tl;dr help us create a new generation of on-chain artists through smart contract wizardry and cc0 licensing.

Overview

This proposal will help rebrand and iterate my on-chain art deployer, Efficax to be “powered by Nouns”. This will push forward a number of nounish principles, including:

• Drastically increasing the surface area and remix-ability of cc0 artwork
• Making cc0 artwork on-chain composable
• Showcasing the Nouns brand to some of the biggest names in digital fine art
• Bringing massive cost savings to the next generation of on-chain artists

Intro

Hi! I’m diid, and I want to bring on-chain art and CC0 licenses to the masses.

Last year, during exploration for my own art projects, I designed and built a method for deploying on-chain art at a fraction of the usual cost. Everything worked within a Manifold Creator Contract, making it easy to publish and sell, and an easy web1 styled interface made it user-friendly to mint. Since then, the 3 successive versions of the tool have been used to deploy over 600 fully on-chain artworks at over $200,000 in gas savings, with artists like XCOPY, Gremplin, and Ol1y taking advantage of it, and to date I haven’t charged a single dollar.

The existing versions have tons of advantages for folks creating and storing their art on-chain, but I want to take that to the next level with licensing, composability, extensibility, and a more direct interface!

Deliverables

This proposal will fund the design, development, and subsequent rollout of a comprehensive new version of my on-chain art deployer, Efficax. This will include a brand new Nouns-tagged frontend application, a highly extensible smart contract, and even a new licensing layer to allow for CC0 remixes to run wild.

Along the way, there will be several checkpoints to success, including:

1. Efficax 1.3: HTML and JS in SVG support
2. Efficax 1.4: New frontend complete with quirky branding
3. Efficax 2.0: Redesigned smart contract w/ all new features including CC0 attestation
4. Launch: CC0 artwork commissioning, exhibitions, and “seeding”

Funding

Overall, funds will be used to support the development, deployment, and subsequent launch of Efficax 2.0. I am requesting 10 ETH for the project from start to finish, which will be roughly split alongside the checkpoints:

1. Efficax 1.3: 0.6 ETH
   • 0.4 ETH contract development hours
   • 0.1 ETH frontend updates
   • 0.1 ETH deployment
2. Efficax 1.4: 3.4 ETH
   • .8 ETH design consulting, commissions for additional icons and branding
   • 2 ETH frontend rewrite, modern responsive adaptations
   • 0.2 ETH website deployment and maintenance
   • 0.2 ETH contract updates
   • 0.2 ETH frontend open sourcing preparations
3. Efficax 2.0: 4.5 ETH
   • 1 ETH initial contract development
   • 1 ETH on-chain deployment plugin
   • 1 ETH default minting and deployment plugins
   • 0.5 ETH automated and manual testing setup
   • 0.5 ETH unofficial contract audits
     • official contract audits usually cost 10+ ETH on their own
   • 0.5 ETH legal consultation
     • Need to make sure CC0 attestation is as legally sound as it can be, given that US and international law doesn’t have a lot of precedence here
4. Launch: 1.5 ETH
   • 0.5 ETH cataloging and deployment of existing cc0 artwork
   • 1 ETH gas subsidies & refunds for launch-day artists

While building something like this would generally be much more expensive, I’m confident in my abilities and connections that I’ve built within the space. Alongside having built and deployed the other versions of Efficax by myself, I’ve also written over 40 smart contracts for NFT drops and projects, and have nearly a decade of programming experience across the stack.

Further Context

(the boring part)

Efficax and the state of on-chain art

What is it?

Efficax is a Manifold Creator Contract extension that produces massive cost savings for artists storing their art within the Ethereum blockchain ledger. It was bootstrapped entirely by me, and through its 3 versions boasts gas savings of up to 75% for raster images and 90% for vectors.

Simply enough, it’s the most efficient way to store artwork on-chain, and the results speak for themselves.

What results?

With artists such as XCOPY, Gremplin, Ol1y, and Spøgelsesmaskinen making use of the technology, the first 600 artworks deployed on Efficax were done so with a measly 25 ETH in fees. That might sound like a lot to burn, but that translates to a minimum of $200,000 saved by the community over that time.

I’m personally not a fan of talking myself up, so I’ll let these folks do it for me:

Manifold:

XCOPY:

ambr0sia:

Chainleft:

Smokestacks:

AD:

Rug Radio:

Budsnob:

Cool, what about the little guy?

Helping a big name artist release art is a huge milestone, but to me the majority of the satisfaction comes from onboarding new artists to fully on-chain work. Some crafty artists have minted works for a lower cost than listing them, something not conceivable before Efficax.

The interwoven aspects of provenance and artwork coming together within a single transaction is a magical thing, and a great learning experience for digital artists of all backgrounds. Making on-chain art more accessible helps them understand more complex structures like DAOs and different auction types.

The next iteration

Why are we here?

This proposal will fund the design, development, and subsequent rollout of the successor to Efficax. While a fully redesigned second version has been in the works for quite some time, and much of the architecture and design has been thought out, I need your help to get it past the finish line.

What is it?

Efficax 2.0 will provide not just a storage system, but a way for artists to utilize easy and quick plugins in combination to release NFTs in any way they want. Designed for ease of use and simplicity of development, anyone will be able to build atop the foundation set from this proposal, and all of that will pave the way for a brighter future for on-chain art.

For those who care about the technical details, Efficax will take the singular extension framework that Manifold (and other platforms like Zora) use and expand it to every facet of tokenization. Within a single extension framework: the minting, metadata setting, transferring, ownership, and even complex behaviors like bridging have to reside within that single extension.

Efficax 2.0 imagines a new world where every piece of an ERC-721 or ERC-1155 contract can be controlled by an extension while still adhering to the guidelines set by the platform. This lets the platform do the bidding with indexers and exchanges (Foundation, for example, only indexes certain platforms) while also allowing the artist full control over the token.

Why care?

• Nouns branding will be shown in the app to the next generation of on-chain artists, from cryptoart OGs to first minters alike.
• On-chain art will be more accessible to everyone, making it easier to understand the technicalities behind NFTs.
• But wait, there’s more!

Paving the way for revolution

CC0 and immutability

While there are many things interesting and particularly cypherpunk about blockchain technology, none more so than CC0 culture. While the CC0 license allows anyone to create, remix, and distribute work without accreditation, the licensing is often done off-chain. Usually, this comes in the form of a banner on a website or a public post on social media. When we’re talking about large projects from 1337 to Nouns to XCOPY’s portfolio, it can be hard to absolutely trust that the art you’re remixing is CC0. While a CC0 license cannot be revoked, it can be quietly made less public, and that greatly reduces the surface area for innovation.

While a mistake, this is XCOPY’s page about the CC0 license, for example

Stalking potential uses

Shortly after the release of XCOPY’s first fully on-chain editions, the blockchain native and certified chefs at Int Art began cooking. Despite Efficax not having good ways to plug in with existing artwork, they were able to fetch the metadata and extract the art. With XCOPY’s work being famously openly CC0, they successfully turned that into a new, interactive token using only the tools available within the Ethereum network. The Stalker is a great example of what could be possible by making artistic resources available to all on-chain.

By their admission, this 2023 (and ongoing!) example is one of the first composable artworks ever created within the Ethereum Virtual Machine. To my knowledge, it’s the first to utilize assets from other contracts in a way not originally intended, but it doesn’t have to be the last.

Iterable CC0

While the extensible design of Efficax 2.0 will allow for many different use cases, there’s one that’s particularly interesting to public domain enthusiasts: composability.

Mints on Efficax 2.0 will be paired with a simple license. To start, the options will simply be “all rights reserved” and “no rights reserved.” While this might seem simple, the addition of programmable extensions means that ALL CC0 artwork is available to be built on from within the EVM.

So, Efficax 2.0 won’t just be a way to sell art, it will also be a way to give art to the public: much like Nouns and successive on-chain CC0 projects like 1337 Skulls have done before it. This, combined with the programmable nature of Ethereum smart contracts, means that people across the internet will have a repository of artworks to remix, expand upon, and combine. For those wanting to create new art off-chain, they’ll no longer have to wonder if they’re going to get a cease and desist order. Licensing, artwork, provenance, sales, all residing within a single token on the network.

Seeding the catalog

Filling the catalog with CC0 artworks is a reasonable first step in achieving this interoperability pipe dream. As such, Efficax will need a kick off! Utilizing my connections and friends at Burrito DAO and the Foundation-conquering Eternal world, a few rounds of CC0 attested artworks will be added to Efficax from day 0.

On top of that, there’s tons of ability to catalog and utilize existing assets, such as Nouns traits themselves! This is something I will leave to further iteration, but the ideas abound, including starting a nounish DAO just for this purpose.

Incentivization

To date, I haven’t charged a single dollar for Efficax or any of my tools, such as Diither. I believe strongly that accessibility is one of the most important factors in making our small corner of the internet become mainstream, and the “come and see” aspects allow for hands-on education. That being said, it makes sense that if you’re saving $1000, paying $1 won’t make a significant impact.

While I’ll make a quick note that this proposal does not make any pricing or payback guarantees, I believe a strong way to incentivize CC0 art for artists who might be on the fence is to negate any charges for using the contract and application. A few bucks if you keep the rights, nothing if you don’t.

In Conclusion

Overall, I’m a guy with a proven track record for building things that wants your help to build a new, potentially revolutionary, thing. I think it aligns incredibly well with the values that Nouns have proliferated in web3, and I’d love to take that to an audience who cares about the same things. Building tools for builders and artists is my passion, and I hope you’ll join me.

Much love, diid