A Big Thing or Two on Wednesday, 5/6
If you missed it, we may have it here. An art, tech, whatever newsletter.
First, a Note
We’ve had a lot of great times on this newsletter, through its many forms, all of which I will now describe because it’s my newsletter and I want to. For those of you who’ve been here through all 171(!!!!!) editions, you may remember when we were only reposting the essays we launched primarily on Medium, plus some podcasts, and then dabbling in Substack exclusives, deep dives into the artists in our Genesis Collection, for example, which we considered a lil something extra for subscribers. Then in late 2023 we transitioned almost all of our writing to Substack, with our “Dear MOCA” column featuring answers to your questions, and “MOCA Weekly” containing links to big news, pieces of art we liked, bits of insight as to what we were working on internally. “MOCA Confessional,” which lasted from March to August 2024, was basically me just yapping for a few-thousand words about whatever was getting me frustrated that week, and then we paused for a while to focus on Art DeCC0s, which was nothing less than a massive success. This newsletter’s current form, the “MOCA Weekly Roundup” (for which “Three. Big. Things.” was more or less just a nomenclatural change) began over a year ago in February of 2025, and has run longer than any of the above iterations. Sorry again to go fully historical on you, but given the circumstances, I think a traipse down memory lane is fitting.
Now, some news. Our newsletter is going to look different from now on as I begin the process of transitioning away from MOCA. This is a tough time for everyone in crypto art, and unfortunately, your friendly neighborhood art museum isn’t spared the hardship. I can’t promise you that there will be a newsletter every week to come, and I probably won’t write one if nothing of actual interest arises (how many more times do you want to hear about another platform closing?), which is happening more and more, despite my best efforts to find fascination in everything. We’ll be publishing mid-week, I’ll be a discussion of just one or two topics, and when the time comes for me to hang-up the ol’ Substack, I will make sure you all know first. We can say our proper farewells then.
I suppose this is a kind of pre-farewell, and I’d prefer if you kept everything on the down-low for the time being. I’m not writing wthisfor reasons of pomp. I really just wanted to let you in to my world a bit, and also have an early chance to thank you from the bottom of my heart for meeting me here week after week. The greatest thing a writer can find is a reason to write, and you have been my reason for years and years. A bigger and more heartsick letter will come later on, who knows when, but for now, just know that I’ve loved being here with you more than I’ve loved being almost anywhere else. Thank you again.
And Now, This Week’s BIG Thing:
What Does it Mean to Come Home (to a Project) Again?
I’ll admit, this is less hard “news” than a topic I’ve been chewing on over the past week and didn’t really know how to write about otherwise. Let me just start with why this is on my mind. It’s really two things. The first is that Betty, founder of the 2021-era PFP, DeadFellaz, announced last week that she was returning from a long hiatus to once again lead the project, reclaiming her once-role as CEO, all detailed in the tweet below:
As usual, the social media response was split into two camps: the numerous who emphatically celebrated Betty’s return, and the few who decried her as opportunistic for leaving an NFT ecosystem in peril, returning only now that there seems the tiniest, most distant flicker of hope.
I’m going to put Betty aside for a moment to mention that another brutal announcement rocked our ecosystem last week, as Ciphrd, founder of Tezos-based generative art platform, fxhash, made it very clear that the platform would not be able to continue existing in its current form. I’ve included Ciphrd’s full tweet below, but something he says therein is worthy of our special attention:
“At this point in time, no one in the team is getting paid, there's myself and a handful of volunteers, as we're essentially running out of cash. I can understand why many platforms stopped trying, building this kind of product is draining you to the bone.”
It’s the same outcome as nearly every other crypto art platform/business, though I appreciate Ciphrd’s unique honesty: we are all people running foundations/platforms/businesses in a capitalist ecosystem. Money cannot be magicked into existence by willpower alone, yet it must be made somehow, and in the event that the money does not come, the foundations/platforms/businesses and their operators/leaders/founders must respond accordingly so that they can continue to do normal things in their lives like pay for food/shelter/children/healthcare/etc.
Ciphrd gives the impression that fxhash is receiving a final loan that will allow them to remain operational in something resembling their current form, with hopes of discovering a long-term sustainable business-model over the summer. So now let’s put these two things in conversation with one another: Betty returning to her beloved project after an extended bear-market hiatus, and Ciphrd expressing really little hope that he and his team will be able to keep their platform alive for long.
