Speaker A: Alright, hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed. Maybe the most special episode of Waiting to Be Signed yet. We're joined today by Ciphrd, founder and creator of fx hash. Adam AJ Bernie, founder and creator of Tender. Trinity, co-founder of the Waiting to Be Signed podcast, award-winning Tez Commons award-winning podcast. We're here to talk about the release of fx hash 2.0. We're super excited. How's it going, everybody?

Speaker B: Are we just gonna forget that Will forgot to include himself?

Speaker A: I'm a given. I'm a constant. Everyone loves this bassy voice. Like, they hear that, they know I'm here. It's perfect. Adam, you're a little sick.

Speaker C: I'm a little sick. I was waiting for Trinity to do your intro, your walk-in intro.

Speaker B: No, Will's got the walk-in. I'm the lazy person here. I just show up, man. It's a great way to be.

Speaker C: And color. Yeah, you provide the color. Got it.

Speaker B: Exactly. Somebody's got to do it. But that's also why we have you guys. Here today to provide the the color on top of the colors. That would would that be the sound? Would that be the flavor? We're going deep here.

Speaker A: We have some great colors coming from Cypher's background here. It's like two a.m. in France. He's joining us, accommodating our East Coast schedule. The mood lighting is popping off. There's so much to talk about, guys. But before we we jump into it, I think that everyone probably knows Adam if they listen to the show. They know Tender. Everyone knows Cypher. It's 2.0. So Ciphrd, before we get into like all the questions and stuff that we're going to talk about, can you just run us down? What is everything that's coming in 2.0? What is so exciting about this update?

Speaker D: Well, first of all, hey everyone, and, uh, as usual, it's a pleasure to be there. We started, I guess, the journey to 2.0 with some release calendar. So we've been thinking a lot about how to help artists promoting their work beforehand because we had observed that suddenly projects pop on the platform and sometimes it doesn't give enough time for people to appreciate what's coming and to prepare themselves. So the first step into preparing the launch was to provide this calendar roughly 1 month before, which we did very recently. Then obviously, like, for the launch, we are going to integrate Ethereum. We've almost a feature parity with what we have on Tezos. So we recently shared a table with what will be there, what will not be there. The main core features will be there. Some small details will not because obviously there are like differences between the blockchains. But we did a great job at covering like most of the features, which was like quite an engineering work, truth be told. With the launch, we'll also release open editions. The first project of the platform will be an open edition, but also open editions will be fully available for any artist after the launch. It will be available on Tezos and ETH. That's about it for the time of the launch. Then we have a few features that are planned right after, one of them being an artist studio. So what we've introduced with the calendar is the first step to having some off-chain data to more properly prepare the release of a project, attach some data that's not necessarily on the blockchain, meaning some work in progress, some extensive descriptions, things like that that might not be relevant on-chain, but that can provide interesting contextual data about projects. So this will be released shortly after as well. Yeah, that's a rough overview. I'm probably like forgetting as usual, like one massive thing because my brain is like deep in implementation, but that should be about it.

Speaker A: I think on our end here, the things we're aware of are like obviously Ethereum, on-chain for both ETH and Tezos. Tezos already implemented platform UI updates, some of which we're already seeing, including the calendar, the new market contract, which is going to bring some other ways to do auctions, including like the refunding auctions, which have been a long-awaited feature. Something else I think that kind of popped up recently as we started looking at the calendar, we noticed that there's like a default for USD pricing if you don't list which chain it's gonna be on. And one of your fx hash team members told us that actually there might be USD pricing as an option coming up in the future as well on the roadmap. So how is that gonna be implemented? Is it gonna be like stablecoins or it will be like a conversion at time of sale depending on the cryptocurrency you're using? And another open question just to ask here while we are on the topic of like payments is like, is there ever gonna be like wrapped ETH or wrapped Tez for bidding? Making offers? Like, those are— that's a pretty common feature on ETH, for example, what we— and we've seen it on OBJKT for Tez. So is that type of thing something that we can look forward to too?

Speaker D: Well, first of all, like, the ETH implementation will use Reservoir, which is sort of the Ethereum standard when it comes to everything marketplace related. So under the hood, they are using Ciphrd, which is like the open implementation of the OpenSea protocol. Which basically covers all the features that you may want to have. This in itself doesn't come with the ability to have at the time of the payment USD to crypto conversion, but allows for stablecoins to be used. Some stablecoins are stable enough to be used as some sort of abstraction for making listings and bidding in USD terms. So if we implement it, it will be in such a way. Unfortunately, it will not be there for the launch. It was planned, but we had to move it back because there's lots of complexity within it, specifically on the USDT abstraction that is a bit complex. There were a few considerations to have, but down the line, we want to tend to a platform where you can see the crypto price, but you first and foremost reason in fiat, and you have the ability to see fiat prices, make listing in fiat and everything. We do think that especially when we are integrating Ethereum and Tezos, which have such different values, it's going to be hard for people to make the mental conversion in their head. Also, like, Tezos is quite low, so we are expecting Ethereum people when they see a Tezos price not to understand how cheap it might be and how easy it can be for them to buy it, which USD terms would greatly help in that regard. But in the beginning, it will be fully crypto on the platform itself, at least at the time of the launch. But in the upcoming weeks/months, we'll slowly integrate a little bit more. It's a big chunk as an update as well on market stats, things like that. Of course, there's like lots of considerations to have, so that's why we push back. And on the rebate auction, yeah, we are very excited about this as well. It's been a long one. We are investigating if it will be released at the launch with Ethereum because it's implemented there, but it's not on Tezos, so we'll see exactly how we release it. But for sure it will be there either at the launch or in the weeks after, because it's been implemented now.

Speaker B: And just to clarify on the rebate auction, is it leveraging the same Dutch auction steps that we see today? Or is it something that might be more linear or time-based, similar to what we might see on a Tonic or an Art Blocks?

Speaker D: For me, rebate is only the fact that you are getting a refund based on the final price. So the auction model doesn't quite matter. It can be steps, it can be linear. So right at the launch, we'll just implement steps because with steps you can design a linear pattern as well as an exponential one. We'll implement others, but for every Dutch auction mechanism, there will be rebates as an option. So it's not related to the DA format in itself.

Speaker B: You know, one of the big things that we've been looking forward to with the fxhash 2.0 releases, I think primarily the release of more art. There's been a really strongly held position that people are waiting for fx hash 2.0. We've seen fewer projects come out, more so recently as with the release of Onchain on Tezos, but we're expecting a huge day or a huge week when it finally releases. Adam, I know that there are a ton of artists that you've been working with in preparation for the fx hash 2.0. What artists are you working with and what has that journey really been like? How are you using some of these brand new features that we've seen?

Speaker C: Hey, yeah, we're excited to use as many of the new features as we can, really. It's amazing that they're launching with this feature parity that Ciphrd talked about, where everything that has been working for Tezos is going to work for Ethereum. So to launch with that robust of a platform just gives us a ton of different options. And I think one of the things we're going to try to do is cross over a lot of those different features with the different releases so that we can kind of express and triangulate how broad that feature set is through this launch day. But certainly I'm always working on some fun projects, a lot of good projects with artists that many of your listeners know or will soon know. And the 2.0 launch has been an exciting moment where I think a lot of us have decided to double down and focus in on launching that day, make it a special event. I can share a couple of the artists that we've got coming up. Some of them I've been working with for nearly a year, some of them I've been working with just for the last month or so. So it's got a great range of history and also a really wide range of the types of art I think probably by now you— I hope there's kind of a variety to the Tender releases that we've done. I think we've done over 20 on fx hash alone, and so this is no different. We're really looking for breadth of releases that each express something different about generative art. We've got a great one coming up with Piter Pasma. There's a release with Ippsketch, something I've been working on with Ella for quite a while. It's really evolved in a beautiful way. I'm super excited about that. Studio Yorktown, going deeper into his architectural roots with a new project, and also bringing something new from Eko33, which, uh, has actually been an amazing experience seeing what they've got under the hoods and all the different works in progress that they have. So it's going to be an exciting day, and that's just on the launch day. We're going to work with fx to bring at least those 5 projects. There will likely be a few more. I can't mention the names yet, but if they get done in the next 2 weeks, we're going to see some bonus projects come out on that opening day. And the whole week is looking to be really exciting. Not only are there these releases from Tender on December 1st, but you've got other curation partners bringing projects on each successive day. And you've got the same beautiful open release strategy from many artists each day. So some of those we're already seeing peppered into the calendar that Ciphrd talked about, and I know we're going to see a lot more pop up soon. So it's, it's definitely becoming one of those things to check in on daily, and I think once it happens, we'll all be glued to that calendar.

