HEN timeline
Last updated
Last updated
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If you read this on Github, there is a more comfortable reading experience on Gitbook:
(abbreviated H=N, HEN or hen) was the first NFT art place on the blockchain. This brief timeline is meant to help preserve common memory by recording key events of its development. Therefore it primarily focuses on Hic et Nunc itself (and later on the offsprings coming out of the community such as Teia) and does not attempt to serve as a timeline of blockchains, NFTs or crypto art in general. These topics are already covered in some excellent resources:
by Furtherfield
by Martin Lukas Ostachowski
A comprehensive collection complementing this timeline is , also at .
It will be up to everyone individually to make sense of a phenomenon that, for most people, was operating since March 1, 2021 and reached 100.000 minted NFTs three months and 500.000 eight months later. Beyond the numbers, the events listed below might provide some clues to its unique development: a set of experiments in various directions, an exploding crypto art and energy consumption debate, Twitter as a nervous system and amplifier, a frictionless “open for all“ art platform, an eco-friendly Proof-of-Stake blockchain, and an emerging and diverse community that includes artists, collectors, curators and hackers.
However, by Matt Medved captures another aspect of H=N that goes beyond rational analysis and historical explanation. Around the same time in April, I “it feels a bit like the place you visit together after the grand gallery opening to have fun and explore” and shared my during the second OBJKT4OBJKT weekend: “a new community of artists and curators is emerging, an art system within the art system”.
This timeline is dedicated to that community.
Launch of the public , the “mainnet”.
This interview with Rafael Lima gives not only provides insights into the plans and ideas of the founder of Hic et Nunc, it also gives a clue about its name, a phrase that appears in Paul Virilio’s writings about a “Futurism of the Instant”, see for example Virilio, P., & Lotringer, S. (2001). After Architecture: A Conversation. Grey Room, 3, 32–53. doi:10.1162/152638101300138530.
It becomes public that a logic error in the Hic et Nunc smart contract which allows an attacker to steal NFTs on the marketplace is actively exploited. In the turbulent fallout of the incident, the trading of NFTs ("swapping") has to be suspended while a new contract is being developed. Effectively this shuts the site down although the creation ("minting") of new NFTs is still possible without risk.
The functionality of Hic et Nunc is fully restored on July 6, after which all existing NFTs have to be migrated to the newly deployed smartly contract ("v2").
"discontinued": founder Rafael Lima pulls the plug on the Hic et Nunc website hicetnunc.xyz.
As the year 2021 draws to a close and a new year is swapped in, many questions remain: what does "Hic et Nunc" mean after November 11? Is it still alive? Has its timeline ended with the withdrawal of its founder or will it be continued? Some artists on the platform (falsely) seem to assume Hic et Nunc is gone, while others have pragmatically replaced the domain suffix ".xyz" by ".art" and simply keep doing what they did before: create, offer and collect art.
One of the contracts governs minting - the creation of OBJKTs - the other one, a marketplace contract, controls the subsequent trade of these OBJKTs through swap and collect operations. According to plans in the community, that second contract is going to be replaced by a successor that will redirect future platform fees to the community. Side note: for the sake of transparency, current and future H=N frontends probably should prominently state the contracts they are minting and trading on.
We might never know, as in the debates on Twitter spaces and Discord we see conflicting interests, fueled by opinion, amplification of the loudest voices, speculation and again and again unsubstantiated claims about the founder's intentions. After numerous heated internal and external discussions, and amidst a difficult and problematic namefinding procedure, this emerging community is still in the process of finding itself before it can rebrand and move on. From a critical perspective it must be acknowledged, that there are much more pressing issues in its environment such as FUD and hostility against NFT creators from some establishment figures and fringe groups, while a significant portion of the community's energy seems to be taken up by internal struggles.
The road into 2022 couldn't be more bumpy, yet exciting. One thing however is clear: It is nonfungible. Take care.
