‘You Are the Art’: Chainspace NFT Portals Connecting Bitcoin and Ethereum

The sudden and explosive rise of Bitcoin NFTs via new Ordinals project has sparked a lot of creativity from Web3 builders. Chainspace is one of the most vivid examples to date – an experimental art project that connects Bitcoin and Ethereum through a lo-fi video rendering app linked to both chains.

The project spans a total of 800 apps in the chain, each a unique portal as pseudonymous co-creators Timshell and el-ranye describe as a “digital object that emits infinite art.” Simply put, each web app – which lives entirely in an Ordinals inscription on the Bitcoin blockchain – is like a Snapchat filter that manipulates the image coming from your computer or device’s camera.

Essentially, it takes detailed selfie camera footage and renders it as old-school ASCII art, using letters and symbols to depict your real-time video view in a more abstract, stylized way. Each Chainspace portal provides a different effect, and some are inspired by the look and feel of notable Web3 projects such as Stolen goods and Terraforms.

Timshel, who is a key figure in emerging “Lootverse” gaming community and involved in publishing work in the chaintold Decrypt that Chainspace provides a way for Web3 users to share a bit of their humanity with communities without making themselves completely innocent. Timshel showed off Chainspace-derived screenshots that users shared in the project’s Discord.

“This is beautiful because this ‘GM’ is much more essential and resonant and human than [a] random Pepe emoji“, Timshel told Decrypt. “It’s something really cool and special to see how people use this, share their feelings, themselves and their faces.”

The NFT or inscription is not an “access pass” to an experience hosted elsewhere. Because Ordinals can contain much more chain data than an Ethereum NFT, the complete web app is written onto the Bitcoin blockchain as a digital artifact. Each Chainspace portal exists as its own unique Ordinals inscription that can be transferred between owners.

“The Ordinals innovation, and the idea of ​​entering up to now 4MB of content on a single Satoshi on Bitcoin – it immediately clicked for me,” Timshel shared Decrypt. “It opened up a whole flower of ideas in my head about things you could do that are higher fidelity than what’s possible on ETH, but still create a token of ETH that can be traded and owned.”

Across chains

His comment hints at the Ethereum component of the Chainspace equation, but there are layers to it. Thursday’s NFT mint will actually take place on Ethereum, with each portal represented by an Ethereum NFT that can be minted through Zora and traded through large marketplaces.

Ethereum NFT is connected to the Bitcoin-based Ordinal on-chain through a smart contract-which has the code that drives it decentralized apps (dapps) and NFT projects – developed by Zora software engineer Iain Nash. The Ethereum NFT artwork you see on a marketplace like OpenSea is actually a screenshot generated from the Ordinal Inscription.

But they are also interconnected in the sense that the NFT buyers can choose to trade in the Ethereum version and take care of the Bitcoin Ordinal instead. Right now, it requires a manual process that Timshel and el-ranye can handle, but they aim to make it a simpler, automated process as more and more Ordinals infrastructure comes online.

As such, Timshel describes Chainspace as being “200% on-chains” – yes, plural – as it is part of the experience on both Bitcoin and Ethereum, and they are intertwined.

But exchanging Ethereum NFT for custody of Bitcoin Ordinal is a one-way process; they won’t let users switch back and forth or keep both versions at the same time. He also cautioned that the ability to switch depends in part on the status of Ordinals, a rapidly developing area that has proven contentious for some Bitcoin enthusiasts. It’s all an experiment for now.

Chainspace portals are publicly accessible, which again reinforces the idea that NFT owners are not buying an exclusive access pass. Anyone can use one of the portals and take a still image from the manipulated video feed and then do whatever they want with them – share them through social media, create them on the chain, generate derivative art, etc.

They will sell 620 of the NFTs on Thursday, with an approval list of active Discord users – people who have already shared Chainspace screenshots and creations – who can make one of the Ethereum NFTs for 0.33 ETH (about $550). Another 100 NFTs will be sent to Web3 builders who helped or influenced the project, with 60 NFTs reserved for the team.

Another 20 Chainspace apps, called X portals, will have no Ethereum NFT counterpart and will live solely on Bitcoin. These will be reserved for future auctions, as well as for the community around the Ethereum NFT art project, Terraforms.

“Crushed Penny”

Given that they are publicly available, why would anyone want to purchase and own a Chainspace portal that is not exclusively available to them? For example, it does not come with any future promised utility or benefits. A handful of the portals are available to play with via the project’s website, while others can be accessed via each Ordinal’s own page.

Timshel quoted growing buzz around Ordinals and early inscriptions on the chain, betting that people excited about on-chain media and Web3 experiments will want to own a portal. He compared it to public art installations that are open to everyone but ultimately still owned by someone, comparing an inscribed Satoshi to a souvenir flattened penny from an amusement park.

“I think people are very excited about owning Satoshi itself,” he said. “They want the ‘crushed penny’ with art on it in their wallet.”

Already, they are seeing people turn Chainspace snapshots into spin-off projects, such as Ethereum NFTs of screenshots of hand gestures or AI-assisted generative interpretations. People are free to do whatever they want with the portals, even if they don’t own them.

But ultimately, the goal is to explore new frontiers in experimental art tools on the chain, while giving each user a completely unique experience. It goes back to the phrase the co-creators have been using since the project was unveiled last week: “You are the art.”

“Each portal is public and inscribed on Bitcoin for anyone to reproduce, forever. But each view is a private one-of-one,” explained Timshel. “I don’t think there will ever be another time where someone’s pixels and Chainspace look exactly looks like what’s on my screen right now. It would be like finding a grain of sand in the universe.”