been just exciting to watch flourish now with also so many new artists. So seeing all of that kind of come together, I think definitely magnetized me to the space and is probably a lot of what pushed me to create Tender, you know, that there's some way to bring some of the opportunities I was seeing from a platform and product perspective, but also just be involved with the arts and see how I could help push the space forward.

Speaker C: It's interesting to hear you had been in this space for about, you know, 18 months longer. Does this mean that you really come from more of that ETH space prior to this?

Speaker B: No, I, you know, I wish that I had gone deeper than I did earlier. I had a couple of good friends telling me, you got to check out what's happening in NFTs. You got to check out what's happening on Art Blocks. And, you know, I think my entry points just didn't grab me, whatever they were. A quick glance at whatever the feed was on Foundation, a quick glance at the latest Art Blocks drop that was a few thousand dollars too expensive for me to enter into. You know, it really crystallized for me the importance of the entry point. And I think by the time that I found fxhash and went through a couple of, you know, learning steps to really understand what was happening there and waiting for things to be signed and figuring out my transactions in my wallets, I did formalize this hypothesis that if people only could get past those first steps easier and have a great entry point, that, I mean, the art is incredible. Why wouldn't people want to stay once they're here? So, you know, if we can help get people over that hurdle, not just with exposing certain art, but also with just helping understand the space and how it works from a technical perspective, from a transaction perspective, There's still so much to be done in the onboarding space. So I try not to look at it from a perspective of regret and try to look at it from a perspective of what can we do to help the next collectors that are coming in. But yeah, I was not early on ETH. I was not early really even on fx hash. I probably came in 5 weeks in, something like that.

Speaker A: But were you like a crypto person? Were you interested in Bitcoin or ETH or altcoins, like just trading that stuff and interested in the space as a technology, or did you just come in purely through art?

Speaker B: Art's the thing that grabbed me. I had some minor investments in cryptocurrencies just to be exposed, but, you know, I'm not a crypto maxi on any front, and that was not what's gonna build my obsession. It was absolutely the art. And, you know, once I saw some of the things that were going on You know, just the variety too of artworks, even at that point in the platform, it's just extraordinary. It's mind-blowing. You can't walk around Chelsea and see that much variety in a week. So yeah, there was no looking back.

Speaker C: And definitely, as you said, huge barrier to entry, especially if you're coming in now. And I really appreciate the idea of how do we kind of focus on the art, leave the technology, potentially leave the currencies behind, and it's just how do we Find what we like and how do we get it as much as possible. And it's not necessarily even to like that frictionless FXHash platform of I can buy and sell and flip all within one contained space. From a Tender perspective, and if I'm putting words into your mouth, let me know, it seems like it's more about the collection area. Obviously to some people selling is important, but the accumulation more than anything and being able to find the stuff that you value and that you want.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: is at the tippy top of, you know, who you want to attract to this space.

Speaker B: There's a lot of thought that goes into everybody's personal collections, and I think being able to articulate what that collecting philosophy is for yourself is super important. And if we can bring a space that helps you articulate that for you, I think that's— that can be a powerful thing for new collectors and established collectors to continually— I'm continually refining my thesis or refining what I'm collecting and what I'm most interested in. I'm willing for that to change. I think that's part of the excitement of the space is evolving, you know, your own creative take on the artwork that's out there. So definitely.

Speaker C: Just a quick side question because we were talking about collecting and, you know, obviously we have you on the show mostly to talk about like your experiences with this space and your vision for Tender and everything that's good to go with that. But What about your collection? I just wanted to get a sense of the things that you love and the things that you find inspiring.

Speaker A: And this is your chance to defend the generative octopuses to me in person.

Speaker B: Oh, we could do a whole half episode on the octopuses. You know, I'm looking for stuff that, uh, I'm looking for stuff that really just makes me smile, that every time I go back to it, I'm still going to have that smile. You know, it's something that I love and I can't always explain it, or I don't want to explain it. It's like, you know, it's like describing taste. You can't always tell somebody why you really love that piece of fresh Otoro, but you do, and you know it when you put it in your mouth. Like, it's just— there's that visceral reaction that I'm looking for in the art that I collect. And what I think is hard about the space is not finding things that are exciting, but refining what you want to collect out of all the exciting stuff. So one thing that I look at is, am I really getting a deeper reaction out of something, or do I think that it's just— I don't mean just, but it's really cool? And there's a lot of really cool artwork out there, and some of the really cool artwork is going to hit people in a deeper way than it does hit me. And so I think about when I'm looking at something and do I want to collect it? It's do I think this is really cool and that's it for me, or is it really giving me some sort of deeper reaction that I can hold on to and know that when it's in my collection, I'm going to keep coming back to it?

Speaker C: And this is your opportunity to shill a little bit too.

Speaker B: I do like the octopuses. That wouldn't be the normal thing that I would go and shill right away, but I think that it has personality. How do you translate the personality of an octopus in any media? You know, I guess that's something that I'm looking for too, is not just something that's interesting because it's generative art, but something that's just interesting because of the art itself. And, you know, you could barely draw an octopus, I think, that has that balance of reality and a little something in their eyes that's like kind of intelligent and kind of otherworldly, which I think octopus— an octopus is. So, you know, I look for things that have probably either a little bit of familiarity, meaning, you know, I think that's how things elicit a response in somebody, is you have that little maybe subconscious familiarity to not necessarily another work, but just something in your life. And so I'm looking for those kinds of things. But yeah, there's great work out there and Don't get me started on chilling. I'll just go to town.

Speaker A: Something that was really interesting is often what we see in terms of the AJ Burnie activity in the sales feed is like AJ Burnie making a sale and then immediately buying a piece from the same collection that's like 25% or 50% more expensive than the one you just sold. And it's always just like doing the opposite. You're like selling low and buying high, but it's because you're, you're, you're minting, but then you're trading into a piece that you actually like. Of the 300, however many there might be in a collection, there's one you have your eye on. And so you're willing to floor the piece you minted to then subsidize the purchase of a piece that you really want from the collection. And like this idea of not just curating a drop and being like, I love this drop, I love this artist, but being like, no, like there's these 5 pieces in this collection that I really want. And It's so the opposite of, you know, me coming into fx hash and art, not really having the same kind of backgrounds that a lot of other Tender folks have in art. It's like, in the beginning I was just like, well, just buy like 3 on the floor. Like, who cares? You know, like we're talking about the code, we're talking about the piece, but you all have this other perspective of like, no, no, no, these are the ones that I want because they fit in my collection and they really speak to me. That was like something that really changed the way I collected was watching That type of thing, and like learning that from you guys.