The domain hicetnunc.xyz is reactivated.
The Teia community marketplace contract goes live. Marketplace smart contracts (also known as "swap contracts") control the trading of NFTs. This step means that from now on artists and collectors can decide to trade their OBJKTS on the Teia contract, directing future fees to the Teia community.
Other marketplaces currently do not display Teia swaps. For a demonstration, 6 editions of the work "hostile environment" were swapped on Hic et Nunc while 4 editions are swapped on Teia.
Note (July 2022): the screenshots reflect the situation at that date.
The automated ("trustless") distribution of royalties - a set percentage going to the original artist during a secondary sale - can be considered a revolutionary mechanism enabled through NFTs and one of the major reasons for artists to engage in the space. It also allows artists to set lower initial prices for their artworks in expectation of future revenue, thereby contributing to a democratization of art.
Finally, an outlook regarding the future of this avant-garde moment. Despite some encouraging signals, given the volatile context of NFTs and crypto, it has to be declared - unknown.
… to be continued
The first tweet from Twitter account contains a to the lecture "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" by philosopher Manuel De Landa. This tweet has been deleted in the meantime, see note at the end.
“rearranging architectures, terraforming autonomous communities […] hicetnunc2000 is a lab for decentralized computing experiments” ()
Rafael Lima with the project "".
“Hicetnunc by Rafael Lima, geared towards crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in the e-sports community, receives a grant by the Tezos foundation” ().
“coming live” ()
The significantly reduces transaction costs, which makes microtransactions on Tezos even more feasible than before.
“Friends, something has been bugging me for a while. The world is burning”, begins the in which artist Memo Akten addresses deep concerns about the energy usage of crypto art. In the subsequent days and weeks heated debates ensue. Memo subsequently and , including a tool to calculate the energy consumption of NFT artworks. The tool was weaponized against individual artists which was not in the intention of its creator and .
Rafael Lima during a chainlink hackathon.
“A microservice to upload files into IPFS” ().
Milestone reached: “microfunding protocol is live” ().
”hicetnunc microfunding protocol” ().
hicetnunc.xzy domain registration. Tracked by . Note that "lifetime" in this context indicates the time span since that date.
to the hicetnunc GitHub repository.
First of www.hicetnunc.xyz. The crawler had difficulties indexing the site. The is dated March 1, 2021.
First mention of NFTs as a giveaway (), followed by . For the first time, collecting an NFT from Hic et Nunc is mentioned on Twitter ().
First reported "bug" ().
H=N “evolved into a tool for creating micro-funding DAOs for any purpose” ().
According to this the first minted NFT on Tezos is by . The operation is recorded .
on Hic et Nunc. The operations are recorded on the contract (OBJKT Swap v1) since March 1, 2021. From July 3, 2021 swapping is recorded on the contract (OBJKT Swap v2).
Before that however, operations take place on yet another . This ledger shows mints of FA2 Tokens (the standard used for NFTs on Tezos) which are classified as "FA2 Token / Defi" and do do not have external artifacts associated with them: "Token", minted since January 29, 2021, and "OBJKT" since January 30, 2021, respectively. On February 6, the first "FA2 Token / NFT" titled "$ung" with ID 7 and (that is not retrievable at this moment). In the listing of the "The Lost HicEtNuncs" by Mike Tyka this is the 8th token of the first row. Yet we can see in the listing a token on its left side which has also a . Assuming they were listed chronologically by Mike Tyka, there is a possible NFT earlier than "$ung". On the other hand, token ID 6 appears . (to be updated)
to the hicetnunc DAO smart contracts GitHub repository.
OBJKT Swap, a manifesto and roadmap ().
Artist and climate activist Joanie Lemercier . Hic et Nunc runs on Tezos, a Proof-of-Stake blockchain whose energy impact is neglectable in comparison to Proof-of-Work (Bitcoin, Ethereum) according to .
