Andy Alekhin of Snark.art on OG Crystals and Dynamic NFTs | Unreleased NFTS.WTF Interview

Previously unreleased: this interview is published here for the first time.Andy Alekhin, co-founder of Snark.art, on OG Crystals, a dynamic NFT project where collectors grow their own crystals, and on making blockchain art before anyone called it NFTs.Interviewed by David Cash. Book David to host, moderate, or speak: https://davidcash.ca

Snark.art describes itself with the line "a different form of art starts here." Recorded live in April 2022 at NFC Lisbon, Andy tells David Cash how a small blockchain and art conference in New York, attended by early builders behind CryptoPunks, Dapper, and SuperRare, convinced him to start a company within days. He explains how OG Crystals works: each crystal grows through iterations, rarity is dynamic, and collectors shape what they end up owning. They talk about how the community grew organically, why including existing communities such as Bored Ape holders helped spark conversation, how commerce and identity become part of the artwork, and the protocol Snark.art was building next, which Andy describes as a digital amusement park where visitors can co-create.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

1. 00:00 Intro: Andy Alekhin of Snark.art and OG Crystals
2. 0:29 Blockchain art before the word NFT
3. 1:18 OG Crystals, a dynamic NFT project
4. 2:27 Dynamic rarity: grow your own crystal
5. 3:12 How Andy got into blockchain art
6. 4:35 How fast the NFT market grew
7. 5:45 Commerce, identity, and a new medium
8. 6:40 Growing the OG Crystals community organically
9. 7:21 Special crystals for Bored Ape holders
10. 8:01 Why projects should include existing communities
11. 8:23 Collaborations and the traditional art world
12. 9:31 Building a protocol for dynamic NFTs
13. 11:22 A digital amusement park for co-creators
14. 12:05 Opening the platform to communities and artists
15. 13:54 Where to find OG Crystals

Speakers

• David Cash, interviewer and editor-in-chief, NFTS.WTF
• Andy Alekhin, co-founder and CEO, Snark.art

Key topics

• Snark.art and early blockchain art
• OG Crystals and dynamic NFTs
• Dynamic rarity and collector participation
• An early blockchain and art conference in New York
• Organic community growth on Discord
• Collaborating with existing NFT communities
• Commerce and identity inside the artwork
• Building a protocol and platform for dynamic NFTs
• Interactive, co-created digital experiences

In their words

"A different form of art starts here." Andy Alekhin, on the Snark.art slogan

"You can fight for your rarity." Andy Alekhin

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2022). Andy Alekhin of Snark.art on OG Crystals and dynamic NFTs [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/T7nIE1IPLgo

Chicago: Cash, David. "Andy Alekhin of Snark.art on OG Crystals and Dynamic NFTs." Recorded April 2022, Lisbon. YouTube video, 14:49. https://youtu.be/T7nIE1IPLgo.

About NFTS.WTF

NFTS.WTF was a Web3 culture publication and interview series edited by David Cash. It covered artists, collectors, and builders during the 2021–2022 NFT boom. It ran for two years and closed after a board decision by the NFTS DAO, which left many of its interviews unpublished.

Recording details

Recorded April 2022 at NFC Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. Previously unreleased. Published 2026 with chapters and captions.

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:03] Hello everybody, welcome back to NFTs WTF my name is David Cash You're editor-in -chief and I'm joined today live in Lisbon Portugal at non fungible conference with Andy I one of the co-founders of snark dot art and one of the original creators of the OG Crystals project Which I'm a huge fan of and we're gonna talk about you but a bunch of things today We're gonna go into the idea of dynamic NFTs and just go a little bit further in depth into Andy's background So without further ado, I would love to let you introduce yourself Tell people a little bit more about your background and yeah, welcome. Welcome to the show Invite me Great to be here. My name is Angelique in I'm the co-founder of snark art and the CEO of snark art so we started our card in 2017 when there was no even this word of NFTs. We called it blockchain art Yeah, yes, and I was fascinated with the idea of digital ownership and experimentation So like immediately I

[0:56] decided to start a company. So like a snark art we made our first project in 2018 Wow Yes, and since then we made more than ten collections and Mostly we try to do something like spare experimental something deep and different different. Yeah This is actually like our slogan a different form of heart starts here. I love that that's about snark art and Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about our latest collection OG Crystals a Collaboration with two great artists Michael Zhu. He's a traditional conceptual artist and Danil Krivarujka He's a digital artist and the idea of the project is dynamic NFT so like the collections already sold out and but but the idea behind it is like when you purchase the crystal The person just a seed and then if you sell when you when you initially buy it Yes, but then like at the moment of sales If you're selling the crystals to somebody else then we are parsing the buyers wallets data and based on this

[2:01] information How old is the wallet? How much is there? What are the collections are there? So we get them in this data and we are growing the crystal based on this data So if you have a thousand it'll be totally different than if you have one exactly and if you have bored apes in Your wallet then it will be different if you have any other collection So like there are like the crystals could grow up to seven iterations Wow So I can people keep growing and if it's a seventh iteration, it's more rare I'm guessing know because it's fully developed because like many people they they grew their crystal until seven iteration So like me me the rarest like in somewhere iteration number three or number. Oh, yeah So like cool dynamic rarity is another cool aspect. So like people they don't get their variety because it's kind of hands-off It's up to the community to completely exactly So like you can fight for your rarity, you

