SPEAKER_00: 0:13

Welcome back to Tez Talks Radio. I'm Blanx. Today we're joined by someone who's been part of the Tezos story from the art side, and now from the network side too. Paper Buddha joins us, an artist collector, and new baker on Tezos. He's keeping things audio only today, which fits the tone perfectly. We're focusing on ideas, art, and how all of this connects. Paper Buddha, thanks for joining. How's it going?

SPEAKER_01: 0:43

It's going great. Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00: 0:48

You have built one of the most recognizable looks on Tezos. What first pulled you toward collage?

SPEAKER_01: 0:58

What first pulled me towards collage, um, you know, probably the fact that I've been keenly aware that we are living in a remix culture and that everything is a remix of a remix of a remix, i.e. a collage, right? When I look at uh a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, that is clearly a collage from previous comic books and you know uh a mix of pop culture, right? If I look at music, that's all samples, that's all people collaging music, right? If I look at code, we're copying snippets. So it's literally collage everywhere I look. Uh, and I wanted to um create a fusion of East meets west and my art, which requires, you know, some collage, taking bits from this culture and that culture.

SPEAKER_00: 1:45

You blend Buddhism, psychedelia, and vintage comics. When did these worlds first start to cross for you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:55

In my head, they crossed in the 1900s. That's a joke. In the 1990s, you know. Um, I started reading Buddhist literature, Buddhist scripture, and visualized these deities kind of as comic book characters in my head. And I'm like, oh, they reside in the cosmos and you know, they're doing everything but missing a cape. Some of them have kind of special powers or certain things that they do. Um, and so from day one, I visualized them that way in my head. Um, I grew up on the west coast of uh the United States, so very heavy Asian influence in the San Francisco Bay Area. Um, and it just kind of made sense. I was a comic book nerd growing up, and you know, pulp comics are the original comic books, you know, those are the vintage golden age published somewhere between 1890 and 1930. Sometimes they'll go up to the 60s. And so by combining these two things, uh, I feel like I'm able to give the viewer not only a semi-psychedelic experience visually, but also this uncanny feeling that this art has been in America for a very long time when in fact it has not. You know, um, I'm trying to popularize the visual art side of Buddhism the same way that Alan Watts or Ram Das did with the philosophy.

SPEAKER_00: 3:18

Now you're based in Detroit, a city that's full of energy and rebuilding stories. Do you feel that atmosphere shaping your creative process?

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

Yeah, I think definitely. You know, one of the things that I I strive for is authenticity. Um, I'm a Zen Buddhist practitioner, and in Zen and that specific flavor of Buddhism, we're really concerned with seeing the world the way it really is. Um, growing, like I said, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, to be specific, East Oakland, a very rough, gritty neighborhood, uh, especially in the 90s. And uh when I'm here in and then it went through this beautiful resurgence and rebuild. Uh, and then some of that comes the negative side of gentrification, but a lot of it is, you know, a net positive. And so I find myself later in life here in Detroit doing the same shit. Uh, exact same gritty, authentic feeling, seeing the people here to see the world the way it really is. Um, we're in the middle of a huge cultural renaissance up here in Detroit. Uh, you know, people look at me, they're like, oh, you must be so badass, you're from Detroit. I'm like, dude, no. We have cheese and wine, we've got olives, we've got cigar bars. You know what I mean? It's uh it is a totally different vibe than what people think Detroit was in 1990s Robocop land.

SPEAKER_00: 4:37

Oh, Robocopland, what a what a great visual. Now, you've mentioned that art is a form of meditation for you. What does that look like when you're deep in the process?

