Still Life by Vinnie Hager

June 4 - @vinniehager

Popular artist Vinnie Hager, best known for his 2021 Letters collection on ETH, makes his Bitcoin debut with Still Life.

The title sums it up, except the inanimate objects are drenched in the artist’s recognizable doodle style, filled with chaotic iconography and pop culture references.

A more ADHD-friendly viewing experience than staring at a dimly lit Renaissance grocery haul.

The Machine by IsmaHelio

June 5 - @ismahelios

The Ordinals debut for Spanish architect IsmaHelio, an artist who’s released a lot of NFTs on several different platforms over the last 3 years, mostly on Tezos.

Like many of his past works, this drop features structural aesthetics but strays from facades to focus on interiors, with pieces that look like what would happen if a Rubik’s cube and a floor plan had a baby.

It’s also gm.scribe’s follow-up to their inaugural sellout of Richard Nadler’s Memento Mori (a big sale at the time), and I could see this benefiting from that momentum.

CityVerse Tycoon

June 6 - @cityversetycoon

One way to deal with the stress of crypto is to treat it like a game… like Monopoly, perhaps?

That’s basically CityVerse Tycoon, a game featuring NFT buildings with real crypto at stake (browser showcase here) and built by a doxxed team with experience at web2 mobile gaming companies.

Piggy Club will be its genesis mint dropping on Xterio via raffle. It promises exclusive in-game benefits like point bonuses and unique gameplay upgrades, but what these will look like is still very vague.

Forbes Legacy Pass

June 6 - @forbesweb3

I wouldn’t blame you for dismissing a Forbes soulbound pass off the rip given the track record of other web2 companies doing similar projects and Forbes’s history of cursed magazine covers.

But there are some positive signs here. Their upcoming pass-gated art drops include Ordinals collections from Harto and Des Lucréce (more on that here).

Allowlist applications are the only way to mint these and should have closed earlier this week, but the link is still up on their Twitter.

Decision Matrix by Kjetil Golid

Next Week TBD - @kGolid

This is the first curated drop for Red Bull’s Velocity Series 2.0, a new art pass that minted out last April and follows the very popular, and arguably the best, art pass of 2023 (Velocity Pass).

Generative artist Kjetil Golid takes the stage with colorful 3D art mazes made of mechanical cogs and poker chips, combining racing and crypto themes.

Similar to the previous Velocity Series, two collections are minting: Decision Matrix, a limited collection of unique pieces that will (probably) be gated for pass holders, and Risk/Reward, a more accessible edition collection.

The previous pass’s track record speaks for itself and more details should be coming soon.

Looming Emotion by Shaderism

June 12 - @shaderism

VIVID Gallery, probably the most commercially successful gen art platform on Bitcoin (they sold out all 7 of their previous drops), gears up for the eight-peat with Looming Emotion by Shaderism.

An animated collection that attempts to distill unresolved feelings into liquid glass, it’s an evolution of Shaderism’s ArtBlocks drop from last year, keeping the same sleek look but with more focus on color.

The moody, free-flowing animations pass my vibe check and are a fresh take in the Bitcoin gen art scene.

EVENT by Bernar Venet

June TBD - @BernarVenetArt

Sotheby’s (trad and web3 art giant) is scheduled to release their second-ever in-house generative art drop EVENT, the NFT debut from French conceptual artist Bernar Venet.

This artist’s work spans decades and mostly deals with metal sculptures, so it’s no surprise that those are an inspiration for this collection (more on that on his website).

The mint follows Themes and Variations, the auction house’s first collection in this program and one of the biggest art drops of 2023.

Sotheby’s pull can be huge, and I’m finding their program’s curation interesting thus far.