MOCA itself has essentially spent the last three years in deep financial discomfort. We know what it’s like to deal daily with such economic uncertainty. I’m sure you do too. Building a social platform, making money in the past, creating real community, none of that really helps in the long term. Money dries-up because that’s what money does. Attention drifts elsewhere, because that’s what attention does. Expectations, however, remain stuck to you through everything. I’m not sure when the broader crypto community, its NFT subset, and its crypto art niche all began to share the same unrealistic expectations of their participants, but when everything for a project goes away, expectations remain, and I’ve never seen anyone really talk about them before.
I am also at fault for this. Hoisting my unrealistic expectations upon a business, letting rage and judgment take-over whenever some platform acts in a way I would specifically define as positive. For example, SuperRare has often been the target of my ire, just as Betty as been the target of NFT world ire, and I’m sure that if Ciphrd returns to fxhash in a few months, in six months, in a year when the ecosystem is better, he will receive the same kind of pushback.
“Where were you?”
“No conviction.”
“Left when things got hard, came back to extract.”
I think we should all probably shut the fuck up in this regard from now, and I am saying that as much to myself as anyone else.
We have this ingrained expectation that every participation in our ecosystem has a responsibility, not just to serve a technical purpose, not just to sell a product, but to literally gird and uplift the community itself. When SuperRare aligns with an influencer sect, people (and me) go apeshit. When the founder of an NFT project leaves to focus on their mental and physical health and family and real life, returning when there is some kind of successful future in-sight, they are labeled extractive for not being foolish enough to sit here and suffer with us, as if they should have instead been paying long-term penance in order to demonstrate their good intentions. Should MOCA shutter, it is obvious what kinds of criticism we will receive. We launched a token in 2021 that didn’t do very well (because of a hack, but I’m sure the market would have killed us either way), so we screwed-over our investors. We stopped holding exhibitions when money got tight, so we screwed-over artists. What about all the people who bought our Art DeCC0 PFPs, and the big promises we made, the huge technological advancements we set ourselves to on their behalf, the airdrops we teased? Without witnessing the years of work on the back-end, the frustrations of the market, the limitations in our own abilities, all the public sees is big promises and failed expectations, which for some reason are consider deliberate attempts to scam instead of the oh-so-human nuances of a five-person organization.
We often say that this ecosystem values integrity, but integrity has a shifting definition. Integrity sometimes means continued success, i.e. a project managing to actually make its constituents money in perpetuity (though that never lasts long). Sometimes it means willfully denying actions that might give it life. Would MOCA be stronger, boast a wider reach, have more impact in our movement if we had aligned with certain influencers, put more of our weight behind big artists? Almost certainly, but we wanted to act with integrity, which we defined as acting consistently with our values. Betty, while leading DeadFellaz, did more interesting things with that project than 99% of other NFT projects, built a real community of like-minded people, created both financial and cultural capital. And yet nothing is seen as enough. One perceived faux pas in five years of existence, and all else is for naught. If fxhash cannot discover a path to sustainable survival (they won’t, there is no way), Ciphrd will be dragged for the same thing.
“Where did all that money go?”
“Left when it was convenient.”
“Never cared about art or artists.”
KnownOrigin was given shit for selling to Ebay. Makersplace was given shit for converting themselves to a white-glove service. Only Async.Art maintained a luster of integrity in death, but seemingly because Conlan and Lisa and their team burnt themselves on a pyre before our very eyes. Only going down with a ship, singing shanties all the while, is deemed sufficient. Suffer publicly? Fine, you get a pass. But that’s so obviously a misattribution. SuperRare gets shit for surviving by any means necessary. OpenSea gets shit for being corporate. MOCA gets harangued by Max Osiris and other OG artists on a regular basis for slights they’ve perceived in our conduct: extractive behavior, false promises, etc.
