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h4x0r Collection
Two months into the new year, and I’ve had a ton of fun establishing the character h4x0r. In the previous post, I highlighted the origin story. In this post, I focus on visuals and chapters.
Visuals
h4x0r = hacker. Is visualized as a hooded skeleton wearing a headset. The headset is how h4x0r transports through the chain from one txn to another txn. Each green block represents a txn made by someone interacting with the chain. (You buy an nft-you are a block.) These green blocks are the stories that h4x0r visualizes in each piece of artwork.
Chapters
Chapters represent a specific time and place in h4x0r's journey traveling through the blockchain, and the visual artwork is a representation of that place. Each piece of artwork visually communicates that experience through scanning, uploading, observing, processing, and so on and on. At the end of each chapter, I have assembled the visuals into a book that will become a physical product available to anyone in the coming months…
h4x0r Chapter.1
Table of Contents
I am h4x0r ⟶ 1 4m h4x0r
Processing ⟶ p20c3551n9
Surveillance ⟶ 5u2v31114nc3
Uploading ⟶ up104d1n9
ccZero ⟶ cc2320
Observer ⟶ 08532v32
Time Machine ⟶ 71m3 m4ch1n3
Link 1 4m h4x0r
Link p20c3551n9
Link 5u2v31114nc3
Link 08532v32
Link 71m3 m4ch1n3
A future book extends each NFT by adding pages of additional visualizations for each story. Chapter 2 is well underway and will be added to the book as the stories unfold.
I'm truly thankful for those who like, retweet, collect, and interact with my content. 𝘐𝘮 𝘴𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥 to build ʜ4x0ʀ further. Every day is a step towards the 𝙫𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣. In my next blog post, I will dive into the art process, editions, physical products, and IRL gallery experiences I am working hard on.
Make sure to sign up for my newsletter below, follow me on Twitter, or message me for collaborations. More love, more wins, and more fun for all in 2023.
h4x0r
H4x0r is a fun collection I’ve created and published exclusively on Foundation. The collection continues the Scanning 1337 aesthetics seen in my previous post. h4x0r, an elite hacker, is imagined as a skeleton wearing a virtual headset and visualized through 3D and glitch artwork.
The Story
h4x0r (aka Hacker) is a character born on-chain extending from cc0 universes.
h4x0r was born when the CR0x9759 contract was deployed and minted onto the Ethereum blockchain. h4x0r lived and explored the depths of this contract confined by the rules of the mint.
One year later, while scanning systems, a daily on-chain routine, h4x0r discovered a gateway. A new world made up of forty-five cc0 projects provided a direct connection from the 13370x9251 contract. A data glitch extracted h4x0r into the visual representation now living on Foundation.
Will you play a role in h4x0r’s story, n00b?
Thankful to cc0 and, more specifically, the Chain Runners and 1337 Skulls, the story of h4x0r begins...Make sure to sign up for my newsletter below, follow me on Twitter, or message me for collaborations. More love, more wins, and more fun for all in 2023.
Ordinals and a16
Bitcoin Ordinals have been all the hype lately. The recent Bitcoin upgrade combined complex transactions with simple ones enabling the ability to inscribe. Ordinal Inscriptions, similar to NFTs, are digital assets inscribed on a satoshi, the lowest denomination of a Bitcoin (BTC). Inscribing on satoshis, named after the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto is possible thanks to the Taproot upgrade launched on the Bitcoin network on November 14, 2021.
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are blobs of arbitrary data and associated metadata, the latter of which tells a Bitcoin node how to render said data (is it an image? Text? Something else?). The inscriptions are functionally similar to calldata on Ethereum in that they store read-only data. Due to the quirks of both Tapscript (introduced in Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade) and Segregated Witness, a 2017 Bitcoin upgrade, these inscriptions can theoretically be as large as 4mb (indeed, someone minted a 3.96mb inscription in early February 2023). The inscription data is posted to Bitcoin’s blockchain as part of the witness data – the section of a transaction that stores transaction signatures, and available for decoding back into viewable content by any full archival Bitcoin node that runs the ORD software.
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are individual satoshis (sats), which are currently the smallest Bitcoin denomination (each 1 BTC = 100m satoshis). The term ordinal comes from what creator Casey Rodarmor calls “Ordinals Theory,” the idea that individual satoshis can be labeled and tracked across Bitcoin’s supply (UTXO set). If users opt-in to this methodology, it becomes possible to see when sats have been mined and in what order. Users can even apply different rarity traits to these individual sats based on various criteria (i.e., how long ago they were mined, whether they participated in a famous transaction, etc.). At the time of writing, there are more than 250,000 inscriptions tied to individual satoshis (ordinals), with most of them mined before 2015. While older satoshis are thought by many to be rare, the reality is that Bitcoin’s monetary policy is such that issuance was significantly front-loaded by Satoshi (by the start of 2016, more than 15 million of the currently circulating 19.2m BTC had already been mined).
a16 Article
Unrelated to Ordinals the a16 team recently co-authored an article with our group focused on publishing our project’s mint strategy. A new NFT launch strategy: The wave mint. Click here for the full article. Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
Other notable writing about this topic can be seen.
