NFT Heroes #7: Paul from fxhash

Paul, Growth & Community Manager at fxhash

Besancia: Hello Paul and thank you for your time! As part of our series on the key players in the ecosystem, I wanted to ask you a few questions. Let’s start with the first one, can you introduce yourself?

Paul: I’m a fxhash community manager and, together with others, am responsible for the platform’s growth. fxhash is a platform for creating and collecting generative art NFTs on the Tezos blockchain. Since launching in 2021, we’ve witnessed an explosion of interest in creating art with code and have given that art a home – we don’t curate the platform, so anyone can release an NFT art project here. 

How did you discover NFTs?

Paul: I originally discovered NFTs because of the Beeple sale, which I think makes me an NFT late bloomer! Afterward, I seemed to read about NFTs everywhere I turned until I finally discovered Art Blocks. However, I was instantly priced out of AB works and didn’t want to pay the obscene ETH gas prices, nor could I ignore the environmental impact of ‘Proof of Work’ blockchains. 

So, while my generative art obsession became stronger, I sought out an environmentally-friendly alternative and discovered Tezos and the legendary Hic et Nunc art platform (it is now extinct but the community has created its own version called Teia). After that, it was game over – I was full-blown addicted to NFTs.

Do you think NFT and generative art changed traditional digital art?

Paul: Yes, without a doubt. Generative art and NFTs are a powerful combination that is taking digital art to its limits – and even beyond them. Before NFTs, there was no real, immutable, and decentralized way to prove ownership of a digital item. But now, because of NFTs, we can easily confer the same uniqueness physical objects have enjoyed to digitally native things like art. 

Generative art NFTs stretch this paradigm even further. An artist’s algorithm can often produce an unlimited quantity of unique iterations, each of them a part of the meta-project with easily identifiable provenance, yet they also exist as singular assets.

How do you see NFTs in 5 years?

Paul : In five years, we will no longer be speaking about NFTs because they’ll be the default standard for asset issuance, ownership, and authenticity. NFTs will be everywhere, likely backing many things we take for granted today, like event tickets and deeds. Since NFTs will back the authenticity of most, if not all transactable objects, we’ll probably drop the whole “NFT” thing. So, art NFTs will just be art. 

What is the biggest barrier to NFT Mass adoption?

Paul: Right now, I think it’s the onboarding. There are still a lot of technical terms, it’s super geeky… Look, there’s Gucci making an NFT drop but it looks like they didn’t know how to do it. You still have to create a wallet, which introduces technical difficulties and special knowledge requirements. We’re still in the Wild West days for NFT adoption – it’s going to take tons of education, outreach, and simplifying the user experience before NFTs gain true mass adoption. 

Any preferred Art Generative project?

Paul: Garden, Monoliths by Zancan is my goal right now. It’s such a beautiful and exceptional work of art, and it’s also hard to believe it’s created with code. Garden, Monoliths (or Gardens for short) also perfectly represents the NFT generative art renaissance happening on Tezos now. Tezos uses 2 million times less energy than Ethereum, making it a truly green blockchain, thus preserving more greenspace for IRL gardens, too.

What if I love Generative art but I don’t know how to code?

Paul: Actually, me neither! But what’s great about fxhash is you can see and read the code to understand the artist’s logic and creative process. Everybody can see and comment on the code – and thanks to this transparency, it’s easy to verify an artwork’s originality and also set the artist’s signature in stone on the blockchain. 

The fxhash discord is also a great place to congregate if you want to learn to code – there are super successful artists who are humble enough to just chill in the support channels and help anyone trying to learn.

Any future projects?

Paul: Not right now. We are fully focused on fxhash because it’s still very early and young and we need to continue building core platform features, even after our release of the full platform. 

Our current focus is on empowering everyday collectors to become curators, giving artists even more modularity for dropping new artwork, and further enhancing current marketplace features. 

Conclusion

Fascinating to see how people who call themselves late to the scene are building core ecosystem projects such as fxhash. 

The question arises, are they truly late or, more likely, are these recent passionate members of the ecosystem merely joining a growing movement that will continue to expand for decades to come?