Speaker A: Huge fan of the calendar. Loving the calendar for our looking ahead section of the podcast where we're trying to figure out what's coming up because not everyone wants to just publish their project and have it sit there for 2 weeks.

Speaker B: And Twitter is dead.

Speaker A: And Twitter is dead. Elon Musk killed it. So that calendar's amazing. But Adam, I just wanna follow up real quick. I mean, so how is it breaking down with those 5 artists? I mean, obviously there's Ethereum available now, Tezos, we love it. There's on-chain, off-chain. So as you're talking with these folks and like, you know, some of these projects, right, that you said you've been working on for almost a year with these artists, like now that these new tools are available, are you finding people biasing towards on-chain now because like that's a really appealing option or do they want to experiment with Ethereum? Maybe they've never dropped there before. Like what are you hearing from the artists as you're working on this stuff?

Speaker C: I think so much of the 2.0 buzz is about Ethereum. There's no denying it. I think a lot of people are really excited to do an fxhash drop, which has all the great community love that comes with it, the great features, the flexibility on releasing quite easily, and to be able to do that with Ethereum and reach hopefully new collectors, perhaps reach different price levels, I think is really appealing to most of the artists that I'm talking to, not just the ones that I'm working with. So I think we're going to see a lot of the releases in that opening week focused on Ethereum. It will be interesting to see how that plays out over time. Whether that priority stays true or whether you see a lot of artists come back to Tezos. I'm really curious if you'll see more up-and-coming artists who maybe have not released as much starting on Tezos and then coming into Ethereum once they've established a community. And frankly, that's one of the things that I'm discussing with a few of the artists I'm working with is using that strategy, and I think that could be quite effective. The funny thing is that with fx hash never having Ethereum and everybody now wanting to do that, I think actually releasing in Tezos is going to stand out on opening week. So it'll be a really interesting week to see who decides to do what, and frankly, we're still making those decisions on these releases over the coming weeks.

Speaker B: I had this question tagged more towards the market section, but I think it makes sense to bring it up now that we're talking about Ethereum, Tezos, USD denominations. You know, in your opinions, is there the sense or the opinion that bringing the USD valuation to fx hash will bring more parity to the pricing of art across each chain? Obviously, this is something that would be more relevant for the future state rather than the 2.0 state, which, you know, we want to keep talking about. We want to get really excited about, but just trying to think forward to the, uh, any implications on chain versus chain.

Speaker D: I think like in a sense, getting to Ethereum will probably onboard more users which may want to get some of the fx hash previous projects, which in turn is probably going to make their value increase to some extent or something like that. But honestly, like I'm not expecting a drastic change in the valuation of the Tezos prices just because we bring Ethereum side by side. Thing is also that on Ethereum, the network is so much more expensive and there is so much more money in it that will be hard for Tezos to compare with it. For sure, like the project that came on Tezos right in the beginning and that left a social impact, a cultural impact on the platform, I'm thinking about, well, there are many of them, but Sorareo, the Zancan, the many artists that have released iconic projects. If we get more engaged generative art lovers on the platform, it will probably have a fallback effect onto this project. What I'm hoping to see is that when people that are used to pay at least $10 for one generative iteration, when they see that on Tezos they can experiment with a params project, with something less expensive, experimentative, then, you know, they may want to give it a try because it's just next to what they or plugging. So hopefully it will have some side effects. It's very hard to predict. Like, we'll wait probably 6 months to 1 year before taking any conclusion, but I think it will certainly have an effect, and I don't see it being a negative effect for people.

Speaker A: Anything from you, Adam?

Speaker D: What do you think?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think first of all, on the USD side, any opportunity there is to think in those terms is a benefit to the art collectors and just understanding the ups and downs of market movements in those terms does get easier over time. I know it's a heavy lift and something that could come over time, but I think that that could help regulate secondary markets a bit across both chains. And then I think also just seeing the artwork next to each other can have a positive impact. It's certainly something that I've tried to prioritize with Tender. Certainly we We launched focused on fxhash for lots of good reasons and always will remain really focused on curating some iconic projects from the platform. But to add other platforms next to it, I think continues to take the conversation out of the chain and even out of the platform and focused on the art. And I think that's what's exciting about what fxhash is doing with 2.0. Is taking the conversation out of the chain. I think that's always been their approach. Like, what I understood from FX is it's about generative art. Art is evolving, you know, we're here to witness this, right? And you still have collectors saying, oh, that's Tez art. I think where we want to elevate the conversation for everybody's benefit, there's no downside to this, but elevating the conversation to just being about the art, it's going to be hard to deny that when there's Ethereum projects on the same platform. And it's just going to highlight some of the pricing effects that are already there that seem to go unnoticed. Looking at the prices of some of these iconic projects that Ciphrd was just referring to relative to those same artist projects on other platforms, sometimes they're higher in Tezos in USD terms. And so that's not something to be ignored. I think that's an effect of the community that rallies around this art that is integral to fxhash. And they're going to be supporting, I assume, the projects the same way when they come to Ethereum through fxhash. So that's going to be really exciting to see.

Speaker D: Something like I'd like to add on that, but this is like a very interesting point, the fact that we already have some pieces on Tezos and on fxhash that have pretty high prices. Like when we are used to looking at Ethereum collections, we see a collections of 10,000 at 1 ETH, 2 ETH, something like really outstanding. But in real life, having a body of 300 generated pieces from a collection that are at 100 of a floor is already outstanding for an artist. Like something I could only dream of that a few years ago. So sometimes we also forget a little bit that it's already great to have that. We don't have to also always aim for something crazy. This is already sustainable to some extent. It's not completely sustainable for many artists, we're fully aware of that, but for a lot of them it's like a decent way for supporting financially this, either this full-time or this part-time if it's like not enough.

Speaker A: I love that. It is true, right? I mean, we see such a diversity of market action on pieces. We see artists who make stuff because maybe they just want to make it and they don't necessarily want or care their work to go to 1,000 or 10,000 or whatever. Like they're making it for themselves or they're making it because, you know, they're a graphic designer and they think it's just really fun to play with JavaScript on the side and do something cool. Like, and if they can make a couple thousand bucks or a couple 10,000 bucks, you know, a year, like selling stuff because people really like them. Like that's such an admirable goal for so many of these artists who are releasing on these open platforms. We're going to come back to the topic of open platforms later, but we need to keep investigating 2.0 a little bit more. And Ciphrd, I want to ask you, aside from ETH, I think the second biggest thing is the on-chain file standard, the impronounceable ONCHFS, as you guys have abbreviated it. I have to plug, first of all, Dan Catt's explainer video does an extremely good job of kind of talking at least about what this means for artists and how they can get around some of the cost stuff. We'll link to that in the podcast notes below, but Ciphrd, like in your words, can you kind of tell us about how this on-chain standard works and how is it different from some of the stuff that say like Art Blocks or other platforms that do on-chain art have implemented their contract? What are the things that you're doing that are enabling people to upload cheaper, upload more efficiently, and get around some of the cost stuff that is associated with on-chain?

Speaker D: Yeah, sure. So first of all, on the naming. Recently I've been joking that I'm on a duty to pollute the generative art space with some unpronounceable terms for the community. So fx hash was the first of them. Onchfs is the other one, and much more to come, hopefully. Onchfs stands for on-chain for HTTP file system. Maybe I can start by making a state of what's currently done on Ethereum when it comes to uploading on-chain. So uploading on-chain means storing the text data, the scripts that allow for the reconstruction of the work afterwards. So you will store the data on the blockchain itself. The current solution is actually pretty optimized. So usually you would have some gzipping of the content on-chain. So gzip is a compression format that's well supported on the web and People will take their scripts, their automation process will compress it and store it on the smart contract, and then it will be fetched when reading the smart contract. The solution that Art Blocks and many others are using is called IPFS, and a great chunk of the on-chain file system is inspired from IPFS, which is an amazing project that I referred a few times in the documentation because I quite like it. However, one of the issues with the current standard for files on Ethereum is the fact that storing libraries, storing projects which have multiple files is not very well supported because the file system is basically designed for uploading random bytes of data and then having some file abstraction on top of it that is not well specified and that allows to fetch this content. So different applications will use different strategies for fetching the bytes that are stored on-chain. And in our context, we wanted to provide something that would allow more use cases in a permissionless paradigm. So for instance, when we look at Art Blocks, what they are doing is that they upload, let's say, processing5.js on-chain. The bytes are stored there, and then themselves they define that, okay, this is the spot where you will find p5.js. And in their smart contracts, they define that, okay, if you select p5.js, it's going to point to this point on the blockchain. What we wanted to have is basically artists that work locally on their project with p5.js included in their folder, just like they will build projects for fxhash or for other platforms or for the web in general. And the on-chain file system will basically be capable of compressing the files, but also mapping existing files that are in their folder to the instances that exist on-chain. The idea is that you can have some sort of decentralized library system where people can upload their library and then anyone can put there in their code and it automatically references it through the file system abstraction. I'm getting into a lot of rather complex concepts, but the gist of it is that we had these few issues what we observed on the Ethereum ecosystem. Size is not one of them. They have reached a pretty optimal state when it comes to size of plot. But for us, the issue was how the file abstraction is handled because the standard doesn't provide the file object abstraction that you will get on other file systems. So for instance, if you want to define a folder that contains many files, there is no standard for it. So that's one point. The second one is the delivery through the HTTP protocol. So we did a few optimizations to compress some headers, the file type, stuff like that, so that you can open the files from your browser. It's the main use case. Like, there's almost no use case where you would open a GenArt project running with JavaScript outside of your browser. So the purpose of the file system was to also build in some byte optimizations so that we can serve a project through a standardized HTTP protocol. I invite people to go through the documentation, which is onchfs.com, or more simply through Danielle's video that will do a much better job at describing it with simpler terms. Because yeah, I lost myself in there, but there we are. That's how it is now.

