I originally wrote a version of this in July of 2021 but was too chicken to publish it. I’ve become more confident in my thinking and the Overton window has shifted since then.

Since November we’ve released 3 earned NFTs that showcase the emergent power of using historical on-chain data to generate unique and user-specific art and attributes. The support from the community (AKA Crypto Twitter) has blown me away – so many people tweeting out their Birthblocks, Token Gardens, and Heartbeats. Their enthusiasm coalesces around a central theme - that earned NFTs have the possibility to reflect their activity on the network and actions to the rest of the community.

Birthblock is an NFT that represents your wallet’s age. Each tree ring represents 100k Ethereum blocks. The color of the tree changes based on the age of the wallet, too. The 5 other circles represent the month/day/hour/minute/second your wallet was born, placed around the tree like a clock or calendar.

We’ve all read or seen Ready Player One. Most of us have seen The Matrix (Zoomers, if you haven’t, please put it on the top of your watchlist). The idea of a digital world we jack into is not new. But the palpability of its imminence has reached other level. Shimmers of it are beginning to come into focus as kids spend more money on Fortnite skins than clothes, spacial-audio-for-the-workplace companies start popping up left and right, and Zuck gets closer to banning Zoom and shipping every employee an Oculus. Neuralink, Kernel, and BCI in general will be next.