Speaker A: Hello and good morning, everybody, or good afternoon or good evening. Um, welcome to a special edition episode of Waiting to Be Signed. Uh, I'm Trinity and I am joined by Will Popp and our extremely special guest, Abstractment, or as I like to call him, Abstraction. Hello.

Speaker B: Hello.

Speaker A: And welcome. How are you all today?

Speaker C: Doing well.

Speaker B: Yeah, excellent. Thank you.

Speaker C: And so for the purpose of this episode, we're going to call you Preston.

Speaker B: Is that—

Speaker C: that's good, right?

Speaker B: Yes, you can call me Preston. I realize it might be a little bit tricky for Trinity with the abstraction versus abstractment. I'm happy to go by Preston. I mean, I might have missed this.

Speaker C: Abstraction sounds like a really cool '90s hip-hop artist to me. So I think that's why I kind of gravitated towards that. I'm like, this is like a guy who probably got a couple beats from Kanye, had a hit, and then, you know, now—

Speaker A: Moved over to the art world.

Speaker C: Yeah, moved over to the art world. But that's obviously not the case here. So, I mean, I think why don't you go ahead and kind of introduce yourself a little bit? I would bet a lot of people know who you are, but maybe they don't know your kind of like full background.

Speaker A: Full story.

Speaker C: Yeah, we don't know your full story. So like a good place to start would be what brought you to generative art and NFTs, I guess.

Speaker B: Sure. Um, so my name is Preston, um, and I grew up in the States, have, uh, basically been traveling the world for the last 20 years and living in various countries. Um, and so I, you know, maybe what I'll do is just kind of provide a little bit of context in terms of as a collector and like kind of how some of those travels have influenced that. And, you know, the— I started off, I guess my professional career started off in Samoa as a Peace Corps volunteer. And so for anybody who's not familiar with Peace Corps, it is a program run out of the US government for US citizens to go abroad and serve on like a 2-year stint as a volunteer. Yeah. And it's a really awesome program. And its whole purpose is to kind of bring US culture or actually take Americans to other countries to better understand those cultures, but then also to bring that understanding back to the US and share that with family, friends, et cetera. And so that's where all of my sort of international travels began. But it's also where a lot of my physical art Collecting began, and so in Samoa, I was living in a pretty remote village. Spent most of my days trying to help the community with various projects. It was it was a really enjoyable experience, but it was also tough. And I was you know trying to get through a lot of the writing and drawing. Also a lot of surfing. I was fifty meters away from the beach. It was absolutely amazing. And a really like rewarding experience. But in that isolation, so there were there were times when I would go into the city and I would just walk around the market for hours. Maybe actually like let me take a step back just to explain one piece about Samoan culture first. So if you may have heard of kava before, so There's also like in Samoa, they call it ava, and it is a powder basically. It's a plant. And then what they do, it's they grind it up into a fine powder, they seep it in water, and then they drink it. And it's like a very communal thing in Samoan culture. So imagine yourself kind of sitting on a concrete slab next to the beach. Got a thatched roof over your head. No walls around, sitting around like with a bunch of older men wearing skirts because that's kind of the dress attire in Samoa. And drinking this hava from coconut cup. And so what the hava does is it basically like numbs your tongue, your mouth, kind of puts you in a very relaxed state and is— it's like a little bit of a buzz to some extent. Yeah. But the bowls that they serve this out of, beautiful. They're beautiful pieces of artwork. And so when I would go into the city, I would just explore the local markets, looking a lot at like the artisanal crafts, but spending most of my time just trying to find the best avobol artist that I could. And it took me quite some time, but eventually I found one where they were just putting together some amazing woodwork, and I bought one, and then I bought numerous more and took them home, gave them around, gave them out to friends and family as gifts. Those are a really difficult gift to take home as a Peace Corps volunteer because you only get a couple of bags, and those are very heavy objects, but they make for great gifts. And so that's where, like, my collecting of artwork began, and it's kind of maybe in a non-traditional sense when we think about artwork, and this is, you know, These are bowls, wooden bowls that are just really nice, nicely carved.

Speaker C: So just kind of in terms of education and background, like you didn't necessarily have like a formal arts education or anything like that as a younger person. It was more just like through your experience traveling, you kind of broke through in this appreciation of art through this culture, and that kind of has inspired you since then to become like a collector and maybe even now an artist. Is that kind of the trajectory?

Speaker B: Well, so I mean, stepping back, way back. So my dad was an art teacher, and I think he instilled a lot of love for art in me as I was growing up. As I grew up, he was not an art teacher. He kind of switched careers in order to kind of make a living and support the family. But his passion was art, and he always loved that. And I loved art class. I You know, competed in several competitions and did well. I was, I was always very, very much into art as I was growing up. And, you know, as I was mentioning in Samoa, like, even as I've come out of kind of that childhood, art has been kind of a space for me that I've found like a lot of relaxation and, and just enjoyed kind of participating in. Oftentimes what I'll do is just At least over like the last maybe 20 years as I've been traveling, I will, or I have created art on numerous occasions, but just for special occasions like the birth of my daughters. I painted a piece of artwork for both of them. And when traveling in Afghanistan, was taking photos of local businessmen and then brought those back and kind of framed them all in like a window frame. It looks, you know, really nice. And it's, you know, it— but it's just kind of opportunities that I try to find to participate in the space, but it's never been kind of— so it's always been a constant thread, but it's never been like a clear, like, focal point. This is what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing right now.

Speaker A: I'd love to hear that. And it's like also just cross-medium, it sounds like there's not one particular thing, it's just kind of the artness of it all just kind of you said, that thread, or just you're being steeped in it everywhere you go, even if it's something that you might not be in a place for, it's something that you engage with, which is really amazing.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: Yeah. So then what kind of brought you into creative coding, generative art, the NFT world? Is that— I mean, I imagine because it's kind of new for everyone in the past year or two, that you have a similar story of encountering it, or maybe you were a fan of like pre-computer generative artists and then kind of reignited that interest with this advent of NFTs.