1337 mint phases are a simple idea: timed mint windows for snapshotted wallets from collections we identified in 4/n. ➜ Take wallet snapshots at random times. ➜ Open mint phases at random times. ➜ Keep them open for random times. Viral fun ensues. Click → to read the full thread
five principles: #YOMO, no public, ever, communities first, reward holders and early believers, a chance for everyone to win. Click → to read the full thread
@1337skulls is the first project to elegantly integrate a whole culture of CC0 art into a single package... made by people who are deeply immersed and enmeshed in that culture-free mint, 600+ traits, 30+ NFT projects ref. 0% royalties. No roadmap.
Scanning
This is a fun post sharing some visuals I created for the 1337 Skulls project, additionally adding some thoughts on why I labeled the style and this post, Scanning 1337. If you haven’t already, check out the 1337 Manifesto, an overview of what the project represents.
Like any artist, I started with many styles, having fun and exploring what 1337 meant. As the visuals progressed, so did my focus on a more consistent output, which I labeled Scanning 1337, representing a consideration of the principles highlighted below.
Here’s a sandbox of visuals highlighting some of my favorite results. All are cc0, so feel free to use them as you see fit.
The story of 1337 is a historic declaration for the power of cc0 and community. The entire project was community-driven, ideated, designed, and coded by a group of individuals working asynchronously under the leet manifesto, comprised of writers, designers, developers, traders, academics, and social and commercial strategists. The world of 1337 is yours; what will you create with it? All visual, sound, strategy, and community content is free to use via cc0.
What is 1337 Skulls?
What is the 1337 Manifesto?
Make sure to sign up for my newsletter below, follow me on Twitter, or message me for collaborations. The next blog post will be highlighting my new 1/1 NFTs and new physical products. More love, more wins, and more fun for all in 2023.
Happy New Year
Happy New year to all! After putting together my Year in Review 2022 blog post I wanted to make a fun visual edit highlighting some of my digital and physical creations. It’s been fun revamping my website into more of a creative playground for art, design, and engineering ventures.
Make sure to sign up for my newsletter below, follow me on Twitter, or message me for collaborations. More love, more wins, and more fun for all in 2023.
Year in Review 2022
What a year 2022 has been, a rollercoaster of highs and lows throughout the world. I just finished watching an incredible World Cup game, and thankful to be here sharing my art and designs with friends, old and new on the interwebz and IRL.
I use this site as a playground to document my creative experiments and write about topics that I find interesting such as cc0, on-chain NFTs, and other innovative technologies that connect back to modern art. This post highlights some of my contributions and creations throughout 2022.
Wiki Contributions
Some of my Wiki contributions helped centralize assets and info enabling the community to expand upon brands naturally.
Design Contributions
I helped create assets across a dozen communities contributing to everything from social marketing, and discord development to giveaways. Also here’s a few links to fun with movie marketing Blade Runner, Tron, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
Product Designs
Alongside my own artwork, I purposely invested in NFTs that enabled me to experiment with IP and cc0 by manufacturing products such as apparel, shoes, prints, and more to learn what consumers gravitated towards.
NFT Drops
Curious about the generative process, I created Mega City Chain, a derivative NFT. It contains pixel art for Hover Vehicles, Memories, Jet Packs, Light Bikes, Headsets, and Light Rails that are imagined to be parallel assets to your pixel pfp. Click for a preview ⟶ Website | Image Collection | Motion Collection.
🖼️ Foundation
The foundation marketplace excited me the most in 2022 as a creative, and I've added two collections with a few more pieces to mint before the year closes. Click for a preview ⟶ Light of Consciousness | Tools. To help bring more exclusivity, I will be tying my digital assets to physical products and experiences in 2023. If you've been to or seen my IRL art shows, you have an insight into what's coming.
2023 Intentions
Having kids (3-yr and 1-yr), balancing a full-time job, and pursuing creative hobbies have taught me the importance of time and focus. My goal for 2023 is to reduce the signal-to-noise and hone in on the areas I love the most.
Professionally I will be pursuing a new job that feeds my passion for building.
I will mint the final pieces for LOC and TOOLS NFT collections and drop only a few 1/1 limited editions available only to holders of my projects.
I will tie my digital assets to physical products and IRL interactive art experiences to connect everything.
I will continue to collect and support artists and projects pushing IP and cc0 possibilities into the future.
If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you and hope you’ve enjoyed my creative content.
More love, more wins, and more fun for all in 2023
