Generative Collection
Crystallized Illusions
Inspired by Buddhist philosophy, Crystallized Illusions is a collection of 99 pieces created through a generative process.
Three variations of this process were made to correspond to the categories of illusions as described by Zhiyi (538–597 CE), the fourth patriarch of the T’ien-t’ai (or Tí Taî) Buddhist tradition.
The Project
Each of the three variations of the generative process was used to created 33 distinct images.
Crystallized Illusions set 1: Thought and Desire (33 images on black)
Crystallized Illusions set 2: Innumerable (33 images on white)
Crystallized Illusions set 3: True Nature (33 images on gray)
Each image has a complexity attribute that correlates to the final image’s scale, and this is denoted in each image’s name (1-33). Images in each set grow from 1500 x 1500 pixels to 6300 x 6300 pixels, and they are all consistent with one another (for example, Thought and Desire 7, Innumerable 7, and True Nature 7 all share the same resolution).









The official collection can be seen here.
The first version of this project was launched on Opensea’s shared contract to save gas while Ethereum was experiencing extremely high gas costs in 2021. I’ve enhanced the project, given it it’s own smart contract, renamed the first version of the project ‘v1’, and I encourange all v1 owners to bridge their tokens to the new contract.
Bridging delivers:
- interactive tokens revealing new art
- an airdropped edition of the same type of ‘illusion’, but animated.
- better decentralization (Opensea shared contract content is only accessible from OS servers!)
- better web3 interoperability (OS shared contract pieces can’t be shown in all galleries, currently)
- better permalinks
The only downside is that gas costs to transfer the tokens increase because the token type is switching from erc-1155 to erc-721.
Bridging is easy: owners coordinate with Matto on his discord, send the v1 token back to MonkMatto.eth, and MonkMatto.eth sends the new token and airdrop reward to the same account.