Speaker B: Yeah, so my first introduction to crypto was back in 2013. I was sitting in a Pakistani coffee shop And, uh, was checking, you know, the news and saw something about Bitcoin's prices that were skyrocketing and coming back down. I think they were at like $200 or $400 at the time. And I just remember looking at it and thinking, wow, like, this is, uh, this is something that I want to participate in. And I tried to, uh, and couldn't figure out a way to do it. And then I just— it kind of stopped there in terms of exploring, um, Bitcoin. I went back to my Looking for physical art and just found a very old Punjabi door that we turned into a dining room table. And so that was my first introduction into it. And I just tracked Bitcoin prices for the long term, but didn't really participate until maybe 2020 when I started to buy crypto. But it was very— it was like in a very small way. Just trying to get familiar with the market, understand. I've never had a big wallet, and so this is—it was just really just trying to get a feel for what was going on. I started to do it a little bit more in 2021, early 2021, and then in July, June, June 2021 is when I started to dive into NFTs, which was like the perfect time to. get really excited about it and then watch the market crash. And so it was a little bit of a rough introduction to the whole space. Many of us have gone through that and we will go through that many more times as we see cycles, which I think the swings are really big and very kind of rapid. But it wasn't until, I guess, September I think I was aware of Art Blocks, um, and was tracking Art Blocks, never buying anything. Um, but then it was in September I found gen.art on the Ethereum blockchain. And so gen.art, for those that might not be familiar with it, it's a, uh, like a membership plan essentially where you pay for a membership and then you're able to mint, uh, kind of guaranteed for, um, for artists or from these artists when they drop with gen.art. The prices are very, very reasonable compared to Art Blocks. And so I, as I watched this and kind of joined this community, I just got really excited about it. I thought it was absolutely fascinating, and I just immersed myself in that space trying to learn as much as I possibly could, exploring some of the other kind of generative art groups out there just to get a better understanding of what they were. But was really kind of considering gen.art my home. And it was through that community that I've kind of really found a passion for generative art. It was within a few weeks I was already realizing that I wanted to kind of figure out how to do or create generative art. And so it was probably early October when I first started to dive into it. And I had had a little bit of coding background prior to trying generative art, but not much. This is all self-taught, trying to do kind of side projects for work. But this is not at all my background. But I had just enough, just enough of an understanding that it was like, kind of this dangerous space where it was just enough of an understanding of how it worked that I thought I could actually create something cool, but that I totally miscalculated how incredibly difficult it was going to be. And it was much more difficult than what I had anticipated when I kind of started off with that.

Speaker A: So from a process perspective, like, And like, you know, with your artistic background and everything, that you may have had like an idea of the types of things you wanted to make. What was your aim? Like, or were you working on things, projects before really starting in on, let's say, Clue?

Speaker B: Yes. So there were several things that I did on my own, which, you know, I now look back at them and, you know, find them pretty appalling and embarrassing. But my goal with those was just to learn how it all works and see what I was able to create. And then it was probably 3 or 4 weeks into it, maybe, that I kind of came across a, like, a vision where I, you know, created my vision for what I thought I could do with Clue and figure out how to build it out. And, you know, like, there is— I think Clue is beautiful. I love it. At the same time, it's not like the most innovative coding behind it. It's just like a really well-orchestrated kind of very— a well-orchestrated set of elements. Yeah. That kind of come together, and I think what is a really nice collection. And so it's, you know, I'm never going to be the one that's actually like changing the generative art space with the innovative coding. I'm just trying to create really great final outputs and putting together a large collection of a lot of diversity. in it.

Speaker A: And that was one, one of the things that we were talking about just when we were chatting before we started to record, um, is that it's not really just about the, the complexity in an algorithm. For example, um, I haven't looked at the Clue code to like understand all the work that went into it, but no matter how complex or simple something might be— and we talked about this a little bit on our weekly podcast, just to plug that a little bit— Sometimes it's just about the refinement in picking some of the color palettes, for example, you know, and just really understanding how different elements work together. And it doesn't matter how that vision is executed. When you kind of hit the print button, it comes out looking wonderful. So like, what was the artistic process when it came to kind of generating those really amazing outputs?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, as I think is pretty evident from the write-up or the description of Clue, one of my big priorities here was creating art that people would wanna put on their walls. And I think that that comes from, like, you know, my appreciation for all of the art that we've collected in the various countries where we've lived. So, like, we've got work from Rwanda, Colombia, Florida, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Samoa, and a few other countries. And I mean, it's just, I love being able to like have that on the wall and be able to enjoy that on a daily basis. And so when I went into Clue, it was all about how do I make sure that this is gonna— or how do I increase the likelihood that this ends up on walls? And I knew that the details were gonna matter on that. And so what I was doing a lot of was trying to create those really high-quality outputs that you can get from CLUE and just zooming in and looking around and seeing what everything looks like really close up. And when I didn't see something, when I saw something I didn't like, you know, dive back into the code and tweak.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it was a lot of kind of back and forth between those outputs and the code. And I, you know, I think every gen artist goes through this. It's an important kind of step in trying to understand what your code's going to produce and whether it's going to meet the standards that you have for the artwork that you're producing. I have really high standards for myself and I want to create great work. And I also just think that I have like I know what I like and I know what I don't like, and I am on what it is that I appreciate and trying to create the effects that I'm looking for. And so, like, on Clue, for me, it was a lot about depth. Like, how can I create depth with this very 2D piece? And, you know, I think I've tried to do that in various ways through the backgrounds, through the ways that, like, you know, the clues, if you will, kind of create themselves. And so a lot of the tweaking that I was doing was how do I refine to make sure that, like, I'm getting the right depth that I'm looking for.