Speaker B: So I'm not a technical person. I think Will might be less technical than I am, except for when it comes to p5.

Speaker A: I'm gonna let that slide for the purpose of your question.

Speaker B: Thank you. I appreciate that, man. One of the things that this was described to me was that part of the optimization of this, and this is partially through the methods of storing these things in a decentralized way, that there's still like a Web 2.0 component. There's still a non-on-chain component to optimizing this delivery. And I'm just curious as to A, is that true? And also B, does in your mind, does it impact the way that we should be thinking about the on-chain side of things?

Speaker D: That's completely true. So when I introduced the system, just to give you some detail about what's off-chain on this system, it's basically the HTTP delivery component of it. So basically the files are on-chain. There is a specification on how the files are ordered, the folders, how everything is classified. But to read that, you would need some small server that basically is connected to a node with the open RPC protocol of the nodes. The Ethereum, Tezos node, they expose an open API for anyone to fetch it. Any node has this set of APIs, and this small snippet can be connected to any blockchain node that's supported by the on-chain file system. And when you say, okay, I want to find this project with this identifier, It's going to fetch on these different nodes where the content is and fetch the whole thing and also prepare it for the HTTP delivery, which is a very important component. So why is it not really important? So first of all, this snippet is like 100 lines. You can run it locally. Anyone can run an instance of it. It's a very simple program. And the second part is that there is no on-chain storage without some Web2 components. Let's say for instance Art Blocks. If I go to their smart contracts, I can go on Etherscan to go to the get project. I don't remember the exact entry point, but get script basically. But you need Etherscan, you need some interface, some program that's connected to the node. You can yourself query the node directly, but oh, then you need a node that's stored on some AWS machine, which is also Web2. So what you need is some nodes that constitute the blockchain, and then you need some interface to access those nodes, except if you want to use a CLI. But if you want to use a CLI to interact with it, a command line interface, you can probably run a local version of the HTTP resolver, basically. Point being that we need one module that's not Etherscan, that's something that anyone can run. And that also provides a more easy specification to this whole file organization. So I think in that regard, it's not important. And also, like when you look at most of the platforms nowadays in the metadata, you have actually an HTTP pointer to the same module that I'm describing. It's something that makes the gateway between the project ID and the actual code that's stored on chain. So this in itself, the on-chain file system is trying to solve that to some extent by making a clear specification for defining this gateway basically. Because right now Art Blocks has their own gateway, Alba has their own gateway, other platforms have their own gateway. Everyone has their own solution. At least this is some kind of standard that allows you to fetch files in a standardized fashion.

Speaker A: Do you imagine like other platforms potentially picking up on this standard and taking advantage of like some of those efficiencies? Like the fact that someone can upload with their project a certain version of p5 and now it's there and so it's free for everyone else to reference, but it's still on-chain. I mean, is that kind of the idea behind this new standard that it might actually spread and become a new thing? I'm assuming it's open for anyone to just kind of like hook into and use, right?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's fully open. Like everything is open sourced, so anyone can pick it up. Actually, anyone can implement the set of specifications on any blockchain and add like a comment on GitHub saying, yeah, it's now on this blockchain. You can add it to the library for resolving this blockchain in particular. Something that's important to note is that on Ethereum, ETFS uses a content store. So the part where the bytes are stored, is similar to IPFS in a way that it's content hashed— content addressed, sorry. So basically for any set of content, you have a unique ID that identifies the content. And under the hood, our file system is going to use their content store. So we'll already leverage the optimization they are doing in storing those bytes. Because if, for instance, one instance of p5 has already been compressed and stored on-chain, then we are going to point to this content instead of a different content store. IPFS in that regard is already solving this for, well, Alba is using it, Art Blocks is using it, probably all the Ethereum platforms are using it. So we'll also be using it with some abstraction that helps many use cases that we have.

Speaker B: So if I were to summarize this, yes, there may technically be a Web2 point of failure. For @ONCHFS, thank you for clarifying the pronunciation. We are all grateful. But that it is not dissimilar to potential points of failure that exist in other standards. And that this is a simple standard that is hopefully, is not dependent on the success of FxHash. It's something that can be pretty much generated and applied by anybody. And so there would be the sense of longevity for as long as somebody is interested. Is that a somewhat accurate TL;DR?

Speaker D: No, no, actually that's not completely accurate because the benefit of having this kind of file system standard is that then instead of having an HTTP URL in the metadata, you will get an IPFS-like URL. So we have a standard that defines how assets are referenced. In our case, it's onchfs:// then the ID of the content. And the slight difference is that for platforms that store it with HTTP, if they fail, the content is not accessible. In our case, maybe we have one gateway to get to the content, but anyone can spin their own gateway. And because it's referenced on-chain with the idea of anyone can plug it. So if anything, it's like way more resilient to us failing.

Speaker B: Okay. I would say I got a solid B.

Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, it's a complex system and I guess— it's complex. Yeah.

Speaker A: I think everyone rewind, listen to that 3 times. You'll eventually get it.

Speaker B: But ultimately, don't worry.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that all sounds awesome. I'm super excited. I know there's so, there's so many artists that we've talked to over the years who are super into the idea of doing on-chain. And now that this is available to them and available to them in like a way that's accessible and not necessarily like extremely expensive because of this new standard. But I want to take it over to Adam now again and ask you, you know, obviously there's ETH, there's on-chain, there's these new auction mechanisms. You're someone who's been working with artists for a long time, almost 18 months doing all of these tender releases on fxhash and other platforms. So what's personally most exciting to you as a collaborator and artist in your own right in the ecosystem, like about what fxhash is doing? What personally gets you super hyped to release a ton of stuff here?

Speaker C: It's a good question, and I think I've answered probably the core reason already with the Ethereum integration. I know that there's generative art on many chains, but really there's so much focus on what's happening on Ethereum, what's happening on Tezos. To see those united in one minting platform is extremely exciting. Even just showing tokens on the same site is rare. OpenSea has been talking about, or had talked about integrating Tezos years ago, never happened. DECA has done it to a degree. We did it on Tender to unite Ethereum connection and Tezos connections so you could see your generative art in one place. You know, I just think you can't understate how exciting that is for fx hash and the long-term impact that's going to have that we probably don't even understand yet. And I think that's, you know, one of the exciting things about most large FX releases is there's a degree of experimentation involved where we know there's going to be a good benefit. And the FX team, from what I've heard, is always willing to accept that there's going to be some things that happen that are outside of our control. And that's leveraging the power of the community that uses these tools and that will use these tools. So that's just as a baseline. I think the most exciting thing is the unknown. I think there's also a really exciting immediate effect that's going to happen with the 2.0 launch, and I'd liken it to the 1.0 launch. This is a huge moment for a really devout community that's already engaged with FX, and it's a really big rallying moment for new collectors to come in. So you have probably a lot of artists who've been waiting to release for the 2.0 launch, and there's going to be this big influx of new art, new conversations, new Discord activity, and all the social stuff that comes with it. Art is so much about the conversations and communication that goes with it between people, and this is a real huge event for everybody. And so I hope that not only does that engage people who are waiting for this, but I hope it really builds some of those bridges with the collecting communities who have not been able to go as deep or had their own reasons for looking away from Tezos work. Now there's going to be a new reason to come back to FX, and I think that we'll see a lot of community outreach. I'm sure the FX team has a plan. Actually, that might be a good question for Cypherd is you know, how to engage actively the other communities. But excuse me, we do the questions here.

