Chromie Squiggle

Art Blocks project 0 · 10,000 outputs · first mint 27 November 2020 · final mint 21 August 2024 · NFT License

The work and its context

Chromie Squiggle is project 0 on the original Art Blocks contract, 0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a. The index records 10,000 invocations against a maximum of 10,000, the runtime p5@1.0.0, an aspect ratio of 3:2 and the licence label "NFT License" ¹. Snowfro (Erick Calderon, the founder of Art Blocks) describes each Squiggle as "my personal signature as an artist, developer, and tinkerer". The project record adds: "Public minting of the Chromie Squiggle is permanently paused. They are now reserved for manual distribution to collectors and community members over a longer period of time" ¹.

Every output is a single fat line that swings up and down across a white field, coloured along its length by a sweep of the hue wheel ¹. Clicking a Squiggle sets its colours cycling along the line. The space bar steps the background through twenty greys, and the arrow keys change the speed ¹. It is, in SquiggleDAO's words, "the on-chain generative art collection most collected by museums globally" ².

Conception and development

Calderon has described the Squiggle as a demonstration that turned into an artwork: "I did it as this proof of concept, then time passed, and I found myself becoming very attached to this squiggly colorful line" ³. The Art Blocks Journal's metadata guide, written by NiftyFifty of SquiggleDAO, traces it to "spaghetti-like" prototypes in 2018. The six types crystallised through "two years of playful code edits and lucky accidents" ⁴.

How the work was constructed

The program is a single script of 5,519 bytes, SHA-256 d6e475f342854bcc8424867a97965e1bca31b79971c71a21456d8c1a9b230390. It was retrieved from the Art Blocks index on 20 September 2026 and read in full ¹. It reads the token hash as 32 bytes, and each byte has a job ¹:

• Bytes 0 to about 20 set the heights of the line's control points.
• Byte 22 sets the "pipe" switch, byte 23 the "bold" switch, byte 24 the "segmented" (ribbed) switch and the rib spacing, and byte 25 the grey of the ribs.
• Byte 26 sets the number of segments (12 to 20), byte 27 the height, and byte 28 the colour spread.
• Byte 29 sets the start hue, byte 30 the direction of the hue sweep, and byte 31 the "slinky" switch.

The line is drawn as hundreds or thousands of overlapping circles along a Catmull-Rom curve, each one hue step further round the wheel. A Normal draws 200 circles per segment, a Slinky 50 hollow rings, and a Fuzzy 1,000 translucent dots scattered around the path ¹.

The published traits follow directly from those bytes. The type counts below include the Hyper variants ¹⁴.

"HyperRainbow" is set when byte 28 is below 3. The colour spread then drops from 5–50 to 0.5, so the hue races round the wheel many times along one line. There are 128 of them ¹.

Quirks in the algorithm

1. The pipe switch does not make Pipes. The variable called pipe produces a Fuzzy unless the slinky switch is also on. Only the combination draws a Pipe: the black-rimmed tube of rings. So the rarest type comes from two switches coinciding, which explains why there are 185 Pipes, against about 1,080 Fuzzies and 1,160 Slinkies ¹.
2. Why only three types can be Perfect Spectrum. A Slinky or Pipe draws 51 marks per segment. Even at the lowest colour spread, the line can pass through only about 160 of the 255 hues. Slinkies and Pipes can therefore never be Full or Perfect Spectrum (code reading). In the data, all 23 Perfect Spectrums and all 43 Full Spectrums are Normals, Bolds or Ribbeds. There is a single Perfect Spectrum Bold, #9657, and there are three Perfect Spectrum Ribbeds ¹.
3. Height is almost always 3. The height parameter is a continuous value between 3 and 4, but the published trait shows it as a whole number. Only the 47 tokens whose byte is at the very top of the range read "4" ¹.
4. Fuzzy dots repeat from segment to segment. The fuzz uses its own small random generator. Its seed is reset from the hash at the end of every segment, so each segment after the first scatters its dots in the same pattern (code reading) ¹.
5. Fractional segments. The segment count is not rounded. The drawing loop runs while the counter is below "segments minus two", so a value such as 17.3 draws as a sixteenth partial segment. The published Segments trait is a rounded figure ¹.
6. Legacy hash format and unused variables. The script reads tokenData.hashes[0], the multi-hash format of the original 2020 contract. It also declares variables it never uses (direction, and a portrait flag). And it names a global color, which shadows p5's own color() function. That is harmless here, but it shows the proof-of-concept origins Calderon describes ¹³.

The full set, and the traits collectors chase

The Squiggle has one of the most developed trait cultures in on-chain art, and much of it was named by collectors rather than the artist ⁴.

The Full Set. SquiggleDAO describes a Full Set as one Squiggle of each type plus a Hyper variant. "Only 128 possible sets exist", because there are only 128 Hypers, and the DAO counted 74 complete sets in existence in March 2024 ⁵. The Museum of Modern Art added "a Full Set of Chromie Squiggles to its permanent collection" in December 2025, assembled from Squiggles given by several collectors ⁶. The Toledo Museum of Art's nine Squiggles, purchased in 2025, cover all six types together with three Hypers (Normal, Bold and Fuzzy) and a Perfect Spectrum Normal, #7583 ⁷¹.

Below is a full set of types from SquiggleDAO's own treasury, with its Hyper Bold ¹.

All held in the SquiggleDAO treasury at retrieval. Renders: Art Blocks media proxy.

