Tin tức công nghệ blockchain là tin tức về các loại công nghệ, thế hệ Blockchain ở Việt Nam và trên thế giới.
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Web3 development has stalled. The concepts that have dominated the current crypto cycle—L2s, DeFi, RWAs, gaming, and prediction markets—originated in the previous cycle. We’re not growing, and we’re not innovating—we’re stuck.
The web3 dev community has done historic work, but that community is vanishingly small—approximately 22,000, less than 0.1% of the estimated 27 million developers worldwide. We can’t onboard “the next billion users” until we onboard the first million devs. To get them, we need to empower devs by treating them as not just builders but creatives, embracing AI dev tools, and fostering a culture of developer collaboration.
In his keynote address at the recent Token2049 extravaganza in Singapore, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined his vision for the future of blockchain: finish building the “durable digital structures” that comprise the network’s ecosystem, work toward making crypto faster, cheaper, and easier to use; and preserve the aspirational qualities of blockchain tech that differentiate it from the traditional financial system.
It’s an inspiring vision. But who’s going to do all this building and all this work? Where are all the ideas to realize this vision supposed to come from? As we often say in web3, “Devs, do something!”
The numbers keep falling
Yet, in 2023, the overall number of blockchain devs fell by more than 10%, driven by an exodus of “newcomer” devs (those with less than one year of experience in blockchain), whose numbers dropped over 50% year-over-year. Even with last year’s milestone rollout of Ordinals, Bitcoin (BTC) lost 19% of its devs, leaving only 1,000 BTC builders.
The number of web3 developers is decreasing; we need this number to increase. So, instead of saying, “Devs, do something!” we need to say, “Do something for devs!” To make web3 a more appealing home for developers, we need to let them cook. Here’s how.
Devs are creatives, so treat them that way. Devs are innovative and innovation is creative, so devs are creatives. Creativity is messy, non-linear, and doesn’t always happen on schedule. Let’s stop treating devs as if their role is to compile pre-existing blocks of code into pre-designed Lego towers, because it’s not. Let’s give devs the support they need to create, test, and build new ideas.
AI is a part of coding now, so embrace it. AI is not a dev replacer; it’s a dev enhancer. AI is a dev mech suit. AI is how Gen Z will learn and write code, massively accelerating the learning curve for newer devs. Junior devs will be able to focus on mastering concepts rather than trying to piece together incomplete documentation or wading through thousands of lines of code for that one missing semicolon.
And AI isn’t just for beginners. Experienced devs are already using AI-powered tools to reduce time to deployment and assist with increasingly important audits of increasingly complex smart contract protocols.
My company, Cookbook, offers ChefGPT, an AI chatbot that can help spark ideas, search smart contract libraries for templates, troubleshoot problems, and more. For devs, this means it’s faster and easier to plan, build, and deploy projects onchain. For developer relations reps, this means devs get answers faster in every language and time zone.
AI dev tooling has a key role to play in the future of web3. Let’s make these tools available to as many devs and students as possible.
The need for a community
Devs work best when they work together, so help them collaborate. We talk about community a lot in web3, but our web3 dev community is fractured and isolated. Web3 devs are a small community that should be closer. There are nearly ten times as many members in the BAYC Discord (still) than there are web3 devs. Web2 devs are far more collaborative than web3 devs.
That could be attributed to the still-emerging status of the web3 industry, where devs often are also owners, executives, investors, or otherwise have direct interests in the success of their protocol. Consequently, they may feel they have competing interests against others’ success. But that doesn’t fully explain the lack of collaboration among web3 devs.
Web3 is tribal. Bitcoin vs. Ethereum vs. Solana, and so on, has sometimes felt like a religious war unfolding on crypto Twitter. But the reality is that we are now, and have always been, moving toward a multi-chain universe where different blockchains serve different use cases with increasing degrees of interoperability. So, while fun is fun, the idea that we need to shred each other over different VM structures as human sacrifices to the Twitter algorithm is dumb. Vitalik is a Bitcoiner. Anatoly ♥️ ETH. Less bickering, more building.
