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Source: Distributed Capital
Source of this article: decrypt.co
Translation: Distributed capital translation
The Story Behind Hashmask: One of the Most Successful Crypto Art Sales Cases on Ethereum
In early 2021, Hashmask sold 16,384 works of art worth a total of $16 million, undoubtedly one of the most gold-sucking projects in this year's NFT project. So what are the stories behind the birth of these crypto artworks? What is the charm of these works of art themselves?
On January 27, an Ethereum fan, Cryptopathic, sent a message to Twitter crypto celebrity Crypto Cobain about the upcoming art auction. These Hashmask lots feature buyers naming thousands of original digital artworks, which could be the next craze.
Cryptopathic told Decrypt: "I'm very excited to hear this idea, at least it's more interesting than cryptopunk. The cryptopunk he was referring to was the earliest form of NFT. Those NFTs, which are usually small, pixelated faces, now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Crypto Cobain read the letter and shrugged his shoulders, saying he might spend $100,000 in personal cash to invest in Hashmask. Why not? He tweeted: "Why would I throw $100,000 into NFTs and then $100,000?" ”
In less than a week, Crypto Cobain's reckless impulses proved right. Thousands of buyers poured in, snapping up 16,384 works of art worth a total of $16 million. These buyers also raised the NCT token price. The value of all Crypto Cobain Hashmasks plus the value of the token adds a total of $426,000. His investment grew by a conservative estimate of 113 percent in five days.
Although this art auction will hit the Ethereum community like a sudden wave, it has indeed gained momentum over the years.
The birth of Hashmask
Between the founders of Hashmask who wanted to remain anonymous, we'll call him David. David began working on the NFT project in the fall of 2019, though the future prospects for it were unclear.
At the time, Hashmask was just a vague and distant target. In fact, when David first collaborated on a like-minded partnership (john, we'll call john) to launch the NFT project, the two broke up over disagreement.
On the one hand, David stubbornly wants to supply a large number of Hashmasks because he wants to share as many Hashmasks as possible with his target market customers. John, on the other hand, disagrees with David and argues for supplying a certain amount of Hashmask so that they would be scarcer and more valuable.
Eventually, John persuaded David, and the two of them decided to create 16,384 works of art. The 16,384 works of art are known as Hashmask. This is the first time in NFT history that buyers have been allowed to name each collection, meaning that the value of each collection is determined by the creator and consumer of the artwork.
Each piece of the collection presents a human-like image, some of which are more like aliens, and the combination of these images is very peculiar. They are weird, bizarre, and fascinating.
In addition to its unique features visible to the naked eye, each Hashmask name gains scarcity due to its careful selection by consumers. This is where NCT (Name Determination Token) comes from. Each artwork has its own NCT, which you can name yourself. This is a key part of their plan.
But to build such a huge project, they needed a team of diligent artists.
Assemble an army of crypto art
The two originally wanted to use social media to find talented up-and-coming crypto artists, but many works of art could be completed through Fiverr, and these works of art started as low as $5. However, due to the extremely low price, the quality of the finished art is extremely bad. David said: "We have to weed out a lot of artists because most of their work doesn't pass the quality test. ”
The two have been looking for good artists until they find enough people to realize their vision. But even though they recruited more than 70 digital artists, the two's work is far from over.
The two founders commissioned artists to create specific parts of the Hashmask collection rather than the entire work, which gave each Hashmask a unique scarcity, such as the color of the pupils and skin tone, as well as the mask itself. The artists would then piece together the pieces like a puzzle.
David said: "After the two of us had collected fragments of all the artists, we ended up creating the whole work; most of the works were made algorithmically, and about 20% of them were handmade. He added: "We are artists of artists. ”
When each Hashmask was made, the series was quietly launched on January 28, 2021.
"We are confident that it will grow. My partners and I are target clients ourselves, and we create for people like us.
Doubts before auction week
The big day when the Hashmask art collection is ready to go public is finally here.
One of the key factors in selling Hashmask is the degree to which the purchase price fluctuates. The sooner you buy, the cheaper it is. The artworks went as low as 0.1 ether ($130 at the time) when they first went online, and then rose all the way up to 100 ether ($130,000 at the time). This sales strategy helps encourage more people to buy.
But will anyone pay for the idea? When the Hashsmask team started counting down, only a handful of people liked their tweets. "What if there is a hashmask after 14 days that it is not sold out?" A Twitter user asked.
