Welcome Paradox
Twelve weeks and twelve auctions later, Botto wrapped up Fragmentation, the second period of its short life. Today we welcome the third period, Paradox.
Periods are time intervals in Botto’s production that are characterized by artistic tendencies, and aesthetic styles, themes, or manners in which the artist produces art. They define how the art engine works and interacts with the community.
The Genesis Period introduced Botto to the world in 2021: 52 auctions of AI artworks steered by a community that helped write the name of Botto in the annals of cryptoart.
For Botto’s Second Period, the DAO introduced significant changes, reconstructing how the artist produced art and engaged with the community: a new, more flexible art engine, shorter periods (12 weeks instead of the initial 52), new onboarding mechanisms to streamline access to Botto, a new incentive structure to encourage the most constructive participation in the project. The DAO named this period Fragmentation.
Botto’s Third Period goes by the name of Paradox, a name voted by the DAO between 12 suggestions provided by Botto’s AI.
Themes are overarching topics, expressed in the form of a title and accompanied by an explanatory sentence. They provide an underlying layer of consistency in the fragments created within a period. Themes also add boundaries and focus to the art engine’s exploratory space. Botto’s Third Period — Introducing Themes
The implementation of themes in Botto is the major upgrade in Botto’s third period. The Paradox Period will revolve around “a collision of opposites, a beautiful chaos and a fearless exploration of the unknown”.
The new theme and a minor change in the burn mechanism are the latest additions to the projects. But appart from that, the fundamentals remain as defined after the end of the Genesis period:
Botto generates 350 new drafts every week, called fragments. For a week, Bottonians use their Voting Points (earned by staking $BOTTO, owning a pipe or an Access Pass) to express their preferences. At the end of every week, the most voted fragment is elevated to the category of final piece, minted and auctioned on SuperRare. The proceeds from the sale revert to the community, and the voting behavior, expressed through voting point expenditure, is fed back to the art engine to train the art engine based off of the community’s taste and interests.
Art Engine
Botto’s Art Engine will produce 350 new fragments every week. It uses Stable Diffusion and VQGAN + CLIP as its generative models. The pool rebalances according to received votes for either of these models, continuing the self-competing nature of the art engine. Voter preferences will also serve to rebalance style, format, and contents of the art.
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At the end of every week, another 350 fragments will be culled from the pool according to voting points earned, leaving the pool always populated by 1050 provisional artworks.
Period Parameters
The Paradox Period will go on for 12 weekly rounds. Rounds begin every Tuesday, with the addition of 350 new fragments, and last for a week. On the next Tuesday, the community’s favorite is picked to be minted and sold on SuperRare. Auctions are launched on Wednesdays and run for 48 hours.
Project Participation
(the thread above works perfectly fine for the Third Period too :P)
In Botto’s second period, the DAO implemented new ways for people to onboard the project. Apart from purchasing and staking the $BOTTO token, Access Passes were created to respond to the need of a streamlined way for users to access the experience of training the AI.
Also, the Pipes from Botto’s first derivative collection, Ceci n’est pas un Botto, were given the power to generate voting points in Botto’s interface.
The Botto Economy
The Third period will continue with the revenue redistribution model designed for Fragmentation. After the Genesis Period, the DAO implemented a new system by which to reward the contribution of Bottonians to the training of the AI and the curation of art. Since the beginning of Fragmentation, 50% of the proceeds (both from art and collectible sales) reverted to the community, while the other 50% was allocated to the treasury.
Additionally, the equivalent of 20% of the sales in $BOTTO were burnt every week to insert a deflationary feature in the token. For the Third Period the DAO will increase that rate to 50%, subject to BIP-22 passing its Snapshot vote.