That means less forking and reskinning of others’ projects. It also means more communication and cooperation with other devs. Messageboards and virtual meetings are OK, but much of the real relationship-building has to occur—gasp—in real life.
It’s a truism going back to Steve Jobs and Pixar—or even WWII-era Bell Labs—that random interactions between creative people tend to spark creative ideas. Web3 needs that energy. And we know that people are less inclined to drag each other online when they have to see each other in person. So, let’s meet up.
One simple way to facilitate these IRL interactions is to create more shared workspaces like the House of Web3 in San Francisco. We’re fortunate to have strong global crypto communities—in San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, Zug, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Lagos, Sydney—so let’s activate them. Let’s get in some rooms with some whiteboards and design the future together.
Web3 has made enormous progress in its mission to build a more open successor to Web2. To regain the momentum that we had before 2022, we need to do more for devs. Don’t just give devs work. Let devs cook.
Stablecoin issuer Agora has selected Wormhole as the interoperability hub for its stablecoin AUSD.
Crypto startup Agora, which raised millions in funding led by Dragonfly, has picked the cross-chain protocol Wormhole as its core interoperability provider for AUSD to expand the stablecoin across multiple blockchain networks.
In a blog announcement on Wednesday, Oct. 9, Wormhole said that AUSD, which is currently operational on Ethereum, Avalanche, and Sui, aims to expand across all other blockchain networks (e.g. Solana, Aptos, Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain among others).
With the partnership, Agora hopes to reduce liquidity fragmentation by leveraging Wormhole’s non-transferable token framework to preserve the intrinsic properties of tokens on different chains. The integration also aims to lower transaction costs and improve transparency as AUSD prepares for future expansion, with Solana being the next target.
Agora’s CEO and co-founder Nick van Eck praised the collaboration, saying it “reduces barriers standing in the way of accessing, transferring, and using AUSD.”
Issued by Agora, AUSD is a centralized stablecoin, backed 1:1 by U.S. dollars and managed by finance giant VanEck. The announcement comes as Wormhole continues to gain traction with institutional players following its partnership with Securitize, which expanded multichain functionality to tokenized treasury bills.
Launched in 2024 by Nick van Eck, Drake Evans, and Joe McGrady, Agora aims to build an open and inclusive stablecoin network. In April, the startup raised $12 million in funding led by Dragonfly to fuel its stablecoin platform launch, emphasizing regulatory compliance.
The funding round saw participation from other prominent investors, including Wintermute Ventures, Galaxy, and Consensys.
One of Bitcoin’s (BTC) most attractive features is its volatility, which is also its most daunting aspect. Managing this volatility is key, and native Bitcoin yields can help achieve this. These yields allow investors to build up their portfolios while protecting them from the worst of market movements.
But volatility is by no means a flaw; it’s a feature of decentralized and permissionless crypto markets. After all, Bitcoin’s high volatility leads to high returns. However, it can’t be denied that this volatility loses its charm when prices are not consistently rising (or falling) but instead fluctuate frequently in both directions.
Volatility, in fact, has also been identified as a critical barrier that keeps institutional investors from allocating to Bitcoin, as revealed by a Fidelity survey. Large swings in price, in either direction, render an asset highly volatile and thus riskier. This is because volatility makes prices less predictable.
So, on the one hand, we have periods between broader bull and bear trends, like we are experiencing right now, that make volatility unbearable. On the other hand, as Bitcoin matures, its volatility is shrinking each cycle. The approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds has the asset’s volatility hitting its 2024 peak at 40%, far lower than 2021’s 106% record highs. While it’s too early to say if this is the new normal, the lower volatility means we won’t be seeing a high percentage of gains going forward.