Speaker B: That's cool. I, I absolutely feel that way. I do do that all the time. I notoriously did it with, uh, Fragments of a Wave. I mean, I must have sold 10 pieces and ended up with 10. Um, so it's— in fact, I think one of your prints was one that I had sold off. Yeah, it's a great piece. It's not like, you know, it says nothing bad about any particular piece that I sell. It just might not fit my collection or a pairing that I'm trying to, to curate or a print that I want on my wall. You know, it could be for any reason. But I know you start the episode this way, but it's obviously not financial advice when I'm spending up to collect different pieces. But if it increases my smile that much more, I'm happy to do it. I'm really happy to. And, you know, I think that goes back to what I was saying about everybody finding their own sort of personal collecting philosophy. Although I've had a lot of exposure to the arts and you know, have this deeper background. It's not a feeling that any other collector couldn't have and or shouldn't have, you know. And that's what I love about this space. People are coming from all sorts of different backgrounds and no matter what, seem to be able to find things that they're really passionate about. If that were all the same for everybody, it wouldn't be that interesting. All the conversations that we're having in Discord wouldn't be that interesting, but it is nuanced. And that's part of what I love about the space is really getting to see what drives other people's collecting decisions and sometimes fortifying your own perspective that I love octopuses and you don't. And sometimes it's learning from each other. And, you know, I'm— I am absolutely not above changing my opinion. I've definitely learned from other collectors and had my eyes open to stuff that maybe I wasn't looking at closely enough. And, you know, out of whatever we're at, 17,000 projects right now, that's bound to happen. But it wouldn't be happening without a lot of the discussions that are happening in Discord communities like #price-discussion, communities like Tender. So I think that's a large part of what brings me and a lot of people back to the space day after day.

Speaker A: You know, to kind of start talking about Tender more, I think this is a good opportunity to transition into the icons list because I feel like for most people who are familiar with Tender, that's where they first learned about it, right? That they're— I know that you wouldn't put it this way, but like this, like quote unquote canonical list of like the grails and like the best projects, right? And I know often you're trying to subvert that narrative and be like, no, no, no, this is like just one person's opinion and anyone can do this. So I'm curious, like, you know, you've talked a little bit about starting Tender. Like, what was the initial process behind the icons list? Like, why start there and what goes into it and the updating of it and the ordering? And maybe you can help to demystify a little bit here in conversation. Like, what is the icons list?

Speaker B: Well, you said part of it, it's one person's perspective. You know, I think my philosophy about curating is to come with a strong point of view no matter what you're curating. And I think that sometimes that can be a difficult thing to do with too large of a committee. So I really committed to bringing the curation of the Icons list only from myself. So I am listening to people, I'm hearing perspectives, I'm learning, like I said just a minute before, but Ultimately, I take responsibility for choosing which projects go on there and how they're displayed. I think the important thing to keep in mind about the icons list is it's a presentation. It's not a spreadsheet. It's not a ranked order of projects by some objective metric. It's a presentation of projects for a purpose. You know, I think about that in design all the time. What is our, what is our design objective? And for the icon list, it's for existing collectors to present things in a recognizable way that brings some of the highlighted key projects to people's fingertips easily. And for new collectors to show off the incredible quality of work that's in this space and try to catch somebody's eye with something maybe unexpected, maybe something that's familiar to them. I'm not sure what, but the ordering is very important in terms of that comfortable presentation that you're going to go through and you're going to feel there's a sequence to things. There's a little bit of a visual narrative, and then there's sometimes some things that are going to stop you. It might be a little bit, you know, not jarring, but a little bit different to grab your attention. And so I'm thinking about that as sort of a sequential display as I'm adding new projects and ordering things is how they're going together. More so than is this ordered by floor value or some other objective metric. All of those things kind of come into consideration. There's a lot of different factors in terms of market value, but also in terms of aesthetic and content and technique. And even sometimes what are the— what does the particular preview image for that project look like? Because that's what you're seeing right there. So it's not supposed to be some perfect display. But it's supposed to be something that's attractive to look at in the same way that you might go through a museum or gallery and things are ordered in a very specific way for a specific reason. And so that's, that's how we approach it. I'm very careful not to try to get a consensus for exactly what goes in there because I feel like eventually it's just going to be sum of everything. So I do always post the icons before I tell anybody else. It's not— I don't think we're particularly creating a market. We're showcasing things that people are already usually excited about, but I don't forecast it with anybody. I just put it up there and I kind of like that sort of informal process to it.

Speaker C: That is definitely one thing that you've maintained control of. And I love hearing your take about even the thumbnail. It matters. It's like, kind of speaks to your collecting philosophy as well. You know, where it's not just the thing that you, the project that you like, it's the specific piece that you like. And we've talked about this, like, you know, just in Discord a little bit about like the idea of offering on a collection is just mind-boggling to you because why would you not want to pick the specific thing that you like, the specific piece that you want? Like, especially when it's something that is on the icons list, for example, where it's something that is an icon to you and something that you're specifically looking to get.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the display of one's collection is, is so often looked at just from your collection page, that scrolling list of everything. And there's been too many times where I've made acquisition decisions just based on what goes next to what and what order they go in. And it's part of the reason that I put a lot of effort into growing the Grail Grids. gallery display for Tender. It's something I started on many months ago. I mean, really right after launching Tender, I jumped into it. I felt like there was a space for something that was experiential and somewhat tactile, but also not 3D and hopefully easy to use. We're still developing it, but I think that that's really a way to expand From some of what's happening on the, on the icons page, some of what's happening in everybody's own collection page, and put some more order to it and start to see different relationships between those pieces. So obviously since I've started, I've seen Deko's launch and the Deko galleries that have come out do a lot of that. And I love to see it. You know, any, any ways that people can better communicate their collecting preferences and ideas and points of view. I'm all for it. You know, the icons list is not meant to be some sort of definitive, you know, this is the, this is the only icons list there should be. But I did feel that somebody should make it and make it easy for people to access those things. And I know that there'll be more ways to do it. I know more people will be making those lists. Some people are keeping them manually. I know that FX is going to be launching some curated spaces that will allow for people to do this. I'm excited about that. I think that more than just ordering these so-called icons, ordering projects by theme and by esoteric approaches to collecting, that's going to be really interesting to see. And hopefully Grail Grids and all these other platforms can help showcase the collector point of view, because I think that's what's going to make the space last, is being able to share those perspectives more so than just in Discord and in fleeting media. But actually in something that's a little bit more concrete, you can keep referring back to.

Speaker A: Was the whole idea of like where Tender is now fully baked at the time of launch? Is it something that's evolved as you— it was like, okay, icons, step 1, step 2, start working on galleries. But clearly like all this stuff happened in parallel, right? Like the printing service, the editorials, which I guess is kind of how you came to gather this first kind of group of Tender members. Like, can you kind of walk us through the timeline here and how this thing is has grown, right? And like, did it take a form that you didn't predict initially? Like, what is— what has been the arc of Tender up until now?