Speaker C: That's really cool. I mean, just like someone who's new to coding, even newer than you, and working on another project, just kind of like hearing that inspires me to, with this next one, really dig in and, like, refine and refine the things that I have more direct control over within my ability of coding, like things like color. Or alignment, like little, little tiny adjustments, right, that might make it just that much better but are within my capabilities. So that's a really, really good takeaway. I'm curious with Clue, we see so many new artists come to the platform and some of them struggle for a long time before they really blow up.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right. And, you know, they have small Twitter followings, they're in the Discord even trying to like, you know, not necessarily shill their work even, but just share it and get, get people to even know that it's coming. And somehow, you know, despite you having a pretty small Twitter following and, uh, you know, I'm sure you were in the Discord, but I wasn't like— I didn't really— I was not aware of you until the day it came out, or that— or just because of people were starting to talk about it, right? Like, you, you somehow hit this critical mass of hype with your work before it released despite being new. So I'm really curious, like, what do you think, aside from the quality of the work, and maybe you want to just attribute it all to the quality of the work, right? And that could just be the case, but like, what do you think that you did to really maximize your chance of breaking through and succeed here?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that part of that Is where I'd like to, I'd like to think that part of that is the quality of the work. Um, after putting so many hours into refining the very, uh, you know, traits and, and find those outputs that I was really trying to achieve. Oh, I'd like to think that that's part of it. And I'd also just note that I think I had like 18 different traits in, in Clue. And looking back, uh, I think that, you know, what might have been a bit of a mistake in, in that When I'm trying to get the right effect for one, I then have to go test it for this one and this one and this one and make sure that the whole thing isn't losing the exact effect I'm going for. And so I like to think that the quality is part of it. No, I was also sharing tweets ahead of time just to try to get additional coverage or interest to include One thing that I think was really valuable is, so I've seen a lot of artists write up pretty detailed descriptions of their generative art, but I think I've only seen it after their projects have been a success. And I kind of looked at that and was like, all right, well, I wonder if this can help drive the success of a project. So I put a lot of time into developing my website and adding out or adding several pages that outlined all the different traits and how I came to choose those and what I'm trying to achieve with them. I think that was helpful. I mean, I got a lot of positive feedback on the website. And then I think it's probably like obvious, but let's like a—

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, the model that I've set up in terms of if you own 5 CLUs, then you're a member of the Clue Crew and we can talk about this. You know, there's a lot, there's a lot to it. But I'm sure that that also like helps spark interest. And if, you know, Trinity, I think you noted this in one of the early podcasts, or like the first time you had a podcast on this after Clue was released. That the mint price is very affordable, accessible, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah. How did you come up with that? It seems so stupidly cheap, especially in retrospect.

Speaker B: Yeah. So this kind of gets into a lot of the dynamics that I'm trying to achieve, or I guess manage with Clue. When I was thinking about mint price, I was in both mint price and the drop collection size, I was trying to think through, all right, well, if we're gonna do 5, you have to have 5 kind of have this lifetime membership, if you will, um, to the Clue Crew, then, uh, you know what that's gonna result in roughly 15, 100.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: 13 or something, um, potential Clue Crew members. That's manageable for me in the long term in terms of outputs, uh, and so I thought that's a drop size number. But then thinking about the mint price, so one thing that I care about is I really want a diverse group of collectors, and I very much know what it is like to be a— or to have a small wallet.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so when I was thinking about that 0.89 Tez for a mint, it was, I want to make this accessible and not just like a piece of Clue, but the full— like, you can be a Clue Crew member for an accessible or an affordable price. And my hope is that, you know, a lot of those Clue Crew members that were able to mint, or even like within a few days, the price hadn't, you know, taken off too much. It was still relatively affordable if people still wanted to get in. And it did, you know, I guess depending on your wallet size, maybe it is today, maybe it's not. Um, but it was all— it was really— I was really focused on how do I make this accessible to everyone, um, because I wanted it to be very inclusive from the beginning in order to have a more diverse group of collectors. Because I also fear that it is somewhat exclusive from here, and it'll be harder for those smaller wallets to kind of continue to participate if they're not already a Clue Crew member, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I think that we've kind of seen that meteoric rise. As you mentioned, those first few days were relatively slow on the— not slow, on the secondary. That's really not fair or accurate. But, you know, after the first few days, things really started to take off. And I think we saw like, uh, at some point a floor price in like the 50s or the 60s after some big wallets came through and swept.

Speaker C: Um, you know, I would characterize it as like a drop that got flipped, unfortunately, like, or heavily targeted. And I think that was kind of— I'm sure you were watching it, but a lot of people who had Temple wallets, and this is not your fault at all, but it's like a lot of people who were trying to mint just couldn't mint. And I think then, like, that's just what happens with projects that are popular and get targeted, is that it just takes a long time to get through that, like, tranche of inventory that people are just trying to sell explicitly to make a couple tez profit. But kind of miraculously, right, I think because of the quality of the work and because of your plan and to kind of create this membership, we saw that get consumed by the collector base really quickly, whereas for other works it doesn't necessarily turn over. So it could take months kind of to get through all that inventory. So it was really cool to see.

Speaker B: And I don't think it was just the Temple wallets, just to note, because I mean, I've got Ergo and was— I tried to mint when I saw that people were having challenges because I wanted to be able to pick some up for people who I knew would want them. And I probably tried 6 times and I was only able to get 1.

Speaker A: I got 5.

Speaker B: I got 1.

Speaker C: Yeah, crazy that you got 5.

Speaker A: I just like spammed the button and I was just like, it doesn't matter, I'm just gonna keep refreshing, spamming the button.

Speaker C: Yeah, I got 1 and then I've really failed in my planning. You know, I kind of, we haven't asked you about this yet and maybe we can like kind of diverge into what kind of stuff you collect on FX Hash. But if you're kind of like an avid collector and watch the market, you kind of know that like the prices tend to go up immediately and then kind of like decline over the course of a week or maybe even longer before hitting that second spike and rise, if it ever happens. So my plan was like, I got a really nice one off my 1 mint, I'm gonna sell it at a markup because it's a really good palette, and then try to get 5 floor pieces later, right?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And enter the club. And what ended up happening was the floor just caught up to the price of where I had my piece, and then I So, uh, it was bad planning on my part.

Speaker A: Yeah, I actually have a quick question for you kind of around the, the drop itself, because, you know, we did like a logo drop like just last week. And how, what, how did you feel like just hitting that mint button, putting it out into the world, and then just watching all the conversations swirl around how amazing this is to discovering it both on the primary and on the secondary, like through Twitter or Discord, whatever?

