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Original post by @Luna.F @Irislaohu

Jointly released by TraFinity Labs & AIO Labs, AIONews first published on the whole network.

It is said that popularity is a circle. In the beginning of 2023, some people noticed that the popularity of NFT circles has returned to pixel art. The pixel-style NFT is firmly sitting on the top spot of the major hot lists. Like the basic models that will never be eliminated in a woman's wardrobe, the avatars of the bullies are composed of small squares, as if to say: all classics will become eternal. This principle also applies to Web3.

On the ever-fluctuating hot list of the recently exploded BTC NFT track, we see that among the top 64 NFTs, pixel-style NFTs can occupy 30-35 places, easily occupying half of the country. (Data source: Ordinals.Market)

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Behind the fascination of pixel wind NFT

In June 2017, the studio Larva Labs launched the pixel-style NFT CryptoPunks, which will be acquired by Yuga Labs, the parent company of "Boring Ape" in 2022. CryptoPunks can be called the originator of NFT. CryptoPunks issued a total of 10,000 NFTs, and each NFT represents a different "punk style" pixel-style avatar. On the CryptoPunks website, each pixel punk avatar has its own profile displaying their attributes, ownership and sale status. Among them, No. 3100 and No. 7804 were both traded at a price of 4200 ETH on March 11, 2022. According to the ETH price at that time, the transaction price was about 75.66 million US dollars. CryptoPunksm #5822 was sold on the market at a record breaking price of 8,000 ETH back in February.

Since CryptoPunks was the first NFT to go out of the circle and be worshiped by players, pixel wind has become one of the genes of NFT, and it was quickly turned into a template by profit-seekers. CryptoPunks have conquered today's NFT market. In the past two years since then, various pixel-style NFTs have emerged, and Worldwide Webb, CyberKongz, Yubo Randos, Meebits, ApeGang, and BitCats pixel-style NFTs have appeared one after another. The number and market value of pixel-style NFT digital artworks continue to increase. Up to now, the number and market value of pixel-style NFT digital art works rank among the top in many NFT markets, becoming one of the important categories in the NFT market. There are waves in the NFT field, and the pixel-style NFT expands a new narrative in Web3.

When buying a pixel wind NFT, what exactly do users buy? It is the buyer's recognition and fascination with the value of pixel style in NFT, and it is a high recognition of the artistry of the NFT market. Digital art is different from physical art forms, and the high prices of followers in the market are more like the cry of performance art.

The emergence of digital art has enriched the display forms of works of art. Some users have seen the value of digital art, and people's value carriers have found a new breakthrough.

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The cohesive power of pixel wind NFT

"The Windlands, developed by PLAYING CHUCKLEFISH, gave me a sense of being back at home like never before. Immediately after it was first revealed in 2018, I was drawn to this Sel I was attracted by the adventurous elements, colorful narratives, and complex and diverse character relationships. But most importantly, I am amazed by the gorgeous scenes and high-precision environments constructed by pixel art.” Pixel Artist Extremely OK Games Mention the fascination of pixel wind in the interview.

Vivaldi Partners, an American marketing consulting company, once divided social currency into six dimensions: belonging, communication and discussion, identity, value, advocacy, information, and knowledge exchange. NFT, as the composition of conversation material in social situations, is a "high-scoring product" in the above six latitudes, and it has naturally reached "crazy spread" in the circle. The famous best-selling book "Crazy Story" mentioned that the value of social currency is that just like people can use currency to buy goods or services, using social currency can get more praise and a more positive impression from family, friends and colleagues. For people, having a pixel-style NFT is to add various labels to their personalities: cyberpunk, high value, futuristic, scarcity, etc. The extreme sexiness of this kind of talk has created a phenomenon-level social wave , allowing more people to voluntarily participate in it.

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At the same time, the financial liquidity and unique classification of NFT have condensed a large number of people who are interested in it into a new community force, and the pixel wind bears the brunt. In the new generation of networks, people's demand for a sense of identity is getting higher and higher, and the collection value of pixel style NFT makes it possible to transfer it as a social commodity. The uniqueness of NFT enables the owner to uniquely recognize their own identity information. People with similar NFTs quickly form a community, seek a sense of identity in the community, support their favorite NFTs, find a common circle and obtain exchange-related knowledge and information in it: I own a cyberpunk scarce NFT, and I also have an NFT OG Club membership in the realm. This takes the social currency value of pixel-style NFTs to the next level, attracting a large number of interested people to invest in it.

