More than just small pictures, this article takes stock of dynamic NFTs worthy of attention

Original author: WILLIAMM.PEASTE

Original compilation: Shenchao TchFlow

There are still many misunderstandings about NFTs. For example, this week Elon Musk said that all NFTs are off-chain, when in fact there are many NFTs that are entirely on-chain.

Another common misconception is that NFTs are more or less just static images.

To be sure, this is not right! In fact, some of my favorite NFTs are ones that have or can evolve in some form or fashion over time.

In today’s article, let’s do a little review and highlight some famous dynamic NFTs with a time dimension.

1) Lifeforms

Created by artist and software developer Sarah Friend, Lifeforms are NFT-based entities on Polygon that require regular care to keep them thriving. In other words, you must transfer Lifeform from your wallet within 90 days of receiving it or it will be destroyed.

Today, just over 50 of these entities remain. Shortlisted for the Lumen Prize in 2022, Lifeforms describes the series as follows:

“By introducing unexpected dynamics into smart contract systems, Lifeforms inverts the typical logic of NFTs, which is to buy, hold and hope their value increases, and instead requires the ‘owner’ to be a caretaker who must constantly maintain or care for their NFTs person or caregiver, working with others.”

2) Chaos Roads

Created by artist, curator, data scientist, and NFT historian Chainleft, Chaos Roads is a collection of art, music, and poetry that runs entirely on-chain, all powered by the project’s code coupled with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) generated.

It is worth noting that in this architecture, there is a coded Entropy system that allows the owner of the NFT to return to one of its earlier visual states. Therefore, the work of this project not only physically evolves with each Ethereum block, but can also return to earlier aesthetic evolutions over time. This is an early example of artistic dynamism leveraging always-on Ethereum.

3) Corruption(s*)

Developed by dom, the primary creator behind Blitmap, Loot, and Sup, Corruption(s*) is a fully on-chain generative ASCII cryptographic art project launched in secret in November 2021.

This series is notable because it innovates an on-chain evolutionary insight system. The system involves each NFT having an insight feature, and they accumulate insight experience over time, thereby evolving the aesthetics of the work. The rate of accumulation increases if Corruption remains untransferred, and slows down when instability i.e. transfers.

4) Etholvants

First released in October 2021, Etholvants is another entirely on-chain experiment that aims to develop single-cell digital organisms by combining them together or staking NFTs. The latter method sees these creatures growing 2 cells every 4 hours, but hundreds have merged so that only over 8400 Etholvants remain in existence today.

5) Fini

Fini is an “active NFT that uses oracles to respond to fluctuations in cryptocurrency value.”

In other words, the sentiment of a particular Fini is constantly changing on an hourly, daily or weekly timescale through the performance of the cryptocurrency to which it is tied, which could be Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Dogecoin, Polygon, Chainlink, Uniswap, BNB Chain, Avalanche or Tezos, etc.

While I personally think the entire series is one giant dynamic concept art project, Finis characters themselves also have iconic and adorable PFPs that provide a very fascinating way to track the price movement of your favorite coins.

6) SALT

SALT is a photographic crypto art series created in collaboration with artists 0x mons and Figure, and features dynamic rendering, meaning that the aesthetics of its tokens evolve based on changes in on-chain state.

What this means in practice is that the series of 180 photos is cycled asynchronously from one token to another in a constant loop every day. The creators previously explained that no owner owns a specific image, all images are shared collectively.

7) Terraforms

Mathcastles Terraforms have many unique aspects that cannot be explained simply in one sentence. In short, the series is a giant runtime artwork that exists as a virtual world entirely on-chain.

Still, one of the most interesting aspects of Terraforms to me is its temporal nature. There are two main modes for this series of NFTs, Terrain and Daydreaming, the latter of which helps delay or completely prevent the hard-coded destruction of virtual worlds.

8) Uniswap LP NFTs

Not all NFTs that can evolve over time belong to the cultural sector. On the DeFi side, the most obvious example is the liquidity provider (LP) positions in Uniswap V3, all of which are represented by specific NFTs that pull data from Ethereum and continuously render that data. If you change the liquidity of your position, your NFT will automatically reflect this change.