Curio Cards
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Curio Cards is the first digital art show collection on the Ethereum blockchain. Launched by Travis Uhrig, Thomas Hunt (Mad Bitcoins) and Rhett Creighton on May 9, 2017, Curio Cards features 30 Cards by seven different artists with unique styles and backgrounds. Despite initially failing financially, Curio Cards helped inform the modern ERC721 Standard for NFTs, and in October 2021, a full set including the card "17b" misprint was sold for ETH393 ($1,267,320) at Christie's Post-War to Present auction.
Early history
2016
Proof of Art
The idea for Curio Cards originated from Travis Uhrig and Thomas Hunt’s early involvement in the San Francisco Bitcoin meetup scene. Hunt, a Bitcoin YouTuber and event organizer, met Uhrig, who later became the lead organizer, and the pair decided to host an art show to spread awareness about the cryptocurrency. That art show took place in May, 2016, and was called “Proof of Art.” Among the artists auctioning their work was Cryptograffiti, a local Bitcoin activist artist, who later contributed Cards 11–13 to the Curio Cards collection.
2017
Developing on Ethereum
The idea to host an art show on the blockchain was inspired by RarePepes, a Bitcoin-based project on peer-to-peer financial platform Counterparty. Uhrig and Hunt wanted to give artists an opportunity to showcase themselves and their work in the same way RarePepes did. The co-founders decided to develop the project on Ethereum instead of Bitcoin because of the opportunities smart contracts presented, including the ability to launch contracts which collectors could buy or “mint” NFTs from (termed “vending machines” by the team). This led them to bringing in cryptocurrency developer Rhett Creighton as a co-founder.
Launch and initial reception
Curio Cards launched May 9, 2017, with the first cards by phneep, a Bitcoin graphic artist. Curio Cards were released weekly in sets of three, except for Cards 10, 20 and 30, which received their own release dates. The original contracts also featured a tiered pricing model, which the founders dropped after the first few cards failed to sell out.
The initial response was not positive, and included confusion about the purpose of the Cards. Owning art on Ethereum was a novel concept that involved a learning curve. Additionally, the project launched during the ICO (initial coin offering) craze, when projects released tokens upfront as a means to gather funds, but often neglected to deliver on the promise of their whitepaper. Because of this, some people were quick to write off Curio Cards as a scam.
As such, Curio Cards failed to generate enough funds to sustain itself, so that the company behind the project shut down.
Recent events
2021
Rediscovery
Amid a renewed interest in NFTs in 2021, a group of collectors grew interested in discovering projects predating CryptoPunks. This movement led to the rediscovery of Curio Cards, and numerous other projects. A collector named DieAping is believed to be the first person to have rediscovered Curio Cards after 4 years of inactivity.
Word of the rediscovery spread on Twitter, after HarryBTC and podcaster Adam McBride shared the news. After the original Curio Cards teams and artists were informed of the fervor around their 2017 NFT collection, efforts were made to make the Cards available on OpenSea. This necessitated coding a wrapper — a contract to make the original ERC20 tokens compatible with the current ERC721 standard used by modern marketplaces.
Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions
In October 2021, a full set of Curio Cards was auctioned by renowned British auction house Christie’s at their New York saleroom, as part of their Postwar To Present auction. This was the first time bidding was conducted solely using Ethereum cryptocurrency at Christie’s. The auction also featured entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck’s Veefriends NFT project, which included several hand drawn pieces that sold for over a million dollars collectively.
During the same month, another full set of Curio Cards was auctioned at Sotheby’s, as part of Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale. All lots were curated by London-based artist Robert Alice. This is the first time in history artwork by the same artists has sold at both of the world’s largest auction houses within the same month (I think).
Curio DAO
In November 2021, a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) was established by members of the Curio Cards collectors community. Curio DAO follows a set of objectives aimed at promoting the original Curio Cards vision; a dual mandate to “support the original Cards,” i.e. “protect the interests of the artists and cardholders,” and to “develop the Curio Cards ecosystem” through “new partnerships, features, and projects.” This includes helping spread the word about the project via social media channels and other collaborations, and engaging with the “cardholder” community. Community contributors are rewarded via Coordinape, an on-chain tool for distributing funds based on group members assigning points for work done. This fund was established via donations from cardholders.
2022
In 2022, following significant community growth, Curio DAO engaged in a number of initiatives to bring in additional funding and foster community engagement. These included writing blog content about the project’s history, artist Robek World releasing his initial, rejected concept art for cards 21–23, and Curio’s Snowglobes: a 3D art collecting game featuring the Curio Cards raccoon mascot and remixes of the set, which was released as reward to cardholders for Christmas.
Supply and rarity
All Curio Cards were minted in 2017. There are 30 cards in the collection, as well as “17b”, a “misprint” resulting from an error with the original contracts. After initial debate within the community, 17b is now considered part of a full set. The full set consists of eight smaller sets, identified based on their artist, except for the 1–10 set by phneep, known as the “Story Set.” The other sets are by Cryptograffiti (11–13), phneep (14–16, and 20), Cryptopop (17–19) Robek World (21–23), Daniel Friedman (24–26), Marisol Vengas (27–29) and Thoros of Myr (30).
Due to their semi-fungible nature, some cards have a supply near or exceeding two thousand, in contrast to the rarest card (26), Education, by Daniel Friedman, which has a supply of 111.
While the initial supply was determined by the founders, from Card 21 onward, the final numbers were left to the artists, Robek World, Daniel Friedman and Marisol Vengas. Robek introduced the idea of a “rare” card in his set (Card 23, The Barbarian), which had half the supply of the previous two cards. In doing so, he encouraged collectors to purchase and complete his set, which also became the first in the collection to sell out. This idea of a rare was then carried over to the next two artist sets.
CCSupply.xyz
After the project’s rediscovery, Curio Cards supply was tracked by Ezra, a community member, in an excel spreadsheet. As demand for the project has grown, and more community members have joined Curio DAO, this work has transformed into an official website, developed by Shukudaidayo: ccsupply.xyz.
CC Supply is an autonomously updating website that tracks supply data for wrapped Curio Cards. When old Curio Cards are wrapped, the website is updated (weekly) to show the latest supply numbers (this may happen now and again, as old wallets holding Curio Cards purchased in 2017, so-called “zombie wallets”, come online).
Things to know
Getting Started
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Infobox
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Citations
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Spelling and grammar
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Objectivity
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Look to other pages for guidance
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References
- ↑ “CryptoPunks: All Attributes.” Cryptopunks.app, 2022, cryptopunks.app/cryptopunks/attributes. Accessed 21 July 2022.