Speaker B: So yeah, drop day. So I was walking around my house earlier that day and it was the first time that it really hit me that, wow, like this is insane. I've been working on this art collection for 2 months, and I have a general idea of what it's going to look like, but I actually don't know what it's going to look like. And I've, I, I've thought about this in terms of like being a collector like many times before in the past, but as, as my Genesis drop and kind of, uh, it was just, just remarkable how amazing this space is and how cool that is that you just put something out there and you have no idea. What's gonna come back? And yeah, I just think it's a really fascinating space from that angle. And then in terms of drop day, like, or after hitting mint, so I was— I actually thought that I was gonna be in jail for 3 hours. And so I had announced a drop time and then— Oh, wow. I had been verified without realizing it since the day before, and so I minted and then had to wait three hours before I actually like unlocked it so that people could actually mint because I wanted to make sure that I stuck to the original timeline in case anybody was paying attention to the previous Twitter announcements on it, and and so that was a little bit kind of. Less than ideal, but I think it worked out just fine. People got to review the code or the outputs and take a look at them before they decided to buy, which I think is always a great thing. And then afterwards, I remember very clearly, it was really awesome. I duck into the fx hash Discord every once in a while just to kind of see what's going on. And I remember dropping in, uh, and just seeing in the, in the price discussion, it was awesome. It was like, I can't remember who it was, who it was, like Coincasher and a couple of others like dropping in memes of like, you get a clue, you get a clue. And it's like, oh, I don't have a clue. It's like, oh, you're clueless.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And just all these plays on the term clue. And I thought it was, uh, it was just like such a refreshing and positive environment in that moment. And I'm just glad to contribute to that. I also think that that's just really kind of just a nice note in terms of like how much I appreciate the community. And like, I feel like I've been given a really, really warm welcome to this space. And that's amazing. Like, I love that. I can't like, I can't thank the community enough for that. It really does make a difference in terms of like helping an artist want to continue to kind of come back and bring back value to the community when they have those positive experiences, especially from the beginning. So it was, but yeah, it was a really amazing kind of day just watching it all happen and the excitement, enthusiasm around it.

Speaker C: Call it a top 2 fxhash moment for you?

Speaker B: Yes, yes.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's in your top 2.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's definitely a top 2 since I've had one Genesis drop so far. Yeah.

Speaker A: Number 1 that we should be thinking about?

Speaker C: Yeah, as I know this is something that you wanted to talk about, maybe this would be a good time to divert and—

Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, I was interested in hearing about your top moments with FX Hash, but actually, like, can I— is it okay if I—

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we can keep going. Oh yeah, let's keep going on Clue.

Speaker B: Because I do want to just mention a couple of things. So I've built out this airdrop model, and I feel very fortunate because I've got a full-time job. I'm not relying on the income from my artwork to keep a roof over my family. But not every artist is the same. Every artist is going to have a different approach. Every artist is in a different situation. Every artist, like, looks at their art from a different perspective. And I just want to note that, like, I really hope that kind of this type of model does not result in any collectors pressuring or any artists feeling pressured to start airdropping to all their collectors, because that's not the right model for everyone. This is kind of part of my model to create space for me in, you know, in the FX# world. And I am hoping that, like, or I guess maybe best case scenarios, what it does is it just creates another option for other artists who are looking to move into this space to, to maybe consider, like, as one of the many ways that they kind of introduce themselves to the community. But this by far and away is not the only, and probably, and probably not the best model. Um, for doing this. So I do want to be very clear on that, that I worry a little bit in terms of that pressure that some collectors might throw towards others, and I discourage that.

Speaker C: I'm actually curious, I think maybe there's something that you're saying in this statement to other artists, but do you have any anxiety yourself around this model that you've now created and kind of have to fulfill, right? I mean, I know when you tweeted it out, it was very much like— I know there was some discussion of like, oh, he's really being very formal with what the rules are of this. I was like, yeah, you have to be, right? Because you are basically making a commitment to anyone who holds 5 and people might be making decisions. People might be making decisions now at this higher secondary market price that they want to be in.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And they might be spending hundreds of Tezos to join versus someone who got lucky and minted 5 or collected them around the floor. Like, do you have like anxiety now because of the success of the project that you're on, you know, you're kind of on the hook, I would say, for at least 1 or 2 or 3 like drops to kind of— I don't know. I mean, I guess what do you feel about it and what do you feel is really more of the question. It's like It makes me nervous. Like, it makes me nervous on the sidelines.

Speaker B: I mean, it's a great question. It's a great question. And I think the short answer is no. And that's the short answer. It may change in the long term, but it's, you know, especially depending on what the price of Clue is. But at this moment, like, I don't feel kind of Pressure. What I do feel is, uh, is like kind of— I don't know the right word for it, but like, like a rejuvenated commitment or something where like— or maybe it's just motivation. It's motivation. Like, um, I feel a very strong motivation to return value to my— like, to the Clue Crew. And, you know, this is When I was in Gen.art, I'm still part of Gen.art, one thing I really loved about that space was it was all about the artist. And they choose the drop size, they choose the mint price, and the members are basically along for the ride, and you can participate as you want. Well, in this scenario, as I was reflecting on it, well, I'm the artist. And all right, well, what do I care about?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: I don't really care about, you know, all those, like, a lot of these other details. And so why don't I kind of flip that concept on its head and focus on the collectors? And like, I am like, I think that that approach was actually really smart from my perspective in terms of giving me a long-term motivation to provide value to those Clue Crew members. And And like, I want to be like, nobody should be buying Clue because of stuff that I'm saying on this podcast. Like, buy Clue because you like, uh, the art, or buy any art because you like the art. Um, I don't want this to kind of turn into like a podcast, but like, I, I am very focused on how do I create value for the collectors. And I'm looking at it from like, so okay, maybe like just to touch on this for 1 minute. Um, so We've talked about the airdrops, and I've committed to doing one airdrop for all Clue Crew members, um, for all of my FX hash work moving forward. And, um, but one other thing that I've, uh, recently decided on, and I've shared this in— Is that there's gonna be times when I actually decide just to airdrop 2 pieces to the Clue Crew. And I think that, like, I really like the way that I've thought You know, one thing that I've struggled with so much in the past is like feeling liquidity strapped. And when, when you don't have liquidity, it like, it's stressful if, especially if like you see yourself, if you want to get into another project. Like what I, I don't know about anybody else, but like what I would do is I would sell something at its low point so that I could buy something at its peak and Then just feel really crappy the next day. Um, and I would just kind of rinse, repeat over and over. And it's— and it was only because I felt like I was liquidity strapped. And so, um, you know, I was talking about that diversity in the collectors early and how— earlier and how I like to maintain that. And so when I think about smaller wallets, like, all right, well, how can I help smaller wallets feel comfortable remaining as part of the Clue Crew? And I think one way of doing that is to airdrop them 2 pieces from some collections, not all collections. It'll probably be seldom, but my hope is that, all right, you know, they can still keep one piece of all of my artwork, but now they've got one extra piece that they can sell if they're feeling liquidity trapped. And all it does is just give them one more option in terms of how they want to manage their portfolio and collect, uh, and collect art. And, uh, hopefully, like, you know, I think kind of in the end my hypothesis and all, if I bring value and create value for the collectors, then that kind of gets reciprocated and they, you know, uh, value and appreciate my art and, you know, what I'm trying to do, um, to kind of, uh, support them as collectors.

