Smart Contracts & Fully On-Chain NFTs: Breaking Down the Basics
Fabio GM, TL, GM, everybody. Seems like you're complete. Can you guys hear me?
Fabio thousand percent. We are ready to go.
Charlie I'm actually super excited for this topic today.
Fabio Yeah. Me too. That's really a topic. I I'm waiting the whole week for for this day because I really would like to hear so much more about this, how that works and everything. But, but first, guys, how are you? How's the weather on your side? How's holiday preparing everything for Christmas or if you're, celebrating it? Too many questions. I know. How are you guys?
Speaker 1 Hey. Hey. GM, Elias. GM, Fabio, GM, Charlie, GM, everyone. Thanks for having me again. And, yeah, I'm taking your question first, maybe. It's so good here, man. All good. We are ready to get into the holiday season.
Speaker 1 Very pumped this year.
Fabio Do you do you celebrate it? Do you have a big, family which, will celebrate together? Or
Speaker 1 Yes. Yes. You know you know how it works down here. Yeah.
Fabio Exactly. That's why I'm asking. You know? Yeah. Christmas in Italy is always like that.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We start on the twenty fourth, then the '25, and the twenty sixth.
Fabio No. Know that. I feel that same here. So every day, we're a part of the family. So three days eating, eating, eating, and after that, you need to make a diet for six months.
Speaker 2 Hi. Hi. I'm just trying to connect to my mic's microphone. So
Speaker 2 But if you hear me, it's it's good.
Charlie Yeah. It's all good. A 100%. Yeah. We definitely hear you loud and clear.
Fabio We definitely hear you. Yeah. So on your side, but everything okay? Holiday already started, or
Speaker 2 does chain left? Oh, yeah. So I am based. We have yeah. I mean, quite a lot of Christmas markets and everything. So, yeah, celebrations are already upon us, I guess.
Speaker 2 live? Also, I have two kids, So, you know, they they love it. So it's fun. Gotta buy the
Charlie gifts. Gotta buy the gifts.
Speaker 2 Sorry? Gifts. Yeah. I have everything except the one that I need to buy offline. So I have everything. All the online gifts are here, but the offline gifts, you know, I have to go and shop. That one is, like, 5% of the gifts that I had to buy, and that's not ready yet. What's you?
Fabio Old old school shopping style. You really go to a store and buy it with your hands and and money and
Ben Ben, GM. How are you? GM, it's actually GM here. I'm in the, in the desert in the Western US, so it's 08:00 in the morning. I just had breakfast, and, I guess y'all probably all use, Celsius. It'll So be, like, 20 degrees out today. It's it's beautiful out here. So it is Christmas, time, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. I'm looking at some palm trees and blue skies right now.
Fabio Well, would like to see palm trees at Christmas. I only see rain and cold weather. So
Charlie I was about to say the same thing. Like, I'm not gonna say that I'm hating on you, Ben, but I kinda am
Fabio because I do not like this hot, cold weather that we are having right here in Chicago. But, yeah,
Charlie definitely have to go over there, man, sometime soon.
Ben I am standing on the porch in shorts right now.
Charlie See, why you have to be saying all that, man? Let's see. That's what I'm saying.
Fabio Yeah. So yeah. But everyone is ready for Christmas. But before we start with your Christmas holiday, we have to talk a bit about our topic today. So let's start right away with our discussion. Let me make a short introduction and introduce also all the our official guests. Today, we talk about a topic which I think is something really important to understand. I will say many people still think, that NFTs are by default on chain. But is the art itself really on chain, or is it just the certificate which is stored in the blockchain? This is something we will discuss today a bit. Today, we're going to talk about smart contracts and fully on chain NFTs, breaking down the basics. Like always, this will be an open discussion. And, as we recently changed our way we run the open discussions, it means we will, open the stage after fifteen, twenty minutes, whatever.
In the first fifteen, twenty minutes, we will talk with the our guests only. And whenever someone wants to come to the stage and ask something or bring his point, on the whole topic, just, ask, and we will bring you on stage. Because it's always really interesting to have different opinions, to say it, say in Charlie's words, we don't wanna have echo chamber here. We wanna hear all opinions about everything. So
Charlie let's Yeah. Also, talking about, no echo chambers here, but at the same time, they'll be going all crazy. Be coherent when it comes down to asking questions if you actually disagree or or agree with anything. So, also, I just wanted to just say if you actually are interested on letting all the people know or sharing this knowledge to others, definitely check the bottom right corner and definitely share the space for everyone else to come in and actually learn what actually smart contracts and on chain NFTs actually are. Because as Fabio said, not many of us, including myself, including myself, didn't know or don't know what that means. So, yeah, with that being said, Fabio, go ahead.
Fabio Yeah. Let me introduce our guests first. Our first guest is Jane Left. Jane Left is blockchain native artist. You really have to explain that later what exactly that is. He specialized in fully on chain art, and he has a huge knowledge when it comes to smart contracts and everything like that. Do you wanna add some more, Chien left?
Speaker 2 Yeah. Sure. So, yeah, I mean, I've basically been in the space I mean, in crypto itself, like, 2017. The NFT space, a lit later, like, the early two thousand twenty one, I would say. And, yeah, I basically, my background is in data science, so I kind of already, you know, had the knowledge on coding and everything. You know, I I knew, like, Python and JavaScript and all those things. So it was kind of a natural, I guess, progression from there to to to these more codes or algorithmic art. And I started with SVGs, which is, you know, kind of one of the primary ways to do efficient code or efficient art. It's mostly in general, it's actually used for illustration, but it's been found really good usage for on chain art as well.
And then, of course, like, I've done some, you know, smart contracts and some, you know, other we can talk about more more of the about those later. But yeah. So, you know, it kind of expanded from there. So now I do all these, like, different, animations and and even music and everything on chain as well.
Fabio Oh, that's amazing. So you have really new huge knowledge. I'm really excited to learn a bit more about, everything you know. Chain lift is an OG. Let's say it out. We yeah. We have to say what we have to say, man. It's
Charlie how we say it. OG. Alright. Go ahead. To be
Fabio honest, yesterday, we we talked in, the Miracle, the internal space about it, and L tier, he knows Chainlap two. He said, wow. Damn. You have Chainlap in the space. He he's a legend. And, by the way, he will jump in later too to ask some questions. And so, yeah, I'm really excited for this space, not only because of Jane, also because of Jabilia and Ben Mello. Now let's come to the next guest, Jabilia or Elia. Elia is a digital artist doing vector art since 2010. He recently released, his first fully on chain NFT. And hopefully, he will tell us today a bit about how he managed it to create it because I really have no clue how this guy managed it to create such amazing colorful piece to fit in the blockchain. That's crazy. Elia, do you wanna add some more?
Speaker 1 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Fabio. Thank you for liking and and also for collecting. This is I can tell you live right now. Thank you so much to the Miracle team to collect one additional of my first full on chain art. Well, we I think we can get in details maybe later, but about your introduction, thank you so much. Nothing has changed, respect to, you know, last week. So thanks again for introducing me like this. Yeah.
Fabio We had you last last week already. That's true. But, you know, we had to bring you on stage again because of your, release. So our next guest is, bell sorry. How long is it meadows or Meadows, or is this something I always struggle with with it? It's it's Meadows. Like, yeah,
Fabio a meadow or yep. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. You know, I'm a Swiss Italian, so I'm not native English. So okay. But Ben Meadows, Ben is a photographer and digital artist. This guy is always at the forefront when it comes to using new mediums for his art, and he has also created a fully on chain art, piece of art already. A bit different than the the one from from Elia, but also hope to hear a bit more later a bit more about how he managed to create that one. Do you wanna add some more, Ben?
Ben No. I would just say, you know, I've been I've been doing photography and art for, I don't know, a couple decades now. I've been doing blockchain since and it's funny. Right? Doing blockchain, I've owned crypto assets for over a decade, loved the technology. There wasn't a lot to do with it back in 2013. You could, you know, buy some, hold on to it, I guess, buy a pizza with it. And then in the real world, I have a little bit of a background in data science, like chain left, big technology background, mostly, network architecture, system architecture, cybersecurity, things like that. And then real world, as an executive in the construction industry and, doing some consulting. And it wasn't until, yeah, the last year or two that that all sort of dovetailed, and I was able to put all that together with some smart contracts and on chain art.
So, yeah, happy to be here and a great great group of people, here on stage with me. I I know most of them, from before this or know of them, so happy to be here today and, dive into this.
Fabio Yeah. We are definitely happy to have you guys today because, you know, I'm I'm still so excited for the for this discussion. So let me ask you my first question. It's a question for all of you. Why fully on chain art? What is your personal reason to do that? Who wanna go first? Nobody.
Speaker 2 I can go first. Okay. Yeah. So The moment I joined the space, I immediately started in getting intrigued with the art, I guess, because there are a couple of elements, like, of reasons, I think. Like, part of it is, of course, the the kind of almost all on chain art. Not all, but almost all on chain art are code based. So, you know, it's kind of appeals to me in in with my background. But, also, the, like, there is a there is a lot of appeal to to the conceptual side of it. So there's there are there are some practical advantages, and there are some conceptual advantages, in my opinion. So practical advantages, obviously, are, you know, are mainly starting from the fact that it's, you know, more permanent, more guarantees for security guarantees. We've already seen some cases of art being disappeared.