Figure: CryptoPunks community number

Figure: Worldwide Web 3 Community Headcount

Figure: Number of people in the CyberKongz community

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A Peek at the Countercultural Attitude Behind Pixel Art

In the late 1990s, the pixel style was gradually regarded by the game industry as synonymous with "rough" and "blunt", and it was no longer favored. But pixel art has not been eliminated, but has become a unique style and cultural symbol. The reason is that the pixel style itself uses simple elements to express the theme content, has unlimited creative space, and has a unique artistic style. Pixels do not use realism to express information. On the contrary, the simple and clean visual effects displayed by the pixel style can effectively reduce visual information overload, thereby improving the efficiency of information transmission.The reason why a pixel can become a pixel style is because it takes a step back to be a retro, and a step further is a trend.

In 2017, Matt Hall and John Watkinson, founders of the software company Larva Labs, developed a program capable of generating thousands of random characters that didn't seem to belong to the prevailing aesthetic genre at the time. It didn’t take long for Larva Labs to introduce what we now know as CryptoPunks — collections of artistic images made of irregular pixels. In these pixel images, in addition to human images, there are also non-human images such as green-skinned zombies, long-haired apes, and blue-skinned aliens, all of which are also equipped with a combination of accessories that flaunt their personality. The two founders bluntly said that CryptoPunks was inspired by the London Punk spirit: "They (these images) must be a bunch of out-of-group and non-compliant people. The London Punk movement in the 1970s feels like the correct aesthetic. The dystopian cyberpunk spirit represented by the movie "Blade Runner" and William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer" also has an influence on this." In their view, the district The early days of the blockchain movement had a raucous anti-establishment spirit, an air they wanted to reflect in their punk exterior.

Previously, there were many people who expressed the view that "pixel art is dead", but in today's NFT world, there are still a large number of artists working hard to create near-perfect pixel works, and one pixel NFT after another is constantly emerging. The most powerful rebuttal. Many pixel-style NFT projects swept the Web 3 world with their own interpretations, and continued to interpret the classics with creativity and communication power. People often question the uniqueness and value of pixel wind NFT. But CryptoPunks wants to express far more than that-in the words of the founders, investing in NFTs like CryptoPunks allows everyone to express their true self in the role of this new art form.

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The return of the NFT world pixel wind, is it accidental or inevitable?Pixel art is a digital graphic drawn using the principle of pixel dot matrix. It first appeared in video games in the 1980s. Due to technical limitations at that time, the game screen could only be presented with rough small squares. Childhood memories "Legend of Zelda", "Super Mario" and "Contra" are representative games of pixel style, accompanying the growth of the 80s and 90s. Then it is not difficult to understand that the reason why it is difficult for other styles to replace the pixel style is first of all——

retro feelings.

Russian-American scholar Svellana Boym (Svellana Boym) wrote in "The Future of Nostalgia", "This nostalgic disease is prevalent all over the world, and more and more people are eager to have a community of collective memory. Emotion, longing for a kind of continuity in a fragmented world". In the era of no social networking and no Web 3, the NFT in the wallet is a business card that opens the door of each community, representing the aesthetics and taste of the holder, and it is also an excellent introduction topic for social development. The pixel style undoubtedly carries the childhood memories of most holders—even for post-00s who have little experience with the mosaic version of "Super Mario", "Minecraft" may be their favorite. You don't have to worry that the other party doesn't understand death rock, and you don't have to feel that the cute style will be out of place. The pixel style has unique advantages and can quickly evoke the common memories of everyone. Friendly, carefree, and happy, it seems to bring people back to a specific era. As soon as the get out of class bell rang, they went straight to the game hall in groups of three and four, and were quickly drowned in the human voice intertwined with the smell of sweat and spicy strips. The former hardware limitations have become tears of the times, and the retention and continuation of the pixel style proves that there will always be people who will miss it. Web 3 provides us with a way to miss, so why can't we just admit that we just want to miss our childhood?

In addition to feelings, the pixel style can indeed quickly open up the market. It is much easier to use pixels to create NFT images of various elements and accessories than other types. The size of NFT is limited and the picture quality is not high, which is why we often feel that NFT itself is very pixelated. If you reduce the number of colors used in an image, the file size will also be smaller, making the image more adaptable to a variety of screen sizes and resolutions, effectively making it compatible with a variety of devices. Pixel wind NFT can be produced in a few minutes, and it has more flexibility in design. Artists can easily create a large number of non-repeating NFT works. Correspondingly, compared with other types of NFTs, the price of pixel wind NFTs is usually lower, the player base is larger, and the operating costs are more controllable. This relatively low price has promoted more people to participate in the NFT market and contributed to the growth of the entire NFT market. Although the base price of the popular project CryptoPunks is high, it does not prevent a large number of players from flocking to pixel wind.

