New platform features

Indexer status page

Sometimes, the indexer gets backed up, leading to delayed mints, tokens slowly arriving in your wallet, sales feed issues, and overall slow performance around the minting experience. It used to be the case that you would have to ask in our Discord about the indexer, but now, you can check the indexer’s service status any time by clicking the indicator located in the footer (bottom of the page).

When you click on the page, you’ll see the indexer service status bar and indicator, letting you know whether it’s synced or not.

Below the status bar is more specific data about how many blocks behind the Tezos blockchain the indexer is running (normally between 2-4 blocks behind), as well as the last block indexed and the blockchain head (i.e., the current block).

For quick reference, bookmark the fxhash services status page.

Marketplace statistics pagination

It may not seem like it at first sight — but this update is a big one! Before, marketplace statistics were capped to the top 15 projects. This limited discoverability for all but the absolute highest-selling artists on the platform, severely limiting the discoverability of newer artists and those with less market share.

Now, with the integration of marketplace statistics pagination, you can flick through the top 50 projects sorted by 24hr, 7d, 30d, and all-time. After giving this update room to breathe and seeing what (if any) effects there are on marketplace dynamics, we plan to expand pagination to encompass the top 100 projects.

What do you think about the new marketplace stats pagination feature? Should we cap it at 50, 100, or expand it even more? Tag @fxhash team or DM us in Discord to share your thoughts!

ClubNFT Backup Tool integration

Now, you can quickly & easily back up your entire fxhash generative art collection by clicking the new backup collection (ClubNFT) button. This integration provides a high degree of redundancy and increases the protection + longevity of your irreplaceable digital artwork

To start, click the three dots menu from your collection page to toggle backup collection (ClubNFT) button, which will redirect you to the ClubNFT app. From there, it only takes a few moments to download a zip file containing all of the IPFS data associated with your fxhash collection (this includes the artwork files themselves).

Let’s pause for a second. Why should you back up your fxhash collection — isn’t it already safe? We believe so and are very satisfied with the level of security offered by IPFS decentralized storage in the first place. But redundancy never hurts. In fact, we consider redundancy to be a best practice, especially where your valuable art collection is concerned.

To quote from ciphrd’s recent interview with Right Click Save:

In the physical world, museums and galleries have a broad array of protective tools at their disposal to ensure the longevity of artworks. Special glass, climate control, LED lighting, and art restorers all play a role in the preservation process. While digital artworks may not face the same types of risks as physical pieces, they are prone to a unique set of dangers that threaten their longevity.

Because fxhash is the world’s largest repository of generative art, it should be just as concerned with art preservation as it is with creation. To that end, we see ClubNFT as a powerful tool in our generative art preservation protocol, similar to the Guggenheim’s Conserving Computer-Based Art Initiative.

If you’d like to learn more about the ClubNFT Backup Tool, we think this explainer is a great place to start.

New audio and includes pre-rendered components labels

Artists now have two new label options to specify their projects further: audio and includes pre-rendered components. The latter provides nuance to the current and much more general Image Composition label.

With these (and future) additions to our labeling system, we hope to make it even easier for artists to specify the nature of the work being published, which in turn improves discoverability when collectors do manual searches or apply filters.

Tezos for Iran added to donations list

In the wake of the historic protests against the killing of young Iranian women, @TeiaCommunity set up a charity fundraiser in solidarity with the protesters & to raise awareness for women's rights in Iran. To read more about the initiative, visit Teia’s GitHub.

Like other donation addresses and contracts in the fxhash donations list, you can now easily split primary and secondary proceeds with Tezos for Iran at the time of minting.

Optimized images served to high-density displays

High-density displays are more common than ever and are rapidly advancing. To keep artwork looking sharp across even the most cutting-edge displays, we're now serving them optimized images.

Bug fixes & improvements 🔧

We’re constantly hunting for bugs to fix and minor improvements to make (that can make an outsized difference in your fxhash experience 😊). These fixes are often the result of community feedback, so please keep pinging us when you notice something is amiss!