SPEAKER_01: 4:50

Yeah, so I really break my art into kind of two major pieces, well, three major pieces. Uh the first major piece is much more uh take psychedelics, get wild, go out there and do the composition, right? So digging through my hard drives or go into the antique store. And like a lot of people don't know this, I go to the antique store, go down into the dingy basement, start searching through the pulp, and then digitally scan it, bring it back to my hard drives, catalog it, and then I'm using that material. So sometimes it's uh let's get high and go out to the antique store and just go like thrifting, basically. Uh, but I don't buy anything. So it's even cooler. I just walk in and I'm like, if it's really rare, if it's a pulp comic that I don't have in my collection, my physical collection, I'll pick it up. But otherwise, it's a digital treasure hunt. It's a lot of fun. Uh, so you know, that's the first stage. And it's not so meditative. It's much more, you know, let's get wild and put things together, see what sticks, what doesn't. The second part of my process is the meditative part. This is when I've got the composition done and it's time for me to start cutting. And I do that on my iPad with my Apple Pencil, the same way that uh a traditional collage artist would have their green mat and an X-acto knife. Um, you know, so that looks like me zooming in 1600% onto uh, you know, a specific element in the collage and then cutting it out by hand. People have often asked me, do you use AI? Do you use a magic wand? No, all of that makes the the work look bad. Doesn't look handcrafted when I do it that way. Um I have experimented with it, I've experimented with AI and um I use a lot of AI in my process, but not in the actual this actual part, right? Um so this is the meditative part. It takes the longest time. Um, sometimes I'll have a composition done in 30 minutes and it'll take me a week to do the cutting. Uh very laborious, but also very meditative. I sit down lotus style. Um, you know, I have a little easel that is very similar to what you would see a Tonka artist use, where they they sit cross-legged and they've got kind of a small box with an easel on it, right? So that you can do the art in a lotus position all day. Uh so it's it's a very interesting fusion of all of these different things. And then just lastly, to cap it off, the third part of the work is sharing it, right? Rick Rubin, um, a creative act, perfectly articulated. There is a separation between doing the work and sharing the work. And so the third step for me is sharing it, which really allows me to keep the first two steps very pure. I'm not worried about sharing it, I'm not worried about what chain it's on, I'm not worried about how much. You know, I'm just making the art.

SPEAKER_00: 7:42

Your pieces often explore impermanence. Does minting something permanent on chain change about change how you think about that idea?

SPEAKER_01: 7:52

Yeah, it's a it's one of my favorite paradox in all of Buddhism is impermanence versus permanence, right? We want to have this cultural legacy. We want the words of the Buddha to be passed, the historical Buddha to be passed on. We want these things in a permanent record, but at the same time, we don't want attachment to material things. So I find the blockchain fascinating. Is that a material thing? I don't know. Is it? Am I attached to my NFTs? Are those material? Ah fuck, man, I don't know. So I really like playing with the juxtaposition, right? Um, I did a big generative release with my partner Pixelboy on FX Hash a couple of years ago that really explored just this concept. It was it's called paper mandalas. Um and the idea behind the project is what if I was the last master that knew how to create a mandala and the only student left to me was a computer. Would I carry on to this tradition, or would I just let it die with me? Because technically I'm putting it on the permanent record. Right. And so I find it fascinating. So I lean in, I'm like, let's put it out there. Um, I recently wrote a blog article on my website that talks about the importance of um the cultural, you know, the traditions, the the importance of a censorship-resistant place to put the work. Specifically in the history of Buddhism, they don't like what we have to say. When I say they, I mean the government. They don't like it when we go, actually, you don't need those fuckers. You uh can attain nirvana all on your own. Um, actually, your belief in God, irrelevant to your ability your ability to achieve nirvana. You can believe in Jesus and come meditate all day. You know, they don't like that kind of talk. And so you look at the historical patterns in Buddhism uh all over the planet. It is literally burning monasteries, burning scriptures, burning the art. It's still happening today in Tibet. It's still happening. Uh, there's a great whitewashing. You know, I've written quite extensively about this stuff. So it is important to be able to have a place where we're center-resistant. We're not going to get our scriptures burned, you know, and and it comes outside of Buddhism. I've seen my Jewish friends uh mint the Torah. You know, they they've minted it online. There it is in perpetuity, fucking forever. And I think that's so cool. But at the same time, what does that say about, you know, religions are a living, breathing thing, they change over time, right? And so uh I don't know, it's a very fascinating concept to play with.

SPEAKER_00: 10:33

Now, paper mandala was a fully generative, and like you said, it was co-created with Pixelboy. What was it like handing some control over to code?