I I don't know if you guys know, but there is, like, a there is an ex copy art from 2018 or '19. I'm not sure. It doesn't have an image anymore. So that disappeared, actually, and it's kind of pretty hard to dig it in. I think some people might have found it, but they're not sure. They can't verify it. So there's, like, this whole thing that, you know, it's an Xcopy. So think about it that way. Like, that that that early Xcopy art is not no more, essentially, because it's it was on a server. Also, little known fact, the the famous Nakamoto card is also, it also doesn't have an image anywhere now. So it's actually just an image that is served by the by the marketplaces, not by like, there is no even not even the link works right now for the Nakamoto card either.
But that that one, at least everyone knows about that image, so it's at least fine. You know, we can actually still, you know, track it down and everything, like, on the collective consciousness. Anyway, so there's this permanent advantages, and and already lots of PFP collections already have lost their images. This So is already from 2021. That's not long ago. And despite that, we have collections that without images, and and it's gonna be more going forward. So there is this permanent advantage, obviously. Right? That's kind of pretty clear. But, you know, this can be kind of overcome, I think, at least partially with IPFS and and Arviv. Then the other advantage that I find in in the on chain art is the composability or interoperability. Basically, you're you can actually utilize the data that you have on the blockchain from another collection into another collection.
So you can actually build entire metaverses pretty much. Right? I mean, it's I know it's a buzzword, but this is the reality that you can actually link from different collections or different assets from different collections, and, actually, you you can build on top of those. This composable element is, I think, really interesting. I think it's gonna be quite big in the future with gaming NFTs. I think most of the gaming part of the space hasn't discovered that part yet. Some did, but, many didn't. And I think it's gonna be very interesting because you can actually, you know, use different aspects of different assets from different collections and being able to build on top of that without actually having to pay extra to build that artwork is pretty interesting, I think. So there is that practical advantage, of course.
And and, I think from The conceptual level, I think this is the part that appeals to me more as as an artist, essentially. The the part that really appeals to me is, like, the nature of on chain art is that it's not just permanent physically, but it's also permanent culturally. That's how I feel at least. You know, we have all these, like, ever I have actually an article written about this. You can find it on my timeline. It's, it's called a conceptual praise from Jane Art. So this is a you essentially can really there there are lots of those advantages. Like, another advantage is, for example, the the trustlessness of it. Right? So you can actually, build an on chain art without actually promising something to anyone. Like, other people can actually verify when they're doing, for example, generative art.
They can verify that everything was actually random, that the artist didn't, for example, disclose any sort of, you know, like, give something to some they some of their special collectors or anything like that. So there is no sort of this, backdoor deals or anything like that, you know, that allows that to happen as well. And then, you know, I mentioned the the kind of the the it it's I also, the way I feel it is that blockchain I'm a you can see it in my title. I'm a leftist. Right? So I I don't like speculation. Like, this this space is, like, I was I I think, like, 95% speculation, but I don't like it that much. And for me, it's kind of almost using this medium, which is actually developed for financial transactions. To do something on that medium for outside its purpose is pretty interesting.
Like, I actually kind of almost force all these nodes that are securing the transactions to actually record my art. It's kind of almost like painting the those notes essentially with with something than than than just those financial transactions. So this is kind of a little bit of a the way I see it is like a rebellion almost. And then, the the optimization element is super interesting for me. You know, efficient codes is if you've you know, in a developer, like, they they and there's, like there are people obsessed with this, like, efficient codes coding and everything else. With on chain art, you have this, like, really you're very limited, right, with the medium. So you have to actually find a way to minimize the size of what you're doing while still keeping the soul of the art alive. Right?
So you wanna still dis you know, convey the emotions that you wanna convey with this artwork, but also you wanna make sure that you do it with the minimum size. So that's kind of another element that is super appealing. And finally, you know, this smart contract element, this comes together with flow on chain NFTs, essentially, and that applies only to to NFTs on smart contract platforms. So it doesn't apply to the ones on Bitcoin. But, with on chain NFTs, you can do very, very interesting concepts. Like, you can actually use the smart contracts alongside building the artwork. So you can actually let the blockchain because blockchain is essentially an ever running computer. It's an always on computer. That's super interesting. Like, it's a reliably running computer. That that means that you can actually use that computer to do very interesting things.
Like, you can make you can actually, you know, let people explore the the concept of, you know, the the relationship between collectors and artists. You can explore how something can dynamically change based on specific actions. Like, you can actually link link the art to so many things within that chain. That makes it super interesting, I think. Like, the the this this is what we call it. This runtime art. You know, it's it's a you know, that kind of on chain art that is linked to a smart contract, and and it runs with the smart contract. It's very I think, like, it's endless at that point. Like, the the possibilities become really endless, and that's that's what really excites me.
Fabio Man, next time, we'll let Leo and Ben answer first. You always answer with every possibility which is possible, so they have nothing to do with that. No. I don't So
Charlie yeah. I'm pretty sure they got some. But I I'm actually convinced, man. Like, as soon as you said the first one, when it comes down, you you were talking about historical pieces that are not longer visible. Like, that actually gave me, like, freaking PTSD. Like, if that happens to me like, you know what I'm saying? Because, you know, most most of us started on the OpenSees, the foundations, you know, the genesis. Right? So I was just thinking, like, if these marketplaces cease to exist, Providence is done. I mean, I got nothing to show for when it comes down to, like, hey. When did I start? So for example, what you just said there, it really got to me where when it comes down to, like, man, I need to do something about this, because years will go by, and these NFTs that I probably minted are not going to be there anymore.
So there's no more providence. There's no there's no more, like, proof of life. Basically, like, you started at this time. So so this is very important. And, of course, the other one the other things that you said as well as far as how interesting the the technology is, but that really got to me as far as like, man, like, all these the x copies and Nakamoto's and people like, historical pieces from back in 2017, 2018, no longer are available or are a lot harder to actually find. So that really that's definitely shocking. But, Charlie, at at least, you'll
Fabio you'll still have you will still have your your provenance that you have started this time just without the pictures. So the lock is still there. You minted it, but you you minted just the blank nothing. So
Charlie If it if there's no if there's no pictures, it doesn't exist. No. That's how I see it. But, yeah, this is actually a very, very interesting, reason on why on chain. And I'm pretty sure not many people are aware of this. They are aware that you once you made this in the blockchain, but is it really? Let's keep it moving. Fabi, go ahead.
Fabio Yeah. This is really is really something we have to talk later a bit more close to it because it is something I'm afraid of
Charlie since I started. Since
Fabio I heard heard heard the first time that the pictures are just stored IPFS and not in the blockchain. Well, I I I know I guess I heard that two years ago or something, the first time that I said, what? I thought it is on chain. So it yeah. That's maybe a huge problem in a couple of years. So but first, before we go go further, I would like to hear Elias and Ben's answer on my first question. So who goes next?
Ben I'll I'll I'll jump in. Oh, Elaine, are you on
Speaker 1 top? Go go go ahead, Ben. Go ahead.
Ben Alright. So for me, I will try and be much shorter than chain left just even though I can tend to, go on and on. But I would say it does come down to permanence, and then it comes down to challenge for me. But from the permanent side of things, I think there is something interesting there. Right? On chain art is more permanent, right, than, you know, a lot of the pieces we're talking about that that disappeared. We're on private servers. We're on, like, an
Speaker 2 AWS. They were, you know, they weren't on an IPFS,
Ben which is, you know, kind of a torrent based distributed file system or, you know, an Arweave, which is itself like its own blockchain. So on one hand, the gold standard for permanence is definitely on chain, but sometimes I think it's oversold a little bit. At the same time, what you what you lose with on chain art, and this is a good thing, is the abstraction between a token, right, which, as Jane mentioned, was more of a financial instrument. Right? AA token. It's simply a nonfungible token instead of a fungible token, like a coin or something. But you lose that abstraction between the token and the art when you do on chain art, which is a good thing, you know, in the sense that the two aren't separate from each other.
It can also be a bad thing, you know, sometimes in terms of if as an artist you wanna do something really wild with an array of images or change the metadata or, you know, on chain art isn't the end all be all even though I love it, and I've, done some of it relatively early on and even, come up with some new ways of doing things, with on chain art on Bitcoin. To my second point, it's a medium. Right? It's a type of medium. And because of that, it has its own constraints and its own peculiarities. Right? If if you're painting tempura on wood panel, that's different than acrylic on canvas, which is also different than spray paint on the side of a building. Right? Nobody expects to see the Mona Lisa on the side of a building, just like you don't expect to see graffiti art on a wood panel hanging up in the National Gallery.