It is time for Bitcoin yields
In a highly volatile market like crypto, Bitcoin yield gives the opportunity to earn consistent and stable returns, hedging some of the price volatility. This steady stream of passive income can be earned without needing to sell BTC. In this way, a BTC holder can finally put their asset, which has been sitting idle for years, to good use.
Having access to yield-generating opportunities further promotes broader acceptance and use of Bitcoin, especially among institutional investors who are always looking for yield strategies.
Even short-term holders may get inclined to HODL their BTC for a longer time period if they have an opportunity to increase their investment over time as they get to benefit from both price increases and a constant supply of income. This, in turn, can reduce market selling pressure, and as demand increases for yield-generating assets, it can further help the asset enjoy a more positive price performance.
There’s clearly a strong case for Bitcoin yield but where is this yield exactly coming from?
The growth of DeFi on Bitcoin
So, in the Bitcoin realm, there hasn’t really been any development to expand the ecosystem, with the trillion-dollar crypto asset only being utilized as a passive store of value. But now, times have changed, and both developers and users want to have fun and do exciting things with Bitcoin. This has led to a new wave of development on Bitcoin, which has given rise to BTC DeFi. The growth of decentralized finance on Bitcoin has resulted in varied sources of Bitcoin yields.
These yield sources include Bitcoin layer-2 solutions that enable BTC holders to enjoy staking rewards, which are determined by market dynamics. Babylon is another Bitcoin staking protocol built on Cosmos that allows BTC holders to stake their Bitcoin on PoS chains without giving up the custody of their assets.
We at pSTAKE Finance also offer Bitcoin liquid staking, for which we have collaborated with Babylon to offer boosted yields. While we are starting with Babylon to provide the primary source of liquid staking yields, which is generated through economic security, we will eventually introduce yBTC as well as multiple avenues for yield to offer a diverse range of earning opportunities.
All these different solutions not only enable BTC holders to earn yields but also offer Bitcoin miners an additional source of revenue. On top of that, Bitcoin’s decade and a half long resilience and trillion-dollar security can be utilized to secure other chains.
In the future, Bitcoin yields, which are determined by the market instead of a central bank, may even be used to set the base rate of return for crypto markets, much like how US T-bills are used to set a base rate of return for financial markets.
So, the yield has far greater and broader implications that go beyond Bitcoin holders and the ecosystem. All this activity and investment into enabling native yield generation on Bitcoin can also lead to a resurgence of DeFi, which took a bigger hit during the 2022 bear market compared to the rest of the industry. Moreover, Bitcoin, which is a distributed, battle-tested, and censorship-resistance peer-to-peer network, can lay the foundation for a robust DeFi sector. With Bitcoin being the most accessible and universal asset class that has a capped supply and can’t be printed endlessly, all this innovation can finally lead to the truest version of DeFi.
Now, to conclude, we are clearly at the beginning of a stellar journey, but for this to become a reality, we need to focus on continued development and innovation in order to build a better future for our financial and economic systems.
Crypto custodian Hex Trust has teamed up with decentralized finance protocol Clearpool to launch Ozean, a blockchain platform focused on real-world asset yield.
Hong Kong-based Hex Trust and DeFi credit protocol Clearpool announced the collaboration via X. They also shared the news in a blog post published on Oct. 8.
According to the two platforms, the RWA yield platform Ozean is backed by Optimism (OP) and powered by the CPOOL token.
Ozean set for traction in RWA space
Ozean will leverage Hex Trust’s regulated infrastructure and institutional clients, alongside Clearpool’s expertise in lending, to drive adoption in the RWA space. Clearpool has originated more than $620 million in loans, with clients including Jane Street, Flow Traders, and Wintermute.
With over 270 institutional clients and more than $5 billion in assets under custody, Hex Trust is set to play a key role in Ozean’s expansion. Some of Hex Trust’s clients, including banks, exchanges, funds, and decentralized applications, could tap into the RWA ecosystem.