SPEAKER_01: 10:45

So I've always been a big technologist and a big believer in code and a big believer in technology in general. I don't think I ever gave it a second thought to hand it over to the algorithm, you know, uh, because of the fact that we are creating the algorithm. So Pixel up Pixelboy and I were going back and forth for a long time on the algo, right? Is this what we want? Is this the right texture? You know, and this is all P5. None of this is, you know, I don't, I think we maybe pulled one library, you know. So this is like pure code. Um, and that was the idea was to mimic my art style as well as the instructions of Omandala out to code and see if it was able to reproduce. And sure as shit, if you look at my generative project, there is not at one doubt in your mind which artist that comes from. You know, you're like, oh, there's the space background, there's the paper textures, there's the shadows, you know. Um, that was all built into the algorithm. None of that is me in any kind of art program.

SPEAKER_00: 11:47

Well, I guess it kind of is though, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01: 11:50

Yeah, yeah, you're right, technically.

SPEAKER_00: 11:52

When you're working on collage pieces, how do you decide when a work is finished? Or do you ever have to stop yourself from overtuning?

SPEAKER_01: 12:02

Yeah, that's interesting. That's a that's a problem I've had more recently. So early in my career, it was really easy to know when something was done. It was like, boom, that's done. Um, and and kind of my method is very reductive, right? I start with a whole bunch of shit and then start taking things away. I'm cutting things out of the picture, I'm not cutting things in, right? Um, so by nature, I'm removing unnecessary things. And uh lately I've gone too far more times than not where I've I've learned too much. And that's I don't know what's causing that, uh, but it's something that maybe started in the last three months or so. And I'm just like, whoa, I took too much. I got to put some more shit back in there. Uh, you know, and so really for me, it's a thing of symmetry. It's um, I do a lot of screen tests. So I will put the work up and walk, how far is that? About 40 feet away, blur my eyes and say, okay, what's that look like? And then I'll put it really small and put it on my laptop. What does that look like? I'll put it on my phone. What does that look like? Um, and really what I'm trying to do is create a sense of symmetry and harmony, uh, both you know, with the imagery, but also with the colors uh from far away. So, you know, you look at it and it looks like a complete work, and then you get close and you're like, of course it is a complete work, and then you get close and you're like, oh shit, there is a lot going on here. You know, I thought that that was part of his hand, or I thought that this thing was part of Buddha's face, you know. Uh, but then when I get closer, it's very different.

SPEAKER_00: 13:35

You've shown your work online and in galleries. What's different about seeing someone stand in front of your work in person?

SPEAKER_01: 13:45

That so I tell all of my friends this. If you're going, if you have a gallery show, recruit three or four people to take pictures of folks looking at your work. Because that is the most at for me, the most impactful image that I still carry in my head today is if I'm at a gallery show and I look over and I see people staring, especially if it's just a silhouette and they're just in awe, right? And it really makes me feel special. It makes me feel like I'm creating something special, like I'm connecting in a special way. And unfortunately, that is super lost and digital. You know, it's like I got no idea, man, if that guy bought that because he's speculating, if he bought that because he's a Buddhist, if he bought that because he likes comic books, or if he even likes it, if he's even a he, you know what I mean? Uh, and so there's a lot lost in translation there. And those gallery shows definitely I feel like they give me personal legitimacy and and ammo to keep going.

SPEAKER_00: 14:47

Now you've called Tezos a counterculture chain. What makes it feel that way to you?