Speaker B: The arc has been pretty organic, so it's hard to say like what was there from the beginning, because really when you're in the creation process, there's always a flood of ideas. And, you know, even in the 2 weeks it took to get the first version up, there was new ideas flooding in. And that's when the decision to do editorials came in. You know, you're working on something and as soon as you have a good version, you think about what is deficient about it. Okay, well, we need more voices on here. We need to hear people describing the projects and what they mean to them. I want to capture some of those, you know, again, fleeting conversations from Discord and put them in a searchable way on the site. So that's where the editorials came in. I think that's probably where some of our first conversations came in. Not just myself and you guys, but most of the initial core tenders were really born out of conversations around the editorial and the writing. And we're talking to CalicoJack about writing about Smolskull. He had that passion. That's a perfect voice to talk about Smolskull. And finding different community members like that that had these projects that meant a lot to them and inviting them in to say something. In their own voice. So that was something that was part of the core experience from the very beginning. And I think also another way to keep it from just being about my personal perspective. Galleries were something that I conceived pretty early on, even though it's taken a while to execute on them. So, you know, everything is kind of built on top of each other, and I think we'll continue to do so. I have a lot of roadmap to execute. But I don't think any of it is terribly surprising because it's just focused on the generative art space and what I think collectors and artists would want to see out of a platform.

Speaker C: One of the reasons that I started using Tender a lot in the first place was the watchlist. I'd been like asking Cypher so many times, can we just bookmark projects, bookmark projects, bookmark projects? And, you know, that is one of the biggest things that I like to use Tender for. And, you know, I probably should update my watch projects list, you know, just same way that you're updating icons. It's like my own curated view of things I want to get and tracking the prices.

Speaker A: And you were mocking up UI stuff and putting it into the feature request in the FX Hash Discord.

Speaker C: Oh, absolutely.

Speaker A: And you were like, here's how it should look. Here's how easy it'll be. And like, just, I want to be able to do this just with full, you're doing your full leveraging your skills sort of.

Speaker C: Yeah. I think what ended up in Tender is like absolutely more usable than what I had put in. Um, for example, the ability to see multiple Pieces, which is key, I would say, rather than just like the floor piece. But, you know, that really goes to like that curated view that I think Adam really brings to this space where it's like, not just let's look at the cheapest one, but the, let's look at, you know, like 5, 6, or 7 of the cheapest ones. And then we can kind of get a sense of what might be a good value or, you know, within the price range that I'm seeking to get. And so from a collector standpoint, that's something I really appreciate. Is there anything that you can tease as to what might be coming in the pipeline from like a feature functionality perspective that would just continue to kill it?

Speaker B: There's a lot of things that we're still, I feel like, catching up on that will provide value in terms of, you know, working within the offer ecosystem, being able to find— we just added the ability to find pieces by particular traits. You know, those are things that I consider to be basic functionality that we just had to catch up on. And full disclosure, I actually started conversations a similar way in December thinking, you know, Ciphrd, how can I help, right? Like there's a lot of opportunity, almost infinite opportunity. Are there some ways that we can, that I can use my experience to help the core platform? And the reality is, you know, development cycles can only go so fast. We feel that very much with Tender. There's so many more things that I want to be doing than we have actual time for. Now the pass has allowed us to start accelerating that, which I'm really grateful for. But, you know, I think the core functionality of managing your reserves, your offers, finding things that you might have looked at before and saving them for later is really key. I use my saved list way too much, you know, alerts. And I think one of the things that we can bring through Tender is some of the stuff that is a little bit more difficult to do with a pure Web3 chain-only build, which, you know, I think it's great that fx hash maintains that perspective, and they do so much without any third-party database. And we're just, you know, I just have a, you know, I'm not as committed to, frankly, I'm just not as committed to doing the full Web3 on-chain thing. And so, you know, any ways that we can take advantage of that and provide an additional toolset for collectors, let's go ahead and add that. As far as other things coming up, the big push for the next, let's say, a couple months will be bringing other long-form generative art platforms onto Tender. That's the thing that I think is going to do the most for the space. I think it's going to be one of the game changers, not just for Tender, but for cross-chain collecting. You know, from a technical perspective, what DECA is already doing with connecting to your Tez wallet and your ETH wallet, is really good, and you can see how much that they've smoothed that out over the last couple of months. And so I think already there's some comfort with starting to merge those worlds, but to be able to see your collection and to be able to provide views like an icons list that's across platform really follows our intention of putting the art at the forefront. And so there's going to be a lot of things for collectors and for artists that sort of follow that approach as far as functionality and additional things on the site. But ultimately, the idea is really to elevate the value of the art. And I think when you're going to see fxhash work right next to works from other platforms like Art Blocks and GM, I think it kind of erases the— not erases, but I think it puts in a different priority order the emphasis on the art. versus the platform. So I'm excited about that.

Speaker C: Quick question. Garden Monolith still number 1 on ICON's list? When do we bring Art Blocks in?

Speaker B: That's a great question.

Speaker A: Yeah. Are you going to do an ICON's list for the other platforms, do you feel? Or is it, are they going to intermingle? Are they going to?

Speaker B: Yeah, we're working on it now. I think as much as possible, we're going to keep it as one list. Now the ICON's list is already I haven't counted. It's got to be 180 projects on there. So it's, it's long, you know, we're going to be adding some other ways to either sort, filter, or categorize it, even without integrating other platforms. So I think that will be helpful, particularly for people who might be looking for something at a price point or something in a theme or something from whatever the categories might be. I think With the additional platforms, it would be easiest to just have an Art Blocks icons list, but I just think it defeats part of the purpose of elevating the singular perspective on generative art. Will there be a toggle to show just Art Blocks or just one particular platform? Yeah, absolutely. We'll make it easy. We'll make it apparent which platform each project is from, but I think one list is really important. Also, you know, other thing I'll say about the order is for those who are looking closely, it changes. So I don't just leave things there and not, not reorder them. So sometimes I change them, you know, maybe my point of view has changed, maybe there's a little bit of a hive mind change, or maybe just new works have come out that have recontextualized the old works. And I would expect that same sort of evolutionary process to happen once we have other artworks and other platforms on there.

Speaker A: You kind of mentioned the pass already. What kind of brought you around to the idea of doing a pass as essentially, I guess, partially a form of crowdfunding for the project, but also community building, right? Like, so what brought you around to that? First, I kind of want to hear the history of the pass and how nervous you were the day it released and all of that, because I'm sure it was really, you know, we had talked about it a little bit and everyone had their own ideas of like It's gonna mint out right away. No, it's gonna take a month. No, like we should, you know, like there was a lot of different points of view. I mean, personally, I thought it was gonna take a long time, right? I was like, that's a lot of Tez. Like people don't necessarily know like what they're gonna get, but it went within what, 4 or 6 hours. So huge, huge success. But, and then, then we should talk a little bit about some of the criticism, I think. But let's start with the past and like the journey to that and just your own personal nerves and stuff.