The colors presented by the early pixel style are limited by the RGB color display of video game screens, and the color choices are limited to 56. Therefore, game developers usually choose high-saturation main colors, low-saturation transition colors and shadows for matching. The combination of red and green with blue and yellow is the most common combination, which brings a strong visual impact to gamers and makes the brain secrete exciting and happy dopamine. Later pixel art works such as Pinto, cross-stitch, and Lego still continued this color law, and pixel NFT is no exception. The visual tension of pixel-style NFT can bring users a sense of excitement and curiosity (of course, it will also remind them of the thrill of playing games when they were young), and it is so eye-catching among the rows of avatars on the hot list.

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When CryptoPunks was created, Larva Labs kept 1,000 avatar NFTs in the project, and the remaining 9,000 NFTs were distributed free of charge to users with Ethereum wallets.

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The follow-up market of CryptoPunks has been hyped to sky-high prices, and the collections have gradually flowed into the hands of whales. The top 5 CryptoPunks holders are mainly original collectors who still own 14% of the total CryptoPunks to date.

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Over time, the transaction evolution of NFT collectors also shows that the transactions of "legendary NFT collectors" account for a smaller and smaller proportion of the total transaction volume (in terms of ERC 721 token transactions, legendary collectors mean Top 0.1% of collectors).

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The giant whale game breeds more black-box operations and insider trading, and the number of wallets does not represent the number of real players. The authenticity of buyers and sellers and the flow of funds may become a financial game, and the market for high-priced transactions is definitely not the domain of ordinary people. However, the artistic style cannot avoid the coercion and control of financial forces, and the hype mechanism makes the transactions in the market half true and false. The media after Beeple's "instant fame" revealed that the buyer was Metapurse founder Meta Kovan. Metapurse led the issuance of token B.20 associated with Beeple. At the same time, the same buyer whose Id is metakovan participated in Beeple's December 2020 auction with 11 wallets under different names.

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NFT Artwork - Carnival Game from the Top of the Pyramid?

The high-speed entry of refined images and 3D technology has made the NFT market diversified and explosive. Mainstream artists began to join the NFT track, and digital art gradually paralleled the market. With the addition of various art styles in the market, the art styles and even the art system of the NFT market will also evolve and explode in diversification. Not only picture art, but also video, music and other forms are entering the NFT market.

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Beyond the popularity of pixel wind

Art is an ever-evolving medium, building on the past to explore new corners of human experience and imagination as new styles and techniques become popular. Just as those mosaics and stained glass led to LCD watches and Pong, the pixel art of the past is influencing creators of the present, creating new building blocks for the future of gaming. “From ancient Greek and Roman mosaics to stained glass to cross-stitch, weaving and beading art, to dot-matrix printers and cheap LCDs on the front of a public transit bus or a rice cooker,” Christina-Antoinette, a pixel artist with decades of experience Neofotistou describes, "The placement of discrete points on the grid means that the image won't disappear anytime soon."

Reference：

• https://postergrind.com/why-are-so-many-nfts-pixelated/

• https://www.wired.com/story/modern-pixel-art-games/? mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=wired&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter

• https://www.bricktownworld.com/en-us/blogs/the-bricktown-blog/the-role-of-pixel-art-in-the-expansion-of-nfts

• https://ishare.ifeng.com/c/s/v 002-_ljXmEMPkYrPSa 1--izFR 2 gs 5 KgB--bX 3 S-_oohVnB 65 Jc__

• https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20220323 A 01 ST 200 

• https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/498363713 

• https://www.digitaling.com/articles/338316.html

• https://www.business 2c ommunity.com/nft/CryptoPunks

For creators, the popularity of art is like a sudden east wind. With this wind, they may be able to break through the restrictions of the circle in the early stage and tear apart a corner of the real world. However, with the increase of entry forces, encrypted art cannot give the ideal completely decentralized fair and just market, and its financial attributes make it inseparable from the eyes of giant whales. In the future, we believe there will be more room for imagination as to whether NFTs with more styles and gameplay can give diverse answers.

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