SPEAKER_01: 14:57

Man, that's a tough one. Like I've been a I've been involved in a lot of counterculture movements throughout my life. Uh, you know, growing up on the West Coast, big involvement in the rave scene in the 90s when that happened, big involvement in the LSD scene, still to this day. Uh, you know, multi-generational hash guy, you know, so part of the weed counterculture movement, uh, part of the, you know, obviously the music with that. Uh Web3 in general is counterculture, you know, but Tez specifically is fucking punk rock, right? I lived in Seattle for a while, and this Tezos still to this day has the same vibe as grunge of like, uh, it took a minute for subpop records to come up and be a thing. Nirvana was already rocking around town. And and so it feels very much like that scene where we're just making new stuff or tinkering, and especially as attention continues to shift away from Tezos, continues to shift to Ethereum, continues to shift to other chains, it actually makes Tezos feel even more counterculture, right? Because who the fuck is selling their work for two bucks, man? That's half a cup of coffee in the United States. Uh, you know, and so that is people doing it for the love of the game. That's people innovating because you can innovate, because it's accessible. Uh, you know, I look at Ethereum, I've talked about this before. Being a validator on Ethereum is 32 ETH. Bro, what the fuck? How many people do you know that have 32 ETH to just be like, I'm gonna go be a part of the network? Done. But 600 TES, I think you can swing it, you know, and so the accessibility to the tools that other chains are already using, that's a thing we don't talk enough about. Yo, you can go vibecode your own token works and run it on top of Tesla's right now. You can vibe code that shit today. Uh, you would have a real hard time doing that on Ethereum. You know, there's already a ton of stuff happening over there. Um, so that's that's a part of it. The other part is that I think Tezos is truly a global culture, right? And um, that's one of the reasons, big reasons I chose to make Tezos my home chain, is uh I'm talking to an international audience. Hello. Uh I'm using international art. Hello, I'm trying to do East Meets West. Hi, you know, so it doesn't make sense for me to be on a US-centric chain like base. Eat a dick, dude. You guys don't know anything. I'm gonna go talk to the people that are actually in Turkey, the people that are actually in Tibet, the people actually in China. You know, that's who we're working with here. My family lives in Indonesia. Uh shout out to the Indonesian uh contingency on Tezos, huge, right? Um, so I feel like I'm part of a way bigger global counterculture movement with Tezos.

SPEAKER_00: 17:38

Do you remember your first mint or that moment you realized this wasn't just another NFT scene?

SPEAKER_01: 17:45

Yeah, actually, I came in Tez as a collector first. So fun fact, big collector, love collecting. Uh, I came in during a Turkish event. And so, you know, there was some political turmoil in Turkey at the time. This must have been 2020, 2021. Um, they actually disabled crypto, they shut down crypto, they were becoming, I don't know, looking like they were ramping up to be a dictatorship. It was looking real bad. And all of a sudden, there was an event on Tezos supporting Turkish artists that were minting for like one Tez. They were basically saying, Fuck you, government, watch me mint this stuff, watch me have the freedom to transact in the crypto world, and watch me like uh buck the system. And I was instantly in love. I was like, yo, this is this is for me. I'm like, that speaks to my ethos in a huge way. I joined uh blockchain-related stuff in 2013 specifically to burn down the banks, to buck the system, to tear down the government. Like, bro, I'm here for that. I'm not here for your mass adoption to JP Morgan. Fuck you. You know, that is literally creating the same systems we're trying to replace. So uh that's not what I was here for. So when I saw that on Tezos, I immediately fell in love. I was like, yo, this is international. We're actually doing things that create impact in people's lives. It's accessible to everyday people, whether their country allows it or not. Um, it is censorship resistant, it is basically the proof of stake version of Bitcoin. I'm bucking in. Uh, and so that those were my realizations early days with Tez.

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

And now you're running a bakery. What made you want to move from creating to actually securing the network?

SPEAKER_01: 19:34

Uh okay, so some maybe controversial stuff here. Uh like I said, I collect, I'm also a DG and I'm big in DeFi. I love technical analysis of a chart. I play a lot of coins. So you do the TA on Tezos and it's grim. You do the TA on Tezos right now, and we're in what's called a long-term accumulation phase. That means that the room to the bottom is significantly little compared to the room to the top. In other words, if you were to slip back 50%, you would be at the all-time low of Tezos. Who gives a shit? But it on the other end, if you were to go up to the all-time high, you're looking at an 800% gain. All right. Everybody that uh knows anything about trading is just gonna accumulate until you see the until you see the volume start to pick up. What do I say, what do I mean when I say volume? I mean fucking Etherlink. And I mean the video games they're playing, and I mean the perpetual markets, and I mean all the shit that Tezos artists are complaining about is what's gonna bring TVL to Tezos, what's gonna make the coin go back up. Okay. Uh it's hard for me to make a living minting my art at 66 cents a coin. Fucking straight up, dude. That is not enough. Dropping a 20 edition, not enough to pay any bill, enough to maybe get dinner in the US, in Detroit, at least. It's maybe enough to go out to dinner by myself. So that's not gonna cut it economically speaking. Well, what will cut it, right? Fucking baking will. I remember two years ago meeting a guy at one of my events in Austin who was a Solana delegator, and this guy had more money than God, and he was socially awkward and a weirdo, and I loved every minute of it. And I was like, yo, what do you do, man? It's like I'm a Solana delegator. I was like, okay. Uh, how the fuck did you do that? Because that's like 2,000 saw times$220, because it was like all-time high at the time. Uh, I was like, that's uh that's unattainable. And he looked at me and he went, I got in when it was 50 cents. Ah, I see you. Okay. And so the all those things started to align. And I was like, I I've always wanted to be a baker. I want to support the my home chain. I want to um create economic opportunities for myself on that chain. What's the best way for me to do that? Dude, the Solana guy already told me Tezos is at 66 cents. Go start your baker, dummy. And then in three years, you'll show up to the party. And people be like, How the fuck are you so rich? You'd be like, I started a Tezos baker. Oh, how did you afford that, man? That's crazy. It's like 25 grand to do that. No, man, it was 600 when I did it at 66 cents. You know, so I had this opportunity, this realization, right place, right time, you know. Um, and not making as much as I wanted to on my art drops forced me to innovate, forced me to look at other stuff. And now I've got this really awesome mechanic in my ecosystem where I can reward my stakers with art. Uh, you know, I can do special allow list opportunities for people that are delegating and staking. It just opens up an entirely new world for me. Uh, and with with token works and what's happening on ETH and the eventual adoption of that to Tezos, it adds an extra piece of ammo. Like, wow, I could take those taxes and put it into staking on my baker and then take those rewards and put it into my vault. And you know, my vault can start maintaining the floor on my collection. Like that stuff is super wild. And I don't know how many people are really thinking about that in Tezos ecosystem.

