Arbitrum x Transient Labs
Anna Hello, GM. How are you all? I'm super excited to be hosting this AMA. By the way, my name is Anna, community manager at the Origin Foundation. And today, we are with our friends from Trention Labs. And, yeah, we are going to be discussing about art, about NFTs, about, yeah, the about the story of of some artists that we have today, for sure about the Genesis catalog announcement as well, maybe some alphas around it. Let's see. And and, yeah, super excited for this one. How how are you, Al? And who's behind the Transient account?
Daniel Hey, Anna. This is, Daniel from Transient Labs. And then we also have David from our team, and I'll let everyone see their introduction. But Roger is from the twenty four hours of our community who helped spearhead this Genesis catalog token initiative, which we're really excited to dive into as it's kind of been a bit under wraps in the last couple months. Should we do a a round of introductions then?
Anna Yeah. Totally. Let's let's start then. Thank you, Daniel, for sure. We're super excited for sure for this. And, yeah, maybe can we start with you? You want to share something something else about you?
Daniel So my name is Daniel. I work at Transient Labs, and I lead marketing and artist relations. And, we, you know, recently started working with Arbitrum this year, and we were just exploring some creative use cases, which is where the Genesis catalog token idea came into play. I'd love to pass it over to Roger to introduce himself and maybe mention artists that will be presenting today as well just so I make sure they're up as speakers.
Roger Let's go. Hey, everybody. Glad to be here. Proud to represent twenty four hours of art. So twenty four hours of art started as a daily independent art report published across x and now Farcaster as well as a newsletter, and it's evolved to much more. So at the end of the calendar year 2023, we introduced the community, and each of those community members sort of owns a day of 2024. And I see a lot of those community members in here. We have over 320 unique people in this community, and it's evolved into quite a collective. It's a melting pot of artists, collectors, builders, really anyone interacting in and around this lovely space that we occupy. And Transient Labs, through it all, has been our partner. Our our partner on the technical side could not be more proud of that relationship.
And so after we launched and and dug into the year 2024, we were, I think, you know, looking for productive ways to repartner or to do something else fun together. Transient, always ahead of the game. Genesis catalog token, that's what we're talking about today, came across the radar, and 24 hours of our collective was the perfect fit. So, essentially, it allows well, actually, you know what? Round of introductions. Let me let me hold the thought on the Genesis catalog token and just actually grease the wheels for a lot of the amazing artists that we have here. So I'd be remiss not to start with Justin Wetch, partner in crime on the design side of twenty four hours of art. You see you'll literally see his artwork every single day as part of this project. And then beyond that, we have Paper Buddha in the house and on stage.
We have Selkie in the house and on stage. And then in and across the audience, just in order of who I'm seeing, Art Jedi is with us. Ben Meadows is with us. True Drew is with us. Jose is here and many more. Others not necessarily participating in the campaign, but I see Ryland down there. I see Seth down there. And, again, so many more people. So that's my story.
Anna Wow. This is great, Dan. And, yeah, I'm super excited to be here, like, with all this talent. It's super, super cool, to be honest. You you you are the stars of the day today. And cool. Yeah. Well, I may maybe we can, like, share more to the community today about, like, the inspiration behind this concept. And, also, like, I'd like to know as well about the artist point of view regarding the the challenges that are out there around digital art. Like, what are those challenges that digital artists are facing at the moment?
Daniel Yeah. No. This is a a perfect way to segue into the Genesis catalog token and, like, where that concept came from. And so the short kind of explanation is often artists opt to reveal unpublished works or works in progress, unminted works on on social media platforms like X, Warpcast, or Instagram.
Speaker 7 But that kind of leads
Daniel them it opens up vulnerability for other people to steal their work and claim it as their own. And so that's kind of the root of Genesys Catalog tokens is we utilize story inscriptions, which are kind of our way of adding on chain text to a particular token to capture on chain provenance of the unpublished works before they are shared on social media or before they're minted. I'd love for Roger. You know, I think you really saw the value immediately on the first call we had to kinda just talk about what what sparked your interest in this concept.
Roger Yeah. I'd love to do that. So I think you you mentioned work being stolen. I think that's key. I think the word provenance is key here. Right? Having something sort of immutably there, right, indisputable. You share the work you want when you want. But the other key aspect to it from my perspective and where I really saw the value come through is it doesn't represent a supply increase. And I think, you know, everybody has different philosophies on supply as they should. Everyone needs to to follow their own path, and there's really no right answer. But nevertheless, people do have their opinions. The nice thing about a Genesis catalog token is it doesn't affect somebody's core supply, where they're essentially able to use this catalog token. And like Daniel said, through transient tech and story inscriptions, they're inscribing onto the singular catalog token.
So they can create sort of this endless running story really as long as someone might wanna keep it up. I mean, you're you're gonna hear from artists today that are are using it for a one off, meaning they're taking you deep, deep, deep into a singular work of art to take you behind the scenes, and that's an amazing use case. And still others, you're gonna see this long running journal. They have plans to keep this going for quite some time. And I think I mean, it's all thrilling, but that's the fun of it. They get the choice, and it's not about minting, you know, extra work after extra work. It's really adding to a singular token to feature anything they want that can then be minted, sold, collected, etcetera, anywhere else. And I I think that's a fun chain of events.
Daniel Follow-up question, Roger. Like, you know, we we internalize this within the community, so we never made really a public announcements about this Genesis catalog concept. And so this is really our second time, I guess, we did a Twitter space to talk about the concept originally when, like, the soft launch it. But now we can like, we have it out there. So that's kinda like the proof of concept. And now we have creators who went through the flow, who've created the Genesis Catalog tokens and have really great, hopefully, great experiences to share about it. How are we like, how are you releasing these reports? Like, are you showcasing these artists through your platform and community, or is there gonna be a report at the end? How does it tie into the twenty four hours of art community in particular?