Speaker B: I want to hear the story from Adam's perspective on the pass.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: I mean, the pass was definitely not something I was thinking about when launching Tender in February. You know, that idea did come up somewhat naturally a few different times in conversation. Certainly, I was looking for a way to sustain Tender. I put a lot of money into the platform. So I don't code anymore. So I was hiring part-time developers to continue building the project. And also, I I fired all my own clients, so I was not making a living in any other way. So I'm looking for a way to continue building Tender. And, you know, I think we've provided some value to the ecosystem, and I want to be able to continue providing that value and do so much more that I know we can do. So, you know, The Pass came up sort of in that context, but what made me comfortable with launching it really was all the conversations and critical discourse that We had around the pass. We meaning the original tenders of about 25 people really had a lot of in-depth conversations. There's a lot of criticism of what do it mean to do a pass, or even criticism of like what would happen if we don't fortify a larger community and miss that opportunity. So really the perspectives coming from a lot of different angles kind of helped build comfort with the unknown of what was going to happen because we just played out a lot of different scenarios. Because it's not just about what it means in NFTs or, you know, because there's a pass on ETH, we can do a pass here. It's a different space. And I think we spent a lot of time discussing what's right for the Tezos community, what's right for the fxhash community in terms of pricing, in terms of benefits, in terms of trying to make sure that there's still a lot of access to Tender. And ultimately, Tender is about the larger community, and we are going to do and are doing everything to provide value to the passholders. But ultimately, our goals are larger in the sense of serving generative art. And so we try to be clear, and I try to continue to be clear that there's a definite element of support that we're looking for from our pass holders and from anybody who's involved in Tender to help us keep pushing, keep pushing the space. And, you know, I think some people extrapolate that out to say, well, if the space grows and I'm collecting in that space, maybe some benefit comes back to me. It's not a guarantee we're putting out there, but it's, I think, another reflection of the sort of altruistic virtuous cycle of this ecosystem. One of the things I love the most about it, the more we put in, From a platform, from a community perspective, the more we all get out. And I don't mean just collectors, I mean artists too. I love that. That's a little bit of the genesis of the pass. I mean, I think even internally we had a, we had a lot of different perspectives on what was going to happen. Pass Day had some really encouraging conservative predictions that kind of tempered expectations. And so I think I personally went into it thinking, hey, from a pragmatic perspective, if we could sell a couple hundred of these passes, I've got some runway. I can keep going. That's really how I look at it is this is our runway. We don't have any other outside investment. I don't have personally deep pockets. So I'm extremely grateful for everybody that bought a pass and supported us in this way.

Speaker C: I think that there's that vision for what the Tender Pass group can be. You know, some people have said it's just paid alpha group. You know, that's not it. Some people said it's just like a Moonbird type of thing, and, you know, that's not it. But like, what does it really represent to you in terms of like what's the type of community vibe that you think that should belong to the Tender Pass or that you've seen kind of emerging organically? It's a different space.

Speaker B: It is. And I think some of the communities that I'm most excited to be part of are usually organically grown. And so I'm very You know, trying to be too cognizant of growing an organic community, but I think leaving the space for people to shape it how they will within the parameters that we've set up is really important to me. And I think that's what's going to allow the focus to elevate on art. And certainly there's a lot of discussion of the market dynamics, the platform and the blockchain dynamics. But really, when, when I see some of the art-focused conversations happening in Discord and know how much more we can continue to evolve the exposure to perspectives from other curators and collectors, I think that's the stuff that really excites me about encapsulating the Tender philosophy. I think as we expand outside of FX and really focus on generative art as a whole, That'll bring in so many more voices. We've already had, I think, a good influx of collectors that are new to the FX space, and I'm excited about that. Like, to expose more people to it is a great thing. So I'm excited for then this community to get exposure to others. So looking for ways to build bridges and partnerships with other platforms, I think, is going to be a huge opportunity for growing what Tender means as a community. And, you know, that's not just passholders. I think there's always now going to be this core group of passholder perspectives and, you know, the activity that goes on in the Discord. But we're there on Twitter. We want to be active in the greater conversation. And that's always something very much on my mind is the balance between serving passholders and the people who have very directly supported us and supporting the greater community and all the people that have come to use Tender and benefit from it, that's just as important.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think if you could expand a little bit more on Tender's role in the greater community, because one of the criticisms that we've seen coming, of course, from people who didn't get a pass for whatever reason, is by issuing the pass, creating a Discord that is for passholders only, you know, offering some features of the site to passholders only, it's creating You know, a group within a group, right? Like there's now like this, this quote unquote in-group and it's just for maybe the more moneyed people or the more influential people and I'm not in it. And, you know, things are changing and I don't like it. And, you know, like we've seen a lot of comments like that and it is undeniable, right? Like there is a Tender Pass. There's only so many of them. People who have the passes, there's going to be some benefit conferred to them.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But yeah, I think it would be really helpful to hear from you, Adam, like a little bit more of Tender's role in the greater community and how being a passholder is just like Tender+, right? It's not like it's only for passholders, right? Like clearly there's still so much you can do on the platform without having a pass. And I think it would be beneficial to hear you talk a little bit about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you're right. Things are changing. They're definitely changing. And I think that's a good thing. We've seen a lot of change on the platform just from CoreFX perspective, you know, there's a lot of critical discussion of what allowlists are going to do and DAs are going to do, and they came and they've added some value, and that's part of the space. So certainly I think this community has seen things that are more common on other platforms come in, you know, a couple months afterwards and have seen some benefit from those. But I think we've tried to bring a pass approach to this space in a very different way where we do respect the initial community that we were founded for and really by, you know, the core of Tenders were just more collectors. I might have found you guys because of the podcast, but also because you're just active in PD. And that's who I was reaching out to, people who were passionate about the space and wanted to contribute. And that's what we're looking for in the larger Tender community, whether they're pass holders or not. We were very deliberate with the benefits that we're offering to passholders. For one, making sure that anything that was already built and accessible by the larger community, by the public, is still accessible. So we've closed nothing else off. And the things that we are keeping to passholders only are really sort of like added benefits. Like you say, they're plus benefits.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Even as far as the reserve list for collaborations, which we had started before the pass, you know, we still are very adamant that there's a portion of them, a significant portion, that's open to the public. And that's a way— all of this is a way to keep integrated with the greater community. So it's a balance, you know, it's a balance. Also, we have people who have supported with real Tez. I know it's not an inexpensive purchase to take on a pass, and so we want to provide real value there too. One of the criticisms you know, that comes up not just with TenderPass, but with any sort of Tez-restricted access, is that we're building walled gardens, you know, some kind of walled community. And the analogy that I put back against that is it's not about us putting up walls and restricting things. It's about us really providing more of like a premium guided tour experience of that garden. So it's the same garden. We don't really have anything special that's not already there. We're just serving it up in a really specific curated way with some extra features. You can come into our garden tour and you can, you know, we're going to serve you a nice cocktail and we're going to give you a Hasselblad to shoot the, you know, to photograph the flowers with. And we're going to really tailor that experience for these passholders. But everybody can come into the garden. It's not our garden. So I think that's the perspective that we'll continue to take as we grow both the greater platform and things for the passholders.