SPEAKER_00: 23:04

Well, a lot of people see staking and baking as finance, and you've talked about it more like patronage. Can you expand a little bit more on that?

SPEAKER_01: 23:14

Yeah, definitely. You know, I I think it is a mix of the of the both. Um, you know, obviously I got into it because of my DeFi acumen or whatever you want to call it. Um, but I do see it. Yeah, yeah, degenerate. I do see it as a uh as the as a potential future for um digital patronage, right? And one of the problems with patronage that we currently talk about, you know, the the big whale that's like, I buy art that I love to support communities and you know that it supports the art is fucking bullshit. Because after you buy 50 pieces from me, then what? You're gonna buy 51, 52, 53? Well, man, it's been a year. I still have a kid, I still have a wife, I still got a house, I still got bills, right? And so a better way to go about that, only by the art that you love from me. If you vibe with me and you love what I'm saying, but maybe you're like a hardcore Roman Catholic and just like having Buddhist imagery is not your vibe. Fucking bet, bro. Stake on me, no problem. Because by you staking on me, I get to bake a block. And when I bake a block, I get a reward. It's not a lot right now, but it's compounding interest, it's about scale. So as I get more and more people staking on me, those rewards get bigger and bigger to the point where now I have a steady paycheck. Holy shit, I just went from wild volatility to like I can count on$2,000 every two weeks. You know, I can count on a thousand bucks a week. Now I can safely move on to bigger, better things. One of the problems I've had is waxing and waning interest back in 2021, fucking killing it, bro. I couldn't mint anything without it selling out. Uh, 2024, fucking crickets, nothing, right? I think I made maybe five grand in that whole year. And so uh what that does to me is I had to scale back my big ambitions. I had to scale back these big art projects that I wanted to do. I had to scale back the new technology refresh that I need to get done in order to use some of these new tools, right? Literally running out of megabytes and not being able to afford more of them. And so, as fucking ridiculous as it is to say, that's a very real thing. You know, people that have been here for five years, your computer was made in 2020. You're trying to use 2025 tools on a five-year-old computer. Bro, you got to get a technology refresh. And so, all of these things, they don't work if you're waxing and waning interest. They don't work if you're not the top artist for five years in a row. And that's just not that that'll never happen for anybody. Maybe X copy, but I doubt it. I think even he at some point will no longer be the darling, you know, and that's just the way it is. You can't stay famous forever. And so, what is the more um realistic way to approach it? Create steady income for yourself anywhere, somehow, any any way. And for me, that was the the easiest call was to support the Tezos network that I love, continue to grow it, continue to be active on Tezos, use some of those rewards for collecting, use the rest of it to live, bada bing, bada boom.

SPEAKER_00: 26:33

Since going live as a baker, have you noticed any changes in how you view collectors, artists, and validators working together?

