What the heck is a Hashmask?

Before Hashmasks, DANNY (@seedphrase on Twitter), an anonymous digital art collector, had never considered displaying digital art on his wall. 

“I loved the intricate detail of each piece and how everything wove together into a cultural mosaic,” he said. 

DANNY loved it enough to shell out 420 ETH — about $650,000 at purchasing time — for what he calls a “mystical halo demon” Hashmask (seen below).

DANNY is far from the only one who has become entranced by the colorful and mysterious art collection that has become the latest non-fungible token-based sensation. But at least part of the draw is the sheer number of dollars being thrown around. 

The Hashmasks founders, who remain anonymous, launched the project about a month ago. In the primary sale, buyers reserved Hashmask portraits — without knowing beforehand what the artwork looked like — by depositing ETH in a smart contract. In less than a week, the team sold the whole collection of 16,384 NFTs for $16 million.

Now, there are secondary markets for Hashmasks on platforms including Opensea and Rarible. A number have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and two — including DANNY’s demon — have cracked the top 10 richest NFT sales on record.

Why are DANNY and others throwing so much cash at Hashmasks? It’s hard to answer that without first answering this one: What the heck is a Hashmask? 

Mysterious origins

The website for Hashmasks describes them as a “living digital art collectible.” But in many ways, they are similar to existing NFT-based collectibles like CryptoKitties and CryptoPunks. Each features a unique set of traits, for instance, and the items that were minted first tend to be more valuable than those created later.

In DANNY’s view, what sets Hashmask apart from other NFT projects is the variety of available qualities and characteristics. “There are multiple complex layers to each piece, creating implicit subsets within the defined parameters,” he said.

According to an explainer on Medium written by the Hashmask team, each Hashmask collectible has features that belong to six “pillars,”: explicit traits, subcategories of these explicit traits, implicit traits, hidden messages, an “index,” which is a reference to when it was minted, and a name. 

Explicit traits, a roster of which appears on the website, include character (male, female, “mystical” or robot, among others), mask (animal, “street” and “basic” to name a few) eye color (“freak,” “glass” and “mystical” are three examples), skin color (similar to eye color) and items (“Shadow Monkey” and “Golden Toilet Paper” stand out). 

Take DANNY’s mystical halo demon, for example. Its character is mystical, its mask is unique, its eye and skin colors are also mystical and it has no items. 

Implicit traits, on the other hand, are not listed on the website and can’t really be categorized. These can include backgrounds, hairstyles, hair colors, and more. Sometimes they even include hidden messages or qualities that are not immediately obvious to the observer. 

The traits were designed by a group of 70 artists recruited by the Hashmask team. Each artist was given a specific task. Some only created masks, others created backgrounds, some created items. But no one besides the team knows who they are.

“They’ve made a point of hiding the identity of the artists behind the project,” said NFT investor and original Hashmask buyer VonMises (who is also anonymous). “I’m not sure what their reasons are.” 

"We wanted all the art to be united under the Hashmasks brand given the decentralized process for how the art was developed in the first place," the team told The Block. 

What’s in a name?

But the main thing that makes Hashmasks unique as an NFT collectible is that the name of each Hashmask is changeable. This is possible thanks to ERC20 tokens, called “NameChangeTokens” (NCT), which the Hashmask team developed. NCTs give holders the ability to name their Hashmasks or even gift someone the ability to do so. 

The creators added this feature because they wanted to give collectors the ability to influence the value of the artwork. In a post published on February 12, they said their initial idea had been to let the community participate in the creation of the art itself, but because the collection had to be hashed on-chain this would not be possible. So, they settled on changeable names.

“By allowing users to change one significant part of the collectible, we have successfully handed the community a robust tool to contribute to the value hierarchy formation,” the team wrote in the post. “Everyone has a name, everyone has a username, and the concept of naming resonates with everyone regardless of your culture, age, or background. It works.”

The customization component is compelling, but there could have been more to it, argues DANNY. “It would have been nice to see added utility outside of simply changing the name of your Hashmasks, such as a more gamified aspect, where you can use your NCT to upgrade certain attributes (such as changing the color of a mask) for a more personalized touch."

The Hashmasks team said they have no present plans to add more functions to NCTs. 

 VonMises said it might also help if the story behind the art was a bit less mysterious. “Maybe giving out a little more information about the artists could potentially get more people interested.”

The success of the Hashmask collection may be largely the product of good timing, he said. NFTs are booming along with everything else in crypto.  

“People liked the project and thought, well, I’m too late for Cryptopunks, they’ve gone up a lot, I’m too late for other things, but this might be the project I make a lot of money on,” VonMises said. "And the returns have been crazy.”