Welcome my friends to the eighth edition of Nonfungible Alpha.
Each week, I drop actionable insights for both collectors and artists. The focus is the 1/1 market, up-and-coming artists, and the art of collecting.
Alright, LFG
Weekly Quote
When you pay high for the priceless, you acquire it cheaply
Joseph Duveen
📈 Market Pulse
The 1/1 market is off to a sluggish start for October.
So far, SuperRare and Foundation are on pace for a combined $5.6M in volume in October. This would be the second lowest figure of the year to date, after June ($5.4M).
The month is young, however, so let’s see what happens.
🎯 Weekly Featured Art
Cardinal by Rich Caldwell
Available on SuperRare
note: this nft dynamically adjusts to display the viewer’s local time
Why I Spent 3.69 ETH on a Toilet JPEG and the Potential of Web3 Performance Art…
Earlier this week, I shelled out 3.69 ETH for a jpeg of a man sitting on a toilet.
Why the f**K did I do this? How did I end up spending an ATH for the artist in question on a jpeg that I find so distasteful that I have it hidden on my opensea profile?
Today, I’ll share the crazy story of how this came to be and close with some general thoughts on the potential for performance art in Web3.
Let’s rewind the tape.
In August, I discovered an artist by the name of Bryan Beckon aka freebac, thanks to a tip from another great emerging artist, Tim Grib.
Bryan’s work hit me right away. It’s something like 3D, digital Basquiat. But comparisons like this only go so far. Basquiat was his own artist, and so is Bryan.
I ended up collecting his genesis 1/1 as well as a tokenized physical, both pictured below.
No surprise, Bryan’s work has drawn a loyal and growing collector base in his short time in the space thus far. In the past 30 days, he is a top-3 creator on Foundation, by sales volume (along with omentejovem, another artist I am fortunate to have collected early on).
On October 1st, Bryan dropped his first-ever edition with some…unconventional rules. The immersive performance art scheme, entitled Last Man Standing, had the following guidelines:
24 editions will be sold, all to separate collectors
once the last one is sold, a 24h countdown will commence
the last person holding an edition will win the physical canvas of DAMN (pictured below)
if, however, at the end of the 24h countdown more than one collector is still holding the edition, nobody wins DAMN
Last Sunday evening, the final edition sold and the countdown began.
At this point, Bryan introduces the first twist: anyone who burns will receive a pfp from the “Friendly Fire” series.
A number of burns roll in and by Monday morning with a bit under 12 hours to go, half of the editions have been burned.
Why are people burning? I think a combination of wanting to lock in the pfp (and not expecting they’d win the physical), social pressure, and “FOR THE CULTURE” as burners like GVG and funghibull declare on the Discord that Bryan has set up for the event.
Meanwhile, a secondary market for the edition emerges. One collector who had already burned his edition places a bid to get a new edition (he might have burned earlier in pursuit of a specific pfp as Bryan had hinted at the order in which PFPs would be distributed).
I bid myself, reasoning that if I can obtain more editions, then I can burn them and increase my odds of being the Last Man Standing. I only place modest bids, and none of them are filled.
However, with several hours left, a mysterious anon buys an edition for 1.42 ETH on the secondary, burning it moments later to secure a pfp. This secondary buy is a fun and bold move but inconsequential to the final outcome. However, it plants a seed in my head that will return to relevance a couple hours later…
Even with burns trickling in, a number of editions remain. I feel like a stalemate where nobody wins is the likely outcome. So I propose an idea Monday afternoon with several hours remaining:
create a group-owned multisig among remaining edition holders
all holders send their edition to said multisig
randomly select a winner (using the multisig)
return the winner’s edition and burn all the other editions
This would guarantee that somebody wins and that every collector has a fair, equal shot at doing so.
But multiple remaining holders are AFK (or choosing to not signal their presence), so there’s no ability or collective will to coordinate such a thing.
At some point during the day, Bryan mentions in the Discord that he will change the metadata of the edition to a jpeg of him sitting on a toilet taking a dump in the event that more than one edition remains at the end of the countdown.
He’s joking, right? That’s my first thought…but the more I think about it, the more it dawns on me that this is the type of thing this guy would pull…
So in other words, there are three possible outcomes:
burn my edition in exchange for a pfp
don’t burn and end up with a beautiful edition and the physical canvas, assuming everyone else burns by the deadline
don’t burn and end up with a toilet jpeg if one or more other persons also haven’t burned by the deadline.
The stakes have never been higher.
By two hours remaining, twenty virtuous souls have burned while four greedy mfers, myself included, remain in the running. I bounce to the gym for an hour hoping by the time I return at least one or two more will be burned.
When I return, three remain standing: myself, KDean, and Bitman.