SPEAKER_01: 26:43

I'm definitely a lot more in tune with it. Um, you know, I'm I'm in chats with obviously you become a baker and you get into all those chats. There's not a whole lot of art folks in there, but they're all way interested in what I'm doing. They're like, yo, you're like the first artist we've seen come through. This is really exciting for us. Um, because it really is bridging two worlds that don't talk. Uh, the baker homies, they collect, but they don't really talk out in the art world. Some of the biggest, most well-known bakers have like three or four likes on every one of their tweets. And I'm like, what the fuck, guys? This is breaking bad. You guys aren't listening to him? Like, what's going on? You know, uh, this is primate. You're not listening to what he has to say. What's wrong with you? Zero just came through and said something and he's got 10 likes. You know, what the fuck? Uh, and I know we don't have all the interest, right? But uh bridging those two worlds, I think, is really important. You know, it's really important for artists to see just how accessible this is. Um, there were very I had some technical limitations, but I was able to overcome them in the first week with the help of AI and everybody in the chats, no problem. As in technical limitations, as in, I couldn't use the command line interface on my Mac because I didn't know fucking Linux well. I could use a uh GUI on Linux, but I could never have gotten into a command prompt. And within a week, no problem, dude. We had modified the Baker software to run on Mac OS so any artists that come after me can run it through their command line. I've got a really great knowledge of how it all works. Took less than a week of just learning, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 28:21

That's awesome. Now, your online presence, it mixes humor, spirituality, and community. How do you stay grounded when things get noisy in crypto?

SPEAKER_01: 28:35

Sometimes the best action is non-action. So when shit gets spicy, I typically become a uh fly on the wall, you know, and then like I've seen one of my group chats got real spicy the other day, and I didn't say much. And every now and then I would come in and lovingly say some kind of something to the effect of chill out, babes. You know, you're all right, we're here for a while. Uh, a little bit of humor, a little bit of hey, don't take things so seriously. Um, but sometimes it's non-action. I don't have to say something every single time online. And a lot of people feel they do for the algo or for whatever, or they want to go kiss some collector's ass. And it's like, dude, it's really apparent, homie, that you're kissing that guy's ass because he just bought your work and you want him to buy your work again. So maybe I'm saying the quiet part out loud, I don't know. But I choose not to engage in that kind of behavior because it's not good for my mental, for my mental. It's not good for me spiritually to do that. Um, and it's not very fun, right? I'm here to have fun, I'm here to fuck around. Uh, that's what life is about. You can't take it too seriously. And so, really reminding people to do stuff, breathe, bro. Oh, holy shit, you need to take it easy, only like let's go drink some water, you know, let's go smoke some weed, relax. Um, and I guess. Yeah, exactly. And I do that in real and real world scenarios all the time. I'll come up to somebody and give them a little rub on the back, you know, some big ass. Well, we're at the Toledo Art Museum. They're getting all butthurt talking to Adam about token works. And I'm like, hey, it's gonna be okay. Your bags will be fine. You know, and I just kind of rub their back and they're like, Oh, you're right.

SPEAKER_00: 30:12

Oh man. Well, you've hinted at a collector reward system that uses games of strategy and chance. What inspired that idea?

