Justin Trimble's Art Blocks profile describes a BrainDrops cofounder, a claimer of CryptoPunks, a participant in Art Blocks from its test network and first day, and a part of the MoonCats rediscovery. The wallets linked to that profile hold 80 Art Blocks artworks. Seventy-two of them sit inside the AB[500], across 32 of its 500 projects. [1] [2]
- Profile
- Justin Trimble on Art Blocks
- Linked wallets
- 0xb668…9b1d · 0xdf4c…3913 · 0x0872…60d4 · 0xa449…e72c
- Art Blocks
- 80 artworks
- AB[500]
- 72 works across 32 projects
- abTDH
- 4,293,917 · +2,500 per day · method
Entry into blockchain and crypto art
The fullest public account of Trimble's path is a December 2021 conversation on Andrew Steinwold's Zima Red podcast, summarised by The Reading Ape. It describes someone who came to crypto art from art and music. He studied psychology, went to business school, and moved to Nashville to play bass and write songs. By 2015, with the first Oculus development kit in circulation, he was looking for ways to combine art with virtual reality. [4]
Crypto arrived in stages. The summary records that he heard about Bitcoin in 2013 and dismissed it, then returned to the field around 2015 and 2016 through other coins and trading. CryptoPunks changed the frame. A message about the project on Twitter made sense to him because he understood digital provenance, and he claimed a few Punks with help from the project's community. He did not take many. I didn't go crazy. I wish I had gone more crazy
, the summary has him saying. [4]
During the quiet market of 2018 and 2019 he returned to virtual reality and art. In early 2020 he sensed activity gathering again and turned fully to crypto and NFTs, becoming an active presence in the CryptoPunks Discord, where he helped newcomers find their way in. [4]
His profile also claims a part in the rediscovery of MoonCats. MoonCatRescue was deployed on Ethereum in August 2017 and then largely forgotten. In March 2021 collectors found the contract still open, and the remaining cats were rescued within hours. The episode helped give a name to the practice of searching the chain for early, overlooked work. The role is recorded here as Trimble's own statement. [2] [6]
Art Blocks holdings
Art Blocks opened on 27 November 2020 with three projects: Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro, Genesis by DCA and Construction Token by Jeff Davis. Trimble's main wallet holds works from all three that were minted that day: Chromie Squiggles #242, #250 and #252, Genesis #132 and Construction Token #326. Art Blocks marks the profile as a Day One Minter. [2] [3]
Snowfro
DCA
Jeff Davis
Dmitri Cherniak
Still previews of four works from the linked collection. Images supplied by Art Blocks; they do not reproduce the interactive artworks.
The Squiggles continued. The linked wallets hold 25 Chromie Squiggles, all minted between 27 November 2020 and 16 January 2021. Fifteen carry the same mint date, 11 December 2020, with numbers running from #3723 to #3764. Art Blocks records the group as a complete Chromie Squiggle Type Set, meaning one work of each Type. [2] [3]
Around them sits a record of the platform's first months. The collection includes Dynamic Slices #58, Cryptoblots #16, Elevated Deconstructions #74, Ignition #352, NimBuds #381, HyperHash #314, Unigrids #416, Ringers #598, Spectron #110, Archetype #259, 720 Minutes #717, Apparitions #333, Inspirals #169 and Aerial View #13. Each was minted between December 2020 and March 2021. Art Blocks records completed sets for Curated Series 1 and Curated Series 2. [2] [3]
The footprint is concentrated at the start of the index. Most of the 32 projects date from the first four months of Art Blocks, and most of the works have not moved since. That is what abTDH measures: time held, weighted by edition size. The largest single contribution comes from a later group, twelve works from Shvembldr's Ieva, an edition of 500 minted in August 2022. Two works from Casey REAS's Phototaxis sit beside them. [1] [2]
October 2026 added a second movement. Two further wallets were linked to the profile on 1 and 5 October. On 8 October, thirteen works arrived in the newer wallet from twelve different addresses. Nine belong to the AB[500]: AlgoRhythms #455, glitch crystal monsters #633, Vortex #684, Para Bellum #559, 80s Pop Variety Pack #130, 923 EMPTY ROOMS #678, Cytographia #290, Twist #146 and send/receive #508. They extend the collection into Factory, Presents, Explorations and collaboration releases. The same day, Art Blocks recorded the profile as an AB500 Foundations Set Holder. [2] [3]
The two movements read well together. The first is an early participant minting what the platform released as it was released. The second, nearly six years later, is a collector returning to the index as a whole and filling in the categories that came after. The published abTDH figure reflects the first movement only. It counts 63 works across 23 projects at the 8 October snapshot, taken before the arrivals. The nine arrivals begin accruing from their own date. [1]
Associated holdings
Trimble's best-documented work beyond Art Blocks is BrainDrops, a platform for AI art. A 2023 study in The Metaversalist names three founders: Trimble, described as the platform's primary leader, the developer known as Punk 2513, and the artist and educator Gene Kogan. BrainDrops launched in 2021 with three collections: Genesis by Claire Silver, podGANs by Pindar Van Arman and Brain Loops by Kogan. [5]
The model will be familiar to an Art Blocks collector. Named artists release bounded collections of several hundred to a thousand works through a shared platform at an accessible mint price. The difference lies in the medium, since the outputs are produced with machine-learning systems and fixed in advance. In the 2021 conversation Trimble named Art Blocks as a favourite company and credited it with letting artists earn a living while collectors bought at approachable prices. BrainDrops applied that structure to another field. [4] [5]
The wider collection is known mainly through Trimble's own description. His profile lists generative art alongside XCOPY, beeple, hanrgb and Osinachi. The 2021 summary records claimed CryptoPunks and names a PixelChain Avatar as his favourite NFT at the time. The Metaversalist also describes him as a seed investor in and advisor to Stability AI. AB5D has not matched these statements to wallets, and they are recorded here as statements, without a count. [2] [4] [5]
What the on-chain record does establish is duration. A person who claimed Punks in 2017, minted Squiggles on the first day and still holds them has kept the same works through several markets. For an archive of the first five hundred Art Blocks projects, that continuity is itself a kind of evidence: the opening day of the platform, still held by someone who was present for it.