“Hex Trust will bring its vast and growing client base, along with our cutting-edge technology infrastructure, to take Ozean to the next level to unlock this trillion-dollar market opportunity,” said Hex Trust’s chief executive office and co-founder, Alessio Quaglini.
Ozean will also benefit from the growing adoption of Hex Trust’s U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDX, which launched in May. USDX recently partnered with Velodrome as its primary decentralized exchange and integrated with LayerZero for cross-chain liquidity.
Currently, the firm’s services and products span several countries, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and France.
American financial giant State Street is exploring blockchain technology to tokenize bonds and money market funds for enhanced collateral management.
State Street, the largest custodian bank in the world, is leveraging blockchain to explore the tokenization of bonds and money market funds, joining a growing number of firms adopting distributed ledger technology in traditional finance.
In an Oct. 8 interview with Financial News, State Street chief product officer Donna Milrod said the firm has two ongoing projects focused on tokenizing collateral linked to money market funds and bonds, adding that the pilot “will take us through part of next year.”
She explained that the Boston-headquartered banking institution aims to develop tokenized collateral that can be used as variation or initial margin for trading.
State Street does not rule out stablecoin launch
Currently, trading firms are required to liquidate their holdings in money market funds to post cash as margin for trades. However, with digitalized funds, tokens could serve as collateral, eliminating the need for redemption altogether, Milrod explained.
State Street is not the first institution experimenting with the tokenization of money market funds. BlackRock, for example, launched a blockchain-based fund earlier in March. JPMorgan is also exploring the use of tokenized money market funds as collateral and has already tokenized real-world money through its stablecoin.
Although Milrod noted State Street’s current focus does not include launching a stablecoin, she acknowledged the potential for future developments, saying, “That does not mean we will not [launch a stablecoin] at some point, but we do not feel the need to do that right now.”
Blockchain oracle provider RedStone has announced the launch of oracles designed specifically for Bitcoin staking.
RedStone, a modular oracle provider, is expanding the list of its available oracles across multiple networks by introducing oracles tailored for Bitcoin (BTC) staking, now available on the staking platform Lombard. The Switzerland-based company’s oracles are built to supply real-time data for Bitcoin staking, allowing users to stake their Bitcoin and receive Liquid Staking Tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
According to a press release shared with crypto.news, the solution is already live on Lombard, a restaking protocol managing over $500 million in total value locked. The oracles are designed to track and report key metrics such as staked Bitcoin amounts, LST issuance, and net asset value calculations.
RedStone plans further expansion of Bitcoin-focused oracles
Beyond Lombard, RedStone plans to integrate its oracles into additional platforms, including pumpBTC and Solv. In the coming months, further expansions are expected to reach Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain. RedStone’s chief executive, Jakub Wojciechowski, said the latest solution will provide Lombard with the infrastructure “needed to bridge Bitcoin and DeFi seamlessly.”
This isn’t RedStone’s first venture into blockchain oracle services. The company has previously rolled out similar products across various blockchain networks, including Ethereum and The Open Network. Founded in 2021, RedStone raised $15 million in Series A funding, led by Arrington Capital. Other investors include HTX Ventures, Amber Group, and Spartan.
Palau’s government in partnership with Soramitsu and Japan’s ministry has launched a blockchain-based savings bond prototype aimed at enhancing domestic investment growth.
Palau is launching a blockchain-based savings bond system developed in collaboration with Japanese blockchain firm Soramitsu and Japan‘s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to provide citizens with investment opportunities in domestic infrastructure projects.
In a Tuesday press release on Oct. 8, Soramitsu said the so-called “Palau Invest” initiative seeks to empower citizens by providing them with a new means to invest in national projects while earning yields from those investments.
Based on the SORA v3 Hub Chain’s Hyperledger Iroha 2-based network, the program is part of METI’s “Global South Future-Oriented Co-Creation Project,” Japan’s commitment to supporting emerging economies through technological innovation. Funds generated from the digital savings bonds are said to be allocated for critical infrastructure projects such as housing, roads, and public facilities.
