Pak
Pak is an anonymous digital artist in the crypto art space.[1] In December 2020, they were the first to earn $1 million for their NFT art. [2]
In April 2021, Pak released a special Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collection in collaboration with Sotheby's.[3][4] The auction fetched a total of $17 million. [5]
Career
In December 2020, Pak became the first crypto artist to earn more than $1 million from his Ethereum-based artwork. His works have been sold on platforms such as SuperRare, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, and Async Art. The artworks were auctioned off in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). [6]
Pak is the founder, and lead designer of the internationally acclaimed Undream studio and the AI-curator Archillect, which collects and shares stimulating visions with two million followers on Twitter.
Pak is an anonymous artist. In a 2018 interview Pak talked about the reasons behind his mysterious persona:
“Having no face and physicality helps me define myself with concepts rather than a face and a body. This is the main reason I have no personal* data online and this is also why my physicality changes from presentation to presentation (actors and actresses ftw!). In the end no one really knows which me is the actual me, which makes me smile and continue my journey.” [7]
Archillect
The Archillect AI algorithm scrapes the internet for visual content that is most likely to trend on social media platforms. The images are then posted on Twitter and Instagram.[8][9]
Archillect is a ‘she’ and when asked why, Pak replied:
“Archillect is made to inspire. To give inspiration. Inspiration leads creativity and if we look at anything from mother nature (biology) to mythology, all creation and birth comes from a female gender. Those things combined make Archillect a she-personality.”[10]
"The Title" by Pak
In December 2020, Pak release their new collection, called "The Title". It was a statement about what NFT and crypto art can be. Pak sold the same image at different prices. The only difference was the title of each NFT. Essentially Pak wanted to prove that NFTs are not really about the art itself but more about ownership of a file. The artwork is the same for all of these NFTs, but some are more valuable than others due to the scarcity and the "Title" of each NFT. [11]
One of the NFTs from this release was labeled “The Unsold” and had a price tag of $1,000,000.
Collaboration with Sotheby's
One of the art releases that Pak had on Nifty Gateway received the attention of global auction house Sotheby's. In January 2021, Pak had announced that a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) would be gifted to any auction house that asked for it, and Sotheby’s responded: “We are intrigued…”. [12]
In March, Sotheby's announced it would collaborate with Pak for a sale in April 2021. The auction house’s CEO Charles Stewart said in an interview with CNBC that the sale would include both individual works of art as well as “open edition” NFTs, where multiple buyers can purchase minted tokens for the same work. [13]
In April, the auction house revealed that Pak would release a new NFT series, "The Fungible Collection," for collaboration on April 12 via the digital art platform Nifty Gateway. The event would mark the first time a major auction house linked up with Nifty Gateway, which in recent months has sold closely watched NFTs by Mike Winkelmann (Beeple), Grimes, and others. "The Fungible Collection" sale will include open editions, wherein multiple buyers can purchase minted tokens for the same work at a fixed price of $500. Pak would release six other works in the days leading up to the sale, including two unique works which will be auctioned, in a sale led by Sotheby's contemporary art specialist Max Moore, who began working with Pak in January on the collaboration. [14]
Sotheby’s first Non-Fungible Token (NFT) sale of works by Pak fetched more than $17 million over a three-day drop. “The Pixel” sold for $1.4 million and elicited bids from many top NFT art collectors in part because its medium-gray monochrome represents a single pixel. The competition winnowed to three bidders who spent more than an hour and a half dueling it out in small increments, lobbing some bids as low as $50, before crypto-art collector Eric Young won the work. Another piece, dubbed “The Switch,” sold for $1.4 million to California cryptocurrency investor Damian Medina. "The Switch" is actually a digital image of a rotating, black-and-white geometric shape whose bigger appeal lies in the fact that the entire work is designed to change form if its new owner ever decides to try it. [15]
Another work in the sale, "Equilibrium," looks like a simple white orb, but it unpeels like an onion with different components. Offered in an edition of four, one version called "The Cryptographer" was given to a Dutch artist named Mathijs Vissers, who solved a puzzle attached to the work. Another version, "The Hunter," was given to whichever collector paid the most to buy an older piece by the artist offered on a different site during the run of the Sotheby’s sale. [16]
Sotheby’s reports there were in total 3,080 buyers of nearly 24,000 “Open Edition” cube units, raising $14 million.[17][18]
SuperRare Auction Record
On February 15, 2021, Pak had an auction on SuperRare that broke their all-time record. The NFT was sold for 96.8 ETH or the equivalent to $175,801. [19][20]
'Merge' Collection
In December 2021, Pak released Merge collection on Niftygateway. They used a different method which included inbuilt scarcity mechanism to decrease token supply over time.
Each Merge Token transfer merges with other token in the wallet and resulting in single token with bigger mass. Merge NFTs are generated dynamically based on these masses so a user's NFT can become as he acquires a bigger mass in his wallet. Buyers had 48 hours to get as much tokens/mass they want from December 6, 2022 to December 4 ,2022. The starting price was US$575 for each token. The collection total raised US$91.8 million with 28,983 collectors snapping up 312,686 total units of mass, or NFT.[26][27]
Collaboration
In February 2022, Pak collaborated with WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange to release the 'Censored' NFT Collection. The Collection was released on February 7, 2022 which was also Assange's court date. Assange was appealing for extradition to the U.S., where he was about to face up to 175 years in prison. The collaboration raised $54 Million for the WikiLeaks Founder’s Defense Fund with a Major NFT Auction. A total of 29,766 buyers paid a collective 671 ETH ($2.1 million), overriding his existing record for an open-edition NFT. [21][22][23][24][25]