Notes from the Road: State of Digital Art and Crypto

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Hello friends!

My 'holidays' are wrapping up as I get ready to head back to Spain after spending some time in the US. I say 'holidays' because I haven’t exactly been offline—between publishing podcast episodes and keeping the Academy by Blind Gallery running smoothly (spoiler: it’s going great! We’ve had amazing feedback on ilithya’s Pixel Shader course).

Visiting Florida, Nevada, and Utah was a lot of fun, and even though I’ve been traveling, I’ve kept up with the digital art and crypto space—mostly through Farcaster and X, and jotting down notes along the way. As I’m finishing up packing, I thought I’d put together a 'notes dump' on the most interesting trends and events I’ve observed.

It's been an interesting few months in the digital art space, with some major shake-ups. In July 2024, Known Origin shut down after being a key player in the NFT space (early on). It’s hard to see these marketplaces go, especially since Prohibition.art, founded by Jordan Lyall, followed suit not long after. I still remember having Jordan as the first guest on my podcast almost a year ago—how time flies. Despite their ambitions, the realities of running platforms in this space have proven tough.

Outside the crypto art bubble, platforms like Friends.tech have also called it quits. While not directly related to art, this just reinforces how challenging it is to build something sustainable in the crypto world (something was telling me friend.tech wasn't going to last).

But where some platforms are folding, others are launching new and exciting projects. The team behind gallery.so launched a new product called moshi.cam. It’s all about bringing Polaroids onchain, and they've added some cool features like tradeable frames. Similarly, deca.art - a similar product to gallery.so - announced an ambitious project. Shape, a new Layer 2 blockchain built on Ethereum and tailored specifically for artists and creators. Another team exploring something a bit different is Bright Moments with View.art, aiming to curate and showcase digital art in screens in a clean, straightforward way.

When it comes to platforms gaining steam, both Zora and Rodeo (by the team behind Foundation) have been making moves this year. Zora has seen impressive growth, and they’ve rolled out some interesting features like sparks (a new way to package ETH pricing into friendly figures) and tap to mint. They also launched a mobile app to make onchain interactions easier, which is something that’s been a long time coming.

Meanwhile, I’ve been having a blast using Rodeo. I keep minting art, mainly because the Farcaster integration makes it so easy to discover artists, and it’s affordable. Plus, the referral rewards are a nice bonus. Zora, on the other hand, is buzzing with all kinds of creativity—memes, videos, audio, you name it.

Moving on to some crypto art performing well, XCopy and his popular Max Pain and Frens series have been gaining traction, despite the market conditions. Over the last 3 months, the floor has gone up +117% (0.36 ETH -> 0.8 ETH)... And 80% in USD terms.

That reminded me of an early morning when I won a Max Pain on Kevin Rose' giveaway... Good times.

While the hype around NFTs might have cooled off, there’s a clear trend toward hyper-curation in the generative art world. As things have slowed down, platforms like fxhash.xyz and Art Blocks are focusing more on curated collections and real-life experiences, which are proving to be valuable ways to engage collectors.

fxhash recently hosted an IRL event featuring Entangled by Bjørn Staal, while Art Blocks made a big comeback with Bokeh by Michael Kozlowski, which also emphasizes physical artwork. These moves tell me that while the market might be quieter than it was during the NFT boom, platforms see value in building more meaningful, curated collections and events. The self-service approach that once ruled the space feels outdated.

Talking about generative art...

Over the past months, I've been collaborating with generative artist, architect and designer Heeey to bring an educational material about the history of this movement to life.

Heeey put together an amazing research, filled with historical artworks in addition to his opinion and perspective. He examined pivotal moments, key figures, and groundbreaking movements that shaped its trajectory throughout the last 60 years.

If you want to get a deeper understanding about computational art, I truly recommend this course.

On the AI art front, Refik Anadol dropped some huge news recently. The creation of the world’s first Museum of AI Arts, Dataland, in Los Angeles. And it’s not just any building—it’s designed by Frank Gehry! This is a big deal for AI art and shows just how seriously it's being taken in the mainstream.

Also, Botto keeps thriving and has now expanded its token to the Base network. I'm curious to see how this cross chain experiment evolves - remember, the token powers Botto's DAO, which is used to vote and curate Botto's artworks.

Ganbrood recently debuted a new AI series, Daemonica Syntheticum, on Verse, curated by Tender. While browsing the collection, I noticed how Verse has been doing some heavy lifting by integrating popular ETH collections into their platform. They’ve also announced plans to integrate with Tezos, which is a smart move as the space continues to fragment. Having some consolidation—even if it’s just on a dashboard—helps bring a bit of order to the chaos.

Speaking of Base, we can’t ignore how fast it’s been growing. Most of the tools I use as a content creator—like Paragraph.xyz , Pods.media, and HyperSub.xyz —are apps built on or integrated with Base. Plus, platforms like Rodeo, Zora, and many from the Farcaster ecosystem have found a home on Base as well.

That said, there’s been a lot of talk about decentralization, or the lack of it, given that Base is built by Coinbase. While there are definitely concerns, it’s hard to argue with the speed and adoption happening on the platform right now. It’ll be interesting to see how the conversation evolves and clearer plans towards decentralization (although those could slow down the development speed).

Meanwhile, Tezos community keeps showing up. Even though volumes are lower than some other chains, the community remains super supportive of artists. Here is a new artwork, presented at Token 2049 in Singapore, by Agoria: {Compend-AI 2049} on Tezos .

I wasn’t able to attend Token 2049, but it looked like most of the attendees were from the broader crypto world, rather than the digital art scene, based on what I saw online... Which includes a lot of Solana and its Breakpoint event. It still feels geared more toward trading and memecoins than art or non speculative use cases, but their ecosystem keeps growing. I definitely need to dig deeper into what’s happening there, since it’s probably the chain I know the least about.

Another event just around the corner is the announcement of the Lumen Prize winners. Out of nearly 2,000 applications from over 60 countries, 65 finalists were selected by the Lumen Prize Jury. The awards ceremony will take place in London this October, and I’m really excited to see the winners across their well-defined categories. Big props to the Lumen team for coming up with this thoughtful categories: Still Image, Moving Image, Interactive Immersive, and Futures.

Looking through the list of finalists, I was thrilled to see some familiar names—past podcast guests and featured newsletter artists—getting recognized: Ana Maria Caballero, Alex Estorick, Sasha Stiles and Nice Aunties.

The last note I took over the last weeks is a new trend: private sales. I'm not if it is just me, but I've seen an array of private sales mentioned in my timeline. Not sure what is causing this trend, and due to its nature, we can't really confirm an uptick in private sales. We can ponder on the effects thought.

On the plus side, they allow collectors and (sometimes) artists to negotiate directly, often leading to better deals, exclusive access, or avoiding marketplace fees. There’s also a sense of trust and relationship-building between buyer, seller and the brokers. However, the downside is the lack of transparency, which can sometimes lead to uncertainty about pricing or authenticity. Plus, without the visibility of a public sale, artists might miss out on the buzz and potential new buyers that a listing on an open marketplace can bring.

In such a fast-moving and unpredictable space, the recent closures serve as a tough reminder of just how hard it is to build something that lasts in crypto. At the same time, solid teams experimenting with new ideas show that there’s still plenty of talent and passion driving things forward. Physical events, exhibitions, and awards keep the spirit alive, offering much-needed connection beyond our digital bubbles.

As always, share your thoughts in the comments or mention anything that caught your eye recently.

Until next time,

- Kaloh

PS - Let's connect on Farcaster, X or Instagram.

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