# Construction Token by Jeff Davis

*Art Blocks Curated, project 2 · 500 outputs · minted 27 November 2020 · CC BY-NC 4.0*

![Construction Token #373: pale mint and near-black bar groups woven over a saturated green ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2000373.png)
*Construction Token #373, held by AB5D: a Standard output with the full-strength hue as its ground. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

## The work and its context

Construction Token is project 2 on the original Art Blocks contract, `0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a`. The index records 500 invocations against a maximum of 500, the runtime `processing-js@1.4.6`, a square aspect ratio, the licence label `CC BY-NC 4.0` and a price field of 0.1 ETH [^S01]. The project description says each token's seed sets "the number, orientation, and placement of rectangles, as well as the color selections". It adds that "most tokens are monochromatic, with occasional light or dark variants", and that a few use complementary colours [^S01].

Each output is a square field of one-unit bars, laid in combs of parallel stripes. The combs run vertically or horizontally, cross one another and leave the ground showing between their teeth, so that two layers of stripes read as a woven lattice. In most tokens a single hue appears at three strengths: full, pale and dark [^S01]. Artnet, previewing a 2023 Sotheby's sale, called the series "somewhat reminiscent of Mondrian's intersecting straight-line work" [^S02].

It is one of the three projects with which Art Blocks opened. Art Blocks itself puts it plainly: "three artists launched the first projects on Art Blocks", namely Erick Calderon (Snowfro) with Chromie Squiggle, Daniel Calderon Arenas (DCA) with Genesis, and Jeff Davis with Construction Token [^S03]. On the index's timestamps, Construction Token #0 is the earliest token on the contract, and the project was the first of the three to sell out [^S01].

## Conception and development

Davis came to code by way of painting. In his February 2021 conversation with Calderon for the Art Blocks Journal, he describes taking art as a college requirement, completing majors in mathematics and art, and then an MFA in painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago [^S04]. He moved from painting and printmaking to digital prints, and around 2009 to generative work. At first he used "tables of randomized data in Excel" to drive compositions built in Illustrator, before settling on Processing [^S04]. His website adds that he is the author of two textbooks, *Foundations of Design* and *Foundations of Color* [^S05].

The geometry of Construction Token therefore did not begin on the blockchain. Davis's 2020 portfolio page places it beside a run of earlier crypto series, Abstract Tokens, Jazz Tokens and Constellation Tokens, issued as fixed PNG images [^S06]. In the interview he guesses that Abstract Token was how Calderon found him, "which is what eventually led to my first Art Blocks project" [^S04]. He had been accepted to SuperRare in 2019 [^S04].

Art Blocks' own account of the launch, written by Druid in 2021, says the platform's pace took its founder by surprise. Calderon had "a few additional scripts written as a backup plan just in case no one was interested" [^S07]. Davis recalls receiving the invitation at the last moment. Calderon emailed "late on Thanksgiving" to say the contract was on mainnet and to ask whether he could launch on Black Friday [^S04].

Davis's statement of method in the 2025 announcement of his final AB500 project describes the analogue discipline behind this kind of work: "using rulers and flat brushes for precision, methodically mixing colors from a core set of paints" [^S03]. Construction Token's program reads like a coded version of that practice: a ruled grid, a fixed set of mixed tints, and bars laid down one after another.

## How the work was constructed

The program is two script parts that concatenate to 6,329 bytes, SHA-256 `e66bae6ba7a7b24a83616491efc2dc87bbb892ff5a3d8962cc913c61e9a86c0b`. It was retrieved from the Art Blocks index on 20 September 2026 and read in full. No code is reproduced here [^S01]. It is written in Processing and reads the token hash in the original contract's multi-hash format [^S01].

**Reading the hash.** The program turns the 64 hex digits of the hash into 254 byte values. It takes every overlapping pair of adjacent digits, then pairs digits from the front and back halves, and pairs them in reverse [^S01]. The first five values set the whole composition's global parameters; the rest drive the bars.