Speaker A: I feel like the one thing we haven't talked about yet is, well, I guess you kind of talked a little bit about it in your last answer, but the collaborations and what's going on there. I think it would be a good time to talk more about what are Tender Collabs? How did they come about? I mean, maybe, maybe how they came about would be the best place to start because even before the collaborative contract, right, some of the earliest work must have been going into these considering when they started to release. So what, like, what even gave you the idea of doing a Tender branded collaboration? And yeah, was it something that you started on your own? Was it just in talking to artists, this idea came up organically?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What were those initial conversations like and how have they evolved?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a fun one to reflect back on because actually in some ways the idea of a collaboration was what brought me to the space in general. Maybe some folks have seen, I did a pretty quick thread on my personal Twitter account about the genesis of Love, the collaboration with T. Boswell. And The quick story is I had this idea, this part of my personal artistic practice of painting these little energy fields of watercolor dots that were just, you know, too meticulous for the real-life time that I had. And I thought, man, that'd be a killer generative project. And I started to look into somebody to collaborate with to bring it to life. I knew my coding skills from yesteryear were not going to come back to snuff. And so I was looking for a partner and in a very long route, I didn't find the right person, but I was led to fx hash. And so I think really as Tender got off the ground, it kind of reignited this idea that, hey, it'd be great to find somebody to collaborate on this project and started looking around and getting inspired about other projects. And so while I'm exercising this digital product background that I have, I'm also thinking about from an artist's perspective, you know, what would I love to see in the space? From a collector's perspective, what would I love to see? And I think, again, it was one of these opportunities to bring these different, very deep backgrounds of my own into use for the space. And so when I started reaching out to a couple of artists, it was before I knew about the collaborative contracts coming out. My plan was to have a TenderX account And every project was going to be named by the artist that I'm collaborating with. So it'd be like published from TenderX, first project Abstractment: Pang. You know, it was just not the most— so thankfully the collab contract came right when we were launching our first ones and it's worked beautifully. But, you know, the reception to— I guess I just put it out there without worrying too much about what the reception was going to be, but the reception has been incredibly positive and collaborative by the nature of what we're trying to do. And I think part of that is coming from my proposal for those projects. And I'm really transparent that for one, I have a very specific background, 15 years as a creative director, deep artistic practice personally that allows me to operate in this kind of collaborative dialogue, creative dialogue that might not be about hands-on code, but it's going very deep into the concept of a piece, you know, the way that the works are coming together, the varieties, all the way down to pricing and talking about the work when it gets closer to release. So really communicating, I'm coming with a lot of that experience and be very active and involved in the process. And then also that, frankly, we're looking for some support. And as Tender goes out there and tries to support the community of collectors and the community of artists, by highlighting works that the collaborations help us sustain. And that's part of the revenue share idea too, is that they're part of growing our runway so that we can keep doing what we're doing and bring the benefit that we haven't even brought yet. And so that continues to be part of the series. You know, we have the benefit of the past proceeds that gives us a certain amount of runway. We're in this for the long haul though. And so these collaborations will continue to feed and extend that runway from a pragmatic perspective. But, you know, kind of coming back to the art, it's, it's, uh, one of the most inspiring things I can imagine doing, working with a lot of different artists, each with their own philosophies and processes and objectives, and really, you know, trying to both shapeshift a little bit for every individual collaborator, but also push a little bit in every project. I think that's one of the benefits. From a creative perspective that we can contribute, that I can contribute, is pushing a little bit outside of anyone's comfort zone. And certainly the artists push back on inputs that I give in the same way. And so there's always a— I think with a successful collaboration, there's always a little bit of that tension that you can push on each other and end up somewhere that you would never have gotten to if you were working on your own.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I feel very fortunate. I think all the projects we've put out so far have ended up in that place. So I'm super excited about all the ones that are coming up too. There's a lot of good stuff in the works.

Speaker A: I mean, yeah, it's interesting. By my count here, and my count's coming from the official Tender website, we've had 6 collabs, which is inclusive of the Tender Pass with Punevyr, all of which have been very different. There's like Pang with Abstractment, Reconnaissance with Nat Sarkissian, Speed of Dark with Lauren Houdard, Love, as you mentioned, with Tee Boswell, and most recently Bound with a new artist to fxhash and maybe even to generative art. I'm not fully sure of their entire story about David Bryce Allen. Clearly with Love, you had this piece of your own that you were interested in pursuing, but with every other collaboration, Are these artists bringing a work in progress to you? Are you sitting down with them from the start and just like, we have an agreement, we're gonna make a project together, let's see where it goes organically? Like, how does it, you know, outside of the one where you had a preexisting, like, something from your own personal practice, like, how does this work? And then how do you even approach the artist, right? Like, and just say, I have this idea, let's work together. And also like, Give some reserves and like, let's work on pricing, like all of this, right? Like it's kind of, it's gotta be, you know, to put myself into an artist's shoes, like it's gotta kind of be a tricky proposition in a little bit of ways, right? Because you don't know what's gonna happen once the piece releases and you're making a deal to give up some sales to, you know, to give some reserves away. So like, what is this whole process? You know, to the extent that you can share, right? Like what is this? What has this been like? What's the reception been like?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Has anyone been like, who the hell do you think you are?

Speaker B: I mean, do you know what I mean?