Artist Mario Klingemann . However, this work is among the first 152 pieces that were created on a different smart contract and therefore have become "invisible" - .
This date marks the official beginning of Hic et Nunc, when “swapping OBJKTs” (trading of NFTs) is possible (). At the same time, .
to the Hic et Nunc API GitHub repo.
Artist Taís Koshino writes the first curation article about NFTs on Hic et Nunc ().
and publish articles about the phenomenon.
, the first collaborative art show on Tezos appears as a gallery on Hic et Nunc. Further editions will follow.
The first #OBJKT4OBJKT event is initiated by the . During a weekend that has the appearance of a worldwide virtual party, artists offer and collect their NFTs for a minimum amount of Tez or completyely for free. A second, bigger event in late April attracts even more attention but also reveals the problem of “hoarder bots”, programs written to mass-collect free objects and resell them.
Artist Murat Pak of what will become, after discussions and adaptions, the Hic et Nunc logo, shaping the visual identity of the project. Responsible for the design and conceptual studies was artist .
An NFT to preserve history: The first 152 NFTs are minted on an initial version of the Hic et Nunc smart contract and become inaccessible on the platform later. , an NTF created by , makes them visible again.
"Not another JPEG." Artist M Plummer-Fernández about the blossoming (and sometimes stuttering) platform that attracts more and more people who are critical of mainstream NFT marketplaces. The essay itself is steganographically hidden .
This day marks the inauguaral , eventually a series of 7 coordinated NFT drops curated by Juliette Bibasse and Joanie Lemercier that take place between April 19 and June 11, 2021. In the words of Juliette Bibasse, they include "pioneers of the digital art scene, in response to the outrageous energy consumption of CryptoArt releases (PoW). Their goal is to encourage the community to transition to #CleanNFT (PoS)". The exhibitions feature artists beesandbombs (Dave Whyte), Memo Akten, Juliette Bibasse, Myriam Bleau, Mike Brondbjerg, Cinzia Campolese, Alex J. Champandard, Raphael de Courville, Ali M Demirel, Cadie Desbiens, Zai Divecha, Diane Drubay, Saskia Freeke, Nettrice Gaskins, Han, Auriea Harvey, Mario Klingemann, Joanie Lemercier, Golan Levin, LIA, Zach Lieberman, Shantell Martin, Kelly Richardson, RubenFro, Helena Sarin, Sasha Stiles, Patrick Tresset, Mike Tyka, Universal Everything, Patricio Gonzalez Vivo and Addie Wagenknecht.
Hic et Nunc is believed by some commentators to reach or overtake NFT platforms on other blockchains, measured by metrics such as daily active users (DAU). () Note that this entry is under review, in order to (in-)validate claims such as this one, I am planning to add a data section to this repository
The , promoted by Hic et Nunc, enables creators from the Global South to develop "connections, experiments and critical thought about NFTs."
Artist, creative coder and tool creator Javier Graciá-Carpio reports 10.000 Artists on Hic et Nunc and provides an NFT that .
Claire L. Evans describes the Brazilian digital art scene and background of Hic et Nunc in an for .
is a community-organized hackathon born from the idea of improving and building upon various technical and gouvernance aspects around Hic et Nunc. The initiative materializes and gathers more than 150 volunteers in 20 working groups, who originally plan to keep working during 24 hours. Yet the Hicaton continues over multiple months, with participants tackling a wide range of issues such as governance, site features and various improvements. The organisers, who receive overwhelming participation from the community and support from the Tezos foundation, manage to set up the event within a week and .
H=N celebrates 100.000 minted NFTs ().
Objkt.bid launches as an experimental platform, adding an auction feature for Hic et Nunc tokens. The site evolves into , the largest Tezos NFT marketplace, reaching within 12 months.
Meanwhile, the alleged attacker, operating under the moniker "hen-exploiter", is engaging with the Hic et Nunc community, mainly via Discord. The ongoing issue also exposes rifts in the community, amidst questions about the development of the site and the parallel opening of objkt.bid (now , see ). An AMA (Ask me Anything) event with Rafael Lima, on July 4, 2021 attempts to give some insights into the philosophy behind Hic et Nunc.