**Colour.** Colour is in hue, saturation and brightness [^S01]:

- Byte 0 sets the hue, anywhere on the wheel.
- Byte 1 sets a "value range" between 70 and 90. This controls how pale the tint and how dark the shade are.
- Byte 2 picks one of three arrangements, deciding whether the ground is the full hue, the pale tint or the dark shade. The other two become the colours of the bars.
- Byte 3 is a rarity byte that can override all of this.

**Structure.** Byte 4 sets the number of bar groups, from 20 to 40 [^S01]. The canvas is a 36-unit grid, sized to the browser window in multiples of 72 pixels. Each group gets a start point, a length drawn from ±3 to ±7 steps of two units in each direction, and an orientation. It is then drawn as a comb of one-unit bars, two units apart, vertical or horizontal [^S01]. The first four groups are anchored to the four edge lines (left, top, right, bottom), so every composition is tied to its frame [^S01].

The Variant trait follows the rarity byte exactly. A recomputation from all 500 published hashes matches every label [^S01]:

| Variant | Rule in the code | Share expected | Count of 500 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Standard | rarity byte 0 to 226 | 88.7% | 449 |
| Light | 227 to 239: pale ground, mid tint and full hue | 5.1% | 22 |
| Dark | 240 to 252: near-black ground, mid shade and full hue | 5.1% | 27 |
| Complementary | 253 to 255: near-black ground, full hue and its opposite | 1.2% | 2 |

Among the 449 Standards, the three ground arrangements are close to even: 146 full-hue grounds, 153 pale and 150 dark (own computation from the hashes) [^S01].

![Construction Token #0: violet and near-black bars on a pale lilac ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2000000.png)
*Construction Token #0, a Standard with a pale ground, minted at 15:58:01 UTC on 27 November 2020. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

## Quirks in the algorithm

A full read of the program, checked against all 500 published token records, turned up the following. Points that rest on the code alone are marked as a code reading.

1. **The two bar colours never share a track.** Bars in the first bar colour always start on odd grid lines and bars in the second always on even ones. Reflecting or clamping a group never changes that parity. The two colours therefore interleave like warp and weft. They only meet where a vertical comb crosses a horizontal one, and the later one is painted on top (code reading) [^S01].
2. **An empty border on all four sides.** Bar groups are clamped to the grid's 35th line and never start before the first. Every token therefore keeps a one-unit band of bare ground, 1/36 of the width, round its edge (code reading, visible in every render inspected) [^S01].
3. **Overlapping "pairs".** The first 63 byte values come from overlapping digit pairs, so neighbouring values share a hex digit. The low digit of the hue byte is the high digit of the value-range byte, and the ground arrangement shares a digit with the rarity byte (code reading) [^S01]. A rare variant needs the hash's fourth hex digit to be `e` or `f`.
4. **Edges half as likely.** Several choices round a continuous value to a whole number. The end values are therefore half as likely as the rest. In the data, 20 and 40 groups each occur 11 times, against 19 to 32 for every count in between (own computation) [^S01]. The longest spans (±7) are rarer for the same reason (code reading).
5. **A misspelt type.** The hash-reading loops declare their variable as a `Sting`, not a `String`. Processing.js evidently tolerates this, since all 500 tokens render (code reading) [^S01].
6. **A copy-paste slip that does no harm.** When a vertical span runs off the grid, the program reflects it using the horizontal length table rather than the vertical one. The two tables are identical, so the output is unaffected (code reading) [^S01].
7. **Analogous hues, computed and never used.** The program works out two neighbouring hues, 15 and 30 degrees round the wheel. It never uses them and never declares them, which hints at a palette mode that was planned and dropped (code reading) [^S01].
8. **Unused hash and redundant drawing.** At most 245 of the 254 byte values can ever be read, since a token draws no more than 40 groups. The canvas is also painted white before being painted the ground colour, and a margin variable is fixed at zero (code reading) [^S01].
9. **Complementary is always dark.** The complementary branch sits inside the dark branch's range. It inherits the maximum value range and so always has a near-black ground [^S01]. Both published Complementaries (#284 and #365) show this.

