Tezos' largest NFT platform Hic Et Nunc shuts down｜The disappeared present moment: sanctity or betrayal?

(This article is authorized to be reprinted from Soybean Paste, the original title is "The Disappeared Moment, Sanctification or Betrayal?")

This article is authorized and reprinted from Mashbean, with the original title "Disappearing Now, Is it Sanctification or Betrayal?"

Today, let's talk about a story. You can think of it as a major breaking news event in a distant country, or you can see it as a futuristic allegory. For me, this is a live record of the metaverse, a long story with many terms that I will do my best to explain.

This morning, Hic Et Nunc (Here and Now) unexpectedly shut down, leaving only a contract address on its Twitter official account with a self-introduction that reads "Discontinued," disappearing from the world.

Hic Et Nunc (referred to as HEN) is the largest NFT collection platform on the Tezos blockchain. It has been operating for only eight months since March and has accumulated over 500,000 NFTs. It has gathered many algorithmic artists and new media artists. The community's style is mainly focused on freedom, affordability, and sharing. In the global NFT trading market, it ranks around the top ten.

Is this another typical "Rug Pull" event in the cryptocurrency world? Not quite. The contract is still there, the NFTs are still there, only the website has disappeared. This may be a world-class community experiment, as HEN now disappears into the void of decentralized networks.

It is lamentable that just last week, the HEN community celebrated the HEN500K event. In this event, whether renowned artists or emerging artists, everyone sold their works at very low prices, allowing everyone to exchange and collect. Such activities are actually quite unusual in the NFT world. On one hand, it disrupts the market, and on the other hand, it does not generate much profit. However, Tezos is such a place, and this custom started with HEN.

But less than a week after the event ended, HEN shut down unexpectedly, shocking the artists and collectors above. This must be a significant historical event in the short history of the Tezos blockchain.

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Twitter immediately exploded with confusion. Some artists who are not familiar with the essence of blockchain were running around, asking if their works are still there, if they will disappear along with the website, and where they can showcase new works.

Fortunately, this is the world of Web3 (a third-generation internet where autonomy and ownership are in one's hands). Although the platform is dead, the works are still alive. While the website is closed, the smart contracts are still there, the NFTs minted by the smart contracts are still there, not to mention the IPFS (InterPlanetary File System, a decentralized peer-to-peer storage system) that stores the image files is still there. Everything is still there, only the surface layer has disappeared, and this surface layer, the HEN website, is the origin of the entire artist ecosystem.

Some artists joked on Twitter that all the artworks participating in the HEN500K event will become legendary because this is the true finale of objkt (the work number on the HEN platform). All artists will become OGs (Original Gangsters) who control rarity. While the Tezos blockchain will continue to rise, objkt will remain around the 511,000th number, forever dormant.

Today, the shutdown of HEN symbolizes the disappearance of a symbolic experiment.

But a new symbol is born almost at the same time.

True decentralization.

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To be honest, as a public platform, HEN often has malfunctions, a simple user interface, and frequent feature downtimes, like a community with frequent water and power outages. However, this drawback has been taken as a meme joke by the highly tolerant community.

Rafael Lima, the founder of HEN, full of community ideals, created the experimental HEN in March this year. In the eight months of operation, the business has grown remarkably. Of course, there have been many governance issues and personnel changes in the process. Perhaps it can be said that HEN saved the Tezos blockchain, and that's why some say that Tezos is a blockchain with only NFTs left. Due to its Proof of Stake design, which was initially hailed as the Ethereum killer, but due to its rigorous adherence to decentralization and steady updates, its progress has been slower. Now, who knows how many generations of Ethereum killers have emerged.

But regardless, NFTs on Tezos are called Clean NFTs because they do not involve mining with computer power, thus not wasting electricity. HEN's astonishing growth occurred in August this year when it was in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Over the past few months, HEN has encountered many problems, including governance issues and financial distribution (due to the transparency advantage of blockchain, it's easy to trace the wallet transactions of HEN), leading to several batches of developers leaving. The most famous case is objkt.com, a secondary market on the Tezos chain.

Just from the name objkt.com itself, you can see the competitive stance. OBJKT itself is the code sequence for NFT minting on HEN. These five letters were taken verbatim as the name of the new business. No wonder Rafael called objkt.com a thief. However, perhaps out of mutual understanding or other reasons, this website has a good trading interface, convenient auction and collection functions, but objkt.com has never introduced the service of minting NFTs. Therefore, it has always been positioned as a "secondary market," connecting downstream services of all first-level markets, with the largest first-level market being HEN.