[2:45] know Like you can build your crystal on your own and this is like a cool like Cool game try to sweep the floor of other ones make sure you own them. Yeah, cool Yeah, but also yeah, you can grow your crystal like in a very unique way You know have special wallets and have like rare wallets and to grow them Yeah, you choose to pick from it. So I'm in from a wallet or transfer more cool Um, I really want to get into more of ideas of dynamic NFTs and I want to talk about what's next for OG Crystals I know you guys have a lot of exciting announcements But before we do let's just take one step back for me as well because I love the history of the space and you know Talking about that Teach and studied about that extensively would love to go back to when you were starting snark art We'd love to hear if you had any specific influences obviously Bitcoin NFTs or tokenized art or blockchain art was a thing.

[3:27] Were you ever into counterparty or what was that kind of maybe first? Initiation into it was it when Heath launched. What was your what was your thought? A little bit Like Bitcoin talk there was like a small ad that there will be a Blockchain and art conference in New York I need to go there. So I came there And that's like Josie Bellini like the original artist. Oh, yeah Conference maybe like 50 people there and Like they gather it more like for the first time and they were talking about amazing things They were like met and John creators of critter punks there They were guys from dapper there and they were like guys that later launched super rare So everyone was there and like they were talking about amazing things, you know, how you own digital content How you you produce it how you like this blew my mind.

[4:25] Yeah, and immediately Like I know like two days after I decided I need to start a company. I need to be in this market So that's how snark art started Amazing, so then you're fast forward to now obviously there's been so much adoption in the past year I mean, it's exponentials crazy. Like, you know, I wrote a thesis on NFTs in 2020. The amount has changed since then is Insane so I can only imagine for your from your perspective from 2017 this change. How do you feel right now? Is it is it exciting for you? Are you like is it overwhelming? I'm curious how how you guys look at it You know The the market right now is like that big that you you can't like like like check all projects now It's impossible, you know But I still believe that there is no mass adoption yet, you know Like people that are buying they're mostly from the crypto community and and the general public they're interested Well, they say zero point zero zero zero nine

[5:16] percent of internet users own an NFT as of last year And then apparently that's times three now, but it's still super tiny tiny Right now the market is already big, you know, but well now there is a market like it's yeah So like excited like like I'm really excited with this and With the whole idea of the new medium, you know Like there's so many ways you can experiment with so many things that you can do that You can't do in any other medium, you know, it was like nothing monetizing things Yeah, also monetize and you can also play with monetizing. You know, not just monetizing things but like make fun of that You know, it's interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Money is a medium, you know Yeah, because it's that's that's the element that was added to the internet with web3 now We have commerce integrated into the system and that's your identity now But I love how you play with that though because I mean

[6:08] that is like you're you're taking their wallet address as like how They're perceived Like these crystals as a result, they are snapshot of identities of their of all of the owners Yes, so like like that's why these people that participated in Their co-creators right so like yeah, and I think that's super important to web3 as a whole Co-creation so we have like three original creators and six thousand more co-creators. That's super cool. Yeah Yeah, you do exponentially grew your artist base just by having a community that was excited And let's talk about the community a little bit because obviously you've grown a substantial community I believe it's around 30,000 people have you know in somewhat 60 that he's double, you know I've interacted with her in some way being involved with this project So, how has that process been and was it organic did you find there was a period of just insane growth when everything was building

[6:55] How was that for you? Well, it was completely organic and then like like when we when we watch the play for the announced the project We thought that it would be like relatively small project for conceptual art. Is it three thousand pieces, right? Was it yeah, it was 10,000 Initially when we announced the project we didn't announce the number of pieces We know that will be like decided later based on the community that to see me It would be like I don't like the 2,000 pieces Depending dependent. Yeah, but like somehow This I like what we did also we did collaborations like unofficial collaborations with board apes and crypto puns So if you own a board, they wanted to try it. Yeah There's a chance that you will get like a special ape crystal So and and so like this kind of like started like like people start conversation in these communities And like next day after we announced the project

[7:42] we had like first thousand people came into our discord And in three days it was 5 ,000 people and then like like everyone was talking about that and it was it was amazing So you had the super organic like og process for the OG Crystals. Yeah This is like the OG Crystals. Yeah organic growth crystal Super cool, I mean it also makes sense and maybe you want to talk about this a little bit I think a lot of projects can learn from what you've done and also I mean There's other brands who've done similar things like artifact or even Damien Hirst when you in some way incentivize or include I think include is a better word Big projects with amazing communities and I almost think it's it's a lost opportunity when projects don't in some way cater to the existing people in the space, so maybe you want to talk about that and Everything is open so you can do these conversions and like this is like this who's