Speaker A: Excuse me, stay in your lane. Just answer the questions.

Speaker C: Okay. You co-host once. Before I know it, you guys will be doing collaborations.

Speaker A: Oh, too late, man. I've derailed the episode. Trinity, take it away. What's the next thing that we want to talk about here?

Speaker B: While we're talking about Tender, While we're talking about the things that Adam is super excited about, you know, I think that this is truly the first time from an fx hash point of view that there's a sense of collaboration, curation, and partnership. I think there have been some soft partnerships in the past. Things that come to mind include like Cure 3, for example, or some of the stuff that happened with Here and Now. But with what we're seeing with the calendar, which we talked about previously, There's definitely a much more hands-on proactive role of like, here are some people that we're actively working with and that we actively believe in, such as Tender, such as Bitforms. What made fxhash decide to go into this direction? It really represents like a partial shift from like the anti-curation open platform, what will be will be point of view that was definitely much more prevalent with fxhash.

Speaker D: Beta and 1.0? You partially answered to the question in a way that we've had many instances of this kind of partnerships with collabs, FX collabs, let it be with Cure Cube, let it be for physical shows where we have to work with some galleries or something. And if anything, it's an attempt from us to open this creation toolset to anyone. So right now for the launch, we are experimenting with a set of curators as well as partners and like communities that we've been working with in the past 2 years. And we are experimenting this format of release with them. So you have the ability to tag a project on the calendar, but also later this is going to translate into you have the ability to create a space where you present some projects. Let it be you want to co-release with an artist or you just want to feature some projects in agreement with the artist in a particular context. So the idea was introduced a while ago. It was curated spaces. So I had this whole system in mind with a decentralized curation system that's fully on-chain. But I quickly realized that the economic incentives of the system weren't super aligned with what we wanted it to be. And a better way would have been to make it completely off-chain. And have the economic incentive be elsewhere. So this is going to be what Curated Space were initially aimed to be. It's a way for people to create projects off-chain and have some economic rewards on-chain by co-releasing projects with others, things like that. Honestly, like, super excited. Like, I know we've been talking with Adam about this for a while, not extensively, but, you know, gathering feedback on what could be good and what were the pain points for him. So for instance, the fact that he had to create a TENDER account for co-creating with the artists wasn't the ideal format. It was indeed some kind of collaboration, but maybe a better format would have been to present it as some kind of gallery or some kind of curation group. This was like one of the pain points that we've seen and we aim to solve with this system. But it doesn't go against, you know, everything is fully open. Everyone has the ability to collaborate with curators because also we hope that by making curators' pages public and giving means for people to contact them and things like that, it may open up some use cases for the artists to reach out or for, well, curators to basically get more inbound eventually.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's been really interesting to work with fx hash. I think it will be interesting over the coming weeks to more officially work with fx hash in the public sphere. But certainly behind the scenes, Tender wasn't even started without a lot of discussion between Ciphrd and I coming up on 2 years ago in a few weeks, you know, so talking about what role curation does or doesn't have in the platform at the time is an evolving conversation. It's been really rewarding to see some of the mindset sort of evolve over those 2 years and also for Tender to try to react and support in the needs where something isn't addressed on the core platform. So whether it's adding editorial very early on or ways of displaying curated assemblies of pieces like our Grail Grids, galleries, things like that as a way of supporting, I think ultimately makes sense for some of that stuff, even like the calendar, to come on board into the main platform and be executed there. So You know, curation is, I think, a really, really difficult thing to avoid in the art space, and I really respect how thoughtful FX has been about the way to integrate it. I think this is a big moment, a big step for them to reach out to not just Tender but a community of curators who are out there and engage them in ways to make the launch as exciting as possible. And of course, not just the launch, but ongoing. How it's all positioned, I think, is one of those things that we still need to see in action. And Ciphrd's right, like the collaboration aspect for Tender's work with artists actually in many ways to me feels very natural because my personal process is so collaborative with the artists. And I think even in past episodes, we've talked about what does collaboration mean and how can that be possible without actually programming and while it felt natural, I'm not sure it was the best thing for the artist. And I do think that there can be some stigma, at least in the current ecosystem, about artworks released with another name on it, and especially when the other name is a brand. And so I fought that a little bit. It's a really difficult thing to measure and know how much it impacts, but brand definitely matters even in the art world, and perception of an artist's integrity really matters in the art world. And so I'm really curious how we can help, meaning Tender and all the other curated partners and fx hash themselves, can help elevate the notion of curation. Not that it's a practice of trying to extract, but a process of trying to add to the stories that are told around art, to the final product of the art releases, and to how the communities engage with that art. So I think there's a huge opportunity here, but it still is going to take a lot of work Even outside of putting the labels on them is how is that sort of integrated into the community conversations? I'm curious actually, maybe back to Cypherd, if there are some things that the FXHash team will do from a communication standpoint on how to bring those, those attributes to life. Sorry, I'm asking more shit.

Speaker A: He's asking questions again. No, he's making our lives easier.

Speaker B: We can see—

Speaker A: Booted from the chat. He's banned. Mods. All right, Ciphrd, go ahead.

Speaker D: Yeah, that's actually a pretty good question. I don't have an answer to that right now. Maybe the team has discussed it. I'm gonna be honest, like, in the last 1 month and a half, I've been deep into the products, in the technical, the technical aspects of it. So I've missed a few discussions in regards to, uh, this particular topic and a few others. You've also tackled like an important point that is we've witnessed over these last 2 years some curators, yourself being one of the main, that have brought some projects on the platform that would never have seen the light if it had not been through your guidance. And we talked with so many artists that said, yeah, it was really helpful to co-create with Adam in the ideation process, in the— and this is like the kind of creational practice we want to emphasize, as opposed to sometimes what we see in traditional art gallery pattern, that is, hey, I'm going to take your work, I'm going to buy some, I'm going to sell it, I'm going to make some profits, I'm going to showcase it. It's a spectrum of galleries out there, and you have some of them that are very profit-oriented and don't care much about elevating the practice. By providing an open ecosystem where the user's wallet and eventually their appreciation for the craft is what makes curational practices a success, as opposed to it being enclosed in an ecosystem that's completely faked end to end, hopefully will bring some interesting patterns, behaviors.

Speaker C: I don't know the exact word. I really appreciate you saying that about my practice, and I totally agree with what you're saying about the potential value that curation can bring to the space. It's very similar to the value that we really attribute to the art and the artworks that we see on fxhash. That was one of the most immediate things that captured me about fxhash was, you know, just the fact that great artworks that might not be from an artist that everybody knows about can still shine, can still be valued and elevated by the conversations from the community of collectors. And so we've seen the product of that time and again. Through fx hash and not just within the platform, but within the overall ecosystem. So these are artists who may have found some success on fx hash coming from very little audience to eventually launching on other platforms with pretty high-value releases. So that path is proven for the artist side. I think it'll be really interesting to see how that can happen on the curatorial side as well. If you're not coming from that background of I am 100% focused on profit, but I am 100% focused on the value of the art that I'm curating and I'm helping and I'm ushering into the world. Hopefully, I'm biased, hopefully that is ultimately rewarded long term. And I think this step into curation for fxhash can help that happen and perhaps even accelerate that.

Speaker D: I have maybe one last thing to end. That's a little bit another light on this, which is If at some point also in the future we end up in a situation where it becomes necessary for artists to release through a partner for having their work to sell, we'll probably pull the trigger on the system or completely redesign it. The purpose of it is like not that we end up in this enclosed ecosystem where you need to know a partner to have your work sell, but really to have the ability for artists to showcase in different fashions without them releasing by themselves suffering from it. If at any point we see that this suffers, we'll try redesigning the system or something, but this is really not the goal with it. And we also don't want it to take like too much of a big impact on the platform, and we don't want to suddenly have, yeah, this is the partner's calendar, and if you want to see all the releases, you have to click on this small tab.