In addition, services considered to inherit HEN include hen.teztools.io and hicetninc.art, but at present, they seem to be striving individually.

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October, known as Uptober in the cryptocurrency world, was also surprising for objkt.com. Just in October alone, many new projects bypassed HEN and directly used objkt.com as the secondary market. These projects include the algorithmic artist Memo Akten's Distributed Consciousness (AI octopus), Indonesian artist Ayra's GogoPen, Sutu's Neonz, and finally jjjjjjohn's creation of the hero who saved the market, randomly common skeleton. These PFP projects (Profile Picture, a type of NFT project related to avatar NFTs) were directly listed on objkt.com without going through the smart contract process of HEN.
From an objective perspective, HEN's trading volume has been declining since October, with some interpreting this phenomenon as a cooling of the NFT market. However, the fact is that the trading volume has shifted to objkt.com.

Why did HEN shut down? Perhaps it was a coincidence in timing, as just last night, objkt.com announced the opening of the minting feature with great fanfare, causing a stir in the community. And this morning, HEN announced its closure. It's hard not to connect these two events.

Regardless of the cause and effect relationship, the shutdown of HEN highlights the "anti-fragile" nature of the Web3 blockchain world. The disappearance of a website will not take away everything you have cultivated there. Everything remains in place, just needing another interface to present it. No one can create or destroy an entire world on their own. This is completely different from the Web2 era, think of websites like GeoCities, Apple News, and those cultural heritage that we have forgotten and disappeared.

In the Web3 paradise, the gardener's departure will not erase a garden.

In fact, hDAO is still distributed among many holders. hDAO is a community governance token airdropped to early artists and collectors on HEN two months after its launch (DAO is a decentralized governance organization, and DAO's governance voting uses the tokens they issue, in this case, hDAO). However, HEN has not yet moved towards the ideal conclusion of pure decentralized governance (commonly known as Dexit, Exit to DAO, transferring power from centralized governance to the masses).

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Leaving an unfinished Roadmap, Rafael, like a suicide bomber, forcibly shut down the website, leaving behind the smart contracts.

What concept does he want to convey?

Is it pure stubbornness? Immature behavior of a dictator? Or some intriguing cyberpunk manifesto? Is he a dictator? A saint? Or a betrayer like Judas?

My friend Zaibatsu and his artist community released an NFT after the shutdown of HEN, a portrait in an oil painting style of Rafael Lima in military attire. The title is in all caps "DECENTRALIZED," with the description "The first and only known portrait of Rafael Lima, founder of Hic Et Nunc. Minted Thursday November 11, 2021, a day that will live in infamy." Limited to 250 editions, the selling price was 80 NTD, and this work was sold out within a few hours, with the secondary market price already rising to 1,200 NTD.

This portrait itself is a rather internal art tactical operation. It is a protest action born out of collective anger, spreading widely within the Tezos community.

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So, is Rafael a dictator? I don't know, but I do know that the shutdown of HEN can be seen as a form of power decentralization (even though this power has gradually become weaker), reminiscent of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Regardless, the closure of HEN has disrupted players at all levels of the Tezos NFT ecosystem. Starting today, NFT platforms will enter a heated competition phase earlier than expected.

The birth of HEN was admirable, and its disappearance is admirable.

The vacuum it leaves will bring all kinds of contenders onto the stage, and the Tezos NFT market will officially enter an era of warlords. The top player, of course, is objkt.com. Besides that, in Taiwan, we also have akaSwap waiting to shine. AkaSwap offers complete decentralized services, including minting, selling, gifting, etc., making it the most Web3-like service among the NFT platforms I've seen in Taiwan. You can imagine it as the Taiwanese version of HEN (with a touch of homage). In fact, my "New Era Flag" was also auctioned on AkaSwap.

This will be a game of cooperation and competition. The secondary market is coming to eat the first-level market's pie, while the little players of the first-level market are about to divide this vacuum. Whoever can connect the contract records left by HEN, create the ultimate user experience, and maintain legitimacy in the community will become the winner of this metaverse war. However, not all are in direct competition, as there is also the possibility of collaboration in asset integration and circulation.

Is it possible for Taiwan to secure a place in this vacuum battle?

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The whole drama has only just entered its second chapter. Let's continue watching.

Regardless, it's a good thing for users. Because this is the world of Web3.

Idealist, dictator, thief, homage, protester, artist. These are the stories I saw this morning and shared with everyone. I should be the first in the Chinese world to report this news.

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Image: The portrait of the dictator "DECENTRALIZED" drawn by Zaibatsu and the artist community hic et ubique (I also have collected XD)