Neither of them are on Discord with rumors circulating that Bitman is still asleep (I have my doubts as it‘s already 11 am in Taiwan…)
The idea crosses my mind of creating a 3/3 multisig, assigning KDean, Bitman, and myself as signers and then sending my edition to it.
This would give me some leverage, I figure. Neither KDean or Bitman would win if there was an edition in any other wallet, and there would be no way to get the edition out of the wallet (multisig) without them signing a transaction to send or burn it. So I would tell them “hey, send your editions to the multisig too and then we can select a winner at random.”
I decide this move is too risky. KDean or Bitman might legitimately be AFK and never see it. The edition would remain trapped in the multisig, and everyone would lose.
With maybe 40 minutes remaining, KDean drops by the discord to share an unwelcome “GN” announcing that he’s off to bed and will be holding his edition to the bitter end.
I reply that I plan to hold mine too trying to push for a negotiation. But he’s soon out for the night and doesn’t appear to be bluffing.
At this point, a wave of ngmi washes over me. I see no path to victory…until…I think to look on opensea once more. I see that KDean had listed his edition for… 3.69 ETH.
I DM Bitman. I figure we can agree to split the cost for KDean’s edition, burn it, and then randomly select a winner amongst ourselves. 1.35 ETH for a 50% chance of winning seems quite reasonable.
No reply.
15 minutes left.
To burn or not to burn?
I’ve come this far, and I’ve already said I’m not gonna burn. I don’t want to flip last minute. So…
I’m. Not. Going. To. Burn.
But I can’t just sit around and cross my fingers that KDean is bluffing and that Bitman suddenly wakes from his (supposed) sleep.
That would likely result in no PFP and a boring finale to Last Man Standing.
I have a more…exciting idea in mind.
So with just several minutes on the clock, I pull the trigger on what may go down as the most idiotic or most 4D-chess jpeg move ever.
I hit the buy button on KDean’s edition for 3.69 ETH, instantly burn it, and send my remaining edition to my vault to signal that I’m hodling all the way through.
By doing so, I lock in a PFP (pictured below), a limited edition of two in the event that Bitman doesn’t burn, and the prospect of winning the canvas and being the Last Man Standing in the event that he does — all while creating some fun performance art.
Well…
Bitman remains AWOL and doesn’t burn.
Nobody wins.
But that’s not the bad part. As I feared, Bryan wasn’t joking about the metadata. So…Bitman and I are now involuntary owners of the following jpeg, which I’ve blurred out of courtesy (DM for secondary inquiries…)
Despite this outcome, I have zero regrets. I feel that I made a +EV trade at the time, and even the end result wasn’t so bad. I took away a PFP and a fun story. And who knows, maybe this repugnant jpeg accrues great value someday. God knows stranger things have happened in NFTs.
Later, Bitman reported (or claimed) that he had set an alarm for after the deadline, so that he wouldn’t be tempted to burn. Side note: playful jabs aside, Bitman is someone I respect for his great collection and knack for picking out promising emerging artists.
Thankfully, I no longer have the dubious distinction of spending an ATH on a toilet jpeg as Bryan hit a fresh ATH the other day with “The DAMN Thief,” a work inspired by the edition outcome:
Last Man Standing showcased the potential for performance art in Web3. Bryan created not just art but an experience for his collectors that they won’t forget anytime soon.
A few potential insights or rules of thumb we can take away from Last Man Standing on how to do performance art in Web3 (these are just rough guidelines and I’m sure there are exceptions):
Take advantage of unique, Web-3 native possibilities. In this example, burning and changing metadata are two primitives that are only possible with NFTs (yes, someone could burn a physical piece of art but not easily or in a publicly verifiable fashion)
Make it unpredictable and introduce some twists along the way. Nobody knew how the story would unfold, which is what made it so fun.
Make it immersive and participatory. Let your collectors be performance “artists” too who are collectively creating the outcome.
Let everyone win (something). Whether it’s a physical canvas, a pfp, or a limited edition toilet jpeg…it’s cool if everyone walks away with something.
Make it social. For example, setting up a one-off discord or telegram, or a new channel if you have an existing discord. Bryan also hosted a Twitter Space in the final moments of the countdown.
While Web3 unlocks new opportunities for performance art, I don’t think every artist needs to do this type of thing. Artists like Alpha Centauri Kid, Tjo, and Bryan love to experiment with stuff like this and have a knack for it, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.
But a general mindset of applying creativity not just to your art but to the market and to the process of building and strengthening your collector base is a great orientation in my view that I’ve seen pay off for artists in this space.
Even while reading this story, I got an adrenaline rush. These are great tools for have fun and marketing together. But yes it’s not for all of us, I’m going with my strategies and learning more
I am very happy I came across this the inspiration I got from this is like nothing I have ever seen it all about everyone winning