WeiRays | Ethereum Radiation

The Story

On August 5, 2021, at 12:33:42, block #12965000 was validated. That was the first of many blocks mined after one of the most important and successful Ethereum hard forks, the London Hardfork Upgrade. The upgrade in question introduced — besides other improvements — the EIP-1559, which proposes the destruction of portions of ether for every validated block. That Wei is not just removed from circulation via a dead wallet, it does literally disappear, gone forever. We couldn't resist starting rambling, fantasizing, and daydreaming about that fact, asking ourselves: Where does the burnt Ethereum really go?

WeiRays is the fantasy of how the ether is burnt. It's not just gone from the wallets, it's not just an amount that decreases, it's actually Ethereum Radiation. Particles of Wei are expelled from the validated block, following pseudo-random paths with certain degrees of freedom of movement. The result is a minimalistic artwork of shapes and colours.

The London Hardfork Upgrade has already changed forever the Ethereum protocol, and it has already left a mark in history. With the WeiRays collection, we wanted to translate that important technical change into visual art, letting Ethereum lovers to own and hold an unique piece of that historic event.

About Us

Hiro (programmer) and Jay (artist & designer)

We're a small team of two, Hiro & Jay. Between both of us, we've more than two decades of experience in the software development and design/art industries. Long-time blockchain lovers, we knew about the existence of NFTs for a while, but we didn't really dig into it till about half a year ago, and it was love at first sight.

After long brainstorms, we decided to create BlockAgo, an experimental art agency to honor the most important past events of the blockchain. We think the blockchain world is changing faster than the speed of light, and some events really stand out. Those do deserve to be honored and remembered.

WeiRays is our first project at BlockAgo, a minimalistic generative artwork to honor what we consider one of the most important hard forks of the Ethereum blockchain history: the London HardFork Upgrade.

Art Collection Details

WeiRays is a generative art collection composed of 10,000 unique pieces. Each of the pieces is associated to one of the first 10,000 validated Ethereum blocks in history where gas fees were burnt, starting at block #12965000.

Each WeiRay represents the burnt fees of the block the piece is attached to, hence the quantity of rays is proportionally related with the quantity of ether that was burnt in that concrete block.

Besides this trait, there will be a number of other traits that will be pseudo-randomly generated and completely independent to the block the token is attached to. The off-chain pseudo-random algorithm will be seeded with a hash generated from on-chain data: the contract address and the token id. That random hash will be the responsible to give the WeiRay its actual shape, traits, and rarity.

Release Date

Mid/late November

Total # of tokens

10,000

Tokens withheld from sale

200 — giveaways, and marketing

Price per token

0.05 ETH

Blockchain

Ethereum

Reveal Type

24h after release

Contract Address

To be announced

Roadmap

1 - Community Building

We're strongly convinced that WeiRays will be as good or bad as its community is, so our focus will be to grow our community slowly and steadily. Counterculturists, community-driven, blockchain-lovers, NICE human beings, that's the kind of people we want to attract.

For doing so, we'll need as max help as possible, and that includes content creators with an audience. If you're a content creator and you love the WeiRays, don't hesitate to contact us to discuss how we can collaborate.

We'll also pay special attention to those who support us from the beginning, the early adopters. This project is literally growing from the ground, and we're incredibly grateful for those that are believing in it. The early adopters will surely have benefits compared to non-early adopters, check out our Discord and Twitter to know more about it.

2 - Presale — Mid-Late November

A presale will be scheduled for mid-late November — the date and time to be announced. We will whitelist a maximum of 1,000 early adopters, and they'll have the chance to acquire 2 WeiRays each. We'll give a 48h window for the presale, so we avoid gas wars and everybody can wait to mint at the lowest gas timeframes possible.

3 - Public Sale — Mid-Late November

The public sale will be scheduled a few days after the pre-sale, that'll be late November. The maximum number of WeiRays you'll be able to acquire is 8 per mint.

4 - Donations

We plan to donate 20% of the funds split between The Water Project — which has an incredible impact in Africa — and the Ethereum foundation fellowship program, which we think it'll keep supporting Ethereum ideas in developing countries. More details about these donations will be announced.

5 - The Future is 2.0

After the public sale, we'll do big efforts in keeping the community growth at healthy levels, and in expanding the boundaries of the project. We'll have a clear focus: organic, slow, and steady growth. We want the WeiRays to get in front of as many eyes as possible.

In the meantime — hold on to your papers — we'll be working on the 2^nd and last project associated to WeiRays. That will be a fully on-chain, generative artwork honoring the upcomming Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. That collection will be composed by 12,000 unique pieces, and every WeiRays owner will receive a 1:1 airdrop. The collection will be released a few weeks after the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, dates to be confirmed. We estimate that to happen somewhere during 2022. This new collection will close the circle of art related to Ethereum.