So, you know, for me, that challenge is the fun part. Right? What what can I fit on there? But I also don't expect to put a 50 megabyte, 32,000 by 24,000 pixel image on chain. It's just not gonna happen. I mean, supposedly, could as some great conceptual piece of art that I spent $10,000 minting and stitched together with code. But, realistically, you know, that's stretching the the medium. It would be like oil painting the side of a building. It you know, you could do it to do it, but that's not really what that medium's there for. So for me, it's permanence, and it's it's concept and it's challenge that makes it unique. And it has advantages, but it also has disadvantages. You know? And some of those advantages and disadvantages are conceptual and practical. And, you know, then we go back to priorities and preferences and why people like what they like.
So I am not a on chain maximalist, but I I certainly love it, and love what what you can do with it.
Fabio But also really interesting points. So now it's even harder for you, Elia, to say something.
Speaker 1 What's what's what's Yes. It is. Thank you so much, Shane, Les, and Ben for leaving me in this situation right now. Well, no. I mean, of course, I come from a very different from a very different path. So I can put it down the artist way maybe because this is what I did the last ten over ten years. So well, before approaching this whole crypto art space back in 2021, You know, I did some research about NFTs, what an NFT exactly is and stuff like that. You know? So first time I learned, and and it was very, very superficial, It was that the the concept of this smart contract thing and the possibility or or maybe the the promise at this point, the promise to have my art baked by the blockchain. Okay? That was how it was sold back then. Well, you know, the the frenzy was high.
It sounded very, very cool to me, so I decided to jump in and, okay, let's see how it played out. Early twenty twenty two, I was listening to conversation between a couple of BTC maxes, and they were very, very skeptic about NFTs in general. And I was like, let me let me understand why these guys are so skeptic about it. And the point they brought up the the the issue that JPEGs are not truly stored on the blockchain indeed. They are, you know, as Ben said, stored on private servers. So, what what I was doing here? What's going on? I mean, that that was my my reaction. Okay? And from that point, this question has always been at the bottom bottom of my mind. Is an NFT a 100% decentralized or is not? And it was there as I as I move on. It was there.
So another another thing I I can add is that I was pretty, pretty concerned by this space, the the the NFT space, not addressing this issue at all or at the very minimum. I mean, every everyone seems crazy about AI. We are talking about AI. It's the new god. Oh, wow. It's super cool. But what about this issue, this very basic issue with NFTs? Nobody is talking about it. Okay. Something is is wrong or or or I have missed something for sure here. Okay? Well, I discovered this this topic, this on chain subculture, let's call it like that, only recently. And it was a great discovery because at the very least, he answered my question about an NFT the possibility of an NFT being a 100 decentralized. Okay?
Well, then I just came up with this simple idea because, you know, I was excited when I firstly discover about the on chain art, but I was even more excited when I discover about vector could be stored on chain better than bitmap images, you know, the pixel based images. And guess what? I was a vector artist. I've been a vector artist for over ten years. So I was actually it it was like the stars align in the sky somehow. You know? I was like, let let's do it. Let's try something else because art can be stored fully on chain. Vectors can be so can be stored fully on chain. So the art stored on chain can be a 100% scalable, Plus, I have my own I developed a lot over the years, I developed my own signature style that is pretty, pretty recognizable. So why not trying?
It was for me. I mean, you got it, Fabio?
Fabio Yeah, man. So you was was was predestinated to do that. So
Fabio yes. Something like that. That that's crazy. I need to find a way to store photography also in the blockchain, but maybe let's talk about that later if that's possible.
Fabio Yeah. You can. Yeah. You you need to teach me how, man, because, you know, I I I want my my art on chain. I don't wanna lose my art. I I wanna make them forever available. So yeah. We
Charlie I got so many questions, man. It's freaking ridiculous. I'm pretty sure the audience too as well as they will come up as well and ask questions. But there's so many things to unpack when it comes down to this. IPFS, NFTs or supposedly NFTs or I don't know how we call it. JPEG. I will say I'm gonna say JPEG. JPEG store on a server, not on chain. So let's let's unpack this. Let's keep talking about this. It's very interesting. You
Fabio how how we will do that now? Because we have Altier on the stage now. For those who doesn't know Altier, Altier is one of our cofounders. He is our CTO. He is, from my opinion, that the man I know which has the most knowledge about, everything, one of the most intelligent people I know. And, I would like to before I know he's here to ask some questions, but I would like to hear, from him a short explanation on what's the difference between on chain and off chain NFTs. So how a really a normal NFT works and and what's the opposite with or what's the difference of a really on chain NFT, just for everyone who doesn't know it because I know he's good in explanations. GMLT here, by the way.
Speaker 3 Yo. GM. GM. Happy to be here. When I saw the lineup, I I immediately thought I I had to make it because you're overselling me because all the people you have on stage are way more intelligent than me and know the subject matter way better than me. So, yeah, amazing. Thank you to the guests, first of all. So, yeah, to the to your question about the short explanation, what what's on chain art and what's off chain art in regards to NFTs. So, if you meant, like like, I think most most of the people are minting on on manifold or foundation super rare contracts. Like, most of them are are pointing, like, to to a link where the image is stored. We talked about IPFS. We talked about RWave, and mentioned they work slightly different. But in the end, they do the same thing, for for a user perspective.
If you do it on chain, the actual what you see is on chain. So it gives you an additional layer of provenance, trustlessness, and that decentralization like the the people mentioned before. So and as always, it depends what are you doing and does it fit your target you want to achieve, and then you use the tool you want to use.
Fabio Okay. So but maybe this will
Speaker 2 be yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I just wanna say, like, I think I I wanna kind of, I guess, agree with Ezir here. And, also, hi, by the way, Ezir. How's it going? How are you doing, man? I first of we're
Speaker 3 talking to each other, but we got we go back a little in this space.
Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. I actually was just gonna, like, resonate what you just said. Like, essentially, it depends on what you wanna do. It's also kind of agreeing with Ben a little bit on on actually, like, Ben was probably the one person who who was a bit more, you know, raised skepticism towards this, but I agree with that, actually. It's it's really depends on what you wanna do. On chain art enables lots of new conceptual explorations, and I think that's super exciting. That doesn't mean that, you know, everything has to be on chain. Like, it's it's not you know, there is a bunch of very interesting, very innovative, very conceptually intriguing art that is not on chain, and that's totally okay as well, I think. It's also worth mentioning. Like, Charlie, you mentioned, like, you were very scared. I think, like, IPFS and I, we've cover a lot of these permanence, I guess, fears.
They they I mean, we don't know. Maybe maybe not for 100% certainty. Like, I mean, even on chain art is not 100% certainty. We don't know if Ethereum will exist in, you know, ten years or Something. But, you know, it's a like, Arviv, for example, has like, if it has a token model and stuff, and there might be some security issues there. We don't know. And IPFS requires you to pin it and everything. Yes. All of them have some assumptions, and they all come with assumptions. But I will say, like, you know, if you have one of these three on chain, ARV, or IPFS, you're doing one of the better approaches than storing inside a server. So at that point, I think, you know, of course, moving on to on chain has some other advantages. I mentioned all these, like, composability and and the other conceptual explorations.
But, again, like, if you're exploring something else, it doesn't have to be on chain. It's just really I wanna stress that point. There is also a lot of very average, in my opinion, and maybe other people like it, but in my opinion, very average on chain art as well. So it's also worth, you know, really thinking about what you really wanna do and then then, you know, go into that medium. Having said that, like, what Elia just described, this is, like, his journey on how he discovered and how, you know, he became you know, he does done this thing. Like, hearing stories like that is, like it just makes me so happy. It's so awesome. So, yeah, I just wanna say that.
Speaker 3 Love you, Jane Laugh, man. Yeah. It's and, honestly, push the boundaries. If someone tells you it's not possible, maybe it's possible. Then try to push the boundaries and talk to people, see if there is a way and be pestering. And, telling someone mentioned that it is possible to to mint a 40 gig megabyte photo to the chain, and I already know Fabio will come to me and and ask me, Thierry, how can we do that now? Exactly, bro. How can we
Fabio do that now? I fucking knew it. No. But that that leads me to the next question. So is there a max size of ARC you can store in the chain, or is it just the more the the bigger it is, the more you pay for gas? Or
Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, it's both. So, yes, of course, it becomes very expensive as you go further. The size so it's a little tricky. Basically, because you're serving things like the rendering and everything, serving it from the chain directly, happens from the chain, you usually rely on browsers to display the data. And, you know, while I use things like, you know, SVG and HTML and everything to minimize that size, and then a lot of other people here do as well, like, some people use bitmap version, and those are usually they tend to be a little bit bigger in size when, you know, when you wanna achieve quality. And so far and and the way that you can do it is that you can stitch contracts to each other, and then you can kind of, you know, build on top of it.
