Creative Code Projects

[bestatigen]

I wanted to pick up from #15 and compare, resources permitting, various creative code NFT platforms over different chains and the different approaches they use to storing and rendering of Media; the goal is to get an idea of how flexible the solutions are to support different combinations for the future and, where possible, how solid these PoC standards are.

Ethereum

ArtBlocks

It seems like the information stored on-chain is the full script to recreate Media, the name and version of package/s used. Example here.

AsyncArt

There is the interesting concept of layers here, same as you have them in Photoshop, Ableton, or FinalCutPro. Layers are owned by collectors and can change state, which then changes the masterwork. The state can either be changed directly by collectors or based on some oracle data, like weather or stock price.
The layers are also NFTs.
Supposedly, there should be a standard for this. Otherwise, it's easy to lose the hang of it.
In the smart contract, there is a whole logic for these "controlled" NFTs to store the state value picked by the collector and keep the mappings of master-layer internally.
Example of a Layer and it's Master.

Autoglyphs

In this case, the instructions are generated on-chain and also saved on-chain. Example of instructions. The Solidity draw function takes a random seed and generates a set of instructions for it.

NEAR

GNR8

It's a platform for creating and minting creative code projects. You can work directly on the code. It picks from both ArtBlocks and AsyncArt in the sense that you're buying seeds with variants, like in ArtBlocks, and as the owner of the NFTyou can apply some state changes, like in AsyncArt. There are both mint parameters that can be set on collecting and owner parameters the collector can change arbitrarily after minting.

Tezos

Hicetnunc

Allows rendering creative code projects by uploading a zip file with the script and other necessary files. It allows to read the creator and viewer id to be able to generate a unique Media:

const creator = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search).get('creator')
// if the viewer is not authenticated to a wallet, this value will be false
const viewer = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search).get('viewer')

but it's not as dynamic as the other projects. It's still interesting as it supports also normal JPG-NFTs.

Takeaways

• Most of the times scripts and versions are saved on-chain
• Iframes are often used to embed the Media
• There seem to be no patterns for ML Media
• Combining NFT-Layers layers to create master Media

[bestatigen]

Example of ArtBlocks TokenMetadata:

{
  platform: "Art Blocks Curated",
  name: "Synapses #185",
  curation_status: "curated",
  series: "3",
  description: "Synapses is a generative study on movement and texture. Thousands of particles flow in space leaving a trail of their journey. the movements are inspired by swarm behavior and flocking mechanism. The trails when left by each particle resembles the graphite or carbon smudges on the white canvas. The particles follow either single or multiple vectors to create these intricate details. Additional project feature(s) => Background: Light, Origin: Bottom, Orientation: ‘The Skewed Mirror",
  external_url: "https://www.artblocks.io/token/39000185",
  artist: "Chaosconstruct",
  royaltyInfo: {
    artistAddress: "0x9fBC14032362d43F3cdfc89524a13e317d4a4788",
    additionalPayee: "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
    additionalPayeePercentage: "0",
    royaltyFeeByID: "0"
  },
  collection_name: "Synapses by Chaosconstruct",
  traits: [
    {
    trait_type: "Synapses",
    value: "All Synapses"
    },
    {
    trait_type: "Synapses",
    value: "Background: Light"
    },
    {
    trait_type: "Synapses",
    value: "Origin: Bottom"
    },
    {
    trait_type: "Synapses",
    value: "Orientation: ‘The Skewed Mirror"
    }
  ],
  payout_address: "0x6C093Fe8bc59e1e0cAe2Ec10F0B717D3D182056B",
  features: [
    "Background: Light",
    "Origin: Bottom",
    "Orientation: ‘The Skewed Mirror"
  ],
  website: "https://www.instagram.com/chaosconstruct/",
  is dynamic: true,
  script type: "p5js",
  aspect ratio (w/h): "1",
  uses hash: true,
  tokenID: "39000185",
  token hash: "0x5f344579c4ebe7256097d1adbd985f0f6b2dab3faf3214734f78d71414ae07f4",
  license: "CC BY-NC 4.0",
  animation_url: "https://api.artblocks.io/generator/39000185",
  image: "https://api.artblocks.io/image/39000185",
  interactive_nft: {
    code_uri: "https://api.artblocks.io/generator/39000185",
    version: "0.0.9"
  }
}

[bestatigen]

Some progress here for the creative code type of projects,
I tried to take a generator example HTML page code from an ArtBlocks generator and deploy it on Arweave, and it works fine.

This means we can implement creative code projects with a similar approach to normal ContentType NFTs and have the fallbacks on NEAR ContractMetadata for the scripts with package versions and at the TokenMetadata level for the specific collector's parameters in the case Arweave is not available. Token data has URL to Arweave generator that renders well online on itself (examples here and here) and can be for now just showcased within an iframe in this repository front-end.