Speaker C: I can't name names on that one.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, maybe they haven't told me yet. I'm sure they haven't told me. You know, it's, um, the process is definitely a larger conversation first. How, you know, what are we trying to do as an initiative, Tender Collaborations? You know, we're trying to bring very new works to the space in a different way. We're trying to evolve the understanding of what collaboration means. It doesn't just mean a technical collaboration, it can mean a very creative and artistic dialogue that leads to collaborative work. So I think, particularly in the beginning, there just was not a lot of pure collaborative projects coming to the market, certainly not before the collaboration contract. So it was kind of a new idea and I think actually the novelty attracted a really good response in the beginning. And I think now that we have 5, 6 of these, plus a couple of Visors released, we have the benefit of people having seen the work that's come out. So hopefully we have some proven quality, caliber of quality. We also have a really consistent approach to the splits and the relationship between the artists and Tender. So I think that consistency has kind of helped just create a shared understanding of what we're doing and how things, how things are launched. You know, really, besides the element of support coming back to Tender, you know, we can't promise any sort of like quantifiable return on what the collaboration brings. But I like to think that there's a real definitive value in terms of what success comes to the project. It might be in Tez or it might be in, you know, hopefully some extra attention that we can bring to the project and to the artist and to an ongoing relationship.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: you know, all of the artists that we've worked with so far. I mean, the process is very tight. There's a lot of conversations, and I've become quite close with all the artists. So it's, you know, I think those are lasting. I know from my side, I really value the lasting relationships that have come out of that. And I hope that I can also serve as sort of a sounding board for any of them going forward. So there's, you know, there's intangible benefits from it. But the process itself, after that initial conversation of, you know, just trying to gauge interest and explain what we're trying to do and the pragmatics of how it works, is I always ask for a little bit of time to come up with a set of concepts that are completely unique for each artist. And so what I'm looking for is concepts that suit— maybe it's their aesthetic, maybe it's what I perceive to be their approach and their process, what I might perceive to be some of their technical skills and the way that they're producing their work. So I'm using some of my background in engineering, you know, technical development, to understand a little bit of where I think things could go. And then I'm bringing a lot of sort of my artistic background, my art history knowledge, and trying to bring something that could combine into a new concept. So it's literally 3 or 4 different directions that I'll present or share with the artist and let them kind of talk about them, think about them, evolve them. Sometimes we pick one and we just go for it. And we, you know, there's development and they'll, they might go away for a couple of weeks or a week and come back and, you know, maybe it stays right on course. Sometimes it goes off into left field and That's a great thing, and that exploration leads to somewhere else. You know, I think any artist can say that a concept can sometimes be shifted late in process and, um, you know, change the way that it's articulated towards the end, and that's okay. And that happens sometimes. I've had some of the collaborations have started in one direction, hit a dead end, and we've gone to a different direction. And that's a lot of work. I acknowledge that, like, but I always try to put the emphasis on the artwork itself and making something that's truly different, truly exciting for us as artists, and then hopefully for the community of collectors. And I think with that approach, it's, you know, hopefully it's paying off. I mean, you can see me, I'm collecting the artworks that we're putting out there, not out of any duty, but because I love what we're— well, it's kind of a funny relationship being part of the creation process and also really coveting these things.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So yeah, that's, I don't know if that answers all of the process because there's just so much that goes into it, but I will say that it's collaborative the whole way through. It's very hands-on.

Speaker C: I mean, I have so many questions because that was such a great response. I'm just going to put some of my wonderings out there and you can kind of tackle them how you feel. One, when you're coming up with these concepts, how do you communicate that? Do you like do mockups and just sketches? Do you bring in like style guides and like inspirations, like, you know, for example, with, um, Reconnaissance, like where you just, here's space images, here's things of Mars.

Speaker B: So there are a few examples of collaborations where I just had a very specific idea. So with Nat and with Tyler, you know, I thought this is, this is a great concept for us. Let's talk about the idea of collaborating. And if you're into it, let me throw you this one first. And if it sticks, well, let's just go for it. And if not, I'll— I have some other ideas. And so for, for Recon and for Love, those were specific ideas that I just thought would be a perfect match. You know, having looked at what Tee Boswell did with Fracture and their use of color and watercolor techniques, it just— it all came together. It seemed like a perfect fit. And certainly with Nat's original Hills and just seeing the sort of photographic feel that he was able to achieve through code, kind of combined with some stuff that I had seen in a book I had. I had a book called This Is Mars. It's an incredible book of real photographs. I mean, essentially reconnaissance photographs from Mars, surface of Mars in black and white. And that inspired us to try to see what we could recreate in a new way from that inspiration point. Most of the other projects Yeah, it's a combination of reference images and mood boards and writing. I do a lot of writing. I try to keep everything concise just from a pragmatic perspective. I have a lot of these conversations going where I can't put, you know, pages and pages into one concept at first. So I really try to keep it high level most of the time in developing these concepts is just up in my head, really thinking through what would be interesting. Doing research, finding inspiration points in unexpected places, and then doing some writing that describes a little bit of where I think it could go. It might describe a little bit of what I think we might leverage from the artist's past work, whether it's technical or creative, and finding some reference images that might just lead to some new ideas. You know, I, I think for any artist, a reference image is not about recreating something that's been done before, but a jumping off point that might make you think of something new. And so once those initial concepts are out there and we might decide on one, then I usually go deeper and try to find either more references or I do sketches or photo comps. Um, and that's when sort of the back and forth starts.

Speaker A: I mean, it kind of is similar to, not, not that we're doing it on nearly the same level, but you know, as a show, one of the things that we rely on more recently is like artist collaborations to help us come with our token drops that we do. And by the time this episode comes out, I think the next one will release, so we can probably talk about it a little bit. But—

Speaker B: Exciting.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're working on one with Jeres, and the inspiration is like Olympic posters. And so Trinity went through and like found some, you know, she's a real Olympics head, and she went through and found like old posters that she liked and researched, you know, font styles and all these designs. And then Jeres is like taking it and putting their spin on it. And it's been a super interesting, you know, way to, to collaborate with them. And like Trinity's been doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this, which is really great for, great for me.

Speaker C: Jeres came to us with the concept, so.

Speaker A: Right, right. And it just, it just so happened that you were a huge Olympics fan and you were just like, this is amazing.

Speaker B: And perfect.

Speaker A: You're like, and actually in the 1983 poster they use, you're just like going deep into your knowledge.

Speaker C: Going back and looking at like, yeah, looking at old school posters is fun just to to see how the visual language changes, like, just from, not just from games to games, but over the course of decades. And I was really inspired by, I think, more the concept work for Atlanta '96. It was what they actually like pitched. It wasn't what they actually went with for the brand. But, you know, when I'm looking at vintage posters online, I don't know that.

