Venster: On-Chain Generative Art and Open Publishing

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Wout Fierens

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

wout@venster.art

Additional applicants

Æther Cavendish

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

8

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be fully open source.

[METADATA] Category of Proposal

dApp

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Cardano is especially well suited for on-chain generative tokens, yet paradoxically, there is no platform for generative art in the same caliber as Artblocks on Ethereum or fx(hash) on Tezos. Venster combines venster genart and venster publishing, which together offer a versatile suite of creative self-publishing tools for artists, writers, curators and collectors. venster publishing is also a natural home for multidisciplinary writing in areas such as science, education and research.

Generative Art

venster genart is a unique minting platform that provides generative artists with an unparalleled opportunity to leverage blockchain technology for its archival qualities thanks to Cardano's Native Assets and low storage cost per kilobyte.

Unlike any other existing platform of this kind, venster genart makes it possible to create blockchain art installations where collectors can actively participate in the art. It opens the door to creating truly immersive and interactive experiences for artists and collectors alike.

What sets venster genart apart from its competitors on other blockchains is the support for artistic tools beyond web-based technologies. Thanks to venster genart’s open-source desktop viewers, artists can use a much broader cross section of programming languages and software, making it more versatile than any other platform in the blockchain art space. This specific offering distinguishes venster genart from all other platforms and positions it to attract a diverse demographic of creative coders, ranging from established artists to more experimental emergent artists.

Publishing

Alongside venster genart, venster publishing offers members the possibility of self-publishing articles. Artists, writers, curators and collectors, and indeed all Cardano community members, are invited to mint their own articles on our open platform. venster publishing’s mission is to give voice to the Cardano community and to create a unique forum for discussion and information with a view to fostering community and facilitating the onboarding process for Cardano newcomers. 

venster publishing is instrumental in creating community, in that members mint their articles on a platform where all the writing, on any number of subjects, may be read by anyone with an internet connection, without any pay wall or even the need to purchase tokens in order to access content. Our decentralized publishing platform is diverse, inclusive and community driven; it is also entirely free to readers.

 

venster publishing mints its own curated monthly publication, which includes editorials, articles and in-depth interviews with artists and collectors for seasoned, knowledgeable and newer readerships. The best articles minted on venster genart may be curated for its own publication. venster publishing’s editorial outlook is to attract and creatively empower both established and emergent artists, and to educate collectors, curators and other publishers. The writing in venster publishing’s curated publication fills a gap in the Cardano landscape and is on par with the writing published by some of the best Web3 players on other blockchains (Right Click Save, Super Rare, Outland Art).

More broadly speaking, venster publishing is an open, community driven platform in terms of its content. We champion a vast array of writing forms and welcomes community members wishing to mint essays, experimental poetry, text based art, concrete poetry, etc. 

venster publishing is generally committed to supporting artists and collectors and engages with both groups across various media, such as by holding talks and panel discussions, and hosting thematic group exhibitions on its platform. 

Technology

At the heart of Venster lies the DAT Metadata Standard (or DMS), an open-source standard developed by Wout. It embraces Cardano's unique Native Asset technology to store tokens on-chain, cost- and space-efficiently. DATs, or Distributed Artifact Tokens, can be fungible, semi-fungible or non-fungible.

DATs also introduce a way to instruct token viewers to query information from the blockchain. Queries may include information about the current state of the blockchain, details from the token's mint transaction, or details from previously minted tokens. The queried data can be used to create dynamic tokens, evolving tokens, or interlinked token collections.

All generative art and written content on Venster utilizes the DMS to store code and data on the blockchain. More information about the DMS, DAT examples, and the CIP is available at https://docs.venster.art.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Venster utilizes Cardano's Native Token technology to bring innovative solutions that surpass what is currently available on other blockchains. It proposes a unique take on blockchain art, setting it apart from its competitors.

Unlike many other generative art platforms, Venster's innovation is not confined to its own ecosystem. Anyone can mint their DATs through any Cardano node available, be it a minting platform, Blockfrost, or a self-hosted Cardano node.

Furthermore, we have also be in discussion with NFTCDN who will be taking a look at supporting adoption of our outcomes through delivery of DAT data and media content in line with their vision to abstract complexities making it easier to build on Cardano.

Providing the technology is only one part of the solution. With a view to attracting established artists and serious collectors, we are also building venster publishing, a platform offering both highly curated editorial content on art and technology, as well as the possibility for writers and the community at large to mint their own writing. For example, artists may mint companion pieces, in the form of articles, referencing their long form generative artworks. More generally, venster publishing holds space and gives voice to Cardano community members wishing to express themselves via a decentralized platform on any number of given topics, across many styles and forms of writing and artistic expression.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

We aim to onboard and launch six to eight DAT collections by established artists new to Cardano, before the summer of 2024, and consider that this metric would be indicative of success. Similarly, publishing a monthly publication of curated, in-depth articles about Cardano, technology, generative art and art in general, available for minting as DATs through venster publishing, would not only be a marker of success for ourselves, it would favorably contribute to Cardano’s image as a genuine player in the domain of blockchain art.

As Cardano community members, our deepest ambition is to contribute to placing Cardano on the map, such that we are not only facilitating meaningful conversations within the community, but also attracting quality artists and serious digital art collectors previously reluctant to discover our blockchain.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

The project is already well underway, with the launch of the first DAT collection scheduled for September 2023.