Beyond the Full Set, collectors pursue these traits ⁴¹:

• Hyper sets. A Hyper of every type is the hardest set to complete. The four Hyper Pipes (#3784, #3879, #5280, #6579) mean no more than four such sets can ever exist. There are only seven Hyper Bolds, including #4697 at Toledo and #9139 in the DAO treasury.
• Perfect Spectrum (23) and Full Spectrum (43). These are lines that pass through all 256 hues exactly once, or within one per cent of that. The lone Perfect Spectrum Bold, #9657, is among the most singular Squiggles.
• CS5s. About 80 Normals and Bolds sit at the minimum colour spread of 5, giving the most compressed rainbows.
• The two Rainbows, #1116 and #4739. These Normals reach 801 hues.
• Twins. 171 pairs share identical metadata but render as different shapes.
• Day Zeros. The first 542 mints, #0 to #541.
• Ribbed sub-traits. Harmonics have ribs whose grey matches one of the background greys. Ghosts have ribs of 252 to 255 that almost vanish on white. Perfect Whites have ribs of exactly 255.
• Height 4. Only 47 tokens.

The mint and distribution

The first two Squiggles were minted on 27 November 2020 at 16:12:02 and 16:13:20 UTC. The index records activation on 12 December 2020 ¹. Minting was fast and then stopped. There were 1,768 mints in November 2020, 3,488 in December and 3,813 in January 2021, for 9,069 in all, before public minting was paused ¹. The remaining 931 were distributed by hand over three and a half years, in bursts such as 320 in May 2022 and 141 in July 2023. The last, #9999, was minted on 21 August 2024 as Calderon's gift to LACMA ¹³. The index's current price field reads 0, and launch pricing is not recorded in the sources inspected ¹. At retrieval the 10,000 Squiggles were held by 2,934 addresses ¹.

SquiggleDAO

SquiggleDAO was founded in 2021 "to collect and promote the Chromie Squiggle" ⁵⁸. Its treasury wallet, 0x56fcb471a9dde74045830439ad6612c9aad53c19, held 324 Squiggles at retrieval, the fourth-largest holding ⁸¹. The holding includes:

• 212 plain Normals and 4 Full Spectrum Normals
• 46 Fuzzies, 38 Slinkies, 14 Ribbeds, 5 Bolds and 2 Pipes
• 2 Hyper Normals and a Hyper Bold ¹

In March 2024 it borrowed $1 million from Zharta for a year against eleven Squiggles, a Full Set among them. In the DAO's words it was "the largest Squiggle backed loan" ⁵. The DAO runs a trait gallery, a Sets tracker, a Trait Explorer, video and 3D tools, a newsletter (The SquiggleDAO Times) and a podcast ²⁹¹⁰. It has also been central to the museum acquisitions described above, including MoMA's Full Set and Toledo's #1458, which OpenSea reported as "acquired onchain from @SquiggleDAO" ⁶¹¹.

The Display Station (April 2026). SquiggleDAO worked with Pakmanscoop, Hash Inc and Snowfro to build a physical, interactive Squiggle. Snowfro ported the Squiggle script to C++ so that it runs on a Raspberry Pi ¹². The station connects to any screen by HDMI. Visitors choose a type or Hyper variant, the station shows a random Squiggle from "over 3000" whose owners approved display, and they can change the speed and background. As the DAO puts it: "Many people are unaware that the Squiggle moves" ¹². The aim is for museums to install it for exhibitions or as a permanent display ¹².

The Artist Box (September 2026). The second project addresses what the DAO found to be the main obstacle for museums, "the complexity of securely storing onchain art" ¹³. The Artist Box is a walnut case with a metal Squiggle set into the lid. It holds:

• acquisition and gift documents, a signed letter from the artist, collection information and a Polaroid signed by Snowfro
• a high-quality print of the Squiggle
• a USB drive with display-ready files (GIF, MP4, 4K, 8K, transparent background and 3D)
• a Keystone tablet for the seed phrase, sealed inside a custom tamper-proof lockbox ¹³

The handover is designed to keep custody with the museum alone. On a call hosted by SquiggleDAO and @ArtOnBlockchain (the X account given as the project's website), the museum generates its own wallet through a secure link, "ensuring that neither Snowfro nor the DAO has any access". The seed phrase is saved onto the tablet and sealed so that it "cannot be accessed without the lockbox being physically destroyed". The lockbox goes into the museum's vault, and the Squiggle is sent after a test transaction ¹³. The DAO credits Pakmanscoop with helping to design and build the box. Asked whether it would be offered to all holders, the DAO replied: "We definitely will soon" ¹³.

Together, the Display Station and the Artist Box turn a collector community into something close to an acquisitions department for the work. The DAO builds the display, prepares the custody, and gathers the Squiggles that museums then accession ⁶¹²¹³.

Copyright and licensing

The index records the label "NFT License" without a link ¹. The Squiggle Foundation publishes a Chromie Squiggle licence, which the earlier AB5D essay summarised as reserving the artist's intellectual property while granting owners display, exhibition and capped merchandise rights ¹⁴. The Display Station shows only Squiggles whose owners have approved display ¹². Its use of the art therefore rests on owner permission, not on the licence alone.

Significance and limitations

The Squiggle is the platform's first project and its emblem, and, on SquiggleDAO's account and the acquisitions traced here, the generative work most collected by institutions. Its trait culture of types, Hypers, spectrums and sets was largely built by collectors, and the DAO's hardware and custody projects extend that community's role into how museums display and hold on-chain art ⁴⁶¹²¹³.

Unresolved research questions:

1. Which Squiggles make up MoMA's Full Set, and which wallet holds them?
2. What were the launch prices in November 2020 to January 2021?
3. How many Artist Boxes have been delivered, and to which museums?
4. What do the current Squiggle licence terms say about museum display and exhibition?

Bibliography