Roger Yes. So the the mission of twenty four hours of art is everyone came aboard for a a multitude of reasons. Some people came aboard for patronage. Some people came aboard for the art token. Some people came aboard for the information. To me, all of that is amazing, and and it's a huge shout out to everyone who did that. But to me, it doesn't change the fact that I, in turn, wanna homage and honor every single person within this collective. This is a unique opportunity to do that for the artists. Now at first, I'll be honest, at first, I was thinking, okay. We're gonna do it through a report. Right? We're gonna release the the catalog token campaign internally. The artists who wanna participate are gonna be able to to mint and go through sort of the transient pipeline, come out the other side with something that they're proud of.
And then we're going to create a branded twenty four hours of art report, including these artists. Target goals, 24 artists overall in this first ever report, and that'll be it. And that'll be that. But, you know, after we sat with that concept for a little while, started to feel some artists go through the workflow, kinda wanted more. I mean, this is this is sort of maybe it's a fatal flaw of mine, but I always wanna go a level deeper. And so I said, you know what? Instead of sort of jamming everyone in one report and that having that being the sole touch point, as awesome as I think that could be and will be, because I'm gonna get to it, we're still doing that. I wanted to give a unique and singular spotlight to each artist first. And so that's what you're seeing rollout now.
So you're saying so here here are the steps as to what's happening. An artist, and we're gonna talk to several, are going through this process. They're seeing they're seeing their own value in that. I'll leave those words to them. They're going through the the transient tech pipeline coming out the other side with an actual minted Genesis catalog token on Arbitrum. It's either a singular token or they've already started to inscribe stories on that token again on Arbitrum. Awesome. Now on our end, one by one, we're crafting a story about each artist. Thus far, there have been three. We led with a story about Justin Wetch, then a story about Selke, and just today before the space is about Paper Buddha, and then True Drew, who's here, True Thomas, and the crowd is gonna be the next story and on and on we'll go.
And we're gonna do 24 of these singular stories. When that process comes to an end, then the report gets created, and it sort of gets batch created Lot of those story elements get put in there. We're working on a place to host that on a nice website, clean PDF, and I'm really excited about that step by step. I think it gives each creator a chance to step into that spotlight and hopefully, by extension, get a little more shine out of this whole thing.
Daniel Absolutely. I'm just I was looking to pin up all the three, catalogs that you're mentioning here. I just need to find Justin so I can pin it to the top. Do we wanna jump in and and start talking with creators here?
Roger I love that. You want me to queue one up?
Daniel Yeah. Let's do it. So let
Roger let's start where it began. Right? Let's start in order of operation and and, you know, I think, hopefully, we'll have plenty of time where we can get a couple of those who are participating but don't have their stories published. You know, for those listening to the spaces, ideally, those and by the way, those creators hopefully just launch into your concept. You don't have to save it for the story. We'll, of course, put that together when the time comes. But the first story out of the gate is Justin Wetch. So, again, you know, I'm a little biased on Justin. Justin and I I've had the pleasure of working with Justin Wetch for three years now, across multiple brands, including artifacts and twenty four hours of art. We work together every day. We have we have an everyday everyday, and that is a lot of fun.
By the way, shout out to Beeple. Seventeen years of every days today. That that's a fun he's obviously an inspiration to what we do as well. So I've worked worked with Justin for these three years, kicked this off this year, and, like, right away when this campaign was coming out, I I went right to Justin and was like, hey. No pressure. It has to be your choice. I love you in this campaign if it makes sense. It did make sense. The great Justin, which is here, all the ART tokens that you see, I lead the creative. He leads the execution and adds far more than that. He's really he does step into the co creative chair, on plenty of days. Can't say enough good things about him. Justin Wach, how are you?
Speaker 9 Thanks for that lovely introduction, Roger. I am doing great. It's 45 degrees and mildly sunny in the beautiful state of Alaska, which is about as good as you can hope for. So I'm
Speaker 9 about it. And happy to talk about the GCT campaign today.
Roger So, Justin, when I posed the question, right, when I came to you and I said, hey. If you wanna be in it, I want you in it. What do you think? What what was it actually that drew you to the concept?
Speaker 9 Right. So the value that the creators see in the GCT technology, especially on Arbitrum, as Roger addressed, obviously, there's no supply increase. There's the provenance element. But the biggest thing for me that it helped me explore was more storytelling. Because, ordinarily, I'm a bit of a perfectionist to a fault. I don't like to share behind the scenes of my work. I don't like to share process, but that's kind of you kinda have to do that these days. And, this kinda helped me step into those waters, and, I thought it was a fun way to actually show the development of the concept, through multiple images from a sketch on my iPad in Procreate to the beginnings of iterations on the idea to the different directions that it could have gone, all the way to the actual finished render and to actually talk about the process, which I don't often do.
So for me, the biggest thing that made me say yes was was a very obvious fit to me of something that I'd been wanting to do and to express in my artistic journey that I really hadn't had the opportunity to do yet.
Roger And I think just keep keep steamrolling there. So I I I love the backstory there. And then what did you actually create? Because I think you have you have the you're taking so as you're as everyone's gonna see, there's several, you know, several paths that different creators are following. You definitely have that path of let's go deep on a singular work of art.