Speaker A: Oh, this is a great transition and segue into a little bit of rumor mill, a little bit of controversial territory. But Adam, we've heard that one of the projects, maybe not one that we'll be releasing in the first week, is going to be a curated project, an artist-curated project that's going to use pre-rendered images. There was an fx hash poll, probably what, maybe 2 months ago at this point. About allowing this or enabling this option for artists, another tool for them to pre-select images, upload them, and do what we've seen on some other more curated platforms, right? Like Verse and Tonic come to mind where they will curate. So the first question for Adam, and we'll have a follow-up for Ciphrd, is what do you like about this? Like, we know that you were a very vocal proponent of this proposal when it was up for debate. How do you feel differently about this versus like params? Obviously there are some like bootleg params executions of this that like kind of allow it, but it's not exactly the same. So where do these things fit in your mind? And for this particular project, as much as you care to say about it, would it have been possible without this? You know, do you feel like only pre-rendered images, only a curated execution would work? Let's hear it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I've already been definitely vocal in some communities, definitely in TENDER, definitely in the fxhash poll, probably on Twitter, about the benefit of allowing offline rendered images to be used on a platform like fxhash. And yes, Verse allows it, Tonic, and even Art Blocks Engine has an entire side of their platform called Flex that's geared towards this. I understand also why it hasn't been allowed. Definitely there's a challenge with how to sort of assess static image files relative to the way that fx hash has moderated and assessed works that come into the platform for issues like copy minting and other violations of the terms. So there's definitely some good reasons why this type of project hasn't been allowed on the platform so far. My advocacy is really around expanding the popular definition of generative art and that generative art doesn't necessarily have to be live running JavaScript in a browser. Browser capabilities are a lot better than they used to be and they don't accept everything. You can't really run live code in R or Python or somebody working in many other languages. You know, there's WebAssembly, there's attempts to do some of these things. Sometimes they don't work that great. Right? And so I've seen so many artists try to jump through hoops, and I mean hoops like, I'm going to learn JavaScript from scratch just in order to be able to release a project on fx hash. That's not that easy. Or an artist saying, hey, I could throw around 50 million particles in Houdini and create something that blows everybody's mind, or I can pare that down into JavaScript and get 1 million particles and barely get by on performance. And so there's a lot of sacrifices that are being made by artists all the time in order to make them browser compatible. And there's a really nice sort of common factor, common leveling of playing field for people to use. And I think that kind of helps the community assess things across common parameters. But if we're just looking at what's going to make great art and how can we get access to great art, I think there's a really huge world of generative that we don't get to see on platforms like fx hash. And when you look at the logistics of then where do they go, certainly on Tezos there hasn't been many opportunities for those projects. You could release 100 one-of-ones on OBJKT and it really lacks from discoverability and cohesion and all the release mechanics that come with a platform like fx hash, allowlists and Dutch auctions and all these sorts of things. So there's just a lot of limitations and you do see them on say Foundation or other Ethereum platforms. But again, the seriality of a large series coming to life really isn't implemented on a lot of platforms other than the ones that you guys mentioned. And I think Bright Moments does a great job of it, especially as they've released some of their AI collections in the past year. So aside from wanting to see more diversity in the types of generative art on FX is also just thinking about revenue opportunities. I care a lot about FX and I think there's a huge opportunity there, both on Tezos and Ethereum to support those types of projects. I'll expand even further to say that for me, generative is not just code that happens to be in a language that may or may not work on a browser, but it's also generative AI. And we're seeing the explosion of AI artworks and some great technologies that support them. I love what Emprops is doing with their live generative AI work, and I expect them to really continue to innovate in that space and be a leader there. There's also a lot of artists who just want to curate their, or I would even say just make their final selections for their art series and put that up into a release. And being able to do that on fxhash would be a huge benefit. I think the flip side again is it would benefit from some curation. I feel that there are artists out there who have validated the way that they make their art. The proof points that their art is generative for those people who care. And, you know, the community can vouch for those things. Curators can validate and even add content or encourage the artist to add content about how those works were made and why they are actually generative. There's just a lot of opportunity there in general. And so I'm excited about what can happen when some of the artists that we love from, say, object releases or super rare releases, one-of-one artists who can do something larger to come into a platform like FX. I'll leave it there, and I'm curious to hear what Ciphrd says about the same topic and what we can say about the future.

Speaker A: I think us too, because obviously this poll was put up to the community. It was debated pretty intensely for at least a week, maybe longer, and over the course of that time, the community result was against, and it wasn't like 54 or 46, it was like 60+%, like a pretty convincing majority did not want to do this. So question to Ciphrd, first of all, Adam has a project that's going to be using this. So is this something that is going to be coming to fx hash in full? And if that's the case, can you kind of talk about what you think maybe the community misunderstood about that proposal? And the negative reception that came with it. And, you know, of the criticisms that were drawn out through that community discussion, you know, things around copy minting, things around maybe even arguments pertaining to the spirit of fx hash, were any of those critiques taken in by the team? And like, what's the net result here? Like, if we're going to allow this, where does it fit in the larger scheme of fx hash as a platform?

Speaker D: This particular case is like a multifaceted situation where there are a lot of components to consider. First of all, I think the community understood the poll that was asked pretty well, given the way it was presented. I think it was very clear, and I think the community statement was pretty clear. But what we've seen in the discussion is a lot more nuanced than just yes and no. We've seen people that said, yeah, I voted no, but also I would consider having this kind of project under this certain way on the platform. And yet their vote was a big no. There were other people on the other side, you know, that said yes, but had some issues with it. My point is that the way we asked the question, first of all, was a bit simplistic. We didn't expect that much like reaction to the question and discussion. Otherwise, we would have clarified the case a little bit more. One of the lack of clarification was the fact that as a platform, we can implement some tools that would allow people to— artists to put into their project the source files they've used off-chain for rendering this image, these assets. And we can make this a requirement of the system. So although it will be a fully pre-rendered project, you will still have the ability to pick on the program that generated it, which already probably if we were to ask the poll in such a way, we would get a drastically different answer. With that in mind, we realized that maybe a good way to re-ask the poll is to do a trial with one or a few projects, implement it in the way we designed it with like the full transparency on requirements and everything, and only then ask the community again about this particular case. We think it's a fair way to show the community that, okay, there was a clear no, we don't want to go against that, but we want to show that this is how we will do it. Then based on that, do we implement it fully on the platform or not? And if there is a no at this point, then we would have done everything we could to properly show the community how it could be done. I also think that it's a multifaceted problem because, Adam, you're referring to the fact that nowadays JavaScript is pretty shit, and it is, and that artists that are using Houdini, that are using other softwares, have many issues translating it into JS. Sometimes it's not even possible, or the technical barriers are so big, like you have to do so many optimizations to get to half the results you will get off the browser. But also we have to realize that browser is the technology that's the most shared and like the one that's moving the fastest just because it's the one that's generating the most money in the world. So of course that's why it's evolving so fast because it evolves every year. We have a new set of features with the rise of WebAssembly. It's not quite there yet. Like there's like a few big constraints to it. It's hard to work with it, but there's also the, the rise of WebGPU that's coming. That's been released on Chrome a few months ago, and that's probably going to be available next year on most of the platforms minus Safari, which is always a bit late to the party nowadays. My point is that what was at one point difficult of the browser will probably become very easy later down the line. I'm foreseeing a future where we don't have any more software running on the computer itself, but everything runs in browser because there is a clear benefit in having an app that loads instantly and boom, you have it. And that it's beautiful. It's made for beautiful UIs with great interactions, but also it's becoming more and more powerful. So it will make sense that the future of software tends towards this. And we see this always, like more and more applications that used to be fully desktop now either translated to being on the web or have some big component that's being translated on the web. And many of the applications that we use are actually just a web browser, like Discord and many others. It's like just your browser without the layer that comes on top of it. So I'm putting this on the table because what we may implement now for this offline render project, we also maybe become slightly irrelevant down the line. But it's not a reason for not looking into this because it will take maybe 10, 20, 30 years to get to that point. So until then, we also have to support the creators that cannot have access to the tools we provide. But again, it will be under the approval of the community, if anything. And my last point, which was like sort of why I was kind of against this feature for a while, It's because we see on the platform some PNG layers. Some are great, but I'm not super fan of some of them. And we know that if we ship this feature, it's going to become increasingly harder for the moderation team and for the community to assess how work was done, things like that. So there's going to be extra work from us because if we have to look at a Python file and run it on our machine to check if it works, that adds so much complexity to the verification process and making sure that the platform is, well, running properly. Like we could have someone that posts a random file and generates hundreds of images with some AI tool and says it's another process. You know, it's going to take a lot of time for moderators to go through the whole thing. Whereas when it's JS, you just run it, you see it's open source, well, the source is, you can see it.

Speaker C: Do you think that it's sustainable to be able to moderate at the level you have been? In the future, just thinking about what I imagine your expansion plans are going to be, maybe plans into other aspects of generative or use cases for the platform. I'm just thinking of already the difficulty in moderating the thing you brought up, the layered pings. You don't really know what went into those layers. So already there's sort of some abstraction involved. And so I'm just curious about the decision to go deeper into trying to verify somebody's Python code. Locally in order to verify something versus allowing the community to make their decisions on an open platform of what's valid and what's done well and what's not. Contrarian Adam enters the scene. That's what you want, right? For radio. Like this is we're gonna we're gonna make good radio.

Speaker B: Hell yeah.

Speaker D: Right now we sort of have a half decentralized centralized moderation process. Most of the projects are flagged by the community. There's like a big chunk of the community that knows quite extensively the generative art space, knows how stuff is made. And sometimes, you know, they will say, hey, I've seen this project on OpenProcessing 10 years ago, not 10, but 5 years ago. Like, what? How can you remember? And indeed, you know, we would like check one function that's been slightly shuffled, but it takes time. Like right now we have one person part-time working on moderation only. And some members of the team that often do a little bit of moderation as well. Plus all the members of the community that I cannot thank enough for just going through projects and just sending a quick message on Discord flagging a project because sometimes we cannot see it. And sure, like it's going to add some work to do that. Verifying this off-browser script is going to definitely add some burden. Especially when you would have Houdini, like if you have an Houdini script, how would you expect one of our moderators to, hey, I just happen to have Houdini last version installed on my machine just for this particular use case. Yeah, it's going to be tough, but I feel it's also, we'll see, right? If it becomes too complex, then we may change the system slightly, extend the closing period for this type of project. So that we have enough time to review it. Maybe we only accept some type of project. Let it be, okay, we accept Python, we accept R, and we slowly open up this. We'll see. I feel like it's hard to see how big this is going to be. But yeah, experience will maybe tell if community is receptive to the way we implement it, maybe not. And then it's gone forever. Sorry, I had like one last point on that is that right now on the platform, weirdly enough, we almost accept this kind of project because we have to draw the line somewhere. You can use pre-rendered components that you can manipulate with code, but where is the line between how much code is needed for it to be a viable fxhash project? So already, in a sense, there is a bit of irony in refusing pre-rendered projects because we allow pre-rendered projects that do a slight tint with CSS. Okay. Because we have to draw the line somewhere. And in a sense, it's an artifact of our list of rules that such projects pass and to rendered component projects that only go with the native image don't.

Speaker B: But yeah. Just one quick follow-up question to this before we move on to some other topics. Are there any artists that have come to you who are super interested in using this? On the record? Anyone we should be looking forward to?

Speaker C: I can talk about some of the artists that I would like to see on the platform that would use this. I would love to see quibibi do a project on fx hash. I would love to see Ganbrud do a project on fx hash and many other AI artists. I'd love to see Pierre Casadebeig do a project with his use of R. I would love to see more 3D generative work coming either from architectural applications, Blender directly, Houdini is a good example. There's some well-known artists that use those, Robert Hodgins is one of them, Travess Smalley. Like there's a lot of artists that I would love to see dropping on fx hash that are probably limited by the browser capabilities. And I think that note that Ciphrd had about the browser capabilities expanding is so true. Like what they can do now with HTML and JavaScript is so vastly better than what it was 20 years ago when we were all still using Flash to get by on animation. And I expect it to get better. There's still, if you look at the percent of artworks that are released that are being rendered as static, it's extremely high. It's extremely high ratio of static projects. And so when you get to that level where the live rendering itself isn't as important to many collectors as the output. I think that that's where there's an opportunity to expand what can happen in a platform like this. I know there's debate about what's— where the value is. We could talk about that, but I think that for static images in particular, this is a good potential solve.

Speaker D: I'd like to add on that because I feel like the boundaries open up for the rise of beautiful crafts in mankind. So we can see, for instance, with sculpture for Piter Pasma, it's same render quality as your random 3D software, yet it runs in browser. And I think this kind of boundaries, okay, they limit some creativity within some artists, but also it allows us to showcase exceptional minds that are capable of understanding a system end to end and designing an algorithm that works within this constraint to completely push them and get around so many complex problems to get to a beautiful result that is shaped like their artistic vision. And these type of constraints are great for pushing the craft, but also what we are currently seeing in the NFT space, especially with 3D graphics and particularly still images is still far to the limits of the browser because it's so hard to get crazy looking outputs. But for instance, when you go on shade.toy, that's another website where you can see like WebGL, and there's also compute.toys that does WebGPU now. You see quality of work that we haven't quite seen in the NFT space now. So there's still room for improving within the constraints that we have. So yeah, hopefully we'll see more of this project when WebGPU comes to life everywhere.

Speaker C: Totally agree about the power of constraints on producing exceptional artworks. You know, people have been doing that long before they were regulated. And I think of photography. I've definitely used photography analogies before. I'm waiting to be signed. You know, there's schools of photographers who will only shoot a certain way and only develop a certain way. Documentary photographers who will only crop in camera, only shoot black and white. They won't ever engage with a subject or what's in their view. And then there are collectors who will only collect that type of work or whatever the rule-based approach is or whatever their collecting focus is. They will only really focus on those things. And so I think there's always sort of existed this level of either trust or investigation that's required between the artist and the collector in order to validate what they're seeing. I agree that those limitations can be quite powerful, and I just am really excited about a future in the generative art space where more and more of that onus is put on the artists and the collectors together and the curators that work with them to be able to validate that and take some of the pressure off of a platform like fx hash to have to decide that on their own because As we grow and grow and grow and expand, there's gonna be more and more of that. There's a big opportunity there.

Speaker A: I think that's an excellent opportunity to segue. Let's pull back and talk about the last year in generative art, in NFTs. Obviously 2023 has been a difficult year. We're definitely in the bear market. Maybe we're about to come out of it, but who knows? We're not the podcast to talk about that. In this last year, as the market's turned down, we've seen so much consolidation into curated and premium, you know, in air quotes, platforms. At the same time, we've seen Art Blocks preparing to raise their fees to 30%, OpenSea capitulating to the blur phenomenon and like no longer honoring royalties. So for each of you, how do you think about the last year in generative art, NFTs, What are the lessons learned? Where do you think we're going?

Speaker B: If you're going to ETH, you're open to OpenSea, right?

Speaker A: That's a good corollary to this, which is what happens with ETH. But yes, Cypher, definitely please address that. We're using some of the standards that OpenSea uses and they can certainly index these projects, right? And they don't honor royalties. That's a huge part of it. So sound off, pop off 2023. What's going on? Like, how do you feel about this last year?

Speaker D: It's been a tough year for also many artists that have seen their core of their revenues largely dropping down, which has been probably the hardest thing to witness. As a platform, if we had not raised money, we could not have grown and expanded into it. That's for sure. We could have probably kept existing on Tezos at lower costs. But given the rise of competitors that have access to more funds, it was, well, there wasn't competitors when we wanted to expand then. But what's great is that we've kept seeing great projects popping there left and right, and we've kept seeing some amazing engagement from a few of the members and quite a few members, you know, that don't really care about the state of the market. They're just there to enjoy the practice. And it's super reassuring to know that if shit goes down, at least we have a community of core people that we like and we like building a product for, and that will, you know, in any case shape the tool to be something different that accommodates this community. If like the market will keep being like that for, uh, I don't know, like 10 years, it will be hard to keep existing at our scale. But also realistically, we could be looking at, you know, having a smaller team with a smaller scope of project, which is not something we want. So that's why we are also aiming at Ethereum and aiming at opening opportunities for the artists and for ourselves to hopefully make this a more sustainable ecosystem for everyone. I don't know if I addressed everything because there's like lots of things to talk about with that. Maybe I can let Adam take the mic now.

Speaker C: Sure. I'm not really sure where to focus within this massive bear year of ours, but looking forward, this is one of the most friendly and collaborative ecosystems in any industry that I've worked in. And I've worked in a lot of different industries. I had a creative agency for over a decade and got to work with a lot of different types of companies and the competitive flavor is so strong in everyone I've worked in, including the art world. And so the vibe that's out there for each platform to sort of look after each other is really nice. And the reality is that there's only so many collectors that are present right now collecting amongst all those platforms. There's only so much attention and there's only so many artists that are driving revenue for those platforms. There's only so long that that can sustain itself. And the reality is growth is needed. And I love seeing so many different platforms, curators, artists looking for ways to grow exposure to new collectors and new audiences. That's going to be a critical effort of anybody looking to sustain in 2024, is finding their own ways of growing new audiences. Whether it's finding new collectors on other chains or other digital platforms, other real-life communities and audiences. There's lots of ways of going about it, but that growth effort is going to be critical for platforms that even are focused more on product. So that's something on my mind for 2024, and certainly it's close to the heart of what I think Tender can do and can help with and many other platforms too.

