GM

We always talk about our new friends who joined us last year.

But what about all those who unsubbed in 2023? (forgive them for they know not what they do)

This is the time to honor those fallen readers, wherever they are.

Links for the Top 25 drops are HERE.

My fave drop of 2024 so far

Context 

Onchain artist 0xfff announced YOU ARE HERE, a new multi-chain collection launching soon. 

Here’s what we know: 

• Mint date: Monday, January 8 

• Supply: 22 (11 already pre-sold) 

• Price: 0.1 ETH (or equivalent currency on other chains) 

• Mint chain: launching across all the following EVM chains:

Ethereum, Zora, Base, Optimism, BSC, Avalanche, Fantom, Polygon, Polygon zkEVM, Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova, Harmony, Celo, Moonbeam, Fuse, Gnosis, Canto, Mantle, Linea, Aurora, Scroll, Manta Pacific

Our take 

YOU ARE HERE is, quite literally, network art. 

When holders bridge their tokens across EVM chains, it leaves a trace in the metadata and slowly builds a readable travel history, which is then etched into the art itself (all fully onchain). 

Eventually, with enough activity, the visuals end up looking like a constellation of numbers and lines inspired by the very early mappings for Arpanet, the prequel to the modern internet. 

It’s a digital passport of sorts, and very much Choose Your Own Adventure. Take daily road trips as you visit all your bags, or keep it homebody and enjoy your empty white space. 

0xfff is reflecting on the growing web of criss-crossing highways building out in front of us in anticipation of future demand. They keep popping up thanks to an interesting mix of speculation and idealism, with a strong dash of hopium, which in a way, makes this no different than any other early network laid before it. 

And the fact that there are already 22 of these chains somehow feels simultaneously higher and lower than I expected. Like yes, not sure we need all of these, but I also think we could have 50 more by the end of the year, and maybe we’re still in the small-town-vibes era. 

Maybe, like me, you find your eyes glaze over whenever you hear about a new L2 that does so-and-so 10% faster than competing chains, or is better suited for a hyper-specific genre of trading card games, or whatever other use case people fabricate to justify a new build-out. 

Regardless, devs are gonna dev, and this is a creative and satisfying way of visualizing the current moment. 

Plus, it’ll keep evolving. 0xfff has already confirmed that new chains will get added as they come online, which makes this a living breathing dynamic set. 

Finally, the fact that this is minting across all 22 of those chains (1 NFT on each) gives it a satisfying end-to-end purity that I can appreciate. He didn’t have to go that hard, and another artist with less self-confidence might’ve hesitated to add more friction to the mint, but it’ll be worth it when each NFT has a different visual starting point. 

Bottom line 

Very often these days I find myself saying this is cool but why is the supply so big? 

But here it’s the complete opposite. I wish there were more NFTs because I’d love to see a diversity of user-generated paths and I’m worried that this is 22-lazy-holders away from just being a series of mostly blank canvases. C’est la vie. 

Overall a cool exploration that reminds us of all the pros and cons of “being early”.

✨ Added to Top 25 & Favorites 🔥

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

Wild Wave Studies by Ralgo

Aesthetic art enjoyers, rejoice, for this new Verse drop is here.

Generative artist Ralgo mixes generative code and AI in the 50-supply Wild Wave Studies, further exploring the subject of the artist’s debut Art Blocks, Seasky.

The hand-curated collection showcases aggressive ocean scenes contrasted with a soft watercolor style and warm color palette. One for the “looks good on wall” maxis.

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨

Untitled Bitcoin Drop by Jack Butcher

The floodgates from ETH to BTC are opening up for artists, and who better to take a stab at it than Jack Butcher (our top artist for 2023) with his upcoming Bitcoin Checks collection (exact name TBA).

It’s not thematically groundbreaking for Butcher, as you can think of these like an official Checks offshoot on a different chain, without the composability.

However, they stand on their own as Bitcoin artifacts given their early inscription numbers (~20k) and the fact that this is the popular artist’s first BTC drop.

The first release will be an exclusive claim for single check holders (20+ ETH current price tag on those), which makes this a little less exciting in terms of accessibility, but given the market’s fixation with Butcher I’ve…

✨ Added to Top 25 ✨

Commoners

Commoners is a Bitcoin PFP created by the doxxed team behind Ordinals Market.

This already makes it more interesting than 99% of other Bitcoin drops since its made by a team that have experience at building a working product.

However, very few details have been released. The only thing we know is that it’ll be a stealth open free mint.

NGL, the art on these looks as generic as a ChatGPT 1.0 response, so hopefully the team comes through with some extra sauce in the form of tooling, product access, community engagement innovation, or, dare I say it…utility (ay dios mio!).