[8:29] who's gonna say no, right? Yeah, you do whatever you want I think this is important to mention that the physical aspect of the project So like this second iteration of the project that is happening right now that Michael's you the artist one of the artists behind he's building physical sculpture Well, like all these 10,000 crystals will be 3d printed and physical sculpture and we already talking to a couple of major museums For like they will just like showcase and do at this culture when it will be so like I believe that This connection with the like like physical world and with the traditional art world is important You know we need to get as an NFT community We need to breach this space and we need to we need to I mean I mean, it's really interesting how the physical is coming to me. We're here IRL live in person right now in Lisbon But you know the boom really happened during COVID So it's interesting because so many people are

[9:20] used to interacting and existing remotely in this space But now it's really, you know, these questions are starting to be asked. How do we bring these communities together? IRL even though we're so decentralized So that's super cool I'm excited to see how that's gonna progress and anything else that you're working on right now with the project you really excited about or You want people to check out or mention? So we were so excited like with the technology behind the logic crystals, so we decided to grow it into Two directions. First of all, we are building a protocol Based on the dynamic generative NFTs to allow other projects other NFT collections later on games So even metaverse developers to use this protocol Is it your own chain? Is it a layer 2? No, it's it's just it's just code So it can be used on any blockchain. Awesome. So yeah, we're starting with Ethereum, but we'll be working on

[10:08] other blockchain So like imagine that like in Decentraland right now, all trees are the same right now there. Yeah Like it shouldn't be like that. They should be generative They should be different and they like potentially they can react on some real life events or blockchain events Like imagine that like if crypto goes down there is a rain in Decentraland. Right. Or like something like that. Like everything is possible right now and again we provide technology for that So you want to make that open source and available? Are you selling it as a product? We're selling this as a protocol. So yes, we're already like working on several pilots with the Plateron games So we'll see where it will bring us But also building our own product on top of this protocol and this will be an art platform But we believe that artists are the best in terms of experimentation So we want them to experiment with this dynamic

[10:55] generative technology So we have like a already very strong pipeline of artists. And a use case for this co-creation that you want to promote. Exactly. So like you know, like how we see like these projects will be dynamic All the time so like you can keep like with the crystals You can come to the platform and you can keep changing your crystal like dynamically all the time Or you can dance like you can switch to another project on the platform and like like change it or update it or collectively change it. In a way it's kind of like we want to create an amusement park digital amusement park where you can go and you can Not only like be like a passive buyer, but you can also interact with this You can be a co-creator. You can change something. You can make a difference No, I think that's really cool because I mean obviously in the web3 space is a bit of this barrier Like when you enter you have a very elementary, you know knowledge and then obviously the highest

[11:45] caliber people are You know the devs and the coders who know how to do everything manually But you know, a lot of people are limited by the sites and the let's say entry points that exist You know OpenSea or Rarible. So and I mean those are both great platforms, but you know, it's they're limited in certain actions So I think that's really exciting that you're opening up more tools for people in a turnkey manner Exactly, but keeping it decentralized, which I think is really important. So that's awesome. Yeah How do you want people to interact with your new tool? Like do you want communities to come in? Do you want individuals to come in? Are you just open you want to just see how the community kind of embraces this? Well, we want definitely communities to come in. Yes, and like We don't know, you know, we're builders. So you're starting with these play to earn communities or spaces. Yeah We wanted like to see where it will bring us so we do couple of pilots We're

[12:31] launching the model. So we'll see like the platform mostly like we started as a as a curated platform initially So like we like and can pick an artist for this We're collaborating with traditional artists like with the pace gallery. They like the first project with them, but we also bring in crypto native artists As well, maybe like down the road somehow will open the platform for like every artist You know make it more like open decentralized, but like we decided initially that we need to start it more like on a more curated way No, it makes sense. Yeah Like the more super rare ish model. Yeah Yeah, and for the protocol we are like open to every every company like who outsource this this that's exciting Yeah, no I think it's amazing because there's there's a bunch of people kind of trying to do what you guys have done very successfully in a Vacuum, but I love that you're making it accessible to the

[13:22] community Want to help them again to help them like from the standpoint of technology But also from the standpoint of marketing, you know want to like we want more of this person I really believe that this is full and if T space is about likely and if it should be dynamic the idea that they are Static like static is a little bit boring, you know, we already have physical art It also gives you the option to take it even further because yeah, we have photo Yeah, we have video but what else how can it be interactive or change based on I love you Yeah, and I love that you're basing it on code because that's so true web 3, you know Don't trust verify trusting code all this. So Yeah, it's provable. It's all on the blockchain cool. No, very very cool. Um, so just to wrap things up I mean, obviously it's always too short of a time But it's such a pleasure to to get a chance to chat But where can people find your work and if people want to check out OG Crystals, where can they

[14:07] find that? So yet check out your crystals website OG Crystals calm and for other works of snark That art checks not art and for the upcoming platform. We are not yet announcing the Give us like if you look into it in a month or two, you'll probably see something online. So awesome. Awesome Well, make sure to follow snark art and OG Crystals on socials. Check out their OpenSea grab one on secondary I know I did and yeah, thank you so much again. Appreciate you taking the time We're here again at NFC Lisbon again. My name is David Cash here for NFTF WTF signing off. Thank you so much