## The most coveted variants

No published collector guide to Construction Token was found. The market data inspected shows attention going to the variant traits. There are only two Complementaries, and the Light and Dark variants make up 49 of the 500 [^S01]. Early invocations from the platform's first hours are also of interest (see *The mint*).

**The Complementaries (2 of 500).** #284 and #365 are the only Complementaries. By chance, both hashes begin with the same two digits, so both have hue 149 (a green) with its opposite at 329 (a hot pink), both on near-black (own computation) [^S01]. They were minted 20 minutes apart, at 17:51:02 and 18:10:52 UTC, and at retrieval both sat in the same wallet, which no source inspected names [^S01]. They are as close to a matched pair as the series allows: the same palette, with different constructions.

![Construction Token #284: hot pink and green bar combs on a near-black ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2000284.png)
*Construction Token #284, one of two Complementaries. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

![Construction Token #365: green and hot pink bar combs on a near-black ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2000365.png)
*Construction Token #365, the other Complementary, with the same hues as #284. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

AB5D's #373 is a Standard with hue 151, two degrees from the Complementary pair. It shows the same green in its monochrome form: pale mint and near-black bars on the full hue [^S01].

**Dark (27) and Light (22).** Darks put a full-strength hue and a mid shade on a near-black ground. Lights put a mid tint and the full hue on a very pale one [^S01]. The first Dark is invocation 4, minted at 16:13:37 UTC; the first Light is #16 [^S01].

![Construction Token #4: yellow and olive bars on a near-black ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2000004.png)
*Construction Token #4, the first Dark. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

![Construction Token #16: violet and lilac bars on a pale lilac ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2000016.png)
*Construction Token #16, the first Light. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

**Auction appearances.** Construction Token #114, a Standard in cyan with a pale ground, was lot 7 in Sotheby's "Grails: Property from an Iconic Digital Art Collection Part II" [^S08][^S01]. The sale closed on 15 June 2023, with an estimate of $3,000 to $5,000 and no reserve [^S08]. The collection had belonged to the bankrupt fund Three Arrows Capital [^S02]. The same token was offered again as lot 29 of Sotheby's Digital Art Day Auction in December 2024, estimated at $4,000 to $6,000. Both catalogues give the provenance as "Minted by 0xAddicted. Acquired from above" [^S09]. Neither lot page showed a result without a login, and the Artnet price database entry is paywalled [^S10]. Artnet's report on the June 2023 sale does not mention the lot [^S11].

![Construction Token #114: cyan and dark teal bars on a pale cyan ground](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2000114.png)
*Construction Token #114, offered at Sotheby's in 2023 and 2024. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*

**Market figures.** VERSE's series page, read on 20 September 2026, gave a highest recorded sale of $20,663 and a total volume of $1,721,091. It did not name the token behind the top sale [^S12]. The index recorded a lowest listing of 1.235 ETH at retrieval [^S01].

**Holders.** At retrieval the 500 tokens were held by 262 addresses, 205 of them holding one token each (own computation) [^S01]. The largest wallet held 46 tokens, including one Light and one Dark. The next held 29. No source inspected ties either address to a named collector [^S01]. The wallet holding #0, #1 and #2 held 10 tokens in all [^S01].

## The mint

The index timestamps put Construction Token at the very start of Art Blocks. Construction Token #0 was minted at 15:58:01 UTC on 27 November 2020. Genesis #0 followed at 16:10:41 and Chromie Squiggle #0 at 16:12:02 [^S01]. The index's "start" field for each project (16:00:31 here) is simply the time of invocation 1, so it does not mark a scheduled opening [^S01]. Davis describes the morning: he "unpaused the project along with you and DCA" [^S04].

