Art world

ART WRLD® Walid Raad: Festival Of Gratitude

Exploring the intricacies of tokenomics with a gamified art collecting experience

OVERVIEW

Redefining the modern
art collecting experience with Artwrld

It’s precisely this fragility that fuels the core concept of Walid Raad’s first NFT project, a high-concept satire on toxic leadership presented in the form of NFT birthday cakes. We worked with the team at ArtWrld to define the right smart contract dynamic and tokenize the collection.

Services

  • Strategy, Development & QA

CHALLENGES

How do we slice an NFT?

The inaugural artistic collaboration from NFT arthouse Artwrld, Festival of Gratitude, dropped on July 28, 2022 — Hugo Chávez’s birthday — and auctioned three 1-of-1 digital cakes: one in “celebration” of Chávez, one for King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and one for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Artwrld came to us looking to create an intricate collection that leveraged some native web3 dynamics to further play with the medium and drive the artist’s message even further.

APPROACH

Imagine, enable & impact

Each cake contains several NFT slices whose amount matches the age of each ruler in 2022. The person who wins the auction for their desired cake will receive ten random slices from it, while Artwrld will make the rest available via a public sale later on. More cakes celebrating other leaders will become available throughout 2022: Benjamin Netanyahu, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, and more will all get their own special cake drops.

All cake slices look nearly the same except for the name of the “special ingredient” written on the edge of the cake stand. Raad has laced half of each cake’s slices with poisons (like anthrax) and infused the other half with elixirs (like ambrosia), making each one unique.

All proceeds from the sale of the Putin cake will go to Endaoment’s Support Ukrainian Sovereignty fund, and a portion of the proceeds from all the cakes will go to nonprofit organizations chosen by Raad. The cake auction began at 10 ETH, with digital slices at 0.15 ETH. Raad and his selected nonprofits, which include Arte East, will each receive five percent of all secondary sales on platforms that support creator royalties.

art world artist

RESULTS

  • 22+ cakes sold
  • 12+ collectors
  • 223+ transactions from slices