President of Palau Surangel Whipps, Jr. highlighted the initiative’s significance, saying it can help “stimulate job creation, enhance business opportunities, and foster a vibrant economy.”
As of press time, a public demonstration phase has been launched to familiarize citizens with the savings bond system before formal issuance begins. Once finalized, bonds will be available for purchase through a mobile app, allowing citizens to invest from their smartphones, though no exact timeline was revealed.
For Soramitsu, this launch represents another milestone in its efforts, having previously implemented blockchain-based financial systems in the Asia-Pacific region, including central bank digital currency initiatives in Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.
The UAE, particularly through its Dubai and Abu Dhabi financial hubs, continues to introduce initiatives and regulatory frameworks to attract crypto companies and investors.
Consider the latest update: The UAE announced value-added tax (VAT) exemptions for crypto transfers and conversions.
The UAE’s published changes will take effect on Nov. 15.
The Federal Tax Authority (FTA) on Oct. 2, published Cabinet Decision No. (100) of 2024 to update the executive regulation related to VAT.
The updated executive regulation includes more than 30 amendments affecting various industries.
The nation’s Federal Tax Authority, as per the details shared by business consultancy firm PwC, will apply these exemptions to managing investment funds and other crypto-related activities.
Additionally, PwC reports that the exemptions for the transfer and conversion of virtual assets are treated as effective from Jan. 1, 2018.
Furthermore, the amendments address input tax recovery for crypto companies. PwC explains that in the UAE, crypto is defined as a “representation of value that can be digitally traded or converted and can be used for investment purposes.”
UAE wants to be crypto-friendly
While several countries, including China and India, have been taking a step back when it comes to crypto adoption, the UAE is embracing it.
The country has been actively working to create a favorable environment for blockchain and crypto businesses. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority is also playing a crucial role in regulating virtual assets in the UAE.
The VAT exemptions for crypto transfers and conversions could attract more crypto businesses to the UAE.
The country’s positive outlook on crypto is also visible from its growth in the market. A recent report from Chainalysis highlighted that the UAE received over $30 billion in crypto between July 2023 and June 2024.
This number has brought the country to the top as MENA’s third-largest crypto economy. Chainalysis also mentioned the rise in the number of venture capital funds and blockchain businesses in the UAE as a factor contributing to the country’s growth.
Refik Anadol Studio, co-founded by Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkiliç in 2025, is launching an immersive AI art & NFT museum called DATALAND at The Grand LA, with a flagship location at the Frank Gehry-designed development in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
DATALAND will feature immersive AI art experiences by establishing a new model for artistic expression at the onset of the digital age by taking immersion to the next level with the AI-powered scent of the galleries. As AI artist Refik Anadol explained to me:
“We aren’t yet revealing the details about DATALAND’s artistic programming, but there will be many moments for sharing/exhibiting AI artists’ work both physically and virtually so people who cannot travel to LA have access to the AI art creations. And can purchase the AI art work NFTs minted on an Ethereum-based platform and many other sustainable chains for exciting art and culture activities.”
Refik Anadol Studio announced the launch of DATALAND during Climate Week NYC, which is celebrated NYS-wide for the first time and runs parallel to the United Nations General Assembly meeting, where world leaders gather to address critical global challenges. DATALAND’s inaugural exhibitions will be prepared with the Large Nature Model, an open-source AI model based solely on nature data, to produce unprecedented immersive AI-powered digital environmental artwork. The studio initially presented such installations at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and then at the United Nations in New York during the 2024 UNGA to promote environmental awareness. As UN Under-Secretary-General Melissa Fleming concurred:
“Refik Anadol’s artwork is a testament to the beauty and fragility of our natural world. It’s a clarion call to world leaders: we must harness the power of technology [AI art & NFTs] and human ingenuity and agency to incite action to protect our planet before it’s too late.”