Like, Ben mentioned that method actually earlier slightly, but some someone did it actually. They stored 10 megabytes JPEG on Ethereum, and it just minted out, like, two weeks ago or something. It was, like, it lots of gas lots of gas paid, but it was like a collaborative meeting. And and they did 10 megabytes, but that was, like, a really, really you know, it's a it's a it's a project. Like, it was a proper, you know, exploration. It's it's it's has its own concept. It was the idea. The idea was really to store the largest JPEG on chain, and they did it. And and then I don't think, like, something like this would happen anytime soon again. It was, like, quite a a a massive feat, essentially. I'm
Charlie I'm curious of how much was that gas. But probably they're not Yeah. They have us
Speaker 2 they have some stats they have some stats. I can con connect you to. He's a Catalan artist and developer who who's done this. And, yeah, it was it was quite fun, actually, the the way that he did it. I I I he started the project, like, in the bear market, so I collected some of the early cards I remember. Like, I really loved that, like, what he was exploring there. And then some influencer, I don't know whose name, but, like, tweeted about it two weeks ago suddenly, and then it minted out in one day. So it was, like, a funny thing. But, yeah, I just wanted to say, like, one one one more thing that I I wanna say, actually. You know, we we said, like, what's inside the code is like, what's what you see is what is inside the chain.
There are lots of assumptions with everything. Even even what I did, like, these, like, SVGs and everything, it's not 100% actually centralized. We're still relying on browsers to render, for example. We're relying on browsers to actually render the specific code that we put there. So SVG and JavaScript standards change. Sometimes those might actually, you know, break the stuff as well. So, you know, it's worth really thinking about these things. Like, I think, like, yes, it's fully we we call it fully on chain now because it's like, what is possible at that point? Right? But it's always good for people to realize that nothing is gonna be, like, a, you know, absolute 100% everything. There's always gonna be some assumption, and and and, you know, it's just good to be aware of them.
Fabio Okay. But now if we say breaking down the basics, if I would like to mint one of my pieces in the blockchain, what is the best size to, comp to to bring it down, to to to make it possible without paying a thousand of of ETH to gas?
Speaker 2 Yeah. So so you mentioned phot photography. Right, Fabio?
Fabio Exactly. Yeah. Whatever. It it just it just mean what what's the the best size to do that?
Speaker 2 Well, the the first of all, I mean, I would still go for SVG and HTML, like, if I would do it. But for you, especially for photography, there is a different method that recently some of our friends, like, built some contracts around it called EffiCax. Effi EffiCax. Yeah. I think that's the name. It basically it's a dithering tool that is within the chain. It allows you to kind of optimize the photography. It it won't like, the photo won't be in the exact same image as you took the photo of, but it will very likely keep the same soul and quality almost, but it will deter the image. It will make it a little bit more like, it will minimize it, essentially, so that it can be stored on the chain. And that's kind of the way I will suggest for you to go, like, if if you plan to do that.
Charlie Ben, please go ahead. So
Ben a couple things. Yeah. So I think when we talk about concept, as a quick aside, you know, there's always sort of this, you know, perfect concept. Right? And I I like Chain might agree with me. Maybe he doesn't. But, you know, Autoglyphs is sort of like a gold standard of truly on chain runtime. It's it's, you know, displayed as ASCII code. And a lot of people like to say, you know, that's that's pretty close to pure on chain. There's no external dependencies. You're not talking about what, you know, browser based SVG renderer you're using or and yet at the same time, even that someday could break down the way we look at that code, read that code. So when we're talking about permanence, you know, we're still talking about something on a computer, digital.
It's not, you know, a painting that's in front of your eyes that you're looking at that's sort of encoded, you know, by the laws of the universe. This this is, you know, an electronic thing that we've made, and we have to interpret it to see it with our eyes. Or so you start bumping up on these conceptual limits at some level when we say things like permanence or it'll always be around or, you know, that is probably true. There will be in a 100, if the blockchain's still around, there'll be some digital archivist that, you know, knows how to access this old code and and look at this thing, probably, you know, unless we all you know, there's a nuclear holocaust or, you know, some crazy sci fi movie. Now practical limits. Real world, if you're mentoring you know? So first of all, shout out to DIID's EficaX extension.
Awesome extension. Works with Manifold. It allows you to, store your on chain images as s store two data, much more efficient. I forget, probably 70% more efficient than the more traditional method if you go in, like, the manifold documentation for how you would meant an image. Anyway, excellent, piece of code. I helped them test it out way back when on, Girly testing that before it was live. Very cool. But practical real world, you start running into for the average user, if you're putting an image on Ethereum specifically, the real world limit's gonna be somewhere between one fifteen and a 130 kilobytes in a in a single transaction, you know, without concatenating data or combining it. On Bitcoin, if you're doing an ordinal, it's it's 400 kilobytes, but it's really closer to about three fifty for most, you know, interfaces that you're gonna use, before they'll start giving you errors.
So, yes, if you're taking a photograph, to simplify it even further, there's really two ways to get a image, you know, on chain fully. If you're not writing code, you're not doing SVG, vector graphics, and then any sort of raster image, so more of a pixel mapped image, JPEG, PNG, AVIF, WebP. With those, as Chainleth mentioned, there's really only a few ways to get them down on in size. One is dithering, and there's some different tools for that. But, essentially, you're just you're always lowering the data of the image to get it smaller and compressing it in some way, whether that's using a compression algorithm, which dithering kind of is, whether you're lowering the amount of colors, whether you're mapping, the data, which dithering also does using a algorithm, for coloring. But, yes, there are tools, but your image isn't gonna look the same.
And I if you go to the comments to this space right now, I I dropped a couple of different links to posts I've done in the past. One, you can see a dithered photograph. One, you can see the most recent SVG that I minted on chain. And then just to be a contrarian, I also put, something you can't do on chain, a performance arts art piece I did over the last year, that specifically relies on metadata and images changing. So, anyway, go look at those if you wanna see some real world examples, of what we're talking about.
Charlie So, basically, instead of using color images or photos, it's more convenient to go monochrome as far as, like, black and white or anything like that, sepia, cyanotype. That way, the data is a lot smaller. Correct?
Ben I wouldn't think of it as monochrome. I I would think of it as less colors. Right? So you're literally lowering the amount of colors. You could do it with four colors. You know? You can map things, you know, with four color RGB or with it's it's not about monochrome necessarily because you could have a grayscale image with 200 different, you know, tones of grayscale, and that's still gonna take up a ton of space. It's it's just less is more when it comes to on chain. Less colors, less pixels, less points with the SVG, less anchor points, less layers, less you you just you are challenged by the medium, to be as efficient as possible. And that's true with code too. When I when I did some work on an interpreter on ordinals for compressed SVGs, SVGZ, you know, I got my code down to 22 lines of code using on chain libraries for that. Every line of code costs money, essentially, when you're when you're minting this stuff on chain.
Charlie Yeah. And that's something that you said very important at the end, which is the money, the cost. Right? So I'm just looking at the the two main chains where which is like Bitcoin and Ethereum. What what are your opinions, Chainleft, Ben, and and Elia, when it comes down to older chains that are probably going to be adopting this and the actual gas prices are going to be a lot lower when it comes down to transaction speeds and things like that. For example, Solana, just to mention one of those. What are your opinions on this? Do you think that this is going to be something that is going to be adopted more by other chains, or is this something that is going to be native to only Ethereum and Bitcoin?
Speaker 2 Personally, I don't know much about Solana all that well. I don't know their state policies and everything like that, so I can't really say. I don't really know. Even for Ethereum, like, there's gonna be a state expiry potentially in the future, so it's kind of I mean, there's lots of conversations around it, so we don't know what's gonna happen. But, very likely, lots of artists would object what's what was in the proposal that hasn't been progressed for a while now. So so I'm just saying that, no. I don't I don't know what's how is it in in Solana. But, yeah, for me, myself, I'm doing only on Bitcoin and and Ethereum.
Fabio Is so I Bitcoin more what sorry. It's become more expensive to mint, or is it, plus minus the same, like, on Ethereum? Because I've never minted on Bitcoin.
Speaker 2 So so I have a chart. I I did this calculation, like, a while back, and then it's, of course, varies based on the how busy the met network is. But in what I've seen in Bitcoin, if you're storing in the multisig outputs, which is, like, the unpurunable method, which is, like, you know, the UTXOs, essentially. It's the most permanent version. That's super expensive. That's really expensive. I've still done it, you know, it's really expensive. And then Ethereum state, I would say, is the next. And then in my experience, ordinals have been cheaper than than Ethereum state. But then Ethereum also has cold data, which is this the message that you can add to a transaction, essentially. This
Speaker 2 you know, basically, yeah, it's another kind of type of data that is a bit less, I guess, expressive, but but you can store it there as well. And that's, I think, even cheaper than well, actually, it's it depends. Like, it's it's close to inscriptions, essentially, that price of that call data. And, yeah, that's that's the four that I basically have seen so far, and I used three of them. I haven't used CallData yet, I think. No. Actually, I used CallData as well. So, yeah, those those four are the only options that I pretty much used so far.
Charlie In Inscription, I just wanted to say this, Rick, because I keep hearing this word many times, Inscription. Is Inscription and Mint the same, or are they different? It's
Speaker 2 so it's a it's another long conversation, but description is essentially just adding data to chain. Let's put it that way. And and it's what these ordinal guys have have come up with. Like, they're the way that they use some of chain provenance to consider those as tokens, I guess. Like, we can we can yeah. Like, we can call it that way. So those ordinals are what is actually being transferred, and inscriptions are what are inscribed in the witness data of the transactions or the that links to those ordinals. But it's it's yeah. That's that's what it is, essentially.
