Beeple’s Long Road: A puzzle to solve? | NFT CULTURE | Web3 Culture NFTs and Crypto Art
On March 11, 2023, Beeple and Christie’s hosted the grand opening of Beeple Studios in Charleston, South Carolina. At the opening, Beeple performed a Live Everyday Performance, which consisted of creating 50 Everyday objects as well as one of his “Everydays”, which he called Long way.
After completing each artwork, Beeple would press a button on his desk that would send the artwork to printers hidden in the ceiling of the exhibition gallery, and “airdrop” the prints to the participants below. The exact number of prints is unclear, but is described to be over 900 in total. Each edition of prints contained a unique print with a yellow border and a “valuable red dot”, indicating that the print could be exchanged for an NFT to be received at a later date.
As is his tradition, Beeple published Long way to his Twitter account before 12.00, and completed his everyday routine for the day.
LONG WAY pic.twitter.com/RgoR1jtrZV
— beeple (@beeple) March 12, 2023
NFT of LONG ROAD was also added to the BEEPLE:EVERYDAYS collection.
In addition to publishing Everyday, Beeple also updated the metadata of all the NFTs in the Everyday Artifacts collection. Oddly enough, an artifact #51 consisting of a solid black png titled “???” were included with the previously known items.
The #51 artifact sparked a frenzy of mystery hunters trying to understand what it meant. Additionally, the Long Road NFT does not appear to have been claimed, speculation was rife. Absorbed in said speculation, I made an attempt to develop what I thought was an elegant solution to how the Long Road could be claimed.
The key to my solution involved a subtle difference between Twitter Everyday and NFT Everyday. Because the “Original” Everyday on Twitter contained some apparently Beeple-esque doodles (see the ‘X’s in the upper right of the image), and both the direct print poster editions and the NFT do not have doodles, I interpreted this to mean that Beeple actually physically drew on one of the sheets of paper that were pre-loaded in the printers before the gallery opening. The team would then have scanned the sheet of paper and used this to create a secret “layer” file that could later be revealed as Artifact #51. This will only be done after the curly Long Road is used to claim the Long Road NFT, so as not to spoil the mystery. This may explain why a Long Road claim has yet to bubble up, as the ‘X’s’ on the print are subtle and would be missed as an important detail by someone not well versed in Beeple lore.
So what did the Beeple team have to say about my solution? Well, beyond “RECEIVED”, nothing. So maybe I’m wrong, or maybe the golden ticket to the Long Road is still out there. I leave it to the community to find out the answer.
Good luck!
A special thank you @Sven_NFT to bounce some of these ideas around. Also thanks @AizomeEth for tips and ideas, and @KingborNFT to help me with some questions about contact information. A big thank you to the Beeple team for many hours of entertainment. Finally, thanks to all the other community members I talk to about puzzles and Beeple, it’s been fun as always!