Speaker C: So Yeah, I mean, maybe this is actually a good opportunity project, which you highlighted it. You kind of leaked it or previewed a little bit in a tweet just yesterday, you know, yesterday our time. I don't know if it was maybe morning your time.

Speaker A: Rocking the, uh, some Twitter banners, um, that you just released yesterday, or at least at the time of this recording.

Speaker B: As well, yeah. So this is you know this is just kind of the only the only promise that I've made with the Clue Crew sort of membership is that you get one airdrop for all future pieces or future collections. The the banner piece is just like another little kind of icing on the cake that I wanted to give to a couple of or give to anybody who wants one that seeing a few people adopt them as their Twitter banners. I was like man that looks awesome. And so, all right, let's formalize this and let me actually mint some of these for you. So that was just a little icing on the cake. In terms of what's coming next, so there are some things that I'm working on. As I've said, coding is not my specialty, not a strong suit. I'm also self-taught. And so everything I do takes time and it's me learning and trying to figure out, like, me knowing what my vision is, but then trying to figure out how do I get there. And for, uh, so some of these pieces are going to take a little, a little time to kind of fully develop. The— there is one. So, okay, so the tease from yesterday. Um, so there's a very special clue in, um, in Clue, and it is clue number 205.

Speaker A: Oh, okay.

Speaker B: So this is the only piece in the Clue collection that has both a symmetry and a special trait. And what I'm gonna do is actually like build a kind of a small collection just in honor of that one piece. So it's basically like a zoomed out variation on the lost/not lost special trait, which is what Clue 205 has. Um, I'm going to do like— and I think I'm going to call this Symmetric Clue because the vast majority of the collection is going to be symmetrical in some way. And what I'm also going to do is— so Clue 205 has the Dune Lakes color palette, and so I'm actually going to remove that color palette from Clue altogether and then switch that with what we like, the teaser that I shared yesterday, which is new color palette. Uh, it is neon-inspired and it makes me say bam every time I look at it, so I'm calling it Neonamonapia. Do you get it?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yes, that's my new—

Speaker C: Spell that right now.

Speaker B: Uh, that's okay. I'm not. And every time I need to, I've got to go search how to spell onamonia.

Speaker C: The official Clue style guide.

Speaker A: All right, bam.

Speaker B: So, and also, maybe could I just note, like, so as I'm thinking about this, the podcast will come out on Wednesday or Thursday?

Speaker C: Yeah, probably on the 9th by US time, like midday of the 9th of February.

Speaker B: All right, so let's go ahead and do this too. Um, let's go ahead and just like, let's announce this as, uh, as the drop. So I, I've shared on Twitter that I'm gonna give folks a 1-week advance notice. Whenever these— whenever I'm doing a drop. And this is our 1-week notice, so this will drop on Wednesday. I'll encourage people to kind of come in and listen to the podcast. And what I'm gonna do with this is I'm gonna— let's make this a nice start for the collectors, and we'll do a drop of 2 for all of the Clue Crew. Um, And I think what I'm going to do is probably just reserve 5 of those pieces that I mint for maybe like a Dutch auction or something. Um, still trying to work through those details, but my goal here is like 95% of this collection is going to go to the Clue Crew.

Speaker A: Sounds like I need to get onto the secondary market.

Speaker C: Uh, financial advice—

Speaker B: it's not financial advice.

Speaker A: It's not financial advice. I'm talking about myself.

Speaker B: Right, right.

Speaker A: And I can't wait to see what Onomatopoeia looks like.

Speaker B: Well, you've already seen the teaser for the Onomatopoeia trait or color palette, which that was the tweet from yesterday. But I'll share more details on this as we get closer to it. But yeah, I mean, like, I want to start off with a bang for Clue Crew and, you know, like I said, make sure I'm bringing value back to them.

Speaker C: Yeah, and I think because of kind of the funkiness of how the opening windows move right now, I'm looking at the calendar. So for us in the US, there's actually the closing of cycle 87 and the opening of cycle 88 on Wednesday. So I think you'll have to kind of look at your time zones, Preston, and figure out like what, which one of those 2 cycles you're gonna put it in.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: But if it's mostly gonna be minted into distributed minus this like auction system, then it might be a little like less finicky about exactly when it hits, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: Also, like, just congratulations on putting out something that people are going to be really looking forward to. Like, I know that you were really upfront on Twitter when you dropped Clue and announced the Clue Crew that like, this is not your full-time job. You have so many other like responsibilities just with your day job. You have family, you have friends. So I'm really glad that you were able to take that, like, that motivation and just start making new beautiful things. So kudos.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. I mean, it's, uh, it's just a lot of fun. Um, I really enjoy it, and, uh, it's, it's surprising a lot of hours that I put in, and it's quite difficult with the full-time job, but it's, it's just very rewarding. I've really enjoyed the space so far.

Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think of the number of hours just to get that logo project done for us. And you were thankfully a part of it too in that final week. So I was sprinting towards getting everything figured out and wrapping it for FXHash. But man, for how simple that logo project is, going from not coding to getting that done, number of hours. I can only imagine, you know, for a project like at the scale of Clue and just like the refinement of it, how much, how many, how much sleep you've kind of siphoned away into working on it, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: So let's, at, you know, this is the time cop, we're at 45 minutes. Do you want to kind of spend the last 15 minutes talking about some non-Clue stuff? Should we just talk about like you collect on fxhash, like our moments, or do you want to kind of keep going down the future?

Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, that sounds great. The— yeah, I mean, in terms of collecting on fxhash, I will admit that, like, I am not a great collector.

Speaker A: I am—

Speaker B: I've recently realized that I collect my physical art and very different way than how I collect my digital art. And as I've made that realization, I've decided that I'm gonna actually start to put my physical art hat on when I'm looking at things to really help me sort of filter through, like, what is it that I wanna own? When I'm looking at physical art, I'm looking at it and thinking, all right, this is gonna be on my wall for the next 20 years. I wanna love this piece of art. And I won't do that with digital pieces, but I need to start looking at my wallet as if it's my wall and just say, all right, like, if I'm putting it in my wallet, like, this is something that I love and I want to keep. And so I do want to kind of shift the way that I've been collecting. And I'm saying this out loud, hopefully as a way to commit myself to do so. And, but this is also like, because as, as an artist, it is really hard to keep up with everything that's going on in the fxhash community. I have really appreciated your podcast because, you know, when I listen in, I have 25% of what you all are talking about, and then the other 75%, like, I've got to go dig it up and look for it because the rest, like, the rest of the week my head's just buried in code. Yeah. Trying to figure out what I want to do and how I want to like, like what I want to create. And I just don't have the time to like pick my head up and and collect in the right way. So that's a kind of a constant battle for me in terms of being a collector. And this is also a reason that I love what FX Tender is doing. And I think that's like it's it's almost like I just want to stop. Kind of looking at the fxhash homepage and just look at the fx tender page, because that's like, that's the by far the easiest and fastest way for me to see what I want to like, what might be appealing and interesting to me. Um, and it takes all like, I feel like when you look at the fxhash page and I like, so when I first saw the fxhash page, it was probably October, November, early November, mid-November. I think Ken Consumer dropped into the GenArt, uh, Discord and said, hey, If you're not paying attention to this, come check it out. And so I went and checked it out and it just looked like a lot of kind of spaghetti being thrown at the wall to see what would stick. And I looked at it and I was like, all right, yeah, I don't think this is really for me at the moment, and decided to pass. But I think that if I had walked in and seen something like FX Tender, I would have been like, hey, all right, this is where I— this makes sense. This is where I want to be.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it just takes all that spaghetti that's falling off the wall and just really like just shows you the spaghetti that's going to stick, like the artwork that is going to get traction, um, or that is like, you know, worth the investment. No, not financial advice, um, for anybody that's looking to collect.

Speaker C: So cool. The analogy I've seen with FXTender is that like if FX hash is like the L1 of generative art on Tezos, then things like FX Tender, the L2s that are going to be built on top of them that are going to streamline. And I'm sure there'll be more, right? I mean, and that's kind of the nature that Cypher has developed the project is that all the APIs and stuff, it's like all anyone can hook into and build on top of it. So I know I'm excited to see where that project goes and what other kind of Similar projects might arise as well, right? Because discovery is such a problem. And this is something that I don't think we've talked about it on the show, but there's so many projects— not so, not so many, but there are like a handful of projects every week that you look at them and just go like, man, I really hope this one doesn't get lost, you know? And it goes through that cycle of like being, you know, Yeah. botted and flipped, and then it's got 30 or 40% of the inventory on the on the market, but it's still such a good piece. And you just know that if we had 10 times the user base that we have now, a lot of that inventory would be bought up and it would have a nice stable floor price and it could grow and flourish. But what happens if it takes us months to get to that 10x user base and now this is like thousands and thousands of projects buried? Yeah. So we need these L2s to kind of just celebrate that work. And also that's kind of what we're trying to do on the podcast, right? Is kind of create an oral history of what goes on on the platform week to week, because every week feels like a year and it's so hard to remember. I almost feel like they're time capsules that someone who comes to FXHash in a year could go back and listen to our show and be like, even though it's meant to be kind of like news of the week, it's actually kind of cool to hear about that drop that maybe has been forgotten for 6 months and go back and revisit it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that also one thing that shouldn't be overlooked is I think the FX# community, at least the Discord community, is really good at finding good art, picking up, like, seeing the things that have a lot of potential and finding those that are maybe older that have been overlooked. And bringing them back to life. I've been, I've been really impressed with like some of the collectors and things that they've kind of identified in the Discord.

Speaker A: We've all benefited from some of KenConsumer's alpha over the years, or I guess weeks. It feels like years.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: I know that I've learned so much from the, the people in Discord and people on Twitter just kind of You know, helping to communicate some of what makes the work great. So, you know, always indebted to to them. Absolutely. So, have you actually? What are some of the things that you enjoyed that you've picked up? I know that we've talked about how you don't have the time necessarily to be, you know, in the Discord, like you know, looking at every single like drop window. Is there anything that you've that's really given you joy and that you have collected because you're like, yes, this could go on my wall for 20 years?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, I mean, so the other day, uh, when some of the Mountain View drama was, uh, going on, I, I took advantage of the opportunity and picked up a Mountain View for, um, and was really excited to add that piece to my collection. I've been really wanting to get a Stitch, but like didn't book the day that I wanted to and unfortunately missed out. That's kind of one of the regrets that I've had recently. And then, you know, I was able to mint several Glass that I really like. And there's a couple other pieces. I like that. I like the Smolskulls. I think more than anything, I just really like— I love the art, but I really love the community. And I think it's just a great example of where this space can go with like the right— with the right community built around it. It's also kind of, you know, what I'd like to kind of eventually build when we think about Clue Crew. Obviously a much smaller group given the size, but yeah, I like the Smolskulls.

