As a pioneer artist who broke into the encrypted world, Pak has created legends in the past two years and gradually stepped onto the altar of encrypted art. He is the first encrypted artist whose total sales of NFT works exceeded one million US dollars, and now the total sales of his works have reachedReached $355 million。

He is the creator of the record for the most expensive NFT work. The Merge he created was purchased by more than 20,000 buyers for a total price of 91.8 million US dollars.Highest price ever paid for a work of art by a living artist at public auction。

Who is Pak? No one knows his real name, appearance, or even gender of this prodigy standing at the pinnacle of the encrypted art world. What people know is that he is the founder of Undream Studio and the chief designer of Archillect, an AI curation event. He has been engaged in digital art creation for more than 25 years and has cooperated with hundreds of major brands and studios.

Someone praises Pak isSatoshi Nakamoto in the NFT world, but unlike Satoshi Nakamoto, he never left during the pioneering movement of encryption art experiments. From the release of "X" in August 2020 to the recent fame of "Censored", Pak has been active at the forefront of crypto art.

We sorted out Pak's NFT creation process, and while appreciating these unique encrypted works of art, we tried to figure out the similar elements behind them:Open, Homogeneous, Performance Art. Do these elements indicate a direction for the development of digital art? There is no standard for art, and there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people. Please find the answer yourself from the following works.

"X": Pioneering experiments in the open version

Unlimited casting, which seems to be incompatible with the classic law of "scarcity determines value".

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Two pieces of The Force and The Divide in the Open Edition

X first proposed the concept of an open version in the NFT world, that is, collectors can purchase an unlimited amount of NFT within a specified period of time. The less collectors buy, the rarer the NFT copy is. This model dynamically defines the initial value of NFT by demand. . X also provides 2 limited-edition NFTs, which are sold through a bidding auction mechanism. This "open edition + limited edition" model runs through Pak's series of works, and is often used in his subsequent works.

The Title: The value of the theme?

Same artwork, different value.

Published in January 2021The Title, selling NFT works with exactly the same appearance at different prices, the difference is that they haveDifferent header and version sizes。

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The Cheap and The Expensive

In this series of works, Pak tries to think and explore the core value of artworks. These identical works of art are all "authentic works". Why are collectors willing to pay completely different prices for them?

Besides, they have the same storage file behind them, who should this file belong to? Pak is also challenging the notion of NFT ownership.

The Fungible: a fungible non-fungible token

Use the same elements to build different NFTs.

The FungibleIt is a work released by Pak and the world's top auction giant Sotheby's on Nifty Gateway. The Fungible is translated as "homogenization" in Chinese, which is exactly the opposite of NFT. The work is an open version of a small square.

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single block and five block

At the same time, the limited-edition single items The Switch and The Pixel were auctioned with a unit price of more than 1 million US dollars, and the total revenue of the auction was close to 17 million US dollars. This series of works also includes free limited-edition NFTs, such as The Cube, which is limited to one piece and given to the collector who bought the most cube Cube; Complexity is limited to 100 pieces, and is given to 100 users who bought the most open version of small cubes.

Like a building block game, identical components can be combined into different NFT works. Pak used the theme of Fungible to imply that homogeneity and non-homogeneity are not completely opposite, but can be transformed into each other. The merger mechanism also provides new ideas for NFT art creation.

LOSTPOETS: A Renaissance Strategy Game

NFT creativity is not necessarily determined by the creator, and collectors can also write stories in it.

LOSTPOETSIt is an NFT strategy game with a literary story background. A group of sleeping poets wake up slowly, and their stories are written by collectors.

LOSTPOETS has three phases. In the first stage, NFT distribution has been completed. LOSTPOETS includes 65,536 blank paper NFTs and 1,024 initial poet NFTs. The white paper NFT is issued in the form of public sale and airdrop to holders of ASH (the token issued by Pak). Every day, 2 blank paper NFT collectors are randomly airdropped every day.

In the current second stage, the white paper NFT can be converted into a poet NFT without names and verses, each poet is one of the 1024 initial poet NFTs, carrying 256 different genetic characteristics, giving them personality, value and meaning . This stage will also complete the distribution of initial poets (initial poets can name and write poems for themselves).

And in the third stage of the game, the white paper NFT can name and write poems for the poet NFT. In the second stage, collectors who retain both the white paper NFT and the poet NFT can destroy the white paper NFT to name the poet and write their own stories.

In the second stage, collectors who convert all white paper NFTs into poet NFTs can only own silent poets. Pak leaves collectors with a question: Do you want a group of silent poets, or a poet who can write lines?

The Merge: Performance Art for the Masses

Art is for the few as well as for the many.

The MergeReleased on the Nifty Gateway platform in December 2021, it attracted more than 28,000 collectors to participate, and the total auction value reached US$91.8 million, making Pak the most expensive living artist in the world.

The Merge continues the open auction model. During the auction, anyone can buy any number of mass, and the unit price of these mass increases slowly from $299 to $575 over time.

The Merge also introduces a merging mechanism. Each wallet can only have small balls. When buying a second ball, the two balls will be merged into one, and the color and volume will also change. "Annexation" will continue to occur with secondary market transactions, and the number of balls will become smaller and smaller.

Through the interaction of a series of collectors, the final appearance of the entire work will continue to change. The Merge is no longer an image or a game, it is a public performance art written on the blockchain using smart contracts, and the final appearance of this artwork is determined by everyone involved.

Censored: Song of Freedom to Rescue Assange

The same mass art experiment, but singing for freedom of speech.

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The Clock is keeping track of the number of days Assange has spent in prison

Censored consists of two parts, one-onlyClockIt is the core of the whole series. It is a dynamic work, the main part is English numerals, which increase every 24 hours, recording the time Assange spent in prison. The second part isOpen version "X/X", this is also a public performance art, anyone can enter any characters (limited to 72 characters, only English letters and spaces are supported) to generate their own works.

Interestingly, the content entered by the creator will be strikethrough, which fits the theme of "censorship". Each address can only mint one coin, which can be minted for free or at any price. At present, about 26,000 X/X are minted. After these NFTs are minted, they are locked in the wallet and cannot be transferred or traded. These unfree NFTs can only be freely traded when Assange is released, and the strikethrough symbolizing censorship will be removed.

Remember Pak's work, not Pak himself

So far, Pak's most representative NFT works have been appreciated. Some people may complain, what, this is also called art, without aesthetic feeling.

It is true that Pak's works do not have the visual impact of Beeple's works, which are also top digital artists. They mostly repeat monotonous elements, just like Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans. But isn't that art? Is there no value? This question is of course a matter of opinion, but the market has recognized it, and Pak has become the most valuable living artist.

Back to the distinctive elements of Pak's works: openness, homogeneity, and performance art. We don't know if this represents an evolutionary direction of future art, but when we see monotonous and repetitive digital elements change and combine into complex works of art one day, we will think of Pak.

After reading this, let's go back to the question at the beginning, does "Who is Pak" still matter? As Pak said, "I hope people pay attention not to me, but to my work."