Tradition Meets Technology: Verse's Bold Approach
and some hidden gems...
Hello friends,
Let's talk about the platform that's been making waves lately: verse.works. Led by Jamie Gourley, verse has been at it non-stop, mixing fully digital collections with real-life exhibitions. The sleek, traditional art gallery aesthetic — think Frieze/Pace — is just the tip of the iceberg, as verse is all about pushing the boundaries with blockchain and NFT tech.
They've been ahead of the curve with features like credit card purchasing, QQL-style seed picking for minting, and an on-site wallet for smooth artwork holding.
Verse was put on the generative art map with the release of Landscape with Carbon Capture by zancan, an unlimited long-form collection that ran out of control with over 11,400 mints for $100 — over $1M on primary — and 470 ETH on secondary volume, according to OpenSea. Melissa Wiederrecht’s Cosmic Rays release was also unique. The total supply (2,000) decreased by one every minute, shorting the collection cap during the sales period. 911 pieces were minted at a fixed $400 = $364,000!
More recently, they released a 10-edition AI piece with Botto —a decentralized autonomous AI artist, which I covered last month…
Here are some hard facts about verse.works:
Their first-ever exhibition ran from June 16 to July 7, 2022: This Is Tomorrow: Part I.
106 featured artists (that’s about nine artists per month).
58 exhibitions until now (that’s about 4.5 shows per month!).
I explored their vast collections catalog to uncover some hidden gems. These are my top picks, and some of them are still up for grabs in the primary market: