{"id":531,"date":"2022-02-23T17:45:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T17:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grandpascrypto.com\/?p=531"},"modified":"2022-03-09T01:33:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T01:33:03","slug":"blitmap-a-community-crafted-on-chain-art-collection-and-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grandpascrypto.com\/blitmap-a-community-crafted-on-chain-art-collection-and-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"Blitmap: A Community Crafted On-Chain Art Collection and Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

tl;dr Summary<\/strong>: Blitmap is a new community-crafted on-chain art collection and universe created by Vine cofounder Dom Hoffman<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most popular NFT collections on the market are currently profile pic, or \u2018PFP NFTs\u2019. PFP NFTs are a collection of about 10,000 avatars where each avatar has a combination of unique attributes that are randomly generated and combined. This style of NFT, made popular by successful collections like CyberPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club, is often used as a profile picture on social media sites like Twitter. Bored Ape Yacht Club alone attracts a weekly sales volume of over $200 million. Other styles of NFT collections have yet to reach this level of popularity, so most new developers emulate the PFP style of popular collections. However, as happens with all works of art, every once in a while there is a new project that comes along to revolutionize the genre.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blitmap, a collection of 1,700 on-chain pixel art NFTs created by Dominick \u201cDom\u201d Hofmann, took the NFT world by storm in the summer of 2021. Blitmap offers a new and refreshing take on generative art NFTs, and aims to develop a community crafted universe of stories, characters and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who is Dom Hofmann?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dom is best known as the co-founder of Vine, an American social networking short-form video hosting service where users could share six-second-long video clips. Despite being the number one app on iOS and Android in mid-2013, Vine eventually lost market share to apps like Instagram and Snapchat before finally shutting down in 2016<\/a>. However, Dom continued his career as an artist, programmer and serial entrepreneur, going on to work on other social networking applications and art projects. After many years of silence Dom re-emerged on Twitter in early-2021, posting mostly about the blockchain and Web3 technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Blitmap?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 31, 2021, Dom unexpectedly introduced Blitmap to the world on Twitter<\/a>. The initial concept was simple: 17 artists created 100 original pieces of 32×32 pixel art and loaded them onto the blockchain as NFTs. The art itself varies from pixelated drawings of insects, food and human body parts like ears and eyeballs. Blitmap\u2019s Ethereum contract was written so that users were able to create entirely new NFTs called \u201csiblings\u201d by combining the design of one original art piece with the palette of another. A collection of 1,700 art pieces was finally completed on July 2, 2021<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All 1,700 NFTs and their metadata are stored on-chain instead of on an off-chain server. Most art files are too large to be stored on the blockchain so NFT developers rely on an external network of servers called the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to store their data. While this isn\u2019t the most decentralized way to store art files, it gives creators more freedom to make digital art as large and complex as they please. Storing directly on the blockchain presented some constraints to the Blitmap developers. However, doing so ensured all Blitmap art and data will live permanently on the Ethereum blockchain for as long as Ethereum is around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original 17 artists held onto their Blitmap NFTs, but the remaining 1,600 siblings were traded freely on secondary NFT Marketplace OpenSea. The project attracted a small yet strong community of supporters who vote on the direction of the project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blitmap is Public Domain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On August 12, 2021 the community voted to make these 1,700 art pieces public domain under CC0<\/a>. CC0 is a creative license offered by Creative Commons which relinquishes all copyright and similar rights of a particular work, making it available for public use. When a work becomes public domain, new creators are able to create new works inspired by the original, as well as copies or reimaginings of the original.  Public domain rights have a long and rich history in art, writing and science. Works like the Bible are public domain because they were created before copyright laws. It is also possible for an author to voluntarily make his work public domain or for copyright protections to expire. As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years<\/a>. One popular example is \u201cThe Story of King Arthur and his Knights\u201d by Howard Pyle. Copyright protections for Pyle\u2019s collection of stories expired in 1981 giving way for dozens of works to be created including books, songs, movies and video games all inspired by the original source material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making Blitmap public domain allowed other developers to create derivative NFT projects. The most popular derivative NFT project is Flipmap<\/a>. The original Blitmap collection had 10,000 possible combinations, but only 1,700 were allowed to be minted. The Flipmap developers recreated the missing 8,300 combinations and made them available as Flipmaps. However, derivatives under CC0 aren\u2019t only limited to other NFT projects. The community of NFT owners have also created Blitmap-inspired clothing, music and even a hand-made pyro-cut on a block of wood<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blitmap Expansion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from project derivatives, the original artists and developers of Blitmap are working behind the scenes to deliver on their project roadmap which includes extensions to the original project. One such extension is Blitnauts, the heroes of the Blitmap universe and Blitmap\u2019s very own PFP collection. Each Blitmap owner was awarded a free Blitnaut NFT, which are currently selling on OpenSea at a floor price of 3 ETH (~$8,200). The Blitnauts are designed to be more than static images sold on the secondary market, and will inhabit a larger video game world of which the details have not been released by the developers. The next expansion pack releasing later in 2022 are the Rivals, which will be the antagonists to the Blitnauts. The lore and underlying history for the Blitmap universe, characters and game are being written and voted on by the community of Blitmap NFT holders. This is a novel idea in the Web3 space where being an owner of an NFT gives everyday people the ability to contribute to the intellectual property of a brand which the team hopes can become as popular as Star Wars or Lord of The Rings. Blitmap may have just opened up the floodgates for a new frontier in storytelling and world building through NFTs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blitmap is a new community-crafted on-chain art collection and universe created by Vine cofounder Dom Hoffman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[115,128,123,124,116,68,127,126,121,120,118,130,122,117,125,129,119],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n