Pak, formerly known as Murat Pak, is a digital artist,

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

investor, and

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

. Pak is known for creating the curation platform Archillect, an

internet bot An Internet bot, web robot, robot, or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks ( scripts) on the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet bot plays the ...

which reshares media based on user interactions with content hosted on various social platforms and for launching a platform for burning (permanently removing from circulation) NFTs to receive tokens of the cryptocurrency Ash. Pak is best known for working with

non-fungible tokens In economics and law, fungibility is the property of something whose individual units are considered fundamentally interchangeable with each other. For example, the fungibility of money means that a $100 bill (note) is considered entirely equi ...

. Pak's highest-selling NFT, "Merge", generated $91.8 million in sales in December 2021 and is one of the most expensive non-fungible tokens. Pak's NFTs have been sold on platforms including

Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, SuperRare, and Async Art.

History

The identity of Pak is unknown and some speculate that it may be a team. Pak is also credited for having introduced Beeple to NFTs in October 2020. Between February 2020 and April 2022, more than 180,300 NFTs by Pak were sold across the primary and secondary markets, raising $394.9 million.

Archillect

In 2014, Pak created Archillect (a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

and

intellect Intellect is a faculty of the human mind that enables reasoning, abstraction, conceptualization, and judgment. It enables the discernment of truth and falsehood, as well as higher-order thinking beyond immediate perception. Intellect is dis ...

), an

that acts as a curation platform. It searches through

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

and posts images to several social media platforms. Posts are selected in order to be shared as widely as possible, adapting to provide more of the content people are sharing. Archillect has been compared to AI composer Emily Howell as examples of "artistic bots". It has also been described as a mood board. Pak described Archillect as a "digital

muse In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...

" and refers to it as "she". The account has been criticized for sharing content without attribution or with poor attribution. A second account was created to post attribution or sources for images when available and Pak has claimed to take down images on request, though this reactive approach has also been criticized.

NFTs

Style

Pak is known for a style that takes advantage of blockchain technology, specifically its smart contracts, described as an appeal to cryptocurrency fans. The images associated with Pak's NFTs use geometric shapes or programmatically generated images. Pak frequently embeds hidden messages into NFTs, and uses social media platforms in a candid way to promote and discuss them. Pak's use of NFTs has been described as challenging the concepts of value and ownership.

Works

Pak's first NFT, "Cloud Monument Dark", was released on February 3, 2020 on SuperRare, an NFT marketplace. In August 2020, Pak released project "X" on NiftyGateway, an "open edition" sale of NFTs with a scarcity mechanism based on time rather than volume. Thirteen NFTs were offered for sale in multiples for a window of twenty-four hours. In March 2021, Charles Stewart, CEO of

, announced a partnership with Pak to launch the auction house's first NFT sale. This partnership resulted in "The Fungible", an open edition which generated $16.8 million in sales across 6,156 NFTs over two days. The Sotheby's sale and subsequent press raised Pak's public profile, specifically with regards to the role of NFTs in the art world. As part of Pak's partnership with Sotheby's, Pak also auctioned "The Pixel", which sold for $1.36 million, and "The Switch", which sold for $1.4 million. On October 15, 2021,

launched the "Sotheby's Metaverse", a digital art platform for selling and curating NFTs, which offers users a unique personal profile picture generated by Pak. On December 2, 2021, Pak launched the sale of "Merge" on Nifty Gateway. "Merge" was made available for 48 hours, with buyers able to purchase "mass units" rather than individual copies of an NFT edition. Buyers received a single NFT with its associated image generated based the transaction metadata and the number of "mass units" purchased. In total, 312,686 mass units were sold to 28,983 buyers generating $91.8 million. In February 2022, "Censored", a series of NFTs, were auctioned as a fundraiser for the legal defense of

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of News leak, leaks from Chels ...

. One NFT, "The Clock", was sold for 16,593

ETH Eth ( , uppercase: ⟨Ð⟩, lowercase: ⟨ð⟩; also spelled edh or eð), known as in Old English, is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese (in which it is called ), and Elfdalian. It was also used in Sca ...

($52.8 million) to AssangeDAO, an online community of 10,000 people who pooled cryptocurrency for the bid. A second auction as part of "Censored" raised 671 ETH, approximately worth $2.1 million at that time, for separate organizations. $1.9 million in cryptocurrency from the Censored sale was donated to the Ukraine government.

References

External links

Official website

Archillect
Living people People associated with Ethereum Year of birth missing (living people) Unidentified people