Speaker 9 Right. I wanted to to go into the process of the creation of this piece, which is titled, I am the question and the answer, the seeker, and the discovery. It features this humanoid robot reaching out towards a butterfly. The full piece is an animation where you can see the the sun rays going through the forest. I think it's beautiful. I might be a little biased. But that thing, you can you can really get a sense of these questions, especially in the times we're living in and, you know, AI, ASI, AGI is just around the corner. And so the question of, you know, machine intelligence, artificial intelligence, and whether such a creation is a sentient creature, those kind of things always lead me to consider the aspects of my own human experience where it's like you experience these moments of wonder, and I'm you know, if I ever do talk with an AI and it convinces me that it has a sense of wonder like you see depicted in this piece of art, then I might be inclined to agree that they are sentient. But that that's a bit of a diatribe, but
Speaker 9 of you know, as artists, you kind of ingest the culture of what's going on around you, the history as you're living it. And I think it's the artist's job to or some artist's job, some are more introspective. But for a lot of artists, it's, you naturally ingest what's going on around you, and it's sort of your role to crystallize, you know, the trends that are happening, the technological changes, potentially the most massive in human history in this case. And you sort of crystallize those and you show people what it means because I think since ancient times, it's been the role of the artist to show the rest of humanity what things mean to the human experience. So for me, this was an opportunity to just kinda go deep on something like that where I really haven't before. As I mentioned, I'm more into just sharing finished, polished work.
I like to let the art speak for itself, but I think a lot of times that just doesn't come across in the modern era. People are extremely busy. People might look at a piece of art that you make for five or ten seconds at most if you're lucky if the algorithm even shows you to people. So, to me, it was this is a very good opportunity to go deep on all of the thought and care that goes into crafting an art piece by Justin Wedge.
Roger And then, Justin, looking ahead to, you know, the the inscriptions themselves and the ultimate creation of this report, you know, maybe some final words on just how you'd like someone to interact with your Genesys catalog token specifically.
Speaker 9 I hope that people interacting, with my GCT token, will see the the story of how it comes together. And I it's kind of like, you know, I'm I've always really loved behind the scenes documentaries on making of movies or classic albums or things like that and, like, seeing how all the different creative choices came together in the different directions that it could have gone. But, ultimately, being an artist is about making choices, and your voice is the sum total of the choices that you choose to make in your artistic journey. So I just wanted to be a little bit more raw and unperfectionist about this and let people look at the, you know, my haphazard sketch on Procreate or and kind of, my hope is that people might see that and be inspired and say, oh, even you know, my hope is that you see the end result as something that's very high quality and polished.
And you might say, oh, things like that come from beginnings like like anyone can create. So I think what what I hope that people get from it is and why I was so drawn to the storytelling element is just seeing the process all the way through and understanding a little bit more about the decisions that go into creations like this.
Roger I I think it's a beautiful message and would have the encourage. Again, Justin's one of the stories that's been published already, and it's literally up up there, the last pinned tweet. So you will you will see it right there up on top of the spaces. So, Justin, thank you so much. And, yeah, thanks for being the first story out of the gate and, you know, can't can't wait to see the the inscriptions come to life, the report come to life. Yeah. Number one. There we go. Let's keep rolling because what I'm realizing is the first several artists here are each going to represent, like, very, very diverse use cases. And the second story out of the gate, also pinned above by Daniel, is Selke. And Selke, you are using your Genesys catalog token in this case not to feature yourself. Well, it's yourself by extension, but not really.
In a way, you're using yours in a similar way to how we're using the campaign, which is to feature others. So, Selke, welcome. Another bright light within the community. Someone has helped pull together a lot of the people within it for various IRL events across Paris and New York City and beyond. I would love to hear about you.
Speaker 1 Thank you, Roger. Thank you for having me in this space. Thank you so much for featuring the real art residency in the Genesis catalog. Yeah. So I remember when within the twenty four hours of art community, you first introduced the concept of the catalog and invited artists to join in from from the community. And I remember looking at it and thinking, this is very tempting, but I'm at the stage and and by that point, you know, I was I was really fresh in in the community. I think it was right at the start. And I felt I was really tempted to join in, but I felt like I wasn't. Something stopped me. The the residency at that at that point was was in its sort of inception stages, and it was not really something that I had thought about.
And I wasn't really at a stage in sort of my artistic journey where I really wanted to talk about my art or put my art out there. So I was I was tempted by it, but I didn't really make a move, into kind of joining it. And then I got a really lovely message from you with the idea of doing it for the residency, which which was, really sort of a light bulb moment. And I took it, and I thought that was that that's amazing. That's really perfect. This is something that this is a this is a really interesting vehicle to show everyone the development of the residency and most importantly, the artists who are going to participate in it. And this is a really this is I mean, I've I've minted the, the token, as, you know, as everyone can see in the in your really wonderful story, by the way.
Thank you so much. And I but I haven't really, started to add anything to story inscriptions. I haven't really kind of developed it because I really want I've got 40 sorry. I've got 14 artists, 17 actually in total with Brazilian artists who aren't in web three who are going to join us coming to the residency. And it's very hard to get everyone on the same page communicating via Telegram. So we, you know, we we talk all the time. We but we we can't really make decisions as a group all the time because we don't really we're going to have a first group call tonight. And and this is something, that I want to talk to everyone about because I really, really want them to tell me what they want to see in the Genesis catalog. Because, really, this is this is this is about them.
This is about all the artists that have got, coming to the residency. This is a really interesting way to tell their story, to show their to show them, to give them visibility to to and also to, kind of have this you know, have the story of the residency told, in a really sort of interesting way. But I sort of I I I I digress. I think what I what I really should explain is, like, how the idea behind the residency is to have, some established artists or, you know, artists artists who are at different stages in in their careers, but who have kind of made a name for themselves, understand where they wanna be, where, you know, who have achieved interesting things in this space.