Many controversial issues remain, yet members of the community react with a quality that can be described as its strength: humour. As “hen-exploiter” apparently hedges negative feelings towards Aubergines, as noted by , a growing number of Aubergine-themed NFTs are minted and traded directly between artists and collectors under the hashtag .
Community member has a detailed write up: .
A year after the Hic et Nunc domain is registered, eight months after the first NFTs were swapped on the platform (see above) and amidst some internal and external debate, the community celebrates 500.000 OBJKTs (NFTs) using the hashtag #hen500k. Also, the community has roughly reached a size of 50.000 artists and collectors, while around 5.000 visitors engage with Hic et Nunc every day. Community member and prolific coder has provided a .
In an interview in January 2021 (see ), founder Rafael Lima is quoted as follows: "We intend to present it as a public blockchain infrastructure, and we are looking into taking it to full decentralization, making it persist beyond even my own will". The events during and after November 11 clearly confirm this vision.
Due to the decentralized nature of the underlying technology, alternative front-ends such as hic.af, www.henext.xyz, hecticnun.xyz or continue running unaffected. Mirrors of the site such as hicetnunc.art, hen.hicathon.xyz, hen.teztools.io, hicetnunc.cc had already been running in parallel or spin up within a few hours.
In particular the swift initiative by technology company to set up a stable mirror of Hic et Nunc (whose -now deprecated- codebase is ) reveals not only significant technical but also cultural challenges. This becomes evident from the communication taking place in Twitter spaces and on Discord during the next days. After some discussion, the mirror site hicetnunc.art is set up and handed over to the Hic et Nunc community.
A detailed account of these events from the perspective of DNS CEO as well as in-depth technical analysis . Community member shares a different perspective in a statement .
In a technical sense, Hic et Nunc consists of on the Tezos blockchain plus some other stuff on top of it.
Artistic interpretation of the H=N technical structure by , .
The "other stuff" - as pictured above - includes the storage of NFT assets on , an indexer that caches blockchain information in a database for performance reasons and code for the front end. Hic et Nunc also has a governance token called hDAO that has seen some experimental use. Given that structure, what exactly makes up Hic et Nunc as an entity is not exactly clear. However, we are quite comfortable to assign identity to mutable structures like our own bodies, whose elements (cells) are regenerated periodically. I would assume that a necessary condition for Hic et Nunc is minting the OBJKT - the NFT - on the Hic et Nunc contract. But is it sufficient?
Apart from that narrow technical view, political, economic and legal aspects such as ownership over a project and issues of intellectual property still raise important concerns. Is it OK for the community to continue the project? Can it use the name "Hic et Nunc", a similiar name or a different name? What should be done about the hDAO ownership token? Who actually is "the HEN community" and who is speaking in its name? Will it be able to transform itself into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), a form of decentralized ownership? Or maybe could be adopted that seem suited to a commons-oriented spirit?
But it is crucial to look around: each system has its own environment. Hic et Nunc's environment saw a surge of Tezos NFT projects and platforms, notably the NFT metaplatform and the generative art experiment , the entrance of Tezos NFT art at and mainstream NFT platform , and a growing number of artist collectives such as and .
The independent HEN community relaunches under its new name "Teia" (meaning "web" in Portuguese). The name was proposed by artist and decided on by the community in two rounds of voting after intense discussions. The rebranding includes the HEN fork , the Twitter account , the , the community-run , a discussion board, and the . The launch announcement can be found .
, Hic et Nunc. Also, from today, hicetnunc.xyz and hicetnunc.art point to the same site, both domains now under control of Rafael Lima.
