Autoglyphs

Autoglyphs are 512 drawings made of text characters, generated by the same Ethereum contract that holds them. They are the work of Larva Labs. Each glyph is a 64 by 64 grid in which every cell holds one of nine marks: a circle, a plus sign, an X, a straight line in one of four directions, a filled square or a blank. The marks repeat and mirror across the grid, and Larva Labs describes the results as patterns "simple at first glance but rich in internal variation." The contract also carries instructions for drawing a glyph by hand, in the spirit of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, so a glyph can be made at any size.

Matt Hall and John Watkinson launched the project in April 2019, two years after CryptoPunks. They wanted to see whether an artwork could be created on the blockchain itself rather than only recorded there. Anyone could mint a glyph by calling the contract. The first 128 were free and went to Larva Labs, and every paid glyph sent its fee straight to the climate group 350.org. All 512 were gone within hours of the public launch. The contract stores no image. Ask it to draw a glyph and it computes the same grid of characters every time.

Larva Labs calls Autoglyphs the first art project "both generated and stored entirely on-chain." The Centre Pompidou accepted Autoglyph #25 as a gift from Larva Labs in 2023, and the Whitney Museum of American Art holds Autoglyph #115. Collectors chase full sets, one glyph from each of the ten symbol schemes, and Curated counted only seven in 2023. One of them, a dev set of ten glyphs all numbered under 100, sold privately in 2024. It is the largest Autoglyphs sale on record.