Last month, we offered readers three free Metaversal Badges. Unbeknownst to claimants, those who collected all three stood to win a special prize. The winner, @JsixCsix, won an edition of MAX PAIN AND FRENS by XCOPY (the subject of our first Badge-laden newsletter) worth nearly $1,600!

We believe in rewarding our community, and we thank you for being part of it. What will this month’s winner get? We’re not telling. But if you want to stand a chance of being that winner, you’ll need a full collection of Badges. That’s all there is to it… for now.

This week’s brain-bending Badge was designed by Metaversal’s Patrick Lawler using Runway AI trained on a selection of early BrainDrops pieces.

BrainDives and DeepDrops

After an extremely dormant few months in NFTs towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, experimentation in the space has returned. 6529 took his best stab at joining the crypto memetic cannon with his project, The Memes, before the Bored Ape ecosystem stormed back onto the scene with its video game Dookey Dash and the sale of its top prize, the Dookey Dash Key, for 1,000 ETH (~$1.6 million).

The open edition craze ensued, but Ethereum wasn’t having all the fun — some blockchain enthusiasts also found a way to put NFTs on Bitcoin with what we now know as Ordinals.

Jack Butcher’s project Checks (read our interview with him here) has come to be the largest 2023 experiment of all, though, inspiring thousands of derivatives and independent projects, including Vincent Van Dough’s latest addition to the Rare Pepe universe: Pepe Checks.

Yet, despite all this, I think a bigger, multi-industry-spanning trend exists that, while only beginning to get hot, has been lurking in the shadows for quite some time now. I’m talking about tokenized AI art.

Today, we venture down the rabbit hole of this growing vertical, using as our entry point an analysis of a project trying to lead the way: BrainDrops. We hope to make it to the end of this Deep Dive with as few buzzwords as possible. Let’s begin.

The Lost Robbies

Does the future come faster than we think, or do we continuously ignore years of progress until we’re forced to stare at it face-to-face? This is the question we contend with in today’s Deep Dive.

The majority of the world is only now, in 2023, realizing the potential impact of artificial intelligence on life… and art. With the emergence of ChatGPT-3, primarily in school and work settings, AI has officially crossed into the mainstream. It is the quickest-growing consumer application of all time, reaching 100 million people within its first two months of launch. As a result, it’s not difficult to imagine why people might think it’s come out of nowhere. The reality is that AI has been infiltrating our lives for decades now — product recommendations, social media feeds, voice assistants, fraud detection, and the list goes on. Still, the point is clear: we’ve been using AI every day for a long time.

Technologists have been talking about its potential for years, and Microsoft invested a billion dollars in OpenAI just four years ago. AI has been all around us; some of us simply haven’t noticed. In this same vein, we explore AI's origins in crypto art.

In 2018, the storied auction house Christie’s held its first-ever tech summit. Invited was the then-number-one crypto art marketplace, SuperRare, only a few months after its launch. Given the opportunity to add something to the gift bag of all attendees, SuperRare asked its first artist, Robbie Barrat, to create work that attendees could redeem on their own.

With the help of Jason Bailey — better known by his moniker Artnome — Barrat created AI Generated Nude Portrait #7, the seventh installment of a series under the same name. Check out the first Nude Portrait below (it was the first mint ever on SuperRare):

As of 2020, and the writing of this SuperRare article that goes into the story with more depth, only 12 of the 300 AI Generated Nude Portrait #7 pieces had been redeemed! Thus, this collection of 300 pieces was dubbed “The Lost Robbies.” This myth has made them so valuable with time — the highest recorded sale of a Lost Robbie is over 300 ETH (more than $1 million at the time of the transaction).

But to discuss price alone does Barrat a disservice. Barrat was only 18 years old when he created The Lost Robbies, and seemed to be wise beyond his years. He’s vehemently opposed to talking about price when it comes to art. Here is an excerpt from an interview with the artist from Right Click Save nearly a year ago:

Since the SuperRare story on The Lost Robbies in 2020, some of the other attendees of the Christie’s summit of 2018 have evidently realized what they’re sitting on and claimed more of the pieces, as there are now 40 Lost Robbies that belong to active wallets on SuperRare. Supply has gone up, but the legend has grown, too.