Speaker A: 2 out of 2 for our interviews who love Glass. Yeah, I just need to make this our intro question, uh, to the icebreakers. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love Glass?

Speaker C: Yeah, how much Glass do you own?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Forever pumped that.

Speaker B: Uh, and can I flip the script for a second? So we talked about this, you started to raise this earlier And like, I wanted to flip the script and ask you guys a question in terms of favorite fxhash moments. So, you know, you'd started to ask me earlier, I think I've covered the—

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: I will just share that there's one other, and it is when Rich Poole purchased a black and white Clue. And that was just like, that meant a lot. I really admire Rich as an artist and I just think he's fantastic and has been really kind of helpful to me when I've looked out, when I've reached out looking for support. And yeah, when he bought that piece, it meant a lot to me. So I really appreciated that. But I think those are like, those are my big FX hash moments with drop day, seeing all the memes in the FX hash Discord. But you all have been around for longer and have participated much more in the community kind of aspect of it. And so what are your FX Hash favorite moments?

Speaker A: Will, I'll let you go first. I don't want to steal any potential moment that you might have.

Speaker C: Oh, I mean, I think the obvious one obviously is starting the show. And it's interesting. I mean, you know, Trinity and I have known each other for a really long time, and throughout the years we've like always talked about starting projects together of some sort. Usually they're more business-minded than this, um, but this is the first one we actually executed on, and they happened so quickly, you know, like from— I think it was around Christmas time the end of last year that I was just like, this is an opportunity, right? There's no one really creating— I mean, there are people creating some kind of secondary media around the— on the— around the platform, but it's either like written in blogs or Or releases NFTs. Like, there's someone who does an NFT magazine actually with interviews with artists. And it's like, we need some consistent audio thing, something you can subscribe to through an app, like a podcast. And it was just awesome to start it. And you were a little reluctant at first, Trinity, but then I kind of convinced you into—

Speaker A: I'm not a podcaster. I don't listen to podcasts.

Speaker C: Right. But neither am I. Neither am I. But we're just naturals. That's just what it is. We've got radio voices.

Speaker A: We've got 6 years of banter going for us.

Speaker C: So, yeah. So I think that's the obvious one.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. I'm surprised that you didn't say like the NFT drop. You know, I, I, for me, that was like a really fun moment, similar to what you were saying, uh, Preston, you know, where it's, 'cause I control the wallet. Just if I get hacked, please, please, people don't, don't steal our stuff. Um, But like going through, like we were screen sharing, putting in all of like the information, the descriptions, like arguing about how do we capitalize things, um, and then just pushing the button and waiting 3 hours and then just holding our breaths, I think collectively a little bit, just to see what would happen. And I think when it was going through and just checking like over time like who was buying what, it was just like this overwhelming sense of like, they love us, they really love us, you know, and just kind of feeling that support come back from the community. And I think that was just amazing overall.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think those are both just great podcast-related ones. And then I'll offer some like market and collection-related ones because I think also, I don't think we would have gotten to the podcast if it weren't for like one key sale. I made. And, and then I'll complement that by like one key purchase I've made that I'm really proud of, which is when Toxy released Defrag 2. I think— I can't remember if I got one or two of them. I think maybe I was lucky enough to get two of that. And I've— at that point, I was still very much just like a hardcore flipper mode mentality, like learning the platform and just trying to really only viewing it as a way to accumulate Tezos and not even And hadn't really broken through the threshold of like getting into the art at that point. I think I sold one right immediately, probably for 2 or 3x mint. And then the next day, as collectors started coming in, I sold my second one after it revealed for like 700 Tez, which then allowed me to make a month worth of mistakes, like collecting and figuring out, but also just giving me some Tez to play with. And then And then actually engage in the secondary, whereas before I'd only been kind of minting and flipping and trying to do this mint 2, sell 1 strategy that we talked about on our one kind of like collection-oriented episode. And if it had not been for that one big windfall sale, I think there was certainly the possibility that like the momentum would have fizzled out for me and I would be facing down like how many more exchange transactions and putting Helped me kind of get my feet in the community and like feel good about, I don't know, being able to spend and play without it really impacting my personal finances too much. It was just very, very lucky. It's a big moment.

Speaker A: That moment.

Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, and then I guess the, the other one was like that very early on, for whatever reason, within my first day or two on fxhash. I bought an RGB, and I don't know why I gravitated to it or how I even found it. I wasn't even really on the Discord that much, and I don't remember at all how I found it, but I found that piece and I really love— I'd actually collected some similar stuff on HEN that were like Game of Life inspired, like kind of like Game of Life inspired. And I was just looking through it and I found one that I really liked. It was like 50 tez at the time, which I'm sure was way way above floor, and I just bought it. And I was like— and it's also sub-100, uh, like ID number on the site. So I was like, wow, this is like one of the first 100 things made on the site. And like, never had the expectation that obviously now like it's become this grail piece. And so I felt, you know, that also has been a big, big moment for me on the site. It was like, just— I don't know why I gravitated towards it or I picked the one that I did, and it just feels good to have one in the vault. You know, it's what I use as my Discord profile picture.

Speaker A: And I think the other one there is not selling it at 600 Galaxy.

Speaker C: I've listed it a couple times. I've listed— I actually, yeah, I've listed it a couple times and then delisted it, and it's never, you know, now it hasn't been listed for a while.

Speaker B: That's, that's— yeah, yeah, that is awesome. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker C: Congrats on that. Let's hear Trinity. You have to have at least like one.