Charlie Okay. So you'll be because I was confused. I'm like, why are they in the Bitcoin community call it inscriptions? We call it Mint. But now I understand that it's two different things, but it's kind of the same in between. That's why I was kinda confused, that's why I wanted to ask that question. Ben, go ahead.
Ben On a, yeah, on a a quick note on that. On a practical level to the user, they're very much similar, an inscription and a meant. On a technical level, they're very different. Right? Both the technology is different. Right? Bitcoin's proof of work doesn't have smart contracts. You are storing the data in a slightly different way on the network because it's an entirely different
Speaker 1 not entirely different, but it is a different type of network.
Ben And so you think, you know, on Bitcoin, they like to describe it more as you're inscribing it on, say, money. Right? You're drawing your art on money. On Ethereum, you were actually creating. You are minting a new token. So, I mean, on a practical level, it's very similar for the user, but there are some nuances and differences. I have experimented with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Tried to with Tezos. The tooling really doesn't exist. I've talked to some people about it, and, you know, we've looked at it, and the tooling's just not there. I do not know enough about Solana. On, as Chain mentioned on Ethereum, there's a couple different ways of storing data on Chain. I would consider one to be more immutable than the other in the sense that, he alluded to it.
The long term road map for Ethereum includes a phase known as the purge, which would theoretically purge out those Eatscriptions as they call them, the the call data data. But nobody knows what'll really happen. Right? I mean, we have governance mechanisms. If people stored a bunch of stuff on that and they don't wanna lose their data and their value, that particular road map phase could change. The purge could change. I personally, you know, don't love putting data on something that the road map says isn't gonna be there long term. Bitcoin's a little bit different. Right? It wasn't there aren't smart contracts. It wasn't designed, in a way to handle this on chain data in the same way. It doesn't have the same upgradability or ability to fork as Ethereum does. And so inscriptions are a little bit more of a hack, in a sense, but, you know, lots of things are, and they last for a long time.
So I have, inscribed some early ordinals back in February of this year. From a price standpoint, gas or the mempool are probably the most important thing when we're talking about what it costs to store data on chain. You're paying for black block space. And so mempool fees on Bitcoin, gas fees on Ethereum make a huge difference. All things being equal, when fees weren't too out of control a few months back, I found that it was about five times cheaper to store the same amount of data on Bitcoin as an ordinal as it was to Mint on Ethereum. But, again, if gas is higher or lower, if mempool fees are higher or lower, if you're using EtherCAX to store on Ethereum as a store two data versus you know, that's all very variable. But one thing that's constant is if gas is higher, your fees are gonna go up a lot.
And so something that's 14 kilobytes that might cost point o two, eth at, you know, 7 y, might cost you, you know, 0.3 at 30. So, gas fees are huge when it comes to mending on chain.
Charlie I mean, that's the reason why you said at the beginning that it's all about the provenance and the challenge because, again, this is not for everyone. If this is something that you wanna do, of course, go ahead for it. If you actually for example, Elia. Elia is a great example. Like, he stars the line. Right? Now he actually pursue it. You know, he actually made it work. So the reason why I actually asked that because, of course, Gatsby is definitely a deterrent for for anyone, including myself, to pursue this type of on chain art or NFTs. I was wondering if all the blockchains are gonna follow through, and they're going to be doing this because this is very important. As Elias said, But the this is an issue that is not talked about often. So so I was wondering about that.
And when it comes down to gas fees, I think that's the huge deterrent that most people will be looking into it, but at the same time, they will actually be looking at the way or the gas
Charlie to see if they can actually enter. But it's actually a great great way of actually getting started and actually getting that knowledge to to if even if you wanna do it, then by all means. But, also, I'm hoping that there are going to be more options out there when it comes down to other chains jumping in.
Fabio I would like to talk a bit more about the the workflow because now we always talked about about how much it costs and smart
Fabio know, for an artist, it starts in the beginning. So it starts creating the artwork or editing some existing artworks to do that. So how would you guys or how would you would you say someone should start? Is it really is the first point just to make an artwork as small as possible on the on the digital side? I mean, for example, with the photography in Photoshop or with with a vector in whichever program he works with? Or is it would you just use a completely finished perfect artwork and then use that in in in some online tools to make it smaller.
Ben So I'll give a quick answer. As somebody that, you know, I I like to think Elliot's a little more, vector native than I am. Chains a little more code native than I am. I've kinda played around with everything, whether that's dithered raster images, whether that's vector or you know, I've tried my hand at some generative stuff, not real great at it. But I would say there's sort of three paths, and start out with what you're good at. Right? If you're a photographer and that's what you know, start working on dithering artworks and and compression algorithms and and get your photography as small as possible. Figure out your style. Ali has done a great job with his style of photography and getting it on chain. You know, if you're a vector artist, Elliot can get a a piece down to probably lower points than I can.
I I'm a lot better than a lot of guys that are used to just using Procreate and drawing stuff, in terms of optimizing SPGs specifically from a code standpoint. But when it comes to points and layers, you know, Elliot lives and breathes that stuff in a way I don't. If you're a generative artist that writes code, get into the code in the libraries and what's stored online and what you're on chain and what you can do with it. So I would say don't try and you know, if you're interested in getting your work on Chain, don't learn a new style of work first. Learn how to get your work as efficient as possible and start there. And then there's people and tools that can help you with getting it on Chain. But first, you have to have it, you know, in an acceptable way to get it.
If you have you know, if you can't get your art under one megabyte, you need to work on that first, before worrying about how you're gonna mint it unless you just wanna, you know, spend thousands of dollars.
Fabio Yeah. That was exactly what what I wanted to to understand. So means first step is always try to find a solution to make your art as small as possible, then you can talk about everything else. So, Elia, how was your workflow? How did you make
Speaker 1 your piece? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Anyway, because I want to thank Ben because he helped me on the I don't know which kind of magic he did, but he managed to bring down my SVG from, like, '19 kilobyte to 14 kilobytes. So it was, you know, a deal in terms of gas at the end of the day. So thank you so much, Ben. But, yes, my workflow look. Design wise, because I am a visual designer in in real life, I really like to work within dire limitations somehow. You know? A few colors. This space, the less work with the less to produce the the the most at the end of the day. So my starting point was to use I work with Adobe Illustrator as a software. Okay? And I work with my mouse.
So I can I have the full control over every single control point, anchor point in my art? Okay? And this is something weird because sometimes people looking at my art, they are like, okay, but you are drawing it with a pen, with a brush, you know? And I'm like, no, it's just vector art made with a mouse, the old school way. So the least possible number of vector points, of anchor points, was my first my the first rule I had to follow. Okay? I designed the whole piece, you can see, is made by 647 anchor points only. Then I select not much colors, not much gradients. I mean, once I declare a gradient, I try to use the same in different instances. So to save up in in terms of line in the SVG code. You know? And that's it.
Basically, I work with these limitations in mind, then I gave the file to Ben to have a look, and, he he did some magic. But I I I don't know what exactly he did.
Fabio Okay. Now we wanna know what Ben did what Ben made with it. What was your magic, Ben?
Ben No. It's just it's it's back to code size. Right? It's it's more efficient code. It's it's, you know, anytime you have duplicates, anytime you have extra code, it's just trimming it down. I mean, an SVG well, it's true of a raster image too, but they they all turn into, you know, essentially letters and numbers telling you where things are on the image. And so the more you can there's there's multiple tools. Happy to send them to anybody that you know, shoot me a DM if you're interested in it. But there's lots of different ways to get that code optimized, and efficient and and take out the fluff. And that's that's all you're doing. I mean, we're talking very small file sizes. 19 to 13 kilobytes might not sound like a lot, but you're saving almost 50%, which when you're minting it is saving you that much in cost. So, yeah, it's just it's code efficiency versus drawing and points efficiency is all this.
Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. So It was crazy anyway to me because I told my, I went through the the SVG code of my output original output, and, I, you know, I thought it was already very, very synthetic somehow. And then I was shocked when when I found out you you managed to bring it out further.
Fabio Yeah. So at at the end, it's like everything. You maybe need most of the stuff, not really. So it just can bring it down to the the the minimum. But, now, Jane, you also have some, pieces which are moving. Are they also, fully on chain?
Speaker 2 Yeah. I I'm into glitch art, so I I think all my pieces are moving. They are I use animates so animation in the SVG. So there's a there's a there's a command called animate in SVG. So I use that for SVGs. But when I do abstract and especially if I'm doing I also so you can also animate using JavaScript, so which is another way that you can render, you know, on the on the browser just like SVG. So for that, I I use, you know, JavaScript's other other commands, essentially. But, yeah, you can do you can do all of those. You can even do sounds, you know, with the with JavaScript. So, yeah, you can do those also on Jane. The workflow is a little bit different. So it's because you've asked about the workflow workflow. So similar, like, Elia already mentioned a little bit, like, reducing the number of nodes.