SPEAKER_01: 30:23

So I've I've always been a tinkerer with utility. I've always like had lots of fun stuff for my community to engage in. We did a huge uh project called the Paper Buddha Buddies a long time ago, not a long time ago, a few years ago. And um, you know, those all came with different elements, and people could redeem them and create their own 101s out of additions and you know, uh have special commissions within the whole collection. And and it went really well. We had a blast with it. Um, really early on, we did uh one of my Discord mods, uh RIP Discord, we did a tribute, uh a paper Buddha tribute, which was a lot of fun, and a whole bunch of people just did their artistic take on a paper Buddha piece. And so these things have historically been the best performers, the most fun, the best way for me to engage with my community. And so I wanted to kick it up a notch. I wanted to say, okay, now that we've got this baker thing here, um, there's really fun ways uh for me. I have a huge vault across multiple chains. So there's a really cool way for me to be rewarding Tezos stakers with Ethereum pieces or reward, you know, Tezos delegators, you know, with access to uh limited 101 drops that only they can bid on. You know, only people that are staking are uh eligible to get this drop. You know, so there's a lot of fun that I can have with that. Um, not to mention, again, coming back to the actual rewards for baking and me being able to distribute that not only back to the delegators and stakers, but then maybe a wallet that holds the temple Buddha, uh the temple vault, right? That's what we call it, all of my paper Buddha work. And uh, you know, maybe it's able to maintain a floor so that you as the collector, if you buy one of my addition pieces at 20 Tez, there's instantly a 20 Tez offer on the floor. So if you ever don't like it, you just simply sell it back to the vault for what you bought it for and go on about your business or get the next piece that you really like. You know, um, so it's it's really applying kind of a holistic strategy, knowing that I'm multi-chain and that being a multi-chain artist is an issue people are actively trying to solve. If you look at raster.art, raster art right now is multi-chain, Tezos ETH. If you go there and you look at my work, you can actually see both of those things next to each other, making it really easy for you to find the arbitrage opportunities. If you're one of my ETH collectors and you see my Tez floor, somebody accepts an offer at fucking$2. You should be irate. You should come over to Tezos and immediately clean up the floor so it starts to match, right? If you don't, that's fine. I'm working on it. I've got an MCP stack with AI agents. One of my goals this year is to create an automated on-chain way to create equilibrium across collections for for artists. I find it absolutely crazy that people will top blast one of my ETH 101s at two ETH to buy it, and then I'll have a 101 sit on Tezos forever and sell for 20, 20 bucks. Bro, that is crazy. Are you not looking at my Tezos chain? What's going on here? You know, so so having fun with uh holistic strategies across these chains, not just on Tezos, because we're part of a bigger ecosystem. We're not in an echo chamber. You know, I want to be able to onboard my Tezos people to Ethereum, to Solana, to Bitcoin, to Avalanche. I want to be able to onboard those people back to Tezos, right? We can look at Des Lacrest and we can see the success of onboarding his one-on-one collectors from Ethereum over to Tezos and how much liquidity that brings, how much it raises his floor, how much it creates excitement, and how much it exposes new people to Tezos.

SPEAKER_00: 34:23

Now, as both an artist and a collector, what have you learned from watching people interact with your work?

SPEAKER_01: 34:34

That's interesting. That's an interesting question. Because I usually come at it the other way, which is like, what can I learn as an artist from being a collector? Right. And a lot of that is like how I set up my utility, how I set up my community, how I set up a drop is based on my experience as a collector. You know, uh, really early in my career, someone said if you want to be a great artist in this space, you should be a great collector. Because you'll never understand how to communicate to the collector unless you are one. You know, period. End of story. It's all hypothetical if you're not actually a collector. You know, you're just thinking that this is the way it is, but you'll never get the insight of like, ugh, that felt really gross the way that artist did that. Let me dissect that and figure out why I didn't like that and then make sure I don't do the same thing. Or you look at somebody, I'll use Jack Butcher as an example on the East side, who, you know, just yesterday, a bunch of activity around his collection. And if he wasn't in there and he wasn't involved, uh, like on a very real level uh with tokens token works and with all of that stuff that just happened there, it would not have been a success, right? If he hadn't had the experience of being a collector previous, he wouldn't have known how to talk to those guys about what to do with his project, right? And so I I find that that is is more my learnings, my learnings are coming from that. Um, and it's also interesting because I'm primarily a generative art collector. 80% of my bag is generative art, right? Which is not doesn't follow the same rules as fine art on on-chain.

SPEAKER_00: 36:14

No. No, if you could go back to talk to the version of you who was just discovering NFTs, what advice would you give him?

