Art with the EVM and Zero Knowledge Proofs

Speaker: Paul In this talk, I'll explore how smart contracts can overcome their common use as mere transaction mechanisms for digital art. While the ERC-721 standard sparked the NFT Hype, it also inadvertently created a disconnect between artwork and underlying code, where smart contracts often serve only as pointers to external media. Drawing inspiration from the demoscene of the 1980s—where artists pushed the boundaries of limited hardware to create stunning real-time animations—I'll demonstrate how we can approach smart contracts as a self-contained artistic medium. Through practical examples and historical parallels, we'll explore how the materiality of code itself can become the artwork, moving beyond the current paradigm where NFTs typically serve as simple references to off-chain content. We'll look at how this approach connects to broader traditions of computational art while offering new possibilities unique to blockchain technology and zero knowledge proofs