Speaker A: I mean, I don't have as many like big moments as that. You know, I think that there have been some really fun slash stressful times of multiple times of operating it with like 0.3 Tez in the wallet where you like really even don't have enough liquidity to list anymore, which is how I became a big fan of the batch relist tool. Netlify. Please use it only at your own risk. But like, even though like that is not fun because you're kind of gatekept out of literally every single drop, including Clue, there's something about the scrappiness that's included there where it's like digging yourself out of a hole. There's a sort of a sense of accomplishment and just kind of scrambling to figure out how do I like get my liquidity back? Like, It forces you to really look at your collection as well, to try to understand what you wanna price things at and what you wanna put on the market. That said, I also enjoy having liquidity. And I think that, you know, I've talked about this before, one of my favorite moments was, I think it was on the same, was it the same day that Sequence was dropped as well? 'Cause it was a big day, 'cause I remember I actually went to the office. You know, I work from home, I go to the office like, Once every 5 months, something like that. So it was very special for me to be like sitting at my desk while like there was a small office get-together in the background. Like everybody's at the bar and I'm just like sitting at my laptop, like constantly hitting like the refresh button, just trying to see what's happening. Um, but you know, Farbteiler came out. Um, I've talked about this a few times and, you know, I had seen some Twitter previews and I was like, oh my gosh, This is just beautiful. I had already loved the Signatory by Eric Swan previously. Um, and then I think people were just, you know, it had been a big day. There were a lot of big days back in December and just continuing to hit the mint button on Farbteiler because I was like, this is amazing. Like the colors are insane. The structure and the architecture is insane. Like, everything about this piece is just insane. Like, you know, I ended up minting 13 of them. I was like looking around, like, I guess the internet, or just looking around at fx hash being like, why is this taking so long to mint out? And I was like, I know I'm onto something. And then just being right, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Just like having like the eye and having the vision and just being able to predict something that like Other people might like, even though it like wasn't taking off like in that exact moment.

Speaker C: So thank you for telling me. So I minted three because you were like, "You need to get some of these," and I was like, "Okay." I was like, "Are you sure? I feel like this one's a trap." Like what?

Speaker A: It was two tez. Nothing is a trap. So that was a great moment. And then you know obviously, you know, FX hash is. Ultimately, in some respects, just like one giant, like, gambling ring. Because like, you're buying a thing, there's some sort of skill to get there, right? Especially in the early days when it, like, you couldn't just mint through the front end. You always had to find some of these alternate tools in order to be successful. And then like, if you were able to mint, it was like, you had that success because you successfully like outmaneuvered all like the weird blockchain things, all of the weird wallet things.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: You had found your way to win and succeed. And then obviously there's just the lottery component of what is your output? Hitting the jackpot a few times, like getting a 1 in 4 Akeese dragon, for example, is just— it feels so good. Or getting a sequence with the hole in it, which is like a 2%.

Speaker C: Your red Iskra.

Speaker A: A red Iskra. There's just some of those moments moments like that where it's like, this is just like, it's just like a weird moment of like, like success in a way, or just not success isn't the right word, but just like, I mean, it's, it's very like onomatopoeic. It's, it's, it's like bang.

Speaker C: It's an extension of the poker analogy that I was making on our collection episode, which is that you do a lot of things that are, uh, process-oriented, but you know that just because you're Behaving in a process-oriented way doesn't mean that your outcome is always going to be good. And so when you— because of the nature of luck in a game like poker, right? So, but as long as you're being results-oriented and like following a process, like those wins feel really, really good because, you know, like I'm putting my— I'm accumulating enough edge in all of my actions that it is— here's the cases where it pays off, right? So like, I think that's that feeling that you should go play poker. That's not financial advice.

Speaker A: That's so dry and unemotional. Don't we love like the storytelling and the big hits and wins? Like, that's what— yeah, like, that's like— it's the emotional part that feels good too. Although I guess just the satisfaction of executing process and, you know, it was like playing Magic, right, too?

Speaker C: Yeah, like when you've designed a deck and to behave a certain way and then you actually— I don't know if you play any games like that, Preston, but like you design your deck with a certain idea in mind But then again, you're shuffling the cards, so there's randomness to what you draw and like the order in which you see things. So it's when you hit the middle of the bell curve that you designed for and like everything's humming that you feel really good when you play that game versus like the liar edges are where you kind of can feel bad because you don't get to do what you want to do. Yeah, I think that is— that's a lot. Maybe we went longer than expected.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. That was great. It's like the adrenaline keeps us going, uh, when you get those little wins.

Speaker C: It is, yeah.

Speaker B: Same thing for me on the generative art side when creating things and I'm able to overcome one of those, like, challenges that's been driving me nuts for days. It's that adrenaline is what can keep me going for the next 2 weeks.

Speaker A: And I think it's like when you were able to solve that problem and figure out, Like, what is the breakthrough moment? Right? Like, there's got to be something really nice about that as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: Did you know you can put arrays inside of arrays? Whoa, mind blown.

Speaker B: Cool.

Speaker C: I mean, do you want to— I feel like we're at an hour. I know it's getting late on your side. Anything you kind of want to wrap up, put a bow on this and send us out with Verse?

Speaker B: Just a big thank you to the two of you, um, for putting this together, because this is where I get my, uh, FX Hash news every week and, uh, get a lot of updates on what's been going on and some of the big drops. And I, I really appreciate it, and I've gotten a lot of value from it, uh, as someone who's trying to collect more, um, but gets wrapped up into the creating side. It's, it's just nice to have this space to— or this podcast to be able to get caught up on everything. Everything. Yeah, I think that's what we're here for. So thank you. I really appreciate it.

Speaker A: Everything that you do and also for the exclusive drop info. I think everybody's going to be really excited to see everything that you have in store. So that's awesome.

Speaker C: Cool. Well, that feels like an awesome place to end it. Thanks again, Preston. Abstractment. We'll always get your name right moving forward and really looking forward to everything you have to offer on the platform and the community. You know, I think you've approached it in a really— like, I think that's a big part of why you've gotten the reception you have, you know, aside also the fact that art is cool and good. So it's like a win on every level. And, uh, yeah, I guess I don't know, how do you end an interview episode? I think it's just end it by, by clicking stop. So thanks everyone. Thanks Preston. Thanks Trinity for getting up early, and we'll see you all soon.

Speaker B: Thank you.