While the greatest cryptocurrency crash of 2022 was unfolding, Art Blocks continued to grow its distinctive community by acting strange in Texas.
The young genius CEO of the No. 2 cryptocurrency exchange in the world had just quit, the firm’s accounts were being emptied of millions of dollars in real-time, and the company had just filed for bankruptcy. However, at a disused cattle feed mill in the West Texas desert, hundreds of miles away from the clamor of urban financial fear, dozens of crypto culture creators bobbled their heads and waved their hands in unison to a display of vibrating squiggles.
The squiggles were Chromie Squiggles, Art Blocks’ second wildly popular generative NFT art piece. These typically immobile Squiggles were dancing for the first time in time with the ear-splitting beats of English DJ Jamie xx, much to the surprise and apparent astonishment of the barn’s inhabitants.
A meeting of collectors, artists, investors, and socializers from the company’s expanding ecosystem, Art Blocks’ second annual Open House drew 500 fans to the small Texas town of Marfa on November 11, 2022.
An event focused on non-fungible tokens, which in the previous two years have attracted both fervent supporters and detractors in equal measure, could seem to be strongly influenced by the state of the cryptocurrency market. Despite this, the FTX Armageddon seemed as far removed from the gathering as any major event would when word was carried by covered waggons.
That wasn’t because NFT participants believe they are immune to market turbulence. Erick Calderon (aka Snowfro), the founder of Art Blocks and a Squiggles artist, said that this was the case since the gathering and his NFT business have very little to do with NFTs and even less to do with cryptocurrencies.
According to Calderon, a disproportionate number of crypto ecosystem businesses base their value propositions on the uniqueness of the underlying technology. running while earning bitcoin! But in the metaverse, sweatshirts! Cat images, but make sure they’re NFTs! A DAO generated a concept for a poor TV program!
According to him, this obsession simply serves to temporarily mask a company’s product’s flaws.
Why do we stake our businesses on emerging technology? “Companies don’t only exist on cryptocurrency,” added Calderon. They rely on their teams and their cultures to thrive. We’re attempting to run an adult business. That requires developing an internal organizational culture, which is especially challenging in the cryptocurrency industry as everyone is decentralized and dependent on the price of a CryptoPunk. However, we struggled mightily to distance ourselves from it.
Despite the severe impact of the cryptocurrency bear market, Art Blocks employs 40 people and is expanding. It now has a whole curatorial staff that meticulously chooses and approves digital artists before allowing them to debut their collections on the company’s enormously successful platform.
Calderon believes that Art Blocks’ continued success is a result of its decision to abstain from using methods that were adopted by the majority of NFT projects at the height of the speculative bubble in early 2022.
When Art Blocks was going insane in October, he claimed, “I was in the worst mental health situation I’ve ever been in.” Art Blocks NFTs were selling for millions of dollars each at that time.