And other artists who are in that process of getting there or who have achieved some interesting things but really want to expand and want to grow and want to, in who are very, ambitious and a really interesting, really good positive way. And so and and the idea was for the rest of the residency was to get all of them together. And, and for them to really it's a knowledge exchange for for for everyone to learn from one another, to create together, and and also to give the artists who maybe don't enjoy the same amount of visibility as the more established artists that kind of visibility. And this I think the Genesis catalog token is going to be a fantastic way of doing this. Not only that, I mean, we are also I I absolutely need to mention this. We're partnering with Arbitrum and Transient Labs for our digital drop for the residency.
And we we are going to do something, which I Daniel, you can correct me, but I don't think it's been done before, which is all the artworks produced at the residency are going to be featured in one token, and we're going to have a limited edition for that token. And so for a for for an amount to be, yet to be disclosed, you will be able to, anyone who buys that token will have 17 pieces of art within one token from several artists. We haven't announced all the artists. We're we're keeping a little bit of suspense. We haven't announced all the artists yet, but I can tell you now you if you buy that token, you're gonna have a piece by FDOT, a piece by Alamo, a piece by Rachel Wood, a piece by Luca, a piece by so many fantastic artists. And yeah.
So this is I I this so so this kind of ties in perfectly. You know, we are partnering with Transient Labs and Arbitrum. This is this is a fantastic initiative that you have with the token, with the Genesys catalog token. And it kind of aligns with what what we're trying to do, which is, you know, we as I said, and you added to your story, it's all in the spirit of innovation that I always like to talk about. It's all in the spirit of doing things differently, of doing things in appealing ways and ways that, you know, uplift the arts and the artists and, you know, and and and yeah. That's that. And I feel like I'm I feel like I'm rambling a little bit. So please do feel free to jump in. And, yes. If yeah. Absolutely.
So I I I just wanted to say just to close, thank you so much. This is a really wonderful opportunity and a really wonderful opportunity to tell the story of the residency, to showcase the artists in a in a sort of different in in a way, sort of beautiful, innovative way. And, yeah, we're I'm I'm absolutely chuffed, to use a British term, to be a part of this. And I know I can speak for all of the artists, from the residency, that they are absolutely chuffed as well. So thank you, Roger, and, thank you, Transient and Arbitrum, our wonderful partners, you know, for for making this happen. So thanks very much.
Roger Silke, I'm so glad you saw the vision too when it came down to expanding, you know, to the residency, right, to this residency that you've created. By the way, Rio Art residency, you can read about it again within Silky's story. And and we have a fun evolutionary process going there where new artists were expecting to hear soon. It's very fun to see them roll out one at a time. So can't wait for that side of things. But, Selke, I'm really glad that you saw the vision to do it outside of yourself and your own art. And I think that that opens the brain into an entirely new way to to use a token. And I think, you know, that goes for residencies. That goes for, gallerists. That goes for collectors.
I think though these are really interesting use cases of this kind of a token to tap into where at the end of the day, like you said, Selkie, the end goal becomes to uplift the arts, to explore innovative pathways to do so. There are a lot of innovative pathways to do that as, again, a collector, a gallerist, you know, someone who is hosting a residency. Right? So I really want to to tap into that side of potential use cases for the GCT token as well. David, Feinstein, don't know if you have a mic, but if you do, it just jogged my memory. I know you you talked about some interesting ways to use a token like this in relation to even, even your family.
Speaker 7 Hey, Roger. First off, it's been awesome just to hear and see some of these concepts as we expected what was gonna come out of this. As you hear, my son right now is is making noise. But what we talked about was making it like a journal that I could literally, have document, like, the life of my kid and be able to put pictures and videos and just use this as something that I could send to my cousins and uncles and aunts and utilize the story inscriptions to have them, keep up rather than just sending a, physical, holiday card every year. So we we discussed doing that, early last year. I think this year, we actually have some time to do it, but it's been fun just to see how not just creators, but partners and all different sizes of
Speaker 7 utilize this technology in the blockchain.
Roger Yeah. I love I mean, that's the best part about any tech, specifically, obviously, transient tech and arbitrage from chain chain for that matter. Like, the the diversity of ways that you can leverage provenance where it ends up making sense down a lot of these pathways. And, also, David, I love that maybe your family was literally on audio as you're representing that use case. You record that moment. But we talked about The concept of journaling. And on that note, I'd love to pass the mic to Paper Buddha. So fresh off fresh on my mind, this story came out literally a few hours ago today. And, you know, Paper Buddha, first of all, welcome. It's great to see you. It's great to have you a part of this initiative. Before we get into any of the details of it, what drew you to this?
Roger man. Thank you, Roger. Mike Check. How am I doing? Good to go. Cool.
Speaker 5 Yeah. You know, I've been working with Transient for a while. I think I was the eleventh person in the lab and, you know, part of the key and all that stuff. So really exploring different ways to utilize the blockchain. Been working with Arbitrum since, I think, '21, you know, through the Animas Lounge and everything. So hearing everybody and then you, RD, since origin story. So hearing everybody come together was like Voltron. I was like, okay. What are we doing? You know, I got, like, really excited just hearing who was around the table. And then, you know, I think the thing that really drew me to the GCT project specifically is I'm always looking for new ways to engage with my fans and my collectors and show them behind the scenes. Right? Show them, all of the amazing things that happen on the inside of the of the pulp.
