To describe it in a word: Blob.
At first glance, the Blob Ordinals project is hard to pin down. The collection doesn’t really have a singular, central space to look for detailed information. Instead, interested parties have to scroll by a mountain of fever-dream-esque social media calling cards – the Book of Blob, the Blob Army, the hashtag #SendBlob, and a whole lot of retweets – to get to the heart of the project.
The virality of the project is notable, which has been reflected in its popularity on Magic Eden. At the time of this writing, Blob is a top-10 Bitcoin collection. But there’s a lot more to the Blobs than just memes. Underneath the symbolic red and yellow laser eyes, there’s experimental ethos, good vibes, some truly innovative tech and a genuine passion for building within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Collection History and Associated Projects
The Blob origin story isn’t a straightforward one, so we’ll stick to the highlights. The collection began with the pseudonymous Nuro, an artist and physician-turned-crypto enthusiast, and Eloc, who co-founded the project and is credited with building out much of its technical structure. Others have played a role in various stages of Blob development, including ordinalHO, Steaktoshi and Boppleton.
Nuro and Eloc met online and got involved in the early days of Ordinals – deep in the heart of crypto winter. Recognizing the potential that Ordinals had to change the energy of Bitcoin, they decided to build together. But the Blobs weren’t their first joint project. The two first began building Cypherpunk Ghosts, a 777-item collection using ghost artwork created by artist Vinyl to tell the story of Bitcoin.
Community-building was highly important to them, which led to the development of the Cypherpunk Lab. At the same time, Nuro was working to build the Nuro Realm, for which he literally inscribed some of his own brain data on-chain. When Nuro put out the artwork for Nuro Realm with a request for people to join the Blob Army, it went viral. Eloc had also harbored a desire to create a generative Ordinal collection utilizing developments in Ordinals technology.
The resonance the Blobs had with others in the Bitcoin ecosystem proved to be a way to achieve these goals, so they decided to pivot their efforts. And thus, the Blobs – which Nuro has referred to as the unifier of his projects – were born.
Collection Development
The tech behind the Blobs is both complex and extensive. The builders reportedly utilized multiple Ordinals technologies – including parent-child inscriptions and recursive inscriptions, among others – to build an even bigger project. The collection was built with React Three Fiber, using libraries inscribed by their own team. The shader code, in particular, plays a role in the blob’s visuals, impacting their color and shape. By using a variety of cutting edge tech, the Blob team has built a legitimately refined product.
Unlike some so-called free mints where fees still apply, the 10,000 Blobs were airdropped completely free to their holders. They were inscribed ahead of time so that those acquiring a Blob would not need to pay anything for them, allowing people to experience the inscriptions in an organic way. This was highly important to the founders, who wanted to avoid a situation where money became a factor in interacting with the collection. As a result, the Blob airdrop was self-funded.
Collection Concept
Team Blob views themselves as experimental artists, combining Bitcoin technical innovations with scientific theory and various art forms to create. As they’ve said in several interviews, they “believe everyone is an artist, you just have to find your medium.” There’s a heavy focus on 3D elements in the Blob artwork and – of course – the recognizable laser eye motifs.
Depending on where you look, you’ll find different possible meanings for the name. ‘BLOB’ could stand for “Blobs Love Other Blobs,” “Bitcoiners Love Bitcoiners,” “Believers in Loving Our Blobs” or even the “Binary Large Object” concept in computing. It might not stand for any of those, or it might stand for all of them. The general vibe of the Blobs is blob, and to understand them, you have to blob.
And here’s where things get epic. One of the biggest milestones to date for the team was inscribing their artwork on an epic sat, the term for a very rare satoshi. This was no ordinary sat. It was generated during the recent Bitcoin halving and as Decrypt noted, it “was sold for 33.3 BTC in April—around $2.1 million at the time.” The Blobmasters inscribed it with music written, composed, and performed by Epic Chef Steaktoshi, who also used the AI-generated voice of Canadian musician Grimes, becoming the first people to inscribe on an epic sat.
Inscription 70,634,325, the number for that landmark achievement, is being called Spike #1, and Nuro has called it the first “neurogenerative” 3D audiovisual piece on Ordinals – a reference to generative AI and neurographic art.
The Community Of It All
One thing that stands out about the Blobbers is their emphasis on events and collaborations. In the middle of inscribing for their airdrop, the Blob Chiefs could be found at NFT.NYC, displaying works from the collection. On April 10, they hosted a “Send Blob” Space event with BitSquare; and back in February, Cypherpunk Labs and Nuro Realm collaborated with others to launch a San Francisco gallery of Ordinals art.
The Blob team’s focus on community building has played a major role in developing a robust base that can only be described as an epic army… or, you know, as blob.
