The Weekly Stack: Best Before 🍋
Welcome to Gamma's weekly newsletter, where we share all the latest news and alpha on art on Bitcoin. Subscribe so you never miss an issue!
Best Before - Lemonhaze x Ordinally 🍋🔘
New to Signals, Best Before is a collaboration between Lemonhaze and Ordinally.
What if art had a lifespan?
That’s the question at the heart of Best Before, a first-of-its-kind generative art project on the Bitcoin blockchain. Here, the traditional concept of an immutable, permanent digital asset is turned on its head, mimicking instead the impermanent, sometimes all too short human lifespan.
Each of the 420 unique works is born “sealed” at the time of inscription, its fate, lifespan, and even its final visual identity is determined unwittingly by the collector who chooses to “unseal” it. Once activated, the piece begins a countdown, aging according to a mortality curve dictated by Bitcoin block time. It will live, peak, and eventually expire: the inscription remains on-chain, but the living render is gone. Yet, within this system of transience lies a tantalizing exception: a tiny fraction of these works, 0.69%, are mathematically destined to become immortal. These rare pieces will defy the mortality curve, existing forever as an enduring testament to the permanence of the blockchain.
By choosing when to activate a work, the collector becomes a critical participant in its life, making an intentional decision to either keep a piece sealed for years to come, or release it to begin its countdown toward an uncertain fate. Each sealed artwork is full of potential, a state of perfect and eternal preservation. But it is only by unsealing it and revealing its predestined expiry that its full beauty and story can be enjoyed.
This act of activation is a profound one, transforming a static object into a living work of art. It forces us to confront a fundamental question: Is the risk of starting the countdown - knowing its life may be all too short - worth the reward of witnessing its full, vibrant, fleeting existence?
Embrace 🌹
Embrace by Gamma Partner Artist SIGMA-X was our second Gamma Season Pass holder only exclusive release.
Embrace invites viewers into a tranquil garden retreat where nature's embrace both powerful and gentle mirrors the dual nature of life's journey. The vibrant red roses and lush green leaves symbolize the enduring allure of human resilience and growth, reflecting moments of passion and peace that intertwine through time. Like the iconic flowers that weather storms yet bloom with grace, this scene represents the timeless strength and tenderness found in human connections, offering a sanctuary where one can find solace and renewal amidst life's complexities.
Beyond the Canvas XIV 🎙️
Beyond the Canvas, Conversations with Gamma ep. XIV a deep dive into BTC mining with Donny was recently published to our Gamma YouTube page.
Catch up the podcast here.
Partner of the Week 👩🎨
Meet Lena Ekert, who describes her digital works as growing like basslines: “deep, looping, impossible to ignore. The glitch is my off-beat, my drop.” For her, releasing art through Bitcoin Ordinals felt like pressing a rare dubplate, raw, buzzing, and urgent, like a track played once in a warehouse at 3 a.m. “You don’t just see them; you feel them.”
Live on Signals 📶
More artists are bringing their projects to Signals to go-to-market and find real demand to set up the best results for drop day for their projects and their future collectors.
Let’s check them out.
Real-time generative art: Custom JavaScript algorithms creating unique pieces with parent-child provenance
Where Bitcoin’s Scarcity Meets the Ancestral Fire of Clay
Eat Your Veggies by Carole Levy
A physical collection of four 1/1 original dotwork drawings
Transform geometry into life: design, download, and inscribe your unique artwork on Bitcoin.
Our Story for an impermanent world.
Beaties is a code made project that uses recursion and parent-child to bring to life a band of 9 minimalistic musicians, with 14 different genres and unique melodies that goes on forever.
“I would like to paint the way a bird sings.” ~Claude Monet