Right? The the pulp magazine, referencing my work. The I work a lot with the covers, but there's a lot of great black and white stuff under the hood, if you will. And so that's, really what I wanted to do concept wise was share a of the work in progress as I'm building out my brand, as I'm building out my universe over the next year. So things like, you know, the first thing I'm gonna be attaching here, I'll be doing it this evening. I just airdropped everybody their GCTs, and now they can go check. Every time I add something, I'll be messaging everyone in Telegram, and collectors can go just check every couple of weeks and see if there's anything added. But I'll be adding, like, the mock up of a fan that I'm working on, like a hand fan.
And so I'm working with a Japanese company, and then we've been back and forth, and I've got all
Speaker 9 the artwork laid out.
Speaker 5 And just looking at the proof that I have to send to them, I'm like, this is really cool, man. I like this as a piece of art on its own. And so it's the perfect thing to start adding these, mock ups, these kind of, as I'm working with vendors, as I'm working with professional, people in the fashion world, and we start creating these pieces of, clothing or pieces of lore within my universe to share those that concept with people, that this seems like the perfect, use case for something like this. So, yeah, a way for me to engage on a deeper level.
Roger You just keyed in on on something else. Like, a detail that has fascinated me. You were the first to open my own mind where you said, hey. What do you think about me distributing this to everybody? Right? Like, how like, how many token holders are there? Let's go. And I thought that was such a fantastic idea where it was, okay. Instead of, you know, I'm going to and by the way, that it's not to say anyone not doing that is in the no. Not at all. Like, a one one GCT that the creator has and walks everyone through just as valuable. But you sort of put that spin on it where you said, no. I wanna I wanna distribute this out to the twenty four hours of our collective, and that sort of blew blew my mind. So where did that thought process come from?
Speaker 5 Yeah. And so I'm a crypto artist, and I think, I'm really heavy on the crypto stuff. Like, it was pretty easy to get onto the Blockchain Explorer and mint another 30 390 of them and airdrop them to everybody on the list through our you know, through the explorer. And I can show anybody who only minted one how to mint another 299 and then airdrop them to everybody that's involved in the group. No problem. You know? So so just kinda thinking about the the the idea of what this is, the technology behind it, I'm like, well, this is kind of, like, an eleven fifty five, you know, like additions and shit. So why not just drop them to everybody? And it's a beautiful piece of art. And should anybody if I'm doing my job right, by the end of it, there's gonna be a bunch of cool art attached to this main piece of art.
So anyone should be able to, you know, put it up and, like, let's say, Seth Dub Seth Dub and I, we had a chance to connect and really, like, he came to Blunton brunch, which is one of my events that I have hosted in New York. We had a great time meeting each other. And, you know, I can add something that's very specific to him and to our time together in New York, and he can, like, leave it on that setting, you know. And and it's a thing that I want everybody to see, but he can leave it on, like, oh, that's the thing that me and PB did together, you know, or he can leave it on, the front of the catalog. So I wanted every collector to be able to interact with the token on their own and kinda choose their own adventure.
But I wanted to involve a lot of people. And then funny kind of thing not funny thing after I did it, I looked at all the wallets that are involved. I'm like, Now what? Like, I'm I'm in a bunch of wallets that didn't collect me before. So there there was there was definitely an upside on
Speaker 5 That was not my intended purpose, though. My intended purpose was really just to get it in everybody's wallet so they could interact with it uniquely. And then understanding the tech of the blockchain and just like, oh, this is a really easy thing for us to spin up multiple additions. Shout out to the transient team. It was super easy to mint. It was really easy for me to interact with the UI. Really easy easy for me to reach out to Marco when I had questions. And then on the Arbitrum side, it was ridiculously fast and cheap. It cost me 35¢ to airdrop 390 of them, and it was done within, like, seconds. Not even seconds. Less than that. Like, I don't think I could fall down the stairs that fast. That's how quick it was done. You know?
So, like, shout out to all of the technology working well together, to having a beautiful community of people that are hip enough to, like, check their wallets and look at things as they evolve over time. So just really bullish on the technology all the way through and wanted to utilize as much as I could, without going too far, without making it too difficult for people.
Roger Phoebe, you you nailed you took the the question right out of my mouth, the 35¢. Right? I didn't know the answer to it, but I assumed it would be low. That I I probably would have guessed between a dollar and $2. Right? And I think that really speaks to the power of what all of this is. Right? That it is that easy, that it is that cheap, that it is that quick, that if you're doing something thoughtful and distributing it thoughtfully, which you obviously are, man, that's a powerful thing to have at your fingertips.
Speaker 5 You know, I've been a multichain since '21, and I've done airdrops on Tezos, old school old school ETH airdrops, where I'm, like, literally doing them, and then there's, you know, paid gas. I've paid thousands of dollars of gas to airdrop stuff to, like, a 100 people. So, like, watching this technology evolve over the last three, four years to where I was just my mind was low. I was like, Marco, are you fucking kidding me, bro? He's like, no. This is, layer two is where it's at. So, you know, just a big shout out for the technology being immaculate.
Roger Let's go, PP. And, you know, again, everybody, the the story from earlier today is pinned up top. Please do take a read through it. Again, it's the the one that's hottest off the presses here. Before I continue introducing artists, just wanted to give some space in case anyone, wanted to hop back on and and
Speaker 5 ask their own questions.
Roger We can just keep steamrolling. We could do it that
Speaker 7 way. Daniel, are you able to bring up Ben Meadows? Yeah. I
Roger think he I think he has a hard stop at the top of the hour, so I just wanna make sure to sneak him in before he has to officially jump. But as as that happens, the next story up, it's been announced. True Drew, Drew Thomas on stage with us here, another amazing part of the twenty four hours of our collective, a very thoughtful one. Drew, first, how are you? And I would love to hear about your use case.