I think most of us are fortunately unbothered by the noise. For all the shit given to highly-influential actors like Punk6529 and Redbeard and Eli Scheinman and Micky Malka, they are heaped with an equal amount of praise, deserved or not. That goes for all the platforms I mentioned above, and it goes for MOCA too. Betty, I imagine, has taught herself out of necessity to bypass negativity for the sake of the constituency she aims to serve. I am a huge fan of artists like Brandon Walsh and Beatriz Mandolinaes who consistently drag big influencers like 6529 for predatory practices, but I think somehow that is also a case of unrealistic expectations. What does 6529 really owe this community? He takes advantage of an arbitrage opportunity (that there are more artists than attention) in order to enrich himself, yes. But that’s what a business is. It’s what every business in the world is. Starbucks takes advantage of an arbitrage opportunity when they put protein-laden foam on top of a latte and charge six bucks for it. And when I order that (I don’t because it’s disgusting, but let’s say I do), I’m not disdaining Starbucks because they are providing me something in exchange for my cash. That’s what businesses do: they trade your money for a product you want. They provide some kind of service. That is not an exoneration of 6529 or predatory practices in this so-easily manipulable ecosystem, but at a certain point, I wonder why we expect that those in crypto art will act more nobly, more morally, more Christlike than the rest of the world.
If I moved out of New York City because the rent was too high and then returned some years later after the market cooled down, would I be tagged as uncommitted or degradative to New York itself? Why is there any negativity lathed on Betty from DeadFellaz? Truly, why would she keep herself, her precious time, her mental health, her economic survival chained to an ecosystem without any hope? Nobody has discovered the key to survival here, everybody’s best efforts are consistently proven pointless. We should not expect —or even wish!— people or platforms to lash themselves to the mast of a sunken ship in order to prove their devotion or trustworthiness. Why would we want that from them? Why would we think they owe us that?
“Because they made money from us!”
Motherfucker, you bought something from them. Goods and services you wanted were provided for you. Everyone was in full command of their faculties during those transaction, were they not? This is not the same as buying a car and discovering it’s a lemon. ALl knew what they were buying: a spot on a timeline, a volatile asset, a place where their work might be seen.
“Artists act with integrity, platforms should too.”
Nearly every artist I’ve ever met would light their mother’s house on fire if it meant a hundred-thousand-dollar sale and a place in the canon. Get real.
“Crypto art was built on values.”
Yes, and so was Rome. Both are dead. Shared values bolster a thing when it is small in starting, but grunge becomes corporate and The Clash traded dingy bars for arena tours. ROBNESS often talks about early crypto art was Punk Rock. I think that’s instructive.
There are almost no massive, faceless corporations here. There are small teams of a few dedicated people. There are husband-and-wife teams. There are huddling volunteers. Building something over a period of years is no easy feat. Daily time, daily dedication, delusion sometimes, hope and agony and stubbornness, ingenuity, agility, frustration, these are the day-to-day realities of everyone you hate, successful or not. To all the loud critics, I ask you this: What have you done for the ecosystem? What are your so-holy contributions? For what beatified actions were you lifted to the high place from which you may pass judgment? I’ve written over a million words (easy) about crypto art. I’ve thought every day for five years about this movement. I’ve ignored the temptations of fame and glory and riches to act with what I believed was integrity. I’ve paid attention to you when nobody else would. And even I have no leg on which to stand if I’m going to pass judgment.
Do you really think you know better? Or are you just angry (as I am), and sad (as I am), and hopeless (as I am), and miss the beautiful thing (as I do) that once existed here?
Art in the Wild
Quote of the Week
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
-Thomas Edison
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Beautifully written.
Early Crypto Art wasn’t punk rock. That is a plain lie — or an after-the-fact illusion.
What a shitty art that "Trash Art Movement" actually was!
What Crypto Art produced, above all, was an endlessly renewed stream of digital images, many of them mediocre. Why buy this one, when the next “better” one is already waiting around the corner?
Digital art carries a hidden fragility. It depends on screens, platforms, servers, wallets, passwords, blockchains, interfaces, and permission systems. Pull one big switch, and it is gone — not destroyed in the heroic sense, but simply vanished into some technical nirvana.
Build on something that has weight. Paint, metal, paper, canvas, wood, stone — whatever resists disappearance.
Soon you may not even be allowed to read a newsletter without age verification, a QR code, an app, or some new bureaucratic ritual.
Digital is built on sand.
Best regards, Heiner