Speaker D: I'd like to bounce on what you said about, you know, it being the most collaborative space you've been in. I haven't been in much spaces before, so I can't have the same statement. But I must say, it's truly like there's so many great collaborations happening left and right in this ecosystem. It's like really great to be a part of it. But also I think the bear market has had We've seen some behaviors in the space that, well, we didn't put fingers on this, but sometimes it was a bit hard because while it was a bear market, lots of other generative art platforms have risen and they all need to make some revenues at some point. And we've seen sometimes some aggressive strategies by some platforms targeting the big revenue artists that have Well, it has impacted us to some extent as well. Like less and less of the artists that became big on FX have kept releasing there. And we've been aware of, you know, the patterns that actors of the ecosystem have been using. And it's not, it's like not against them. It's like a direct byproduct of it being still a relatively small space and it being like very competitive on the platform side. So I think it's another thing to mention about this bear market. It's been tough on platforms because of that. And it's been also one of the reasons why we wanted to release on Ethereum, because like many of the artists that became big on FX wanted to see other horizons and have access to a bigger collector base. And when we could not afford that, it was very easy for other platforms to get them on board because of course, like that exactly what they were looking for. I hoped, you know, it would have been in all gracefulness and everyone will be sharing about this and talking about this. But yeah, there's been lots of reach out in the background when some projects were published, which made it a bit hard to have proper integrity and don't use the same practices to go after the artists. Hopefully, you know, if the space becomes a little bit bigger in terms of collectors and if artists You know, when platforms have more options, so will artists. And hopefully, you know, this kind of situations may die. But yeah.

Speaker B: I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think that hopefully a lot of more artists will be coming back to fxhash now that we have this whole slew of new features with ONCHFS, ETH, potentially USD valuation. You know, the list goes on and on and on, also with this curatorial layer. You know, we spoke to it a little bit earlier before, but I think that the artist community is there, it's thriving. The collector community is there, well, maybe waiting to grow back and become bigger. But speaking to that exposure to Blur, OpenSea, platforms that don't honor royalties, so far fxhash has been really sheltered from that through the virtue of Tezos, it being really an artist-first chain and honoring royalties being like a non-issue throughout the community. As we open up to ETH, what can fxhash look to do to kind of encourage that honoring of royalties and also making sure that from a platform perspective, more of the trading happens on fxhash versus on some of these third-party platforms? I think that's something that we've been thinking about a lot over the last year. Would love to hear your take on it.

Speaker D: We've also been thinking a lot about this. So first of all, it was really a pain for us to see the main ecosystem of NFTs tending towards non-respect of the royalties just for the sake of improving the returns of the collectors. It's not the space we want to encourage because, yeah, sure, for collectors it may improve their returns. Some of the statements also, like, yeah, if less royalties, then more collectors buy the project. But eventually, if less royalties, then they fight for less royalties, there are no more royalties. And we do think that royalties are actually a pretty sustainable way for artists to have at least some kind of stable income if they keep producing work and if their work keeps being culturally relevant, which is often the case with many artists. Like myself, I've been living off my royalties for more than a year and I'm one of the lucky ones, right? But still, like, I could not imagine going through the first year of FX without having some royalties on RGBs. It would have been a really, really tough year. So it's definitely a model, and I'm not the only one to say this, that's been proven to be great for many creators out there. Now facing the reality, sure, when we'll release on Ethereum, we will be exposed to that. There is this strategy that you can block platforms that do not respect royalties, but we do not think that this is like a sensible approach. We do want to take a product and social approach to that. So first of all, if we want people to trade on fx hash, our toolset should be the same, if not better, than the other platforms for connecting generative art. Sadly, we have no time to completely go through it and redesign it the way we want. We've made some tiny improvements to it, but not to the scale that we want. But this is something we want to go towards. People on FX collect generative art, so we should have a toolset that allows them to collect generative art in a better way than on platforms that are not specialized for collecting generative art. So it's the first point where we can have a clear advantage over others that cannot afford building toolset for generative art in particular. So we'll be shipping a lot in that regard. So USD pricing is one of the features that's requested a lot. Trade offers, this kind of like generative art specific features will be something we'll keep shipping over this next year because it's super important. And the second point is social dynamics. I don't know, maybe it's a bit naive, but I've always thought that The way to sort of help with this royalty problem would be to put some light on the virtue of respecting royalties as a collector. So we'll do some initiatives to showcase the collectors that play properly, that are respecting royalties and honoring artists. Hopefully this will put some light on, you know, we have this collector, we want to give them some spotlight for a physical exhibition because they've been a supporter of artists and we want to give them some spotlight as well as on the platform. I don't know honestly if it's going to be enough to fight what's happening on Blur and the like, but we hope to at least give people another way of looking at this royalty situation. So it will take time. I was talking with some people from the French Ministry, long story, But they, they asked, we want to design a standard for having royalty enforced on-chain. And I was like, yeah, this is not happening. You can't do that technically, unfortunately. Otherwise it would have happened. It's not technically possible, so we have to find other ways to do it. And the other way is to enforce it socially. So we want to build a lot towards that. It's going to be a lot of trial and error because improving virtue of collecting through social highlighting is, it's probably a clusterfuck of some kind, but super complex to evaluate it. And we'll do a lot of experiments. But this is the direction we want to take.

Speaker A: This is easily going to be our longest interview ever. So we have to move on to rapid fire here. Adam, you've had an extremely busy end of 2023. You've curated releases with Feral File, Artmatr. You have an upcoming project with Art Basel Miami, and obviously all the releases that you're engineering for the fxhash 2.0 launch. Can you give us briefly, but also in a very fulfilling fashion, what can we look forward to from Tender in 2024? How has Tender changed throughout this bear market? What's going on with Tender and what we can look forward to.

Speaker C: I think midway through 2022, I saw some new opportunities to do something different with a platform and really had focused on how I'm going to grow a new minting experience for Tender and put a lot of development effort into that. Started looking at whether I was going to raise funds to support that. In the meantime, so many new platforms came to light and it took me a minute to kind of pivot away from that and I'm glad I did. Actually, I don't think I've seen anything launch the same type of minting platform I had been thinking about, but it will happen and there's enough great builders, great development teams that are going to build that stuff. I took all of that focus from the first half of 2023 and now I'm focusing it on bringing art into the world and that's why you're seeing so many releases coming out. Group shows, different events, and that's what I'd expect more out of Tender and myself in 2024. The difference will be I'm going to try to really focus more and more on physical expressions of the work in physical environments. I'll take a page from Maya Man and I won't say IRL, like it's real when it's online, it's real in the physical world, but I think getting works in front of people who don't know about generative art or haven't bought into the premise of it in a gallery art setting, I think will be rewarded by seeing what we can do. We, meaning the greater community of generative artists, can do with algorithmic works in a physical environment. So whether that's partnering with gallery spaces that exist, helping form new gallery spaces, finding our way into prominent art fairs like Untitled Art in Miami and others around the world. Those are all great opportunities for hopefully some rich conversations with new collectors, and the strategy that Tender will take is, I think, a lot more about finding lesser quantity, higher quality, and level of engagement collectors to really deeply engage in what generative art is, the gamut of genres and aesthetics that the medium can cover and bring them along on a long-term collecting journey with us and with the other collectors in the space. I see that as a huge opportunity. I also see a huge opportunity in working with more and more artists, but also really doubling down on many of the artists that have proven to be bringing great new innovative works time and again. So we'll definitely be supporting some of the names that you've seen Tender involved with before, both from a collaboration standpoint and our community in general. And then also engaging other artists who want to find generative ways of bringing their vision to life. I think AI is going to be a great— is already a great tool for that, and I think will be a good way of bridging into other art communities that are already out there and can bring in new audiences. So that's a lot of where our focus will be. I really see in a nutshell, Tender really defining themselves, us, me, as a gallerist. And I don't mean a traditional gallery model with exclusive representation of artists, sort of a future-facing model of what a gallery can be. Something that's open, something that's supporting a wide community of artists, something that is medium-specific. And hopefully doing our job in advancing what generative art is and what it can be to the wider audience.

Speaker B: That is one hell of a rapid-fire answer. 2024 is going to be huge for Tender and hopefully for all of us. We're going to see better days for sure. Fingers crossed. But thank you for that robust answer. I'm going to go to the next rapid-fire. This is for Ciphrd. When I looked at your project page, I noted that it has been a whopping year and a half since Ethereal Microcosm came out in February of 2022. Are we going to see a new Ciphrd drop for fxhash 2.0? The people are waiting. One year and a half.