- Search feature in mobile navigation now opens correctly

- Dark mode is now applied correctly to modals

- Search query value is decoded & now works with special characters and spaces

- All images now display the correct blur

- Using focus on inputs in iOS will not zoom in

- Filters are back on when using mobile for generative token iteration viewing

- File upload now correctly handles files up to the size displayed (for video, image, audio) and also displays a helpful error message when one occurs during upload

- Verified by tooltip in the user profile now displays correctly

- Fixed missing image media entities

- Fixed font color in modals when using dark mode (so now, when in dark mode, some text that was invisible is now visible)

- Added title to relative dates showing a tooltip of the actual date upon hover

November recap

🍂 Looking back on it from here, November was quite a rush! So much happened in such little time — including events, deep [dev] work, and our birthday, which we celebrated with a minting party called #fxhashturnsone 🎂

fx(params) is coming

fx(params) is a powerful new feature enabling artists to build controls collectors can explore, adjust, & toggle at the time of minting. Using fx(params) is simple, intuitive, and above all, very fun. And it's coming soon.

fxhash is about giving artists and collectors the maximum range of open tools designed to remove any barriers to creativity that may exist. Integral to that mission is elegantly embracing the randomness inherent in gen art while building for the future & pushing art forward.

The fortuitous combination of web3 + generative art has narrowed the long-held gap between artists & collectors, signaling the dawn of a collaborative era wherein artworks are marked by and result from creative community-driven interactions.

fx(params) is built to give artists and collectors more points of contact, enabling an interactive loop that seriously ups the levels of artistic possibility by adding artist-defined + collector-customizable parameters into the mix.

In a nutshell, with fx(params), artists build an object of configurable features that is parsed into a control panel that collectors can toggle before minting. This lets collectors express themselves by contributing, collaborating, & participating in the art in real time.

Simultaneously, we're also releasing fx(lens), which is a new boilerplate that allows you to easily test your fx(params) project in a local environment 👓

The applications for fx(params) are vast and seemingly limitless. Artists and creators across different creative practices and industries like fashion, gaming, and live events can leverage this technology to open new pathways to customized, unique art that is always personal.

After months of developing fx(params), we're super excited to be so close to launching. But when exactly is it going live? We're targeting December for the artist testnet and January 2023 for the public launch. We'll regularly update you as we get closer & tick off dev milestones!

fx(params) is a huge leap forward for our platform & we can't wait to share it with you all 😆 If you have additional questions or want to know more about what's coming, don't hesitate to ping the team 💖

We #respectroyalties – and that's never going to change

Together with Teia, Versum, and objkt, we say no to 0% creator royalties and pledge to protect artists' fundamental earning rights and financial autonomy in the web3 era.

Why this statement, why now? Until recently, it seemed like on-chain creator royalties were a non-negotiable aspect of web3 platforms. However, unfortunately, it appears as though some NFT marketplaces don't share that perspective and are ushering 0% royalties back into the fold.

fxhash was created to empower artists and collectors with an open set of tools to create, collect, and curate generative art. Within that toolset, royalties are front and center. Why? Because artists have been a historically disenfranchised group and we want to change that.

As an artist, when creating a project on fxhash, you can quickly & easily define royalties + royalties split (the latter is the ability to split royalties with others, such as minters). Royalties are then baked onchain into each & every token minted. The reason for this is so that every gentk corresponding to your artwork contains royalties data forever and in a standalone manner. When transactions trigger the fxhash marketplace contract, the artist-defined royalties are then automatically dispensed to the specified wallets 🎯

Our hope is that these measures help lift artists up by creating a direct, sustainable, and regenerative earning system that accounts for their priceless contributions to generative art and culture at large. After all, art is work – work that contributes to the good of society and benefits everyone. We'll stand behind #respectroyalties come rain or shine!

Art Basel Miami Beach

Performance in Code: Deciphering Value in Generative Art, Art Basel Miami Beach, November 28th to December 3rd. Featured Live Minting artists: Ivona Tau, Tyler Boswell, DistCollective

For Art Basel Miami Beach, we wanted to build something special that would capture the dynamism of rarity within generative art collections. If you’ve minted on fxhash before, then perhaps you’re familiar with the feature set that gets populated when the artist has defined those parameters for the drop. These features are often traits like palettes, composition, and complexity, and sometimes go beyond analytic traits and into the inventive with characteristics like age and home planet.

To explore these features in real time at Art Basel, we built a Rarity Explorer. This tool lets you sort and filter the live minting collection on display according to its various features and assigns each iteration with a rarity score.

