ciphrd

Abiogenesis is live !

Fully onchain artificial life simulation 🧬

mint happens here
-> abiogenesis.delife.ciphrd.com
0.05 ETH / edition

DeLife: Abiogenesis goes live in ~1h (16:00 UTC) !

It's happening there:
abiogenesis.delife.ciphrd.com

So excited !!!

I will release my next artwork on Monday!

I've been working for a while on a new series of artworks exploring decentralized networks as a computational medium for artificial life. Life native to the medium: DeLife.

The first artwork of the series, Abiogenesis, explores a world of tiny programs interacting, rewriting themselves, sometimes evolving the ability to replicate. Artificial life directly executed by Ethereum itself.

This is also my first release outside fxhash. Building a platform has shaped so much of my practice, and I want to explore ideas beyond the constraints of that format. More freedom to experiment with how a work lives, evolves, and how people interact with it.

Maybe these experiments can help shape what the artist toolkits of the future look like.
Curious/excited/nervous to see where this goes.

You can learn more about the project on the website.

When ? Monday, October 5, at 16:00 UTC
How much ? 0.05 ETH / edition
Where ? abiogenesis.delife.ciphrd.com

Hey everyone,

I've been meaning to share some updates about fxhash with you for many weeks, but have struggled immensely to do so.

A little while ago, as we were trying to secure a loan to keep fxhash going, we received pretty bad news. As some of you were aware, fxhash was under compliance review by the French tax authorities; it was a lengthy and draining process that lasted more than 2 years. At the end of it, despite our goodwill and the lack of regulation applicable to our case, we were fined ~€500k. This would consume almost all of the loan, essentially putting a nail in the fxhash coffin.

This really took a toll on me, as things were already pretty depressing future-wise. I had been operating the company (arguably poorly) almost alone, handling admin stuff / trying to secure some money. This news essentially voided all these efforts and meant there was no future for the business anymore.

At that point I sort of dissociated from this situation, as I had reached my limits in terms of handling this business. I took some time off April/September to work on myself, my art, and try to figure out what to do next. Taking this time off didn't really come from an active decision, but rather from a need to understand what to do next. As many of you saw, I was becoming less and less present online as I had very little energy left for that. I needed to focus back on myself.

During this time, cosi announced the closure of the project. It was hard to watch silently from the sidelines, but I was eventually grateful that he had the composure to inform you folks about the state of things. I wanted to respond publicly to many of you, but I felt like I couldn't just come out of the shadows at such a time without at least offering a few explanations, which somehow felt like an impossible task to me.

I also know fxhash meant a lot to many of you. People put their art, their time, and their trust into this project, and formed friendships along the way. Its closure is a loss for many people beyond those of us who worked on it. I'm sorry my silence left you with so few answers from me during that time. I'm deeply grateful for everything you brought to fxhash over the years, and sad that we couldn't keep it going.

So here we are now. The business is insolvent. I'll declare bankruptcy in the near future and see how we can pay some of those debts back with the few assets left. As for the future of the project itself, I'm not sure. I took some steps to secure IPFS content on a low-cost dedicated instance in case this happened, as a safety mechanism. But eventually, if we want the art to survive over time, the community will have to organize itself around preservation. I've seen a few initiatives already; hopefully this keeps going for the sake of the art. I think there's a bit of work left on my end to ensure the community can properly take over hosting & distribution of the assets. I'll look into that in the following weeks.

On my end I've been working on art again and it feels great. It hadn't felt great for a long time. I would love to find energy and ideas again to contribute positively to the cryptoart space, but it's gonna take a bit of time to get there.

In the meantime, I'm very grateful to those who reached out to offer help/a shoulder to lean on. I hope we can keep these friendships going throughout life.

Another cool partial replicator(s?)
These are my favorites.
Speed 20x, still image below