There have been other developments in Robbie Barrat’s story too, almost wholly centered around his decision to leave crypto and NFTs in protest at the environmental impacts of blockchain technology. Though many believed that was the end of the story, last week Barrat announced an exhibition of his work from 2018-2020 at NFT Paris, as well as a showcase of what he’s been up to in the interim that’s coming later in the year.

Many are eagerly waiting to see whether or not Barrat will announce a return to tokenized art, especially since the dramatic reduction in the ecological burden of the Ethereum blockchain by way of the “merge” (the move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake).

Before we move on from Barrat, I’ll include another piece of his, one of my personal favorites:

Today’s Deep Dive is not a comprehensive foray into the world of tokenized AI art, but I felt it was important to give you some understanding of the ecosystem that exists. Although it might not make the NFT headlines, there is a whole world of AI art in Web3. Before we look at the AI art platform BrainDrops and its outsized role in the sector, let’s briefly consider a few other pieces.

DeepBlack

DeepBlack is an AI-generated collection of over 3,000 pieces. It is considered by many to be the first instance of an end-to-end AI-generated set. Minted in 2019, DeepBlack has generally flown under the radar of even top collectors and has yet to see significant price appreciation. Its floor is currently hovering just over 1 ETH (~$1,600). I’ve included some examples of DeepBlacks below.

Historically, DeepBlack pre-dates some of the greatest collections, including Hashmasks, Art Blocks, and Ciphrd’s RGB. Recently, Von Mises has become a collector of DeepBlacks, acquiring a handful last month. Time will tell whether DeepBlacks will cross the chasm to become the CryptoPunks of NFT AI art.

Most of the attention in AI crypto art tended to go to individual artists rather than larger collections like DeepBlacks (at least until BrainDrops came onto the scene). Here are some of those biggest names:

• Sofia Crespo (we are big collectors of her work and even bigger fans)

• Refik Anadol

• Helena Sarin

• Mario Klingemann

• Ivona Tau

• Tom White

• Memo Akten

• Devi Parikh

• Anne Spalter

…and other big names that we’ll get into a little later.

Wait for the drop

Now that I’ve hopefully whet your palette with a brief introduction to the AI crypto art landscape, let’s get into the one company quickly separating itself from the pack in this emerging vertical.

Launched in what was very nearly the peak of the NFT bull cycle in 2021, BrainDrops went largely unnoticed. That’s unsurprising given how little attention even generative art could garner amidst the veritable zoo of PFPs that dominated volume. No one gave AI art the time of day.

But as we’ve since seen (and were saying at the time): eventually the tide takes out the garbage and the true value remains.

This is the exact case with BrainDrops, which seems to finally be getting the attention it deserves after patiently building for over a year and a half.

BrainDrops functions similarly to the generative art platform we all know and love, Art Blocks, except it’s for AI art. AI artists release collections that range in supply from 500 to 1,000 pieces at a mint price of 0.1 ETH. The minting process is very status quo, which creates the potential for gas wars. That’s regrettable, but even Art Blocks continues to use the same mechanism, so there must be something to it…

Given how underappreciated the AI art movement is, part of the value proposition from BrainDrops is aggregation. By hosting an array of the top AI artists, BrainDrops becomes a place where one can easily look at and learn about the key individuals working in the space.

This is part of the organization’s goals — to enlighten communities about the beauty of AI art, and hopefully set them down the path to creating some of their own. Although admittedly rudimentary in style and nature right now, perhaps the most exciting thing about BrainDrops is what it could become.

Justin Trimble is one of the three founders of BrainDrops, and is the platform’s primary leader. I really couldn’t find much on Trimble in my research, but what I can say is that I followed him before the inception of BrainDrops for his exceptional NFT analysis. He is a storied collector in NFTs, holding CryptoPunks, along with Art Blocks, XCOPY, and Beeple pieces. What is most exciting about his background in relation to BrainDrops is the fact that he’s a seed investor and advisor to Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion. I can only imagine the possible synergies between these two entities in the future.