The like, there are lots of, like, funny tricks there, you know, putting things together, grouping, and all those things. But then with the animation, usually, you have to find the sweet spot where the the frame number one and frame number two and frame number three connect well enough. Like, sometimes, you know, you wanna like, let's say someone is walking. Right? So you can't just put one foot ahead and one foot back and animate the the space in between. It has to move in a motion that makes sort of sense. So you actually have to draw all of these frames. Like, not all of the frames as in, like, as we understand in the in the, you know, heavy or or movie kind of side movie type of style, but more like in the in the computer space, which means that it will all these nodes will move smoothly between their initial positions to the final position, but you have to make sure that the checkpoints in between those first and last vector point needs to be, like, correctly arranged so that, you know, it's aesthetically pleasing and everything like that.
So, yeah, you can you can use those animate commands to do the SVGs, and in the JavaScript, you can do other stuff, essentially. But I just don't wanna go into too much detail. It's a bit, you know, too much there. Wow.
Fabio But but that means, for example, if we talk again about, Elias piece, it will be easy to also animate his piece. You just need to, like, write in a code that this vector goes there, that vector goes there, and you can animate the whole vector, if I understood that
Speaker 2 right. Yeah. That's possible. Yeah.
Speaker 1 Yeah. That's possible, but not that easy as you may think, Fabio. Yeah. Now there's there's there's
Speaker 2 It depends what you wanna do. Like, there are easy ways to do as well, but but depends what what you wanna achieve. If you wanna achieve, like, you know, some basic stuff, it's quite easy. It's just some some, you know, if you wanna do, like I think in your your work, Elia, if I remember, it was, like, this arrow. Someone was throwing an arrow. Right? The the, like, the character.
Speaker 2 Like, you can actually move that thing that it's holding, this this bubble text bubble or or or emoji. Like, you can move it from left to right easily, but you have to animate also the bow. You have to animate their hand, and it becomes, you know, of course, much more complicated then.
Speaker 1 Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, I have the pleasure to collaborate with several motion designer over the years, and they always found out that my art style is not that simple to animate because I tend to simplify a priority my my design. So, for example, I don't tend to separate the the parts. If I can do some I don't know. For example, the arm the arm of the subject is made by a single line, and the line is well, I I don't remember where it begins, but it's like never ending lines. So that's not very, very easy for animators to to keep in touch with what I design.
Fabio Just because you you do it in a complicated way, or is it is it, like, normal for vector?
Speaker 1 It's just that they are not told to be animated. They are not designed at the beginning to be animated. So when I did some animated piece, but it's a totally different work. You know? I had to start with a totally different mindset since the very beginning. So, yes, it's possible, but I had to think about it in advance.
Ben And and like like Shane said, there's different ways of doing things. There's the right way, kind of the most efficient way, which is what, you know, him and Elliot are talking about. And then there's sort of the somebody asked me one time, an artist, They had, like, a two frame GIF. Right? Like like a glitch piece that, you know, had a background that twirled or moved back and forth. And they said, could I put this on chain? And I said, probably. And I converted it to an SVG, converted into two frames. And, yes, you can essentially also tell an SVG to overlay two frames back and forth like a like a GIF that, you know, moves back and forth. So, you know, is that the right way to do it? There's a more efficient way to do it. Right? You could encode.
You could, you know, move the move the background vectors, but you can also just overlay if these pieces are small enough. For instance, this was a proof of concept on Bitcoin when the mempool was very cheap. And so if I could inscribe that as a compressed SVG and SVGZ, I could get it so cheap that when you're talking $20.30 bucks, it's not the end of the world. Is there a more efficient way to do it? Sure. But it would probably cost me more time than the extra $10 I was saving. So I like to think of things a little more like a hacker. We used to have a saying in business, if it works, it's true. And to some extent, that's a 100% how things work with on chain, art. If it works, it's true. That's why there's so many different methods, and all of them have advantages and disadvantages.
So sometimes you gotta think of where you're going and then back into how to get there, you know, because sometimes it's not efficient to do things the most efficient way from a real world standpoint.
Charlie I just wanted to discuss this chart that, I literally pinned from ChainLove, and it's very interesting. If you can just follow me on this, you can click on it. And there's, like, all the network networks, the date they were launched or the year they were launched, the permanent storage fee and runtime. This is very interesting. At the last
Charlie the foundations of OpenSea's marketplaces in in in just just to, summarize. And storage fee, of course, is lower. But then you go on the very top, you get, the Bitcoins, the inscriptions, the Ethereum state, and this Ethereum Cal data that we're discussing right now. So as you can see, permanence is super high on those on top, Ethereum and Bitcoin, while centralized servers are maybe. Storage fee, of course, a lot higher as well. So permanence equals a lot of fees, which is basically securing your NFT on chain. Any more thoughts on this chain left since you actually, share this with us?
Speaker 2 Yeah. This was an analysis I've done, like, in the early this year. I basically digged into the number of nodes and the storage fees. I tested the sources just like Bandit, and, I basically kind of came up with some numbers. I don't really like, I have the spreadsheet for this, actually, which I can probably dig into. But, ultimately, to visualize this, I put together this chart, here or the table here to show the difference between these. And, there there are a few things to point out, I think, here. Like, obviously, like, Bitcoin multistake outputs are I think I consider them to be the most permanent just simply because Bitcoin is secured by the most number of, I guess, like, we can say I wanna say nodes, but, you know, so, you know, it's proof of work, of course, and then it's proof of stake.
So it was stake. So it's not an an apples to apples comparison, but, just making some assumptions essentially based on that I considered multicycle outputs in Bitcoin to be more permanent. So inscriptions are interesting because, so there are two sides of sides to to the story here in terms of the permanence. On one side, today, I think over 95% of Bitcoin, like, whether it's not not nodes are actually storing also the witness data. So it is pretty permanent, almost as much as Monte Secapus, just a little bit less. But at the same time, maybe you're following the news, like, some some mining pools and and those some some of those core the wallet, actually, like, the core developers. They're actually trying to kind of even prune those inscriptions, so there is this potential future risk. So, you know, that should probably needs needs to be incorporated into this as well.
But inscriptions are really cheap. Like, it's this is the main use case that I see for inscriptions. Like, compared like, if you want to do some like, if you're really permanent maximalist, you know, I I told you many reasons why I like on chain art. It's not only the permanence. But if you're a permanent maximalist maximalist, like, inscriptions are interesting in in my opinion. Like, it the the ratio of permanence over storage fee is really good, I think, there. It's it's cheaper than Ethereum states, but, of course, you lose the advantage of using the smart contracts and all these, like, composability and all these cool things that you can do with Ethereum, of course. And and yeah. So there are bunch of other options here as well, of course. And and it's it's worth noting that there is a lot of assumption that goes into this blue blue colored chart.
Like, this is the permanent section, but it is, I think, fair. You know, I'm happy to hear other opinions as well.
Charlie Yeah. Any thoughts on this, Ben and Elliot as well, when it comes down to that chart?
Ben No. No. I I really like the, I really like the art. I I I enjoy seeing it visually because that's kinda, you know I kinda have it in my head in a similar manner, but it's really great visual tool. I got a question for. So Arweave's on there. Why no IPFF? I have my own opinions on IPFF and Arweave, but just asking your opinion.
Speaker 2 Yeah. It's a it's a good question. So the reason I didn't put was that it was hard to, establish a I I I it was hard for me to make an assumption on it. So the the main issue I have with IPFS, and then I I not that I have an issue, but the main issue I think that could be there is that it relies on yourself. Like, that's the funny thing with IPFS that, you know, if you actually if you trust yourself to pin it always, it's actually super permanent. Like, it's actually, you know, more permanent than most of these things that you have there. I don't really know at how if it how it could compare with Bitcoin, but it is very decentralized, and it would, it would work really well. The issue there is that there is an additional, you know, condition there or initial Additional factor to always keep in mind.
It's the pinning. Like and that's that that is a reliance on yourself. So you have a new reliance factor or a new new trust vector here, essentially, which doesn't exist for all these things that you have here. And that's why I didn't put it there because I didn't know how to compare it against those others.
Ben I I agree with that. I have had, I was on pop punk show a while back, and they asked me what I preferred. They were talking about non on chain art, and they said, you know, what do you prefer? Are we for IPFS? And I said, look. It's difficult because you get people that really are anti are weave, you know, that like IPFS. And the only way I can look at it and figure it is Arweave's a blockchain. You're kinda paying on the front end. Right? So you're getting these guarantees that'll last for hundred years, two hundred years, which, sure, they're making a bunch of assumptions and, you know, promises that who knows if they can keep. I won't care. I won't be around in a hundred, two hundred years. But I understand that's sort of the the risk with our weed.
The risk on IPFS, I agree with you, is I can look back at torrents. Right? BitTorrent and all that kind of stuff. I I'm the right age for all that. And oftentimes, just like we have BitRot on the Internet and sites go down, there was torrent rot. You know? And as things got older, people became less willing to host or, you know, in this terminology, pin them, and they disappeared just like sites did from the Internet. And so at least from my side of the world, blockchains are more resilient than depending on people to host things, you know, distribute it. So I prefer Rweave to IPFS at sort of a conceptual level, but I'm totally open to people that have a different opinion. I do think it's telling that if you look at Manifold and Transient Labs, both of them use Arweave as their default.
And those are some pretty smart guys and companies, you know, that certainly have furthered, on chain art. But, anyway, just figured it was a fun sidebar and interested in why why you didn't have it in there. So thank you, Jane.
Charlie I was actually asking myself the same question. Like, IPFF doesn't exist. Like, is it part of centralized servers? Like, I was just wondering that myself too. But, yeah, I'm actually glad that you brought that up as well. I mean, it is actually very interesting to see this chart and see how it works. And as you were saying, inscriptions, which is actually done this, started this year, you can see the ratio where the permanence is very high, but the storage fees, like, way lower than actually what Ethereum state and Bitcoin it, is as of right now. So it's actually pretty cool to see that because now you can get, like, a some sort of, like, a guide to to know where to go as far as, like, if you are actually going that route for permanence. Because, I mean, again, I'm gonna repeat myself.
This is not for everyone. But if you are into permanence, you're talking about providence, you're talking about things like that, and you are actually very interested on those, Definitely check this chart, save it, and and go for that route, the route that you wanna take, when it comes down to that. For example, Elliot is a great example of that. And he probably didn't even know that he's doing this, but eventually he got into this position where now he's at it, and he's actually enjoying it as well. And that's the that he the whole point of this, the whole point of that you get into these type of chains and you actually get to enjoy the process and how to actually get on it.
Charlie I got something else that I wanted to mention here as I actually pinned it on top, and it's a post from Ben. And we were talking about photography earlier on, and this this whole example of compressing images. 28 kilobytes PNG, 360 by six hundred six hundred and eighteen p x. It's not minted. It's not listed yet, but it's on mint. It's on say on is it minted? On minted? But it's on chain ready. What is that supposed to mean, Ben? Is that is it on chain ready? Meaning that it's actually just sitting there waiting to be minted? Or how I mean, I'm just trying to figure it out this that you actually posted and shared with us.
Ben Yeah. So I so I have never actually minted a dethered image. The let's see. I've done a total of six pieces, on chain on Ethereum that I've minted. All have been vector graphics. Let's see. And so it just didn't stylistically sort of fit, you know, in in my canon of on chain works, but it was something that I did for fun. It was my anniversary trip. We were in Vegas. I took a photo, and I said, I wonder how small I can get this in a few minutes. I could probably get it smaller now. I've gotten better. Like like anything, practice makes, perfect. And so in the last six months, you know, I've learned some new things. I could probably get it even smaller, but it's just a great example of you know, here was a photograph that who knows? Coming out of the phone, it was probably 15 megabytes.
Right? And you could get it down to a very small fraction of that very easily. I will find and post in here in just a minute. The photographer Nathan Baumann had a really cool photo that he had minted the same thing. It was maybe fifteen, sixteen megabytes. And I dethered the image, compressed it, and got it down under 30 kilobytes. And looking at it, it looks almost the same. I'll post that one in just a second just because it's a it's a cool example. But, yeah, this was just a great example. It hasn't been minted, but it could be minted very easily.
Charlie That's freaking epic, man, just for the fact that you can compress a file from 15 megabytes all the way
Charlie what, 10? That you were saying, like, the magic number is 14 and below when it comes down to minting costs or inscriptions, whatever you name it. I was just confused with these different terminologies, inscriptions and minting and things like that. But, yeah, this is actually pretty cool that I get to see this in action when it comes down to compression and being able to be ready to be minted on chain, which is huge. I always I'm gonna be honest. I used to dismiss this topic because I didn't understand what on chain meant. Because what my understanding was everything was on chain. Absolutely everything. So when when it was mentioned on chain, I was like, what are they talking about? Like, this is the ex extra things that you gotta do to make it make sure that you are on chain.
And then now that I actually learned from you guys, Ben, Elliot, ChainLab, now it comes to my understanding that there's actually more into it than just minting. It's not just the IPFS and Rweebs. There's more to it. If, of course, you wanna go that route. And I just wanna leave the, floor open for those that are listening to come on stage and ask the questions if they have a couple of questions when it comes down to this topic. Go ahead. I have a question too.
Fabio I'll I'll go ahead, Ben, first. Okay.
Ben Real quickly, one thing I do wanna say about on chain art, and I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating, is the tools are getting better and better in terms of getting the art on chain. But one of the areas where things haven't kept pace is for collectors to understand the on chainness of art. You know? If you go look at, you know, my on chain pieces versus my not fully on chain pieces on foundation or OpenSea, there's really no way to tell without diving into the details where it's stored. You know? And you go click details, and maybe it says IPFS or are we, you know, but I I showed I forget which artist it was a long time ago. It was Nate. When Nate was first getting ready to do his first on chain pieces, he said, how do I know it's on chain?
I showed him an Etherscan how to look, you know, under the URI where the data is. But I think for the average collector, we can do a lot better. Obviously, TokenFox has some cool tools. But but in terms of integrating those tools and that understanding, I think we have a long way to go. Shane's got something to say about it. I was gonna say
Speaker 2 was just gonna say Tokenfox. You said it already. But but but so you're also right, Ben, that you know? So Tokenfox is is a friend of ours, and then he's, like, really, like you know, he's an on chain expert, I would call it. Like, call call call them. They basically have this tool called on chain checker, not x y zed. And it works on subscription today, and he's kind of still searching for a way to kind of, you know, monetize that beautiful tool that he's built. But the tool is the the tool essentially goes into the entire like, it it goes into the contract, goes into the token. It looks at the, you know, the structure of the token. It looks at whether there are any, you know, external links, URLs. It looks at what kind of format it's done.
It basically does everything automatically for you to check whether something is on chain or not. It's a really good tool on chain checker. And and what we can do, I think so so to to to Ben's point, you know, on on, you know, how it's not easy to find these things. I know, you know, as as
Speaker 1 TokenFox did it, but it's just one tool.
Speaker 2 I think we should kind of pressure these, like, marketplaces and everything to, for example, integrate with a tool like Tokenfoxes, like OCC, like, chain checker so that something like this can be actually, you know, used in more mainstream instead of just, you know, how how it is today, which is this kind of niche that we're interested in. It's it would it would be better for everyone to know more about what they're collecting.
Fabio What I wanted to ask you guys, because I just, thought about that now, and is it possible to add to an on chain, to a fully on chain piece, although, like, linked to to, IPFS upload? I mean, just, the safety piece, is stored within the code, to be forever in the chain. But, for example, if a collector would like to, exhibit the piece IRL and the piece is so a little too you know, with a couple of kilobytes, it's it's never big enough to exhibit it in in real, you know, on on a big screen somewhere. So is it possible to mix those ways of of an NFT, like the the IPFS upload with the, fully
Ben on chain? So so quickly, I will say one of the advantages of vector graphics and what chain does, which is, you know, generative vector graphics, is that you can you can resize the piece infinitely. Right? So Sure. But but
Fabio but bit but a bitmap is definitely not possible. Right? That that is
Ben that is one of my that's one of the reasons that I have not minted a a raster image a bit because you lose some of that future proofedness in that way. That that is true. And then, yes, there are different sort of levels of on chainness. But, no, something that is truly on chain, on chain metadata image, and let's say it's a raster image of, like, a bitmap, yes, you would have to essentially go off chain. Now I have played around with, incorporating, up scaling algorithms on chain over on Bitcoin. I I took a piece that was a raster image and then, essentially wrote the LANCAS three upscaling algorithm, into the code. It ended up being a little too heavy for browsers right now.
But, yes, you could theoretically, do some interesting things where you take a raster image and you know what it will look like once it's upscaled at two x, four x using a different out, upscaling algorithm and you're happy with that result, you could, inscribe or mint that on chain. But like I said, then I ran into other technological issues. The browser kinda chugged along when it was doing it, and so that didn't quite pan out. But, yes, that would be the bigger concern with the raster image is, yeah, you wanna go print that thing out and it's 300 pixels, you know, that's gonna present some issues.
Fabio Okay. Yeah. I understand. So but is there a way to make, like, a vector out of a photograph? It's not really possible. Right?
Speaker 2 You can trace it. I mean, it's, I mean, it's not gonna be like, it's not you can kind of try to get it realistic. There are people who are doing it. I'm actually working on something like that, not exactly that, but, like like, you can you can try to make it like this, but, of course, it's not gonna be a photo ultimately. Right? It's gonna be a different file format. It's gonna be different very likely different look as well. But, I mean, you know, nothing stopping you from making it look very, very realistic, of course, if you if you spend lots of time, I
Speaker 1 think. Yeah. Let me let me just add a few cents here, Fabio. If you you can be as photorealistic as as possible with vectors, but at that point, the file, it will be, you know, way more heavier than bitmap file. So it's not a big deal. I mean, if if you want to save up in terms of weight, you have to be as minimal as possible. So it's very hard.
Fabio So Ben's idea with with the upscaling algorithm is still the more efficient way to do that at the end. Oh, we we had someone on on the panel, but he already jumped out. Yeah. So, guys
Speaker 2 so much. We spoke too much.