The award-winning studio has been engaged by leading tech companies, groundbreaking researchers, and cutting-edge thought leaders to produce projects that have been shown in more than 70 cities spanning six continents and experienced by millions of ardent fans. These exhibition venues include several United Nations Climate Change Conferences, MoMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Serpentine Galleries, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Arken Museum, Casa Batlló, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Daejeon Museum of Art, and Istanbul Modern Museum. Nevertheless, Refik Anadol Studio, as explained by Refik, chose “Los Angeles as the perfect city to launch DATALAND, a forward-thinking, revolutionary museum in support of the fields to which I have dedicated my career: art, science, technology, and AI research.” And he continued:
“As LA has long been a city that looks to the future in art, music, cinema, architecture, and more, it feels natural to open DATALAND here. To have a permanent space for us to develop a new paradigm of what a museum can be—by fusing human imagination with machine intelligence and the most advanced technologies available—is a realization of one of my biggest dreams. To do so in a building designed by one of my heroes, Frank Gehry, is almost unbelievable.”
DATALAND will use millions of photos and other records from partner museums, including the Smithsonian and London’s Natural History Museum, to create its installations. “We already have three major collaborations with museums in the works and are very confident to join forces across the world,” added Refik.
History of AI art, NFTs, and museums
Christiane Paul, the digital art curator of Whitney Museum, who is “looking forward to learning more about DATALAND,” detailed the AI Art History at the groundbreaking symposium at Rhode Island School of Design’s “Debates in AI” held during April 11-12, 2024, that invited artists worldwide. She explained that AI art has a fascinating history that intertwines technology and creativity, and it continues to evolve, pushing the boundaries of what is possible at the intersection of technology and creativity.
Christiane Paul, curator of Digital Art at Whitney Museum, debates in AI art history
Early beginnings: 1950s-1970s. The roots of AI art can be traced back to early experiments with computer-generated art, where artists and computer scientists collaborated to create visual and abstract compositions using early computer algorithms. One notable example from this era is captured by the Whitney Museum’s exhibition curated by Christiane Paul with David Lisbon tracing the evolution of Harold Cohen’s AARON, the earliest artificial intelligence program designed to create drawings and paintings. AARON was first exhibited in 1972 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Advancements in algorithms: 1980s-2000s. During this period, algorithms and computing power advancements allowed for more complex and varied artistic outputs, and AI art began to gain recognition in academic and artistic circles.
The city of Los Angeles, which will become home to DATALAND, served as grounds for the Gray Area Foundation, a cultural incubator with a mission to cultivate, sustain, and apply antidisciplinary collaboration, back in 2002 to integrate art, technology, science, AI, and the humanities—towards a more equitable and regenerative future. This foundation moved its headquarters to San Francisco in 2005.
Deep learning revolution: 2010s. The advent of deep learning brought significant changes with generative adversarial networks and other machine learning techniques that enabled the creation of highly sophisticated and realistic artworks. AI art started to be exhibited in NFT form in galleries and museums and auctioned in prominent auction houses, raising questions about creativity and authorship.
In 2014, digital artist Kevin McCoy issued the first-ever art NFT.
Four years later, in 2018, Christie’s art auction house became the first auction house ever to offer AI artwork for sale. Christie’s also hosted its first Art + Tech Summit on the topic of blockchain. In June 2019, the second edition focused on artificial intelligence and art. Since then, blockchain, NFTs, and AI have been hot topics in the art world, intersecting unexpectedly. At the helm of digital curator Christiane Paul, Whitney Museum became an early collector of NFTs starting in 2018.
Mainstream adoption: 2020s. The increased availability of AI art tools to the general public has democratized the creation of AI-generated images. This era has also seen debates about NFTs, its market bubble and crash, copyright, the impact on traditional artists, and the ethical implications of AI in art.