Punk 2513 is the second of three co-founders, and if finding information on Trimble was hard, finding it on 2513 was impossible. Judging from his Twitter bio, I’m guessing he’s the head developer at BrainDrops.

The third founder doubles as one of BrainDrops first artists: Gene Kogan. An AI expert, Kogan’s machine-learning experience is extensive and by no means limited to his work in crypto. Much of his work centers around education: he’s done hundreds of talks, teaching sessions, exhibitions, and residencies on AI and machine learning, and has even published numerous papers on the subject. Further, he consistently holds workshops for teaching and is an adjunct instructor at NYU. He is the perfect person to help educate and onboard the next million users to AI art… and BrainDrops.

This is one of two main future goals for BrainDrops. The other is highly technical and focuses on creating a more complex minting process. Where Art Blocks is inherently generative — as in the minter plays a role in the creation of their output — BrainDrops is currently still predetermined. Some sort of algorithmic input from the minter, whether specifically generative or not, would take BrainDrops to a whole new level.

Let’s get into more of the nitty-gritty of the platform. BrainDrops launched, with not one, not two, but three initial collections:

1. Genesis by Claire Silver

2. podGANs by Pindar Van Arman

3. Brain Loops by Gene Kogan

Triple threat

For all intents and purposes, Genesis by the renowned Claire Silver is BrainDrops’ Chromie Squiggle. Until recently, it was in a league of its own in terms of floor price, to this day resting at many multiples higher than most of the other collections launched on the platform. Being the first collection to launch on BrainDrops has something to do with it, but this discrepancy is almost solely due to the name behind the set. Below is the piece among the collection with the highest last sale:

Claire Silver has been beating the AI art drum since she entered the space, which seems to be in 2017 around the initial CryptoPunks claim. Part of what somebody should begin calling the CryptoPunk mafia, Silver was one of the earliest collectors and advocates for the pioneering digital avatars.

Silver’s been involved with art in some capacity for most of her life and began minting her work soon after her entrance into NFTs. But despite entering the space early and seeing the potential of AI, she’s had to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.

Don’t get me wrong, Silver has been one of the top-selling AI artists in NFTs the whole time, but relative to the way more traditional 1/1 crypto art was blowing up, you’d be hard-pressed to say her work was getting the love it deserved. Regardless of price, Silver is always in the conversation as one of the most highly regarded AI crypto artists, so the fact that BrainDrops secured her work for its launch was an enormous win for the platform. Below I’ve include Silver’s SuperRare genesis, an AI self-portrait titled c l a i r e.

Pindar Van Arman is the artist behind podGANs, and he’s sure to appeal to the more technically-minded collector. His bread and butter is machine learning, but not in the code-based way you and I tend to think of the term today. Van Arman literally teaches machines how to create art. What you might not be able to tell on first inspection is that, despite Van Arman’s very practical roots in robotics, he’s been on the crypto art scene almost from the beginning. Some of his early work has even been collected by XCOPY and Hackatao!

His BrainDrops collection, podGANs, is but one piece of Van Arman’s GAN (generative adverserial network) lore. An entire rabbit hole of its own exists for these bobbing squid-like entities. Famed trader and collector MoonCat has a fantastic thread-of-a-thread that goes into more detail. miniPODs, a second Van Arman collection on BrainDrops, were dropped to holders of two podGANs, and now sit at a floor of over 7 ETH (~$11,600).

The final “Day One” artist is someone we’ve already covered: Gene Kogan. His collection, Brain Loops, was developed by a text-to-image model and features a set of looping videos from a whole host of styles and tones. Metaversal is very proud to hold a large number of Brain Loops of our own.