Fabio Yeah. Maybe it's my fault because I jumped in with his question. Sorry for that. But is coming again, so maybe he has some cool questions or inputs again.
Speaker 2 I wanna say one thing because we were talking about photography. I was just gonna say, like, it's a bit tricky, like or or, let's say, almost like cheating. I mean, I I genuinely like glitch art, and this is kind of what I always got interested in. I collect also of change and with glitch art. But it it is a bit easier to do it with glitch art, I have to say. Like, it's like, the animations and the the the distortions, particularly, like the filters and all those things like glows. These are relatively easier to do in in SVGs, in in my experience, at least, and maybe because I'm focused on that part so much. But, yeah, I mean, from my part, like, illustration, of course, is the probably a bit, you know, generally illustration, like generic illustration, which is what SVG is designed for. But, also, I found Glitch to be relatively okay as well, like, to do as an art art form.
Charlie I was looking at this photo right here, a truck Truckstop Diner, by, by Nathan Nathan. And, actually, like, a 30 kilobyte. Right? But you look at it at a distance, it just looks like a normal photograph. But when you zoom in, you now you start looking at the different details on the decompression of it as well. I mean, that's actually pretty cool. And that to me, it just kinda, like, brings that uniqueness to the actual image by decompressing to those levels. Let me ask you this, Ben. If there's any way that this couldn't be decompressed even more, when it come what we'll say, fourteen, ten kilobytes. Is that possible, or that's that was the limit?
Ben No. No. It's possible. I mean, a lot of times when I'm posting something like that, it's more of a proof of concept just to just to quickly show, you know, using there's there's newer formats. There's always newer compression algorithms, and it's always, a balance between, you know, more pixels, less pixels, more color, less color, a little bit of fuzziness in terms of the algorithm used. So I could absolutely you know, can I use I think that was probably a PNG or a JPEG? Can it can you use WebP? Can you use ABIF? You know, how how much how much time do you have to run the compression algorithm? Because you can run more efficient, algorithms that take a little bit longer sometimes. So there's always trade offs, but, yes, that could be made smaller. I mean, that could be put on chain right now.
But like I said, the limit for a single sort of transaction is generally somewhere between 110, 130 kilobytes. So that could be put on chain, but from a cost saving standpoint, that could be made smaller. Absolutely.
Charlie Yeah. I'm making a whole lot of sense. Fabio, go ahead.
Fabio No. I wanted nothing to do. I was I guess I know everything I need to know now. The only thing I need to know are is there a place where I can find all the information to not forget it? Do you guys have, like, a website, or is there a Discord or something where I see all this stuff you said now?
Speaker 2 So I will do mine now a little I mean, it's not a we have no problem. I don't benefit from it. But, basically, we have this community called pushers, short for boundary pushers. Inside it, we usually you can find it on my website, or you can just go chainleft.art/disco sorry, /pushers. And it's open to all artists. I don't use it as a kind of my own Discord or anything. It's I try to keep it as open as possible, and I assign, you know, create a creator tag to all the, you know, creators essentially. And the idea is basically people who don't wanna manage, like especially these innovative artists and and, developers and and so on who don't wanna manage their own Discord. They can come there and, you know, they can even talk about what they're minting and everything. The only condition is that it needs to be boundary pusher.
So so that's why we have a channel there, for example, called on chain. So that's that's one of the areas that I consider it to be, like, an interesting front where there is there are those innovations or boundary pushing is happening. But there are other channels as well. There's, like, conceptual art. There's the dynamic art and so on. And in that, we also have resources, which I think can be what you're really asking. So we have this resources section there that has links to I'll just count it now. There's on chain NFT timeline. There's fully on chain dot art. It's a creation platform for only fully on chain art. Zero Exchange, which is, like, again, a a crazy platform done by an an early version, actually, of it. On chain checker, which is token Fox's tool that allows you to automatically check it.
Some canons launched by JPEG team in the past regarding on chain resources, but also on in chain collections. Scripty, which is a tool to do generative art, a composable generative art using p five and and three. Js. Essentially, it kind of picks up those libraries from the chain and allows you to build generative art with fully on chain. And EpicX, of of course, is a tool I I don't even know how to pronounce it, but this is the tool that did did did that allowed To compress things very efficiently on chain. And then there are other resources as well related to dynamic card concept to that and historical NFTs as well. So feel free to go there and check those resources. And, you know, also, you know, come come and chat. Like, I think we can help on there as well.
Fabio I hate you guys. I I don't wanna go to more Discord servers, but I really need to join this server. So one more server spam.
Speaker 2 There is really zero spam, really. I mean, I think this I mean, I I we try to keep it zero spam. Of course, like, some people are not like this, but I think most people who join there are not there for any sort of alpha or anything like that. It's mostly for really talking about this stuff that we just talked about.
Ben Sorry. Yeah. I I can suck, and it's a it's a great Discord server. I'm in there, and I'm more of a fly on the wall usually, but it's a good server. Yeah. It is. It is.
Charlie You ask and you shall receive. See, you ask about resources and things like that. They are given to you. Now you gotta go. So definitely, definitely, definitely check them out. If you are interested, you're listening right now and you're interested into on chain NFTs, definitely follow Chainleft. Definitely follow the Benmetals. Definitely follow Javelia. If you I'm pretty sure they are gonna be more than willing, to actually answer your questions as well. You don't have to go on Discord, but at the same time, you wanna be part of the revolution or the evolution for that matter, definitely join up and check out those Discord servers that Fabio hates so much and check them out. L tier, go ahead.
Speaker 3 No. Amazing. I was just gonna hop in and ask this exact question. Where can I get, like, the the documentation for everything so I can check it out myself and help Fabio with his endeavor?
Fabio Exactly. You may bro, let's do it like that. You go to check the server, and then you can do it for me. No. No. I I already wanna join the server. And you have no time for that, bro. You need to stay in your, small room and code our side. You don't have time for that.
Speaker 2 Yeah. Guys I just linked it on the on the reply sorry. I just linked linked it on the replies that that they're linked to the server if you
Fabio just Great. Thank you. Thank you. I would say it was a really interesting discussion, so I learned so much today. And I think even if it's pretty great to talk with you, everything needs to have an end. Any last words for someone? Someone do you guys wanna add something? Maybe in a big announcement or you just wanna say I love you all and bye. It's your turn now. Lost possibility.
Speaker 1 Maybe I go first this time. Just wanna say thank you to the whole, on chain community because, I didn't expect the community to be so so receptive with my art. So a big thank you goes out to the to the community. They are very supportive. My edition is almost sold out. Just one to go. So it's crazy. Amazing. And thank you so much.
Ben Just wanted to say thank you guys for, having me today. I always enjoy talking about this topic, and this has been a fun group. Good questions. Don't have a lot to announce. I'm kinda taking December off. I think this is the only spaces I've done. I'm, I'm buying a house, moving, so I'm just kinda taking it quiet this month and maybe part of next month. I think I have one on chain piece that has a couple additions still available. I linked it. It's a Pepe ducky, which is kinda funny, but it came from my experience running software developers and sort of the rubber duck debugging method. So, take a look at that if you enjoy Pepe and rubber duckies combined, with on chain art. And everybody have a great holidays, so thank you.
Speaker 2 I wanna thank you as well for having me and also really enjoyed speaking to you all and enjoyed the I mean, I learned quite a bit as well. And I know you kept saying this, but I actually really enjoyed this conversation. We didn't get to talk too much about smart contracts. Maybe next time. But yeah. We
Fabio need to bring you on on stage again for another for another conversation about smart contracts.
Speaker 2 Yeah. It was it was fun conversation, nonetheless. Yeah. I don't have much to announce either. I I I don't have any pieces available, but I am well, I have one thing to announce. I I'm actually launching something, but it's more like a more like an experiment rather than full fledged. I wouldn't. It is art, but it is like it's a bit different, let's say. I I haven't I'm I'm kinda trying to keep it a bit secretive right now, but I I plan to launch it before the year end of the year, hopefully. And it will be, like, a free mint for some specific conditions. I already announced those conditions, but so, you know, you can, check it out, if if you're interested.
Charlie Man, it's been a great space. I'm not gonna lie. We gotta do a part two. There's a lot to unpack. I'm pretty sure there's a lot more questions that are gonna be coming up. There's a lot of knowledge that's being actually spread when it comes down to on chain NFT. So definitely, appreciate you guys for your knowledge and what you guys actually gave your time, busy schedule, especially Ben, Ellie, and Shane when it comes down to, like, the holidays are far approaching, so you guys are gonna get busy. So definitely appreciate you guys for coming in. Fabio, go ahead.
Fabio Yeah. I I will say the same. Thank you so much, guys, for your time. Like I said before, I really learned so much, and I'm bullish now. I I need to create, some on chain pieces
Fabio know which piece I will use for that. Yeah. But, so thanks for the interesting conversation, and I wish everyone of you guys a great holidays, merry Christmas, and whatever you're doing. GM, GE, GN, great day, and thanks for joining. So bye, guys.