Speaker D: I think I have like created 70 hours over this last one year and a half. It's so sad. But yes, I think I can speak about it. So the first project on the platform will be a collaboration between Alex, Morgan, Seb, and myself. So Alex is the creator of DeepDream and working as a researcher at Google, and he's like just genius in the artificial life field and a genius in general. So I'm super humbled to be working with him. Basically, he's doing all the difficult stuff, which is not what I'm used to. But yeah, I'm really excited about this project. So, well, he's published some papers about neural cellular automaton, and so the project will be based on this. So it's a cellular automaton that can replicate natural patterns through machine learning. So we'll put a twist to that. The idea is to have this first project being at a small price point and open editions. I'm fanboy about— for— of Alex, so I was like so happy when he was open to collaborating.

Speaker A: It sounds like RGB Moves. Is that RGB Grooves? RGB Grooves. Is there a potential title for this? Like, is it going to be day one?

Speaker D: Like, yeah, it's gonna be, uh, when the platform launches, time zero. I have to check with him, but to see if we can train it on RGB, the first collection, to have some of the patterns from RGB generated by the AI, by the model itself. It's not quite an AI, but yeah, that'll be really fun to collect.

Speaker A: And I think an open edition is a great way to allow everyone, you know, obviously the community is so much more savvy and engaged versus the earliest days of FX Hash when people were still finding it. So, you know, there were so many people who never got to collect an RGB, and so creating something that's open and available and not just like, sorry, you have to have been here in the first 48 hours or you're out of luck, like, I think that's a really nice way to kick off 2.0 for sure. Yeah, me too.

Speaker D: I wish you could see the project right now. It's really crazy. I'm excited.

Speaker A: We're all excited to collect another piece from Ciphrd. Another rapid fire for you. You know, you were talking a bit about providing incentives and things for people to stay on the platform. It's obviously become a bit of a meme at this point, but, you know, Blur issues a token to incentivize people to not honor royalties. So is there the possibility that there will be an fxhash token that emerges, the long-fabled fxhash token, as a way to encourage people to honor royalties and maintain their trading on the platform here? Is this idea completely dead? Should we stop asking about it? Is there some possibility it might emerge in 2024?

Speaker D: The idea is not dead. Like I've been saying a few times why we haven't built it yet, because we think it could be super valuable in many cases. But we have, again, like just to be quick, we wanted to have like fee redistribution to the holders of the token. Legally, it's really complex to have that. So we are thinking about different alternatives. We just don't want to have a token that's just a token there for farming engagement, stuff like that. We'd rather want to have something meaningful for the generative art space long term. So right now we are more looking at, first of all, building the core features of the platform end-to-end. So multi-chain support, putting all the tools that we currently have to a better state because everything is lacking a lot of features and quality of life improvements. And I think only then, when the pace of update will be slower, when we will be more careful about everything we put onto the platform because it will be less obvious what has to go in there, then it might be a good timing for introducing, uh, the token. Because then we will have more certainty about the state of the space, how the token can be interesting for creators, curators, collectors, and don't just rush it in a way where sure it's going to generate engagement, but it's probably also going to damage the sustainability of the ecosystem, which is something we've seen a lot with tokens. You know, it's a quick exit. So we've seen like lots of projects that after the token suddenly kind of died. It's not what we want to aim. If anything, we'd want the token to be the beginning of something else that's meaningful rather than the end of the journey for all the contributors of the current ecosystem. So, hey, TBD. Ask me to the next podcast. Maybe there'll be more, maybe not.

Speaker A: All right, one more, Trinity. Do you want to queue it up with the last one and let's wrap this mega episode?

Speaker B: All right, and this is a question for both of you in celebration of the cross-platformification of fxhash, and that would be building functionality, building platforms ETH or Tez? Which makes your life easier? What would you rather build for?

Speaker D: That's an interesting one. So first of all, building for both is a nightmare. Everything that's based on EVM works together, it's beautiful. Tezos doesn't work with the same principle. Well, it works with the same principles but has very different paradigms everywhere. So it's super complex to build for both. I think, Adam, you've experienced it. For instance, we wanted to have like the 2 wallets connected at the same time with the ability, you know, you have many cases with an account that's off-chain or with Interact. There are a lot of complexity in building this. Now when it comes to, it's about the same. I was expecting the state of the tools on Ethereum to be much more advanced than Tezos. I felt like on Tezos we were working with stone and sticks, but honestly on Ethereum they have like slightly more a sophisticated toolset, but you end up finding the same issues and the same base problems. I must say, like, if you want to start an application from scratch, the EVM toolset is way better by far. But whenever we faced like some particular use cases, I found the Tezos toolset to be better. We have a lot of custom code because of course we are dealing with Tezos Ethereum, so we need Let's say that Ethereum, you have a level of abstraction where you just say load wallet, get address, send transaction, something very simple. Tezos is a little bit more low level. That's what we need for this tool that's a bit sophisticated. And Ethereum was a bit difficult to work in that regard, as like the low level primitives were a bit harder to find, like not as supported. But definitely, like if I had to build FX from scratch on EVM, it will be so much more simpler than Tezos, not gonna lie. But now I regret a bit that we don't have similar primitives than complex, like base breeding low-level primitives than Tezos. Maybe they exist, like maybe we had, like the toolset we found wasn't perfectly adapted, but it was like the de facto industry standard that we used in many areas and we felt a bit lacking of some stuff. Like for instance, they don't have a TZKT instance where you can query blockchain data easily. They have another thing that's Graph, which is a bit different and not as open that TZKT is. It's just one example among many, like, so yeah, not a conclusive answer.

Speaker C: I think for us it's a lot easier because we're not building apps from the ground up. We're basically using sometimes great APIs like Ciphrd's and sometimes challenging APIs like—

Speaker D: I won't name them. Ciphrd's?

Speaker C: No, more like OpenSea. When the challenge is even getting an API key, the rest of it is going to be really difficult and unreliable. So maybe we cut that or maybe we don't. I'm really curious how like fx hash is going to interface with OpenSea with having their collections listed and having gone through that with Art Blocks, who you would assume, well, who does have a lot of clout. In the space and certainly drives a lot of volume through a platform like OpenSea. Even with their releases, there's still a lot of back and forth with getting the collections to show up properly on OpenSea and the creators listed properly and the royalties at least started as proper listings. So at the scale that fx hash operates, but knowing how important OpenSea is to the ecosystem, I'm curious to see how they interact with you guys. But anyways, The short answer is we really have it quite easy by using different APIs. And there are a lot of things in the Ethereum ecosystem. They're not all as cohesive as the fx hash one. So it's been a real pleasure to use that. Thanks.

Speaker D: I'm surprised because our APIs are quite rudimentary. We want to improve all of that. And you are.

Speaker C: I understand it takes time, but they improve and that's what's important. Hell yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, that sounds like a great place to end it. An epic episode. This has been great, guys. We plugged everything. There's no follow-up. That's it. This is just the end. 2.0 is coming out the first week of December. There's going to be a ton of drops. There's going to be Ethereum. There's going to be on-chain. We have a ton of stuff coming along the way. Rebate auctions, a huge update for fxhash. It's gonna be a huge update for curators like Adam here who are going to be able to further leverage all these tools on fx hash to bring more artists to the community collecting on both Tezos and Ethereum. What else can we say?

Speaker B: December 1st, it's a Friday.

Speaker A: Take vacation, cancel your plans, take the day off. It's going to be like the old times, you know, we're all going to be sitting there in Discord. Let's wrap this one, guys. Thank you both so much for giving us so much of your time. Getting us hyped, the continued excitement for fx hash 2.0, for everything Tender's been bringing to the platform. So many artists that we're excited to collect again.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you for having us on. It's been great to talk about what's coming up. I'm so excited for FX 2.0. December 1st is going to be epic, and so is the full week following that. So if anybody out there can bring a friend, bring a friend in. There's going to be great conversations. It's a really good moment to show the excitement that's around this space and maybe even how far a little funds will go in collecting some great art. Can't wait.

Speaker D: Yeah, thank you, Will and Trinity. It's always a pleasure. Absolutely.

Speaker A: It's amazing to have you both on. And yeah, exactly, bring a friend if you have someone who's been trying to get in. Maybe they need a podcast to listen to to kind of break the ice and get them into collecting generative art, maybe they have $5 a month, $10 a month to join our Patreon. That is also an easy way for you to get into the space and start supporting creators here. So gotta plug that, patreon.com/WaitingToBeSigned. That's it for this one. We hope you all enjoyed. We'll be back again soon with another episode. Bye everyone!

Speaker C: Waiting to be signed. Always we're waiting to be signed.

Speaker D: The rail of the week.

Speaker C: To be signed.

Speaker D: We're waiting. Always. We're waiting to be signed.