Hashmask's snap-up contest
It turns out that skeptical people are wrong. In just over 6 hours, more than 3,000 rare and unique digital artworks were sold out. "I need a break," the Twitter administrator tweeted, seeming overwhelmed by the unexpected success of the first day.
#3136的Hashmask在6小时41分钟后售出. I need a break. Maybe this group of people needs to calm down for a while and do whatever they want.
- Hashmasks (@TheHashmasks) January 28, 2021
After 12 hours, that number climbed all the way up, and 4,000 haskmasks have been sold. New buyers are struggling to give their masks a unique name, and pessimistic voices on social media have been completely silenced.
The rapid development of Hashmask surprised the artists. David said: "We didn't expect Hashmask's sales to grow so fast.
By January 30, Hashmask began trading huge sums of money. The first collection, called Hashmask 1, originally sold for 0.1eth on Jan. 28, is now sold for $130,000 with a profit of up to 1,000 times. Other works sold for about 0.9 ether ($1600). Phil Jacobson, vice president of product and operations at creative marketing platform Hashtag Paid, found the momentum of the series to date to be stunning.
Jacobson said: "Once all the works are sold out by February 1, my Twitter subscription will be all about Hashmask." "People start sharing what they get and exchanging it with each other, trying to figure out what's scarce, what's not scarcity, and things like that."
Buyers also liked it. Those people described their purchases as "the coolest thing to do in the crypto space" the following week.
Overall, sales of the Hashmask range exceeded $16 million. The community then begins to discover surprises hidden in the artwork.
The devil is hidden in the details
Many of the Hashmask collections may have been combined through an algorithm, but that doesn't mean the creators didn't leave their mark on the artwork. Some of the information carried by Hashmask was hidden in an inconspicuous place, waiting to be discovered.
Sharp-eyed fans on Twitter were the first to spot these hidden messages. On Jan. 31, even before the initial Hashmask sale ended, Twitter user Jon McIntosh realized that collections whose numbers belonged to the Fibonacci sequence had Invisible Fibonacci symbols.
Meanwhile, Jordan Spence, MyCrypto's chief marketing officer, found that different collectibles can be pieced together like puzzles.
Twitter user Tom Fields said he went through hundreds of Hashmasks to discover hidden information, tweaking different properties. He eventually unearthed a black figure holding Plato's philosophical classic The Republic on a yellow background.
With adjustment layers, Fields delved into the QR codes that covered the cover of the book. He then spent an hour running multiple image programs until the QR code was separated, and then posted the modified QR code to his Twitter.
Crypto Twitter commented on Fields' tweets to let him know that the QR code was an elaborate stalk. It's a prank to boot unsuspecting users into watching a hit video from the 1980s by Rick Astley. The name of this Hashmask is "Never Give Up on You". (Rick Astley is a pop singer who went viral in 1987 with "Never Gonna Give You Up.") ）
Real and unreal
According to Twitter user Trentelme, not all Hashmasksks are unique.
In fact, crypto Twitter has begun to focus on the hidden hands behind hashmask's collection. Twitter user Cap_Plantain said he discovered all of Hashmask's secrets in just five minutes. Using shorthand as a way of finding hidden information in an image, Capëu Plantain discovered that Hashmask's scarce trait completely alters the image.
Cap_Plantai found that different features in the image had additional metadata. Artists have added some very rare features using Adobephoshop.
Twitter user Trentelme scrolled through the Hashmask collection for 15 hours in a row. "By the third or fourth hour, my eyes were trained to spot the smallest differences — and I don't believe the community will necessarily be able to do that."
Trentelme identified two collections called The Real and The Unreal that are almost identical. The Hashmask 3350 and Hashmask 9934 vertically have a small Sanskrit message on the left side of the artwork.
Trentelme thinks David and John tried to take it as an accident. "When I told them, they were really frightened," he tweeted, saying he was still happy to have the real Hashmask. "I don't have it because of a lucky draw or a huge investment, but pure obsession, which makes me feel particularly sweet," he added.
Others may have stumbled upon hidden information, but no one seems to have spent as much time searching as Trentelme.
What's next for Hashmask
Hashmask has sold them all, but their value and spirit will impact the NFT industry in the coming weeks and months.
First, crypto collectibles already have a mature secondary market. So far, sales in this market have reached $16 million, with individual hashmasks selling for between $1700 and $17,000.
But in the case of David and John, their work is done. The needle of innovation is still spinning, but Hashmask, like Satoshi Moto, the obscure inventor behind Bitcoin, will not participate in it after completing his mission.
"We're not going to interfere with where the market goes," David adds, "after all, keeping the mystery is part of the magic." ”