“Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.” -Neville Brody

So I did a series of digital works based on my love of the crypto space. I finished it up and like I do with most digital works I finish. I saved them and debated if it would be worth trying to get them printed and then having a huge stock of prints in my studio until I can sell them. Prints don't generally sell as well as paintings do for me and it's a big upfront risk to take to commit them to print. So most of the digital work I do is more of an interesting side project I take one. There is no real way to share it any meaningful way.

Then I started reading about crypto-collectibles.

I had been following Crypto Kitties and thought it was an interesting use case. I forgot about it after a little while. Then I just so happened to stumble upon Super Rare. In the simplest of terms, Super Rare takes digital art, tokenizes it, and puts in on the Ethereum blockchain. It's exactly what this project needed. So I did it. I put my work on the blockchain.

And it felt good...

The Work

In Greek mythology, the Titans were the rulers of the cosmos. They gave birth to and were eventually overthrown by a more clever generation of Gods known as the Olympian Gods. These are the Greek gods that many people know in popular culture. After reading a bit about the stories around these various gods, they stood out to me as a metaphor for what is going on right now in the world monetary system. With the advent of crypto currencies and the implications of them becoming a mainstream phenomena, it seems possible that the old Gods are at risk of being overthrown. This series set out to illustrate that.

THE KING OF THE GODS.

BITCOIN

The idea that Zeus should represent Bitcoin seemed fairly obvious to me. This was the jumping off point for the whole series. Zeus was the King of the Gods and led the Gods in their overtaking of the Titans. He is the most well, known of the Olympian Gods.

Bitcoin has been the leader of the crypto-space since the beginning. When Bitcoin goes up, the whole market goes up. When it falls, the whole market feels it. When they implemented the lightning network, the whole Zeus parallel solidified for me.

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ETHEREUM

GOD OF THE VINE.

I chose to represent Ethereum with the Greek God Dionysus. Some of the main characteristics that stood out to me from the Ethereum project were that there was one main “Vine” or blockchain in which all the other tokens branched off from. Dionysus is associated with the vine, grape harvest, and wine-making. The creation of smart contracts running on the blockchain adds a beautiful alchemy to Ethereum. I like the metaphor of the grape being the tokens created on the network and the wine being the smart contracts that use them. There is an art to the alchemy and one wrong move can lead the whole thing to being spoiled.

There are also some interesting parallels that make the Dionysus/Ethereum pairing work. Does anyone remember the ICO fervor from 2017? Where people bought into ICOs like drunken fools? There is also the interesting birth story of Dionysus being twice born, and interesting parallel to the blockchain rollback that occurred very early in Ethereum’s infancy as a result of the DAO hack that occured.

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THE GODDESS.

LITECOIN

In Greek Mythology, Athena was born from her father Zeus’ head. Athena was the God of Warfare, Wisdom, and handicraft. Athena was known as Atrytone (Άτρυτώνη “the Unwearying”), Parthenos (Παρθένος “Virgin”), and Promachos (Πρόμαχος “she who fights in front”).

Litecoin started as a clone of Bitcoin. Seeing as it was a lighter, smaller coin, it served as the testing ground for new ideas and technology that the Bitcoin ecosystem was too large to try out. It was the coin that was on the front lines of experimentation and tackling new problems head-on. The warrior goddess that led soldiers into battle seemed like the perfect fit.

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MONERO

THE UNSEEN ONE.

A fierce protector of the souls in his realm, he strictly forbade anyone leaving his domain. Much like how Monero’s main goal is to ensure the anonymity of it’s transaction history. As stated in the Hades Wiki, “He was also referred to as Zeus katachthonios (Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος), meaning “the Zeus of the Underworld”, by those avoiding his actual name, as he had complete control over the Underworld.” Seeing as Monero isn’t just another Bitcoin clone, it needed to be represented by a Greek God that wasn’t beholden to another God. So I chose Hades, brother of Zeus.

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Thanks for taking a look at my work! I'm excited about what this means for the future of digital art as a form of collectible work. Check out SuperRare.co if you want to see what others are doing in the space. This is a great time to be an artist!

Dave Estes

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