Minting was fast. By the index, 3 tokens were minted in the first ten minutes after invocation 1, and 118 in the first hour. The 500th was minted at 18:26:48 UTC, 2 hours and 26 minutes after invocation 1 [^S01]. Genesis finished at 20:30:05 UTC the same day [^S01]. Davis remembers it as "lighting up for the next two hours until the entire project was sold out" [^S04]. He adds: "I was truly shocked, I had never experienced anything like that before" [^S04]. Druid's history gives the same order: Genesis sold out "in just four hours", Construction Token "in just two hours" [^S07].

The index price field reads 0.1 ETH, against 0.05 ETH for Genesis and 0 for the Squiggle [^S01]. No source inspected confirms that this field was the price on launch day. The index records an activation date of 12 December 2020, after the sell-out; the same date appears for the Squiggle, and it probably reflects a later contract update rather than the opening of sales [^S01].

## Copyright and licensing

The index records `CC BY-NC 4.0` without a link [^S01]. On that label the images may be shared and adapted non-commercially with attribution; commercial use needs the artist's permission [^S13]. The earlier AB5D essay noted that Processing.js 1.4.6, which the platform loads at view time, is MIT-licensed. It also noted that no separate licence for the artist's code is recorded [^S14]. The Sotheby's catalogues describe the auctioned work as a 1200 × 1200 pixel PNG [^S08][^S09]. The program itself sizes the canvas to the viewer's window, so the token has no single native resolution [^S01].

## Significance and limitations

Construction Token is one of the three works that started Art Blocks, and on the index's own timestamps it is the first of them to be minted and to sell out [^S01][^S03]. Its program is short and plain, about 6 KB of Processing, and it translates a painter's ruled, mixed-colour method into code [^S03][^S04]. That compactness is part of its interest. The weave of odd and even tracks, the bare border and the three-strength monochrome all follow from a handful of rules. Five years later, Davis closed the AB500 run with *Drawings for a Monument* on 1 December 2025, alongside Snowfro and DCA [^S03].

The collecting record is thin. No collector guide, sales history or named holder of the rare variants was found. The single documented auction token, #114, has no public result.

Unresolved research questions:

1. What did Construction Token #114 fetch at Sotheby's in June 2023 and December 2024, if it sold at all, and who consigned it the second time?
2. Was 0.1 ETH the launch price, and who minted #0 at 15:58:01 UTC, before Art Blocks' other launch projects?
3. Which token made VERSE's top recorded sale of $20,663, and when?
4. Do the ZKM and Francisco Carolinum collections listed on Davis's website include any Construction Token [^S05]?
5. The Art Blocks "Catching up with Jeff Davis" post on Cent could not be read. Does it add to the account of the launch [^S15]?

## Bibliography

### Primary: the work and the artist

[^S01]: Art Blocks public GraphQL index, `projects_metadata` for project 2 (including the full program) and `tokens_metadata` for all 500 tokens, with project records and earliest mints for projects 0 and 1 for comparison. Retrieved 20 September 2026 via https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql. Collection page: https://www.artblocks.io/collection/construction-token-by-jeff-davis
[^S04]: Erick Calderon (Snowfro), "In Conversation with Jeff Davis", Art Blocks Journal, 7 February 2021. https://www.artblocks.io/articles/in-conversation-with-jeff-davis
[^S15]: Art Blocks, "Catching up with Jeff Davis", Cent. https://beta.cent.co/artblocks/+gxb7tz (listed in the project record as the artist interview; body text not retrievable)
[^S06]: Jeff Davis, "2020", portfolio page. https://www.jeffgdavis.com/2020
[^S05]: Jeff Davis, "About". https://www.jeffgdavis.com/about
[^S03]: Art Blocks, "The Final Three: AB500 Comes Full Circle", 2025. https://www.artblocks.io/articles/the-final-three-ab500-comes-full-circle
[^S07]: Druid, "A Home for Generative Art", The Link (Art Blocks on Medium), 10 October 2021. https://medium.com/the-link-art-blocks/a-home-for-generative-art-f5e224e4b11

### Video and audio

- "Jeff Davis (Art Blocks)_Generative Art on the Blockchain: How Ethereum Transformed