For the development work outlined in this proposal, we prepared three repositories on Github to track progress:

• Venster app: https://github.com/orgs/venster-io/projects/5
• Venster viewer component: https://github.com/orgs/venster-io/projects/2
• Venster desktop viewer: https://github.com/orgs/venster-io/projects/4

Once each individual part is finalized, the Github repo will be made open source. The exact timing for the release will be following the timeline outlined in this proposal.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Wout is the lead developer of Venster. He has 20 years of experience as a full-stack engineer and is an avid open-source contributor. He is also the artist behind DendroRithms (February 2022) and The Perfect NFT (March 2023) for which he built the interactive minting engines and created the generative algorithms. In December 2022, he published the first draft of the DAT Metadata Standard and recently finalized it to convert it into a CIP. As a proof-of-concept, he built the current venster.io viewer to test and demonstrate the standard.

Æther has a background in law and finance and spent over 15 years in the hedge fund industry. She is an early crypto adopter and started collecting NFTs in 2019. Æther has been collecting art for several decades and has written extensively about her curatorial choices, including in the Cardano space.

Aether also has a longstanding artistic practice, mostly in the form of writing, and is committed to creating community for fellow artists and collectors.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

Wout built Venster based on past experience with previous sold out projects on Cardano. On the strength of this established track record, Wout further developed the code initially written for DendroRithms and The Perfect NFT. He perfected the technology for a wider audience. The core technology of Venster, the DAT Metadata Standard, has since been stress tested and is already in use at the time of this proposal.

 

Building venster genart is a way of sharing a tested technology with the Cardano community of creative coders and art lovers. Whereas the creation of venster publishing allows us to give voice to Cardano community members wishing to express themselves in the written form. More broadly yet, venster publishing offers the opportunity to the largest potential readership to read about matters pertaining to the Cardano blockchain, without ads or any pay wall whatsoever.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

All development will be publicly traceable through different Github projects for each component. Progress will be measurable in detail through milestones.

• August 2023
• beta release of DAT viewer component
• September 2023
• private beta launch of venster genart
• launch of Colorflows by artist Andreas Walther and gallerist Per van der Horst 
• October 2023
• private beta launch of venster publishing
• November 2023
• first release of DAT viewer component
• December 2023
• beta release of DAT desktop viewer
• public beta launch of venster genart 
• January 2024
• public beta launch of venster publishing 
• February 2024
• official launch of the first version of the venster platform
• first release of DAT desktop viewer

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

venster viewer component (November 2023)

The viewer for tokens following the DAT Metadata Standard is a free and open-source component to render DATs. Its use is not limited to the venster platform; it's available for anyone and will help with the broader adoption of DATs in the ecosystem.

venster desktop viewer (February 2024)

The cross-platform desktop viewer uses the viewer component and can retrieve the required data from the blockchain via venster's public API to render DATs. When in kiosk mode, it can function as a viewer during exhibitions.

In future releases planned for 2024, the desktop viewer will receive features such as token backup, support for non-browser-based tokens, and support for Blockfrost. Additionally, a variant with an integrated cardano-node is in the making, allowing it to operate independently.

venster base (December 2023)

The core component of the platform. It contains multiple parts and brings everything together:

• Authentication using CIP-08 (payment authentication for hardware wallets)
• User verification with venster passport (wallet, Twitter, Discord, DNS records and email)
• User profile management (links, profile images, header and bio)
• Public API for viewers

venster genart (December 2023)

This part of the app is where artists can create DAT collections, collaborate with other artists, and collectors can mint generative artworks. It comes with two types of minting flows:

• Fixed price
• Round-based auction with organic price discovery*

All mints can have interactive elements where input from collectors influences the evolution of a collection.

*a.k.a. Watanabe auction; also used for The Perfect NFT earlier this year

venster publishing (January 2024)

This part of the app is where anyone can mint articles as DATs. It has a tailor-made wysiwyg markdown editor that supports various media types: 

• Images stored on IPFS
• Embedded media from popular services
• DATs from venster genart
• Video stored on IPFS (March 2024)
• Audio stored on IPFS (March 2024)

Articles are generally fungible tokens available in limited editions.

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

Please note that a significant portion of our needs have already been covered. Wout has been building consistently over the past six months, and the beta launch of Venster is on schedule for Autumn 2023. Consequently, this is a request for partial funding of a project which is well underway.

Hence, we are approaching Catalyst to secure funds for the purposes of covering the cost of work to be completed by Æther, the remaining development work on the platform by Wout, and hosting expenses for eight months.

Æther writing/editorial/media and communications: ₳95,238

• 8 months x $3,333 / month = $26,667 = ₳95,238

 

Development work on the platform: ₳70,571

• viewer component: 32 hours x $ 65 = $2,080 = ₳7,429
• desktop viewer: 32 hours x $ 65 = $2,080 = ₳7,429
• venster base app: 80 hours x $ 65 = $5,200 = ₳18,571
• venster genart: 96 hours x $ 65 = $6,240 = ₳22,286
• venster publishing: 64 hours x $ 65 = $4,160 = ₳14,857

Hosting costs venster.art: ₳10,114

• three bare metal servers: 8 months x $354 = $2,832 = ₳10,114

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

To date, Wout has covered all the costs and invested six months of part-time development work into the project. He developed the DAT Metadata Standard and prepared the components to build the app. This proposal would allow him to double down on development to finish the work and launch Venster.

The DAT viewer component, the web viewer and the desktop viewer will be fully open-source from day one. This technology will significantly help other community viewers, wallets, and explorers to implement the DAT Metadata Standard. Once stable and battle-tested, the whole platform's codebase will become available under an open-source license. A significant part of the budget is Æther's salary, which covers a crucial component of the Venster offering. Her editorial and curational work, foremost in the domain of artist and collector relations, is instrumental to opening up a new conversation within the Cardano ecosystem and facilitating the onboarding of quality contributors in the space.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept