The Collection
Cypher Figures has 110 figures represented, with ~ 250 stylish, usually monochrome, images and 2048 wallpapers with unique background colours, 130 textures and 28 stencil designs. The images are x 1024 pixels square.
Why Cypherpunks and similar figures?
In 2024, the world seems to be going a little crazy, and we want to affirm and dwell on those who have put themselves out there to improve our world. Our inspiration comes from Cypherpunks, activists for the privacy and freedom of all individuals. This leads us to acknowledge others, such as mathematicians, scientists, crypto engineers, journalists, and whistleblowers, who all make similar personal contributions to improve the world as the cypherpunks did.
Artwork
Tally is our resident artist and the finished work is based on his mix-in from many sources. The wallpaper backgrounds are classically generative. The figures are based on existing or imagined portraits, redrawn and reworked into monochrome illustrative drawings, sometimes with crazy cyber infiltrations.
We aim for loosely drawn monochromes, almost caricatures, of the figure over a detailed, tight wallpaper, contrasting the looseness of the drawn figures against the tightly patterned generated wallpaper. Creating these wallpapers has been a lot of fun: seeing the patterns emerge from the generation and then curating them to the attractive ones that remain. The figures have been a journey into experimentation with looseness and then working the result into something we are happy with.
The Traits
Our NFT traits tell you something about the figure and the wallpaper:
Figure – The name of the figure
Wallpaper Colour – The name of the unique base colour of the wallpaper
Wallpaper Texture – The pattern the wallpaper uses
Wallpaper Stencil – The stencil and its grid size
Random – It could be anything, but most likely something related to the figure
Bip39 word – The unique Bip39 word associated with this NFT
Why 2048
We chose 2048 to match the cardinality of the dictionaries used in BIP39, which we all use with our seed phrases.
Why Arbitrum/Opensea
OpenSea is one of the oldest and best-respected NFT marketplaces, making this collection accessible to a large community centred around Ethereum. Arbitrum’s technology also means lower network fees than Ethereum mainnet.
Why Stargaze
Stargaze is a community-driven NFT blockchain and marketplace in the COSMOS-verse. It’s native coins are Stars. You can buy Stars on Osmosis exchange or other COSMOS DEXs. Network fees are very low (~2 cents) and the marketplace has great collector facilities. Profits go proportionally to all the wallets that stake Stars to secure the blockchain.
Releasing on Two Blockchains?
There are two Cypher Figures NFT collections, released a few weeks apart, one on Stargaze chain and one on Arbitrum chain. Both have 2048 NFTs with attractive wallpapers covering the same 110 figures. The NFTs are unique across both collections. That is, you will not find an NFT in the Stargaze collection with exactly the same image (or metadata) as one in the Arbitrum collection. The largely monochrome sketch of the figure may be the same, but the wallpaper will be different. This is also true, though, within either collection – you will find the same image of a figure repeated about 10 times, but always with different wallpaper. There are other differences between the two collections as well: The Artbitrum collection uses textured wallpapers; the Stargaze one does not. The Stargaze collection has the name of the figure engraved on the image; the Arbitrum one does not.
We believe the nature of this collection does not preclude this approach of having the same collection concept repeated across the two blockchains. Some collectors are likely to seek out the one or two figures that they particularly like and will be less concerned which wallpaper is used, and the wallpaper gives each NFT both uniqueness (there are 2048 different base colours used on the wallpapers) and a traits profile that collectors like.
With NFTs collections now diversifying to many different modes, we feel this is the right approach for this collection. We hope you agree.