Speaker 10 Hey. I'm great. Thanks for having me up. Yeah. My my use case, a little different from all the ones we've heard so far, but it was, like, instantly clicked for me, is I'm using it more as, a showcase of works in progress, works that are done but may never get minted, behind the scenes thoughts. You know? And I I plan to do a lot more with some code stuff because I do a lot of coded artwork. But for me, I'm in a spot where I'm transitioning from, like, a consulting coding career into an art career. And so my goal like, before I knew about the the GCT, my general goal would be to to get as much art out there as possible and to get as much of my story out there as possible. But really, there's the two ways to do that, the car kinda polar opposites.
You've got, like, the the Twitter, Farcaster, you know, your you can post works in progress. You can post stories, but they get lost. People don't see them. People could steal them, I guess. You know, there's all these there's there's some weird stuff there. And the other end of the spectrum is minting and selling. And minting and selling is is just, like, too serious and too big for a lot of things that I just wanna put out there, and I just want people to be able to to get to know me and get to know my art. And so, yeah, I saw the the Genesis catalog token, and I was like, this is a perfect middle ground because I can put things that are in progress. I can put things that I may wanna MIT in the future, but I'm not quite ready to MIT and sell now.
But I still wanna talk about them. I still wanna tell people about them. And I can catalog it all in one place. You know? So if I put a a nice write up about a piece of artwork, that's where it can live rather than just going away falling away into the ether on Twitter. So, yeah, just it clicked for me for that reason. That's what I did for mine. You know, my my stuff's not out yet publicly. My token's minted. So in theory, you can see it. But yeah.
Roger I I think it's a beautiful thing and and took some time to sit with your token. You've already started inscribing. You know, I there there's so many nuances to it, so many places that we can go. One one random thing that caught my eye is, like, your recent usage of your your artist signature, which I guess, in a way, represents that exact career transition that you're talking about. Can you talk about the the usage of the signature and and and baking that in?
Speaker 10 Yeah. It was kind of a funny thing because I didn't purposely do that or think it was really important at first, but I I was using a signature and a piece of artwork, and I had been using the name TrueDrew. I've been using the name TrueDrew forever, but not literally using it. We use my real name normally. But as I've been doing this art stuff lately, I've been using the name TrueDrew. So when I was going to do a signature, I thought, you know, what do I sign? Do I sign my real signature, or do I sign TrueDrew? And I kind of had to make up a not make up, but, you know, a new signature for TrueDrew. And it sorta hit me that it it was symbolic of that transition, and it's cool in a lot of other ways. And so I sort of kinda leaned into it.
And, actually, one of my generative pieces, there's, a trait where you can it can be signed, and it's either signed by my real signature or it's signed by TrueDrew. And most of them are not signed, but it's a rare thing you can get. And for for me, that was kind of my transition too into I did both for that piece. And now in the future, anything I signed would be this TrueDrew signature. So as I was doing my my token artwork, it made sense to me to just kinda, like, feature that as the focal point and have it represent that whole thing and that whole change.
Roger In a way, it's a it's a marker of the genesis of the true Drew signature. I don't know. I personally find that to be, you know, I I have I have incredibly high hopes for you. Drew, we actually have a we have a random past. We're actually newly human and had no idea you were in this space, and so I have all the all the faith in the world in you. But to think that this is sort of the kickoff of that signature and and and this change is a really incredible thing. So so, Drew, you, and then the last question I'll ask you here, thematically. Right? You, like, you you have a lot baked into that catalog token. For I mean, first, you chose to go the video route. Right? I think that's interesting in and of itself.
I should actually mention, you know, Justin went still on the GCC token itself. Selke went GIF. PB still drew video. There's a lot of a lot of different use cases here, in in a multitude of ways. But, Drew, you decided to go video. You baked a lot of different things into that video, and you started breaking down some thematic elements in your inscriptions. Maybe, you know, instead of me biasing the discussion, maybe feature one more of those elements.
Speaker 10 Yeah. I mean, I think the the idea behind so so I wanted to show all these different elements and not just elements of, like, my artwork, but of me and of my thinking and my style, all the different things. So it made sense to do video. And then I actually have like, I have some experience doing video for client work, and I've done things that I think are cool, but I never really did video. You know, I was never, a video artist. I don't have I'm not like a pro. So I was like, this is cool. This is a good opportunity to try something new and push it in this area where I'm showing all these works in progress anyway. It just all fit. And so I did, like, a a video, and I did the music for it myself, which I've you know, a musician my whole life, but I nowhere near do that professionally or I barely even do anything anymore.
So I thought it was really fun to kinda, like, integrate all these different sides of me. And in the video, it shows some of my artwork, but it also shows some code snippets that come up, some writing snippets that come up that that are talked about in the inscriptions. Now I have one that goes kinda deep about about death. And so even that is represented in this video, but in a way that's kind of fleeting and fast. And so for me, I don't even know how to more more to articulate it better, but it it just kind of embodied it all for me and felt really good. And it made a lot of sense to do that. And then when I was done, I thought, you know, yeah, this really represents what I'm going for, represents my current progress and state and and what I wanted to say.
Roger Well, we can't wait. Next story out of the gate. So not not too long to wait for it now. I'm I'm excited to put it together real time. Me too.