In the time since these genesis mints, BrainDrops has added 12 new collections. For a while, it was uncertain whether or not the platform would have a serious future. Many of its drops made very little noise. It’s easy to build hype and lore around a genesis drop, the hard part is whether or not you can do it for future, non-genesis collections, especially when the market is distracted by other shiny things.

This is exactly what we’ve seen with the most recent collection on BrainDrops, Life in West America by Roope Rainisto. Speaking on a personal basis, this is some of not only my favorite AI art, but some of my favorite art in general. The throughline is stronger than is typical of AI art, which really works in its favor. It feels complete in a way that you don’t usually see. Where Silver’s Genesis collection is the BrainDrops Chromie Squiggle, many early calls suggest Life in West America (or LIWA) is its Fidenza. I would agree. The collection currently sits at a floor price of just under 9 ETH.

Now, from a collector’s perspective, there are a few more things you should know about BrainDrops.

If you hold a “Day One” set — that is, a piece from each of the first three collections — you are automatically given a spot to mint each of the newest BrainDrops sets 30 minutes before their public sale begins. Even if you can’t necessarily afford a full Day One set, you might want to keep this in mind when considering acquiring BrainDrop pieces.

So, what has growth been like throughout this mega-trend of artificial intelligence? As of late - parabolic. Take a look below at a market cap graph of all BrainDrops collections combined:

After being almost exactly flat for all of 2022, things have skyrocketed this calendar year as more and more people wake up to the inevitable rise of AI and its growing role in daily life.

To me, the way to play BrainDrops is pretty clear. Four main collections have garnered disproportionate market demand relative to all other BrainDrops releases. They’re the ones we’ve outlined today: Genesis by Claire Silver, podGANs by Pinder Van Arman, Brain Loops by Gene Kogan, and Life in West America by Roope Rainisto. If you want to bet purely on the growth of BrainDrops as a platform from a popularity perspective, you’ll want to pick up any (or as many) of the Day One sets as possible.

Remember that savvy investors will be looking to collect “Day One” sets, inherently increasing demand for these early collections. If you can afford the steeper price tag, Life in West America will certainly appreciate with time if BrainDrops continues to grow. Aside from these four sets, I recommend approaching collecting on BrainDrops the same way one would collect on Art Blocks.

One of these congruent strategies includes becoming a member of the community. Yes, it sounds basic, but joining the art community is much more valuable than joining a PFP community. Where in a PFP community most conversation revolves around other projects or market trends, niche art communities spend most of their time picking through the collections they own with a fine comb.

By having consistent conversations with other holders, you’ll not only get valuable information about upcoming artists and drops, but more importantly a sense for where aesthetic desire in the market is. As a result, you’ll have a far better grasp of what new BrainDrops collections may have a chance at striking a chord with a wider audience. Now, be warned, it’s very difficult to be an inauthentic member of an art community: these groups care little about price tags and all about the art, so if you don’t genuinely enjoy what you’re looking at, you’ll find it very hard to blend into the crowd.

Another consideration when thinking about a BrainDrops investment is the scope at which you believe AI will change the world. While trying not to get caught up in its recent hype, the potential for AI is not unlike crypto in being able to penetrate every facet of our lives. If you are one of AI’s biggest believers, buying some pieces for AI’s first home on the blockchain probably makes a good deal of sense.

Despite extreme recent growth, my perspective is that there are still a lot of people not paying attention to BrainDrops or AI art at large. Jumping in right now would perhaps show a lack of caution, but if you’re looking to get your feet wet, keep an eye on the BrainDrops market and get involved when prices see a healthy pullback. But always remember to collect art that you actually like (or preferably love), so on the non-zero chance it goes to zero, you’re happy to hold what you have.

Finally, a bet on a BrainDrops piece isn’t just on the continued proliferation of AI art, but on the platform’s founders. Trimble and Kogan have demonstrated that they have an excess of bright ideas between them, and that alone should excite holders about the work and innovation still to come from BrainDrops.

We continue down the rabbit hole,

Mr. Fox

This week’s Badge was designed by Metaversal’s Patrick Lawler using Runway AI trained on a selection of early BrainDrops pieces.