SPEAKER_01: 36:26

Uh let's see. What advice would I give? I don't think I have too many regrets as far as being a collector. I paper handed a couple of things. Um I would say be more conservative with your wins. You know, I've had a lot of wins. Um, I'm the guy that like spends 90% of my win on art, which is not the way to go. You're just supposed to spend 10%. 10% of your win goes to the art. And then 90% should be going to DeFi or to, you know, staking stuff or you know, farms over here, getting your money to work for you. So if I I think I would have, if I would have looked at it more financialized from day one, I think I would have done better. Um, as far as my own personal station, like uh in life after the fact, right? You we can all look good when you go look at an ETH collection and you see that I've done 70 ETH on my additions. That looks great. Until you go, that's over five years. He's a father and a husband and lives in the United States. That shit is long gone, bro. That barely covers his expenses for that long, you know. Um, so I think we have this kind of weird misconception when we see a big number in in on on crypto, right? I look at Kim Asendor's stuff right now. I'm like, this shit is moving today. All of this money that she's getting, it's gonna be great for a year and then it's gonna be fucking gone. And I hope she's still, I hope she's smart enough to take 90% and put it into what I just talked about. If she's not, she's gonna be just like me, sitting here, like, I hope people bought my next job, you know. Um, which of course we all go through that stuff. That's completely natural. Nobody should feel weird about the ebb and flow of financial stuff in their life. Peaks and valleys is the name of the game. Uh, but I would I would have given myself some advice that probably would have helped me smooth that out a little bit more. Um, and it doesn't sound much different than what I would have told 12-year-old me about fiat. Hey man, you should probably save a little bit more. You know, maybe don't buy all the drugs, maybe just a little bit of drugs. You know.

SPEAKER_00: 38:37

Oh well, looking ahead, what's next for paper Buddha? New art, more baking, or something that brings both together?

SPEAKER_01: 38:48

Yeah, it's really both. It's it's uh, you know, increasing my banking presence quite a quite significantly. Uh, I'm not happy with where I'm at with the amount of uh in my baker. I want to add a lot more, I want to open up more staking, uh, which requires me to put more money into it. Okay, great. In order for me to put more money into it, I need to have some successful art drops. And so uh I've got, I was just telling my community this morning, I've done 48 pieces in the last three days. Uh completed them, completed them. So a lot of them were in the pipeline, workflow had begun, and I just had to finish them. And so I've got a big drop tomorrow on Ethereum that is Marfa related. If for those that don't know, uh Marfa, Texas, Art Blocks does a huge event down there in the middle of the high desert once a year. Uh, very high signal, low noise. It's something that I go to often. I love the South. I love getting to wear my cowboy hat and be out in the middle of nowhere. And so I've made cowboy-related art, you know, a big part of pulp magazines uh and pulp comics is the Western, is Western art, right? This was the primary form of entertainment as people were uh stabbing westward, as people were settling the West, Gold Rush times, cowboy times. They were reading pulp comics. And so um, I've got a big drop with uh with 101s, with additions, with bitters editions, all of that stuff on my sovereign contract through Transient Labs. Um, and that will be really showcased throughout MARFA. Got it on a couple of displays so that we can enjoy that. And then when I come back, um, I did a big collection on rodeo honoring the red paper envelope in Asian culture, the lucky red envelope. And uh full set collectors of all 108 of those that were released last year, they're getting one at once. And so I finished most of those last night. Uh, they will be getting minted when I come back from Marfa and dropped to the holders. We're gonna try to do a Miami get together where I'm gonna give them some signed physicals. Um then I've got a spooky drop for Halloween that's coming up. I've got two really great pieces done for that. Um, and then really starting to work on my Miami Art Basil release, which is uh something uh visually different for me. It's gonna be a lot of fun, I think. Uh, you know, looking at some of those kind of Tarzan uh jungle type of pulps. You know, there's a ton of those that are like women in cheetah cloths, kind of cheesecakey, a lot of fun that I think matches Miami pretty well. So uh working on that, I've got a couple of shows there, and that'll take us through 2026. Um, all of those things, financially speaking, will be rolling into Pungster or into my uh my baker, right? Pungster, for those of you that don't know, is this like completely new narrative. I've said token works a billion times in this. It's a new narrative that's happening on Ethereum. It's basically a coin with a tax. That tax buys the floor up and relists it higher. For all intents and purposes, it's all you need to know. Uh you know, fucking crazy stuff. Crazy time to be alive, no-brainer to put a little bit of money in there and then start to put it into my baker, which is my long-term savings for me and my community.

SPEAKER_00: 42:14

Well, that's a wrap for today's Tez Talk Radio. Paper Buddha, I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your story from art and collage to running a bakery on Tezos. You can follow Paper Buddha on X at Paper Buddha and see his work on Tezos through Object and FX Ash. Thanks to everyone tuning in. Make sure to catch our next episode of Tez Talks Radio. Until then, keep building, keep creating, and we'll see you next time.