Speaker A: In that same way, right? Like finding points of reference and sharing it with the artists and then having them iterate and And like giving us a link to flip through and stuff. And we collaborate to the extent that we can, but again, like we're not the ones coding it, right? So it's kind of just like, can you make it a little more spacing between the, you know, like just like little comments like that, right? It's, it's, it's a weird, it's weird. It's kind of weird in a way, cuz it's not your hand creating, but there is like, there is collaboration and, and guidance in that way.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's strange. It's something that I think must take some getting used to, like having the confidence to provide a note to someone, right? And say like, make it more like this.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's one of those things I probably should think about more maybe, because I just kind of go for it with my commentary. But I think that's really coming from, yeah, the decade plus of being a creative director and working your way up to give that kind of feedback, you receive a lot of that feedback. And, you know, you just see the styles of communication. You know, it's not just about the creative input, it's about communication and a relationship that you're having with your collaborator. And so, you know, I think we have amazing artists, amazing personalities in the space that have all come with a mutual respect to our, to our processes where we're able to just be frank with each other. And I think that's incredibly important. important. So, you know, I have a lot of love for the, the people and the efforts that they're putting in, especially towards these collaborations. And I think actually they deserve only, you know, the most frank feedback. So I'm, I'm very conscious of making sure that if something is felt, it's said. And I think they appreciate that. Also, I don't have any predefined expectations. And I think that helps a lot too, you know, to say, hey, this has to come out a certain way, or this has to launch on a certain date. I'm very focused on giving the art and the artists the space that they want. Sometimes they, you know, sometimes they're ready to release something, and, you know, it's always, especially with, you know, an artwork, it's hard to figure out exactly when am I going to stop this, when are we going to release this. And so, you know, I'm always trying to listen to the signals of when are we coming towards the end of this? When are we all feeling it? Sometimes that means that there's a big push at the end, or sometimes it means we just need to stop fussing with some details and get it out there. But, you know, I think TENDER has sort of a, I guess, I don't know if it's a benefit or just a different dynamic than what you guys are doing in that we're not, we don't have any sort of like communications We don't— there's no like necessary word or tie into a brand. And actually, I'm very conscious of trying not to have a Tender style or a Tender look or a Tender message that's common to all of those. And I'm actually interested to see what happens when we step back and look at 20 of these projects. And are there some common themes or not? And if there are, I mean, that's just, uh, great fodder for doing something completely different and trying to push, you know, even myself further in terms of what concepts could be. In the most recent collaborations that I'm working on, some of them are going into real wild territory that I could not have expected just as a result of the experimentation being done in code from prompts or from, you know, whatever reference. And they just go in a I want to really embrace that and allow those things to lead us to places that we might not have thought of before. So it just keeps it super exciting. There's a lot of cool stuff coming up.

Speaker A: By the time this episode comes out, which would probably be a week from today, will you have been talking publicly about the next collab?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Such that we could talk about it right now and how different and unique it's going to be for the platform?

Speaker B: Definitely. collab to release will probably be Thursday the 11th, tentative, but I think it's going to be the 11th with Watkins.

Speaker C: Tomorrow for listeners.

Speaker A: But is fxhash even open that day? We have to double check.

Speaker B: Always have to check.

Speaker A: But yeah, sorry, go ahead. Tell us about the piece. That's super— from the little that we've seen, it's very different and—

Speaker B: It's wild. It's really cool. Have there been portraits in generative art? Yes, a little bit. Have there been faces? This is a very unique take on a very sort of like emotional close-up portrait of— it's hard to say who it is or what it is. It might be human or humanoid or an android, something from the future. And Really questioning what is spirit, what is the soul inside of a face, inside of a head or a body. And Watkins has just done an incredible job to bring to life this idea in a very sort of photographic way. And some of the initial inspiration that we had actually is from my personal photographic work. I don't photograph androids, but my stuff is very close up and Moody, and, you know, we took a lot of inspiration both from that and Sally Mann's work. And he's just taken it to a very different place that, you know, I think is, it's a little bit dark. Sometimes it's a little bit creepy to some people. I think it's very provocative. And that's the, that's the word that always comes to me when I look at an individual piece or the set. And, you know, that's something that I think is interesting to me as a collector.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think it can be really healthy for the space in general, generative art, right? Like when somebody is looking at it, looking at generative art every single day and something like this can catch their attention, I think that's exciting and pushes the understanding of what this is as a medium, right? Generative art as a medium and not a look, not a style. And so I think the same goes for people who might not know generative art. As a, as a little interesting hook. Oh my gosh, that's, that's generative. What does that mean? How is that possible? A little hook to bring people into something new. But yeah, that's coming. That's coming. We've been working on that for many months. And I'm excited not just to share the work, but for him to share some of the making of process and what's gone into it. 'Cause it's really exciting.

Speaker A: It's, it's super weird. And I'll tell you right now, not to be the bearer of bad news, but Thursday the 11th is closed, so you'd have to put it up on Tuesday and get it in the queue.

Speaker B: We might, we might do that, or we might— it's— well, I don't want to speak for, for the artist, but it's, um, it's very close to ready, so we might do that early, or we might push back.

Speaker A: Trinity, I mean, I know you've seen it. What do you, what do you think of— you've seen a few outputs, test outputs. What is your impression?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think it's very, uh, Different compared to almost everything that we see. And I like say that in like the best possible way. Like it's one of those projects, and I would say this about everything that, you know, you've collaborated on, is that it is distinctly itself and kind of unlike anything else that we have seen. Like, you know, I think we all remember the first time we saw like Recon or like Love or Bound. Like they're all so different.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And this just kind of keeps on expanding that, that, that, um, the genre, I think, of what gen art is and what it means to be like a tender collab, I would say. So when you're looking at this 20 projects from now, you know, you're continuing to push the bounds and that's pretty cool.

Speaker A: An especially interesting project to release in this month or around this time because of how much like AI art we're seeing out there right now and how I think a lot of people, if they saw this piece out of context, like not on fxhash, would probably assume it was made through some kind of AI process and not a generative code process, right? Because there's so much of that work out in NFT art social media right now. And there's just nothing that has— I mean, there have been works that use image composition. Or there have been works that draw faces in a more simplistic way, kind of using a tighter set of rules, or— but not nearly with like the same kind of like shading and texture and stuff like this. So honestly, I think people are gonna have no idea what to make of it, which is probably great, right? Like, like, I think it's probably— that's probably a good thing. They're gonna look at this and go, what even is this? And that's— I mean, that was my first impression of it for sure. But like, but to me, that's really cool. Right? 'Cause we see, like you said, 17,000 projects on the platform, right? Like we've seen so much stuff. And so it's becoming increasingly hard to make something that's surprising, just refreshing in that sense. So I'm excited to see how people react to it.

Speaker B: I mean, I am too. It, it, it will be interesting. And I think that's a good thing that it's that different. I appreciate you, you guys saying that. I mean, Trinity, I take that as a compliment that these—

Speaker C: It is.