In Germany, the Intelligent Museum—a practice-based research and development project at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the German Museum—was backed by the Digital Culture Programme of the German Federal Cultural Foundation in 2020. It explores new paths of museum communication and outreach to connect the museum with current AI technologies, making it a place of experience and experimentation, a social space where art, science, technology, and public discourse come together. One of the best-selling AI-generated NFT artists exhibited at ZKM is a program called Botto, which is the brainchild of computer engineers and a German artist named Mario Klingemann in 2021 that creates AI art NFTs. Today, Botto has created over 75 NFTs that generated more than $3 million in revenue.
In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art—ahead of holding its first-ever AI Art Show curated by Michelle Kuo, “Unsupervised”by Refik Anadol—became the beneficiary of a major new endowment established by the William S. Paley Foundation to support MoMA’s ambitious goals in digital media and technology and to provide for new AI Art/NFT acquisitions. Henry Kissinger, Chairman of the William S. Paley Foundation at the time, stated:
“I know how deeply my friend Bill Paley cared about The Museum of Modern Art and with what devotion he dedicated himself to its advancement. With this initiative, the Foundation will honor his intention and continue his vision for MoMA.”
Nevertheless, MoMA has adopted a cautious approach to NFTs so far. Other than contributing data to algorithmically generated works by artist Refik Anadol and, in October 2023, announcing that it had acquired “Unsupervised” for its permanent collection, the museum has not been involved with other AI art or NFT projects.
In Singapore, curated by ArtScience Museum’s Deborah Lim and guest curator Clara Che Wei Peh, “Notes From the Ether” last year was an exciting and timely exhibition that offered a glimpse into the future of digital art with work by 20 artists: Memo Akten, Burak Arikan, Botto, Mitchell F Chan, DEAFBEEF Simon Denny, Harm van den Dorpel, Sarah Friend, Rimbawan Gerilya, Holly Herndon and Mathew Dryhurst, Tyler Hobbs and Dandelion Wistjo+kapi, Larva Labs, Jonas Lund, Ninaad Kothawade, Sarah Meyohas, Rhea Myers, Aaron Penne, Aluan Wang, Emily Xie. These artists work with the emerging technologies of non-fungible tokens and generative artificial intelligence to push the boundaries of what art is and what it could be.
The future of museums AI art and NFTs
Undoubtedly, over the past 40 years, the usage of AI-generated art has been on the rise, becoming all the more popular during the last ten years with the tokenization of art via NFTs, according to the Academy of Animated Art. As Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, explained:
“AI is not just a tool for innovation—it’s a force that can reshape how we see our planet, reconnecting us with the beauty and fragility of nature in ways never before possible. Refik Anadol’s brilliant vision allows us to use technology [AI Art & NFTs] to engage the senses and spark a deeper emotional connection to our natural world.”
Magda Shawon, co-founder of Postmasters Gallery in New York City, who works with the first NFT Artist Kevin McCoy, has been selling digital, AI-generated art to museums such as MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Whitney Museum of American Art for over 20 years. She agrees with Vilas and Melissa’s sentiments about Refik’s impactful AI artwork:
“People don’t want to stop watching Refik Anadol’s AI Work when they sit in front of it. Refik’s work has an impact, but whether it is a trigger to create an enormous field of AI generative art, NFT sales is a big question.”
Digital art has been collected for as long as it has existed, but widespread adoption is still nascent. The tokenization of art via NFTs has helped the digital art world and the traditional art world integrate, leading to a burgeoning interest from museums, immersive institutions, collectors, auction houses, NFT markets, and galleries. The first NFT artist, Kevin McCoy, who created an art NFT back in 2014, is hopeful and supports Refik’s museum, AI art, and NFT initiative. He highlighted:
“I’m heartened by Anadol’s announcement of Dataland. He is leading by example both with his ‘ethical AI’ initiative and the commitment to the exhibition and preservation of AI and digital art that the museum represents. Within this context, the provenance provided by NFTs and blockchain-based records, more generally, can play a central role. This will be an important next step in the expanding use of this technology.”
