gm Bankless Nation, as the Ethereum Foundation seeks to deepen its footprint across the Ethereum ecosystem, creating an art collection could be a smart move!
gm Bankless Nation, As the Ethereum Foundation seeks to deepen its footprint across the Ethereum ecosystem, creating a permanent art collection could be a smart and inspiring move!
Yet the playful community engagement also comes amid more serious efforts by Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation to evolve.
Indeed, in a recent tweet, Vitalik noted that the EF was “in the process of large changes,” including improving “communications and ties between EF leadership and … ecosystem actors, old and new, that it is our role to support.”
This reflective period for the EF has sparked no shortage of new community discussions around how the organization can deepen its footprint throughout Ethereum's spheres of influence.
I'm biased as an NFT wonk, but I did come across what I think is an awesome suggestion by the artist ripcache, who floated the idea of the EF establishing a permanent collection of Ethereum-based art.
This sort of initiative would have tons of potential to highlight Ethereum as both a technological foundation and cultural steward of great art.
So, hypothetically speaking, let's say this EF collection came to pass, and the EF solicited community input on acquisitions. What NFTs should they acquire?
Of course, they could always start with some of the majors, like CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins, Autoglyphs, etc. But these would be the easiest, most obvious picks.
If it was up to me, I'd recommend collecting from two niche areas where Ethereum is unmatched among all chains right now, and that's hypersculptures and conceptual art.
Personally, my top 5 suggestions would be as follows:
Now, let's break down these picks so you can get a sense for why they could be good options here.
Terraforms
I start with Terraforms by Mathcastles because I think it's a must-have in any Ethereum lover's collection.
The series uses Ethereum as its medium, an always-on computational canvas, and it pioneered the hypersculpture form—i.e. it's a dynamic, network-aware sculpture that exists fully onchain, implemented as code to enable perpetual evolution and open interaction.
The collection's nuances run much deeper through its traits (Zones, Biomes, Chroma, and Topography) and modes (Terrain, Daydream, Terraform, Antenna), and I can't do all of these intricacies justice in a few sentences.
Suffice to say, though, it's a new kind of cultural marvel in its own right, and it's a quintessential example of how artists can push the boundaries of Ethereum toward unprecedented creative achievements. It'd be a great fit in an EF permanent collection accordingly.
Cycles
This brings me to my next recommendation, Cycles by Material Protocol Arts, which was launched in January 2025 and is the newest hypersculpture on Ethereum.
Naturally, the series is impressive for a lot of the same reasons that its forerunner, Terraforms, is impressive.
For example, in being fully onchain, this digital sculpture, which is made up of 512 NFT “lenses,” has no external dependencies outside of Ethereum. It will exist and can be interacted with for as long as Ethereum exists.
That said, I think an EF permanent collection should host multiple hypersculptures to highlight the achievements and the potential of artists who are approaching Ethereum as an unprecedented medium.
As such, Cycles would be another great fit here and could convey a particularly important cultural lineage in Ethereum's onchain art scene that began with Terraforms.
Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility
Many don’t realize that Ethereum has a rich conceptual art history, with Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility by Mitchell F. Chan as one of its first cornerstones.
Minted in 2017 before the ERC-721 NFT standard existed, this series is a reimagination of Yves Klein’s Zones de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (1958) atop Ethereum.
Where Klein sold “invisible” artworks for gold, Chan offered ERC-20 tokens imbued with the sensibility of Klein’s patented International Klein Blue (IKB) color. Then as NFTs evolved, Chan introduced the IKB wrapper to modernize his Digital Zones with the ERC-721 standard.
What I love about this collection is how it approached Ethereum as a platform for rethinking art, ownership, and value, and how it anticipated much of the conceptual art that has followed on Ethereum over the past seven years. In my opinion, it'd definitely be worthy of consideration by the EF.
Tokens Equal Text
Another giant in Ethereum's conceptual art scene is Rhea Myers. She's a legend here, and her work around the crossroads of crypto and art goes back over a decade.
For instance, she was experimenting on projects like This Contract Is Art and Art Market in 2014 on Ethereum's testnet! More recently, she auctioned her Secret Artwork at Sotheby's in 2021.
However, my favorite of her works is Tokens Equal Text, a 2019 project that marked another early milestone for conceptual art on Ethereum. This series centers around 32 composable ERC-998 tokens, each owning four child ERC-721 tokens.
The IDs of the child tokens are presented as text, revealing descriptions of visual tropes from the Vaporwave movement, through which Myers critiques and questions the nature of art and aesthetics in blockchain contexts.
This is exactly the kind of fine art that belongs in an EF permanent collection, and Tokens Equal Text serves as an excellent entry point into Myers's groundbreaking body of work.
Sentimentite
Agnieszka Kurant is an acclaimed interdisciplinary Polish artist, and her conceptual Sentimentite series, released in collaboration with Zien in 2022, is undoubtedly one-of-a-kind.
Each of the collection’s 100 NFTs was shaped by sentiment data harvested from millions of posts on platforms like X and Reddit. Inspired by significant global events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ethereum ICO, these emotional pulses are rendered into 3D geological sculptures.
These are Expanded NFTs, too, so they can be redeemed for physical sculptures made from Kurant's fictional Sentimentite material that is created by pulverizing over 50 historical currencies, ranging from shells to gold and even cocaine.
The idea? It's an artistic metaphor for how social and economic systems transform collective energies to create value. In that sense, its commentary is relevant to ETH's own journey toward becoming money.
Notably, the renowned Centre Pompidou collected a Sentimentite NFT in 2023, so the EF collecting one would further reinforce the work's cultural significance and highlight Ethereum's potential as a home for fine art that can bridge the blockchain art and traditional art worlds. Worth a look, I say!
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