EulerBeats Trailblazes On-Chain Music 🎵 - TokenSmart NFT Humpday Report #22
Welcome to the 22nd issue of the NFT Humpday Report, a weekly column covering and providing embedded analysis on the NFT economy’s biggest topics du jour. Brought to you by WIP meetup collaborators and nft42 community hub TokenSmart.
One new project that’s rapidly gaining attention in the NFT ecosystem is EulerBeats, which makes generative music NFTs inspired by the mathematical insights of genius 18th-century mathematician Leonhard Euler.
The project’s “Season 1” release, comprised of 27 algorithmically-generated songs that are fully #onchain and priced on a bonding curve, is unlike anything the NFT ecosystem has seen before. As such, EulerBeats is generating excitement because it’s pointing to a future in which generative music thrives via NFTs.
Who made it: EulerBeats was created by Treum, an NFT platform backed by prolific Ethereum dev studio ConsenSys. After devising a bonding curve mechanism, the Treum decided to create a bonding curve underpinned by Euler’s number, ~2.71828, to celebrate the titanic thinker. Notably, Treum’s creation of EulerBeats was also influenced by trailblazing on-chain NFT projects like Art Blocks and Avastars.
How it works: EulerBeats centers around Originals and Prints.
In Season 1 the number of originals was capped at 27 and priced on the primary market at 0.271 ETH. They sold out rapidly. These generative songs didn’t exist before their associated NFTs were minted. The songs’ ensuing random token seeds then immediately interplayed with EulerBeats’s music generation script, which is stored entirely on-chain on Ethereum, to create unique, generative audio. And the great incentive of owning one of these 27 originals is that the respective owners automatically earn 8% royalties for any ensuing prints they back.
So what’s a print? Treum explains that “prints are replicas of an original and can be previewed by the buyer before purchase on the homepage, since they have already been minted by the original owner.”
Moreover, prints are minted along a bonding curve. A print’s minting price thus grows as more prints come into existence, and EulerBeats stores 90% of print funds. This allows collectors to burn their prints against this reserve in order to “recover 90% of the cost of printing the nth print,” per Treum.
As for the actual generative aspects of EulerBeats’s originals, everything from their chord progressions to the actual NFTs’ accompanying visuals were created randomly via token seeds’ pinging the projects’ Ethereum-stored “music theory engine.”
Interest growing: EulerBeats’s interesting combo of music + tech has led to the project capturing the attention of NFT veterans and NFT newcomers alike in short order. An example from the latter category is famous investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who’s notably been diving into the NFT ecosystem lately.
In his first appearance on Bankless this week, Cuban namedropped EulerBeats as an NFT project he was currently excited about. Specifically, Cuban said:
“Euler Beats, right, I bought two of those. Because to me, it was the most genius idea ever. And I’ve talked to those guys since, Treum, but what was genius about it was: it was generative, and they did the bonding curve and they did a 90% reserve, which means they created a floor for every item, right. So if you took a chance on it, then as long as the prices are going on up, you’re going to make money no matter what. And if the prices are going to go down, well because the reserve is so high at least it’s not going to zero, right. There’s some value there.
And for them as a company, being a Shark, it costs them nothing to mint! Their marginal cost is zero. So their only mistake was setting a 90% reserve, even though that made me buy more. You know, the business side is interesting to me, but again the community side is most important. But sometimes like Euler Beats … you come up with an idea that I thought was just really differentiated and unique.”
Smart contracts updated: Legendary Ethereum whitehat hacker samczsun recently contacted the EulerBeats team, notifying them that a vulnerability in their printing smart contracts could be abused by a bad actor to steal royalties from the owners of EulerBeats Originals. Accordingly, the team sprung into action and on Feb. 22nd updated their smart contracts to mitigate the attack vector.
“You never want to hear from samczsun, but if you do, know that he’s a consummate professional, and was extremely nice and generous with his time,” EulerBeats said. “Thank you samczsun, we don’t think anyone knows how much value you’ve delivered to the ETH ecosystem.”
What’s next: As a generative music trailblazer, EulerBeats has already made a name for itself in the blooming NFT ecosystem. And the project’s here to stay, if it’s seasonal model is any indication. The project’s initial Feb. 2021 release marked its first season, so there’s more to come from here. 🎶
Thanks for reading the 22nd NFT Humpday Report! Check back this time next week for more excellent NFT ecosystem coverage! Cheers🌠