The occurrence of these features within a given collection ultimately defines artwork rarity, as some features, and combinations thereof, appear less frequently than others. However, this type of rarity, which we loosely define as statistical rarity, is only half of the picture — the other factor we’re keen to start talking more about is subjective rarity.

We can’t create a subjective rarity explorer (yet 👀) because SR is defined by community-determined and driven features. It usually appears as a result of discourse & curation amongst collectors. Sometimes, collectors agree that certain types of iterations are more desirable than others, even if, statistically, they're not rare at all.

So, our intention with the Performance in Code exhibit for Art Basel was to open up a dialogue about rarity in generative art. What makes a generative artwork rare? Is it math, collector culture, a mix of both, or other factors? We don’t have the answer, and we’re curious about your thoughts!

#fxhashturnsone minting party

Last month, we celebrated our first birthday 🎂 That's right, fxhash is now officially a year old! Doesn't it seem like we were just minting SMOLSKULL yesterday? Nonetheless, here we are, older and hopefully wiser.

To celebrate, we announced #fxhashturnsone which was a minting party of epic proportions. The rules for participating were simple:

+ Create a generative token with 365 iterations

+ Include #fxhashturnsone in project description

+ Price at 1 tez & donate part or all to charity

+ Drop or open during fxhash anniversary week 11/14–18

The response to #fxhashturnsone was mindblowing, to say the least. Over 200+ projects were published, resulting in close to 100K mints and nearly 30K XTZ donated to important causes, charities, and foundations. The projects themselves were an ecstatic mix of concepts, experiments, and pure artistry, leaving us feeling more thankful for the fxhash community than ever.

Even if you were late to the party, don't worry! There are still plenty of #fxhashturnsone projects with mints available. Our new [backend dev] Louis went ahead and created this super nifty tool that lets you scroll projects that are still minting.

Systemic Premeditation, Berlin, DE

System Premeditation, SP2 Gallery, November 11 to December 18. Featured artists: ciphrd, Ryan Bell, Leander Herzog

fxhash community member and gallerist Kenconsumer opened Systemic Premeditation at SP2, a generative art exhibit featuring three fxhash artworks.

The exhibition invites the viewer on a journey to experience generative art’s compositional complexity, levels of abstraction, and, most of all, its versatility. The works presented here by ciphrd, Ryan Bell, and Leander Herzog span from a constantly evolving and infinitely variable figurative piece, to a printed composition with a fixed form, to an entirely abstract interactive ode to minimalism.

Hiring updates

After hiring a number of new team members over the past few months, we switched gears and searched hard for a backend developer capable of helping fxhash achieve the next round of technical milestones. We’re happy to say we found the perfect person for the role — so say hello to Louis, our new [backend developer] 👋

November by the numbers

📊 All figures below represent the month of November '22 activity sourced from fxwho.xyz

- Mints: 112,975 gentks

- Users: 6,889 unique wallets minting

- Volume (combined primary, secondary, and accepted offers): 2,126,403 tz

- Total mints (all-time): 1,375,257 gentks

- Total projects (all-time): 22,033 generative tokens

Coming up

If you're an avid Waiting To Be Signed listener, then you might have caught an interesting moment during the The First Year of fx(hash) episode.

In it, fxhash founder ciphrd discusses a new project we've taken on called consumable tokens. This feature is coming very soon and will go by a different name, so don't get too attached to the consumable thing. In any case, here's what the feature looks like:

The idea of consumable tokens is that we will set up one token to be consumable on our backend, and on the frontend you will see a project with iterations that can be consumed to trigger an action. So in our case, it will be ordering a shirt. If you buy our token, you will be able to consume it for free to get a t-shirt. So it's a way to have both the NFT and the product in the real world.

This feature won't just enable t-shirt orders (which is still great and means fxhash merch is on the way), but will also finally make it possible for artists interested in setting up 1:1 print shops to have the means to do so. For instance, you might redeem your consumable token for a project to get a fine art quality physical print of your iteration mailed to your front door.

With this new feature imminently releasing, we won't say much more and will instead let you try it for yourself. Well, that wraps up this edition of fx(update). Look for the next one in another month's time — until then, find us in Discord!