Drop Preview | Art Blocks Curated, 'Fontana'

Today's Art Blocks Curated drop comes from artist Harvey Rayner, bringing his collection "Fontana" to Series 8 today at 1:00 p.m. ET. The collection will drop via Dutch auction starting at 4 ETH with a final resting price of 0.2 ETH.

Fontana is Latin for fountain, and thus is the theme of this generative project. From the project description, Fontana is "a playful attempt at abstractly capturing the flowing movement of a fountain using precisely drawn elements that evoke a static and considered rendering of a subject that is in constant flux."

The resulting outputs are still captures of a flowing fountain, an ambitious vision for Harvey.

He has used techniques in the algorithm to make the outputs appear old and discolored as if they each had "spent its life in the bottom of a mechanics drawer." Interestingly, the color expression of the set is fully generative and thus there are no set palettes or rarity, a mechanism that most artists do tend to employ.

Harvey has a history with Art Blocks, as he previously dropped a Factory project called "Photon's Dream" which minted out early this summer and became somewhat of a cult favorite in the Art Blocks community.

The project reached a floor near 0.2 ETH at its peak (currently 0.17 ETH) and has traded 34 ETH over its lifetime. 

Market Analysis and Prediction

Series 8 has not performed well on the secondary markets, and the primary market has been impacted as well. Early sets were minted in the high 1 ETH or 2+ ETH range, and that mint-out price has fallen below 1 ETH for most sets at this time. The most recent Curated drop, Act of Emotion, minted out just above 0.6 ETH and currently sits at 0.45 ETH floor with a supply of 400 NFTs.

The bull case for Fontana is that the artist is well-liked, the outputs are still (still performs better than animated almost always) and the outputs have some nice aesthetics with some very interesting emergent themes (spirals and bullseyes as the most common).

The bear case is that rarity will likely not be a factor in this set, meaning no rare lotto for primary buyers, which caps the upside. I expect the top outputs to go for 2-3 ETH on the mint day, considerably less than what rares have gone for in sets from earlier in the summer. The lack of palettes, while innovative, also prevents palette-based collecting and the creation of sets across projects. Lastly, the floor on Photon's Dream at just 0.17 ETH is not a great sign of strength headed into the mint.

The most likely scenario is mint action similar to the last Curated drop, minting out in the 0.5-0.7 ETH range. There are some tailwinds coming from the success of QQL, but it's not clear whether those will translate to Fontana. If this drops below 0.5 ETH, it becomes very attractive; above 1 ETH and it's much riskier from a trading perspective. The other factor to consider is who is minting - if it's mostly traders/flippers, expect 40-50 percent of the collection to be listed on secondary within an hour of the mint, sending the secondary price downward. If it feels like mostly collectors, the outcome should be better. But as always, if you love the art, mint away.

For those who want to learn more about the artist and/or the project, check out this interview with Jeff Davis the COO of Art Blocks.