This screenshot shows the resulting listings on www.hicetnunc.xyz/objkt/23012:
This screenshot shows the listings on :
"We're out of service for an undetermined period of time". Hic et Nunc founder Rafael Lima has switched off the websites hicetnunc.xyz and hicetnunc.art. This happens for the second time after the November 11, 2021 event (see ). The digital art ecosystem that Hic et Nunc has brought to life remains rather unaffected, as other sites such as , , hic.af, www.henext.xyz, hecticnun.xyz and hen.teztools.io continue to operate, although indexer and compatibility issues between different platforms are . Note (July 2022): out of the sites mentioned above, the community driven https://teia.art/ as well https://objkt.com/, the largest marketplace on Tezos, are actively meintained and operational.
Tezos for Tezos, hashtag , takes place on the weekend May 6 to 8, rekindling a community spirit similiar to previous #OBJKT4OBJKT events (see ). Artists are encouraged to mint editions of 100 within a price range of 0.1 to 1 Tez. According to , 56648 editions of 2629 works are sold in total on the primary market with a combined turnover of 29022 Tez (approx. 72250 USD). While revenues of that size are far from widely reported record NFT sales on other platforms, a grassroots event fueled by enthusiasm such as this one is suitable to highlight the value of communities in the overall NFT art space.
The three-day event at London's fabric nightclub marks another highlight for the Tezos art community. The event is organized by , whose significance since the early days of Hic et Nunc cannot be overstated. It hosted a wide range of talks, panel discussions, workshops, projects, exhibitions and live acts ranging from fashion and generative art to interactive installations, performance and music. At this and other events worldwide, various communities come together to celebrate a new avant-garde in art and culture.
Amidst controversy over a few NFT trading websites' announcements to make artist royalties optional, the leading Tezos art platforms unanimously declare to refrain from such behaviour. Under the moniker "Respect Artist Royalties", statements from , , and take a clear position in the debate.
As announced in the current issue of the , this date marks the first year since the official launch of Teia (February 2 as is designated as "soft launch").
An anniversary invites reflections on , present and future. Current NFT-related headlines tend to focus on the last "crypto crash", an ongoing "bear market", scandals and speculation. A more differentiated picture emerges from a closer look at the present Tezos art ecosystem. First an overview of the numbers:
Source: by - monthly data until January 2023.
Tezos-based art platforms continue to grow and attract artistsand collectors while improving in terms of features, services and interoperability (although the general picture here remains ). Many of the tools and platforms are still created by individuals and small teams, often by artists, and often self-funded.
In addition, there appears to be a , rejecting the purely profit-maximizing philosophy of some other NFT projects. While from a first-hand observation a strength of this community is its diversity, the overall structural inequality in the art market appears unchanged, in particular at the top level of income, according to compiled by NFT Reporter.
During the last 12 months the community-run continuation and evolution of Hic et Nunc, has proven to be sustainable. Among its activities are a number of charity fundraisers, the ongoing rotating and the contionous development of its .
Aside from the online platforms, physical NFT art exhibitions provide a wide range of experiences - from high-profile events and art galleries to live minting experiences and backyard exhibitions. A few examples: in Singapore, various , a multi-venue , , the in Delhi and the in Makati City.
Source:
, the community-run art platform on Tezos that emerged from Hic et Nunc is now as a non-profit DAO LLC.
Teia begins during a 3 months timeframe. The 8 million tokens are to be used in future decision making for the community-run art platform. In a further step towards decentralization, the ownership of the DAO is then to be legally transferred to $TEIA holders.
written by based on personal communication as well as research from Discord, Twitter, Medium, Youtube and other public sources. Thanks to Lionel Radisson, Tais Koshino, Kelly Richardson for contributions. Special thanks to and to Javier Graciá-Carpio for public data collection and to the writers / editors of the . Please note that the founder of Hic et Nunc, Rafael Lima, has deleted various information, including tweets from the @hicetnunc2000 account which are referenced in this resource. I decided to keep the links for documentation purposes. Dates are according to UTC.
Published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