Speaker B: Each are doing something very different. Everything resonates with the community differently over time. There's so much emphasis put on the release, but, you know, as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, there's things that I go back to from many months ago that, you know, when revisiting a second time, my perception shifts. You know, like with the order of the icons list, something that just grabs your attention in a different way is important sometimes.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And what's interesting, I think, about this project is For within this space, it's so very different. And outside of this space, to me, it's very photographic, you know, even if the subject is not quite human. And that's, that's strange. And I think that's what helps keep it in this realm of it really could only be generative. Like, it is to me not trying to mimic photography, but do something new with the medium of generative art in a way that has cues from photography. And I think that's one of these things that can be very helpful for this space, actually. And I've even seen it sometimes as sort of a hot topic. But this idea that you might pull from other reference points, other media, other aesthetics, you know, in some cases it serves— I hate to talk about the art this way, but it kind of serves a purpose. It allows people who might not be as comfortable with viewing broadly different things to have an anchor for themselves to understand, okay, that, that's something, there's something familiar there. And then I can open myself up to what's completely different about this. And I think a lot about photography and the photographic movement as an art medium in the early 1900s. And, you know, in that moment, you have a lot of people in the art world talking about, we've got this reproduction Technique is not art. Get out of our salons. That's not what this— this is not what this is. This is for reproducing reality. That's not artistic. And you had a reacting movement of pictorialists literally dressing up their photographs to look like paintings, using a brush, using Vaseline on a lens to soften the focus, doing these techniques to make it more familiar for acceptance to a larger art world. And I'm not saying, you know, I'm not saying what we're trying to do is trying to trick anybody, but I think on a more subtle level, building in cues that's more accessible for a wider audience is going to help our eventual goal of bringing more people into the space. And I don't mean another 10% of people, I mean 5x-ing, 10x-ing. And there's a lot of great efforts going into that right now. Art Blocks is working on it in every fair, so is fx hash now. They're going out there trying to broaden this audience, and I think not only can we do that through grassroots and hands-on efforts, but even through the artwork itself. And so I'm really excited about the potential for some of these things to broaden points of view that are not even here yet. That's ultimately like when I really go to a high level for Tender, that's where we want to help. is bring generative art as a movement to that level of acceptance as a movement, as a media in the greater art world it deserves to be. There's a clear lineage of this medium, you know, evolving. And it's not just about NFTs. It's not just about a blockchain. And so as we continue to focus on the art and bring new people in, you know, I think we're going to see a lot of excited newcomers. in the coming years. So what's underneath every one of our actions is how are we helping that mission.

Speaker C: Beneath every one of our actions is a generative octopus waiting to be born.

Speaker B: Oh, I hope so.

Speaker A: Wow. I mean, I almost don't want to ask any more questions because I feel like that's such a great place to end the episode, but I'll invite you, Adam. I know, I mean, we just talked about the Watkins Drop. If you want to preview anything else coming up, anything Tender, future collabs, future advisories, if there's anything you want to kind of preview here and get people excited about before we close off the episode.

Speaker B: Kind of piggybacking on what I was just saying about, you know, how do we expose ourselves to a larger audience, we're really doing another push on the prints initiative, doing prints for the community. I keep wondering, like, is this my own personal obsession that I should, you know, tone down? But I really feel that seeing certain works In print. Oh, look at that. Trinity's holding up her holo print. It looks fantastic.

Speaker A: You found it. Wait, I thought it was lost.

Speaker C: It was lost, but it was apparently just done and in the wrong pile.

Speaker B: Fantastic.

Speaker C: Sorry, not to take away the conversation from prints, because it's definitely another way of appreciation, right? And it's personal appreciation, appreciation with others in our direct circle rather than like the broader online circle, right?

Speaker B: I think everybody listening has had that experience of trying to evangelize this thing that we're passionate about to people completely outside of the space. And there's a lot of different approaches. I think that part of our job from Tender's perspective is to help people with those conversations. To me, a print is just a way of helping that conversation. You're not looking at a screen, you're not talking about NFTs and whatever baggage that may or may not come with for a newcomer. And the prints, aside from that are just a real pleasure to look at. You know, I go back to just hopefully collecting things that make me smile. Well, if they're sitting right there on my wall every time I pass by, just makes life good. So we'll continue to try to make those more and more accessible for more and more artists and share more examples of framed work in people's spaces coming up.

Speaker C: And this is where we get to ask you, out of all of your prints, which is your favorite child?

Speaker B: Right now it's still Umbra number 1. I mean, it's the— it's my answer to so many things. It's this beautiful red Umbra from Rich Poole. I got number 1 without having any gas back then, and it just happened to be a really exceptional output. The printer that we use was able to really hit a beautiful rich red, and red is one of the most difficult colors to, to output and pigment. So I'm really excited about that print. I'm also working on a couple of really well-known projects that are not printable yet to try to fine-tune the printing outputs to a point that are acceptable enough for the artist. I think it's going to create a lot of excitement in the community, so hopefully in the coming weeks we can talk more about that.

Speaker A: Both Trinity and I have been working a little bit on talking to artists and trying to get them On the biggest question is always like, what's the quality file output? And there's so much work that goes into converting something from digital to physical in a way that's like satisfactory, right? Not just like a, you know, not just a little inkjet print or anything like that. It's like, no, you need fidelity, file fidelity. You need to make sure that the paper quality is there and all. It's just like, it's a big project.

Speaker B: It's funny because it's really a mom-and-pop shop. That's been dedicated to printing for 30 years. Like, they're so focused on quality and experimental techniques in pigment printing that the quality is literally better than probably anywhere else in the world, because the best places in the world are using their technologies, their ink formulations, their printer drivers. They're actually innovating in all those spaces. I, I was lucky to find them Because they were doing platinum palladium printing for me, a traditional photographic process. They also do a lot of photogravure and other techniques. And as I was realizing, hey, you guys could provide this service for Tender and for the generative art space, they started to share some stories, which I'll have to get some details on, but of working with— they called them generatists in the '90s— to output plotter prints of early generative works. And so, you know, these guys have been around the block. They care about every single print. You know, they're not just pushing it to file print. They're setting each piece up and making sure it comes out right from the printer and, you know, hand packaging each individual. So I highly recommend it, mostly just for the experience of living with that art.

Speaker A: I'm looking forward to my next order. I have some stuff on the shortlist. It's a matter of where are we going to put it? Does it fit the room? It's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, partnership discussion within the family of like what's going to go where. And that's the battle I'm working on right now because I've got like a pretty long list of things I want and it's a matter of whittling it down to what everyone will be happy with.

Speaker B: I wish you luck. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit more about what we've been up to, what's coming up. I hope I got to answer some of the questions you guys had.

Speaker C: And if you didn't, if there are any other questions, We'll be sure to have you back on.

Speaker B: Sounds fun.

Speaker A: Maybe we'll do an end of year Tender check-in once these other platforms are on and kind of seeing how things are rolling then.

Speaker B: I mean, how much has changed in 6 months? I can't tell you how excited I am for the next 6 months that, you know, the space itself is moving that fast, you know, with some true wins in our sales from the past. I'm really excited about what's coming up and how quickly we're going to be able to move on some things. So that sounds good to me.

Speaker A: Thank you, Adam, for taking the time to join us, talk to us a bit more about Tender and community building and just platform building and all this stuff. It's been really awesome to hear.

Speaker B: Thank you guys. It's been good.

Speaker A: Well, that's it for this one. Thanks again, everyone, for listening, and we'll be back again soon. Later.