Roger man. We have the the wonderful ArtJedi on stage. ArtJedi, if you wouldn't mind, if I could hold you just a couple of minutes, I wanna make sure to sneak Ben in before his hard stop. ArtJedi, is that okay? Alright. Perfect. Thank you so much. Ben Meadows, welcome to the stage. Before your hard stop, promise we would make it happen. Welcome. Oh, I appreciate it. Quick
Unattributed mic check. You can hear
Ben me okay? Yes. Good to go. So I would say, you know, I'm a collector and somebody that's been making art for long time, few decades now. And I think the most interesting thing for me I I've been in technology for a long time too about the Genesis catalog token was, you know, I'm not as worried about somebody stealing my piece and going and putting it all over Instagram. I would be, you know, missed if that happened. And and, but, you know, I feel like I would have the provenance to show that I did it first, and I would fight it. And it wouldn't be the end of the world. It's not how I make most of my money. But I do love the idea that instead of, you know, my pieces, I tend to put my photography out on Twitter or X now and Farcaster.
But instead of it being on, you know, a corporate network, that it could be on a decentralized blockchain without having to worry about, like you talked about, Roger, about, you know, inflating my my supply of purchasable art or minted art is really cool. I loved that it was on Arbitrum. You know, if you look at, layer twos, you know, you go to l2beat.com or your you know, they're they're more decentralized. They have more TVL than some of their competitors. And so it's it's a great chain. It's a great, decentralized layer two to use. So I love that. I loved, that it was with Transient. I'd been onboarded onto the lab, via HUD long before that. I know Ben Strauss. I'm a collector of his. I I actually had this second pendulum light, painting. I won the auction on that. So I know they they were a great group.
Had talked to Daniel in the past. And I think for me, to get into my actual token, even though it hasn't been revealed yet, what started it for me was I had been posting my my photographs, my art on and off four, five days a week for much of last year. And, the artist Mendez did a hashtag daily muse competition back in January, where he said, just post something every day that you make. And I said, you know, I'm a pretty consistent person. This is a good challenge, and we're gonna do it for twenty eight days. Today, we're on day a 108. And it was really cool to see, you know, there was this thread of pieces that I've been doing every day, but it's hard to find right now.
And so one of my goals with this Genesis catalog token is to put those pieces on there so that somebody could follow along and see the artistic journey, over the course of months. You know? And I don't know that I you know, I'm no beeper. I may be very consistent. I'm not gonna do seventeen years. I can almost guarantee you that. Maybe I'll do a Genesis catalog token every year or something and and break it up, but it's it's an awesome idea. And so, you know, what is my Genesys catalog token? Right now, the the primary image, I think, is also unique. It's an HTML that displays five different random but representative photographs. One is a collage piece of a sunset. One's a suburban landscape taken from a roof.
One's a drone image, of a canal out in the Southwest, and others of the street sign at night with some graffiti and illuminated by headlights, and another is a grayscale image, of horses out in the mountains and the desert. But it's random. If you go to the page and you load up the token, you'll get one of those five images randomly. And so this was sort of fun. I had somebody a while back describe me as they said, oh, you're a demo scene artist. And I said, I've never heard that word before. We had some discussion. They said, look. You were one of the first people to do this with compressed SVGs on ETH or on Bitcoin. So I learned something new. And so I wanted to kinda lean into that technical aspect with my Genesis catalog token, not just show pretty pictures, but do it in an interesting way that sort of highlighted the breadth of some of my photography.
And so that's where that randomness and the HTML and having to upload the images separately to Arweave and then reference them in the HTML. And Transient was very gracious to help with the some of the viewability issues so it all looks good. And, anyway, very excited about the project and where it's going, and I love how each of us can express things in our own way. And yet this is all still, you know, sort of one big umbrella of a project. So I'm excited to be here.
Roger Ben. And I I love the HTML angle. It just goes right back to that exact point. Right? Everyone really is bringing unique self, unique concept, direction, expression, medium, you name it, and that's the magic of it. That's the magic of the group, but, really, it's the magic of the people in it. So, yeah, Ben, thanks for joining us today. Appreciate you coming, be For your hard stop. So onward and upward to your story soon enough, my friend. Alright. Art ArtJedi, you waited so patiently. You're amazing. Welcome to the stage. You are a Genesis catalog token participant. How are you today?
Speaker 3 I'm doing great. Thank you so much. Mike Chak. Mike Chakcardi. Can you guys hear
Speaker 3 Awesome. That's the question.
Roger The question is, yeah, I mean, you you are someone who has been around this space for quite some time, an accomplished artist and so much more, an amazing collector as well. When you heard this concept pop up on your radar, the GCT, the Genesis catalog token, what ended up drawing you to it?
Speaker 3 Great question. For me well, first of all, the whole concept and everything that's been said in the last hour or so is absolutely captivating and alluring for an artist. Every single reason, use it as a catalog, use it as a stories, use it as your provenance, use it to showcase something. Like, all of the why would one not? Right? And for me, as somebody who has made art for all of my life and professionally for the last sixteen years in a studio. No second income. Everything that's paid in my life is through has been through my art. And and in the last three years since I discovered BAD three, it's been a complicated journey of putting my own art on the back burner for a while and learning about the technology and elevating everybody else around me whilst I figure out the threads in my own life, in my own practice.
And I took this as an opportunity to take a backseat, go back to the drawing board, and look at my art practice, a very nuanced and iterative art practice of the last sixteen years, multidisciplinary, a magpie for technology. It evolves as I evolve. And as soon as I figure something out, it changes. How do I make sense of it to myself before I even make sense of it to anybody else? And I I keep making art. It's an addiction. So where am I going with it? So I took these last three years to go back to the drawing board and reconnect the dots in the new light of information and knowledge that I constantly seek and devour. And with this opportunity, with the twenty four hours of art and the Genesis token, I guess it's a little complicated for me because I wanted to share the whole story of my art practice or at least give an idea
Speaker 3 who I am as an artist or five strands of continuous work that I've made over the last sixteen years. How are they connected to each other? So, yeah, I'm in the process of it, and hence, I haven't filled out the form yet completely. I'm working on it. But it's it's a great opportunity for any artist to to to be part of this. First of all, an awesome collective of thinkers, of builders, collectors, and continuous supporters of art in the space. So, yeah, huge gratitude to you and everybody else who's been part of it and part of my journey as well and people that I have been a part of their journey. Yeah. Just really happy and blissful to be here, sitting here on stage with all of you.
Roger And, RJ, as someone who you know, I'm just thinking back to your artwork itself, you know, your your current work on super rare and your mints across highlight, and that like, I don't know. So so many of the recent recent things as well as dating back several years. And then now you're here thinking through, as you said, sort of taking a step back, right, and looking at at your art journey in this moment in time and expressing it in GCT form ultimately. You know, if I could ask you the same question I asked a few others, when all is said and done, you sort of have that token out there, have that story out there. How would you like to see other people interact with it?
Speaker 3 Yes. That's really, a very I would say, basic question, but not basic in the basic sense. Like, that's an elemental question, isn't it? It's like, how do we want people to see us? In my case, I've been in this space for since January 21, longer than a lot of people, a little shorter than a lot of people as well that I got to know now. But it's and it's a journey where I've sat in spaces for a hun thousands of hours now and supported people, took time out from hosting spaces, and dug back into my studio and my own art practice as pandemic kind of, you know, like, things opened up again in UK and life kinda came back. So I want people to have an overview of me as an artist from, like, where I started, how I started, what my art practice is, and it's not a simple it's not a simple practice.
It's a nuanced practice. It's practice that's contributed to healing for me as an artist, as a human, but also contributed to this continuous line of questioning of culture, of society, of humanity through literature, through architecture, through stories, through elements, through nature, and how do I bring it all together in a very cohesive way through practice of every day for decades, a little longer than people. I just didn't post on Instagram because I'm one of those artists like Justin Wright. I keep it to myself close to my chest. And maybe if I post it every day to on Instagram or somewhere, I'd be somewhere ahead. But that's a challenge in itself. But I don't really even take it as a challenge because just the opportunity to make art every day is liberation. It's like, that's my idea of success already, so I am successful.
Roger Well, appreciate you, Archeta. I cannot wait to see what you ultimately put together and walk forward, and and you know we're here for it. And and this sort of ends our tour through a lot of the incredible artists on stage. There's one more shout out that I wanted to give, and it's someone who can't join us on stage, but his name is Jose Ojeda. He's an amazing part of the community in his own right, participating in this endeavor, and he has sent me a quote. And the quote reads like this, quote, like Drew, I'm also in the midst of a life and career transition. Looking forward to using this token as a means of introspection and sharing a process of me getting reacquainted with my fine artistic practice. Big shout out to everyone who has led the way so far, end quote.
And to give you a little personal Jose backstory, Jose is someone who who has he's multitalented. Right? Outside of, I mean, just an amazing community advocate, but also multitalented across artistic mediums. Now we had a challenge inside the twenty four hours of art community where I actually had a one of one fuck render artwork to give away. So that was an awesome process. We had a whole bunch of entrants. And what Jose ended up doing was picking back up as he put it his saw, his literal physical saw, and he created, essentially a mirror image physical in metal of the fuck render piece. And I thought it was so special, and I approached him with an idea. I said, hey. If theoretically you were able to you were to win this and your entry was to be selected, would you be open to giving your physical that you sort of created to win this competition to another winner, thus making two winners instead of one?
And he was not only open for it, but he encouraged it, and that ended up happening. And so it just gave you a little window into Jose the artist and Jose the human, but big shout out there. And and shout out to the entire again, there's many members of twenty four hours of art here, not necessarily in the GCT campaign, but nevertheless, I see Lawrence has joined the space. I see d d has joined the space and so many others that I shouted earlier. So, that's that. Daniel, how we do? That was fantastic. It
Daniel was really special to hear every creator here, just talk about the way they use Genesis catalogs and and how much it means to them. So really grateful for you leading the conversation here and, inviting the artists up. That was amazing. So thank you again, and thank you to Arbitrum. Thank you to all the creators, Paper Buddha, Selke, ArtJedi, TrueDrew, Justin, Jose. It's, yeah, it's been wonderful to see you guys partake and even the way you express the Genesys catalog token idea and your creative use case for it was I'm just really glad I got to be here. So thank you.
Anna Yes. Same. Me too. It was super inspiring to hear you all. And and, yeah, to be honest, like, in Arbitrum, we are super excited that you choose Arbitrum to be part of this amazing initiative. Like, you're totally making art more special. Like, art is other is special, but now I I feel it's more special bringing it on chain in this way is huge. So so, yeah, thank you for sharing your stories, your use cases. For sure, establishing provenance before artworks are posting social media to protect a artist rights is super important. So so, yeah, thank you for for doing it. And, yeah, cool to keep building together for sure. I'm looking forward to see what's what's happening next and and, yeah, how the community is supporting this as well.
Daniel I'll see you. Thank you again, Anna.
Anna Awesome. Well, thank you, Roger, for for being an amazing cohost on this one. Thank you, Daniel, as well. And, yeah, thank you, Selke, Drew, RTJ, Paper as well, and Justin Paper Buddha. Justin and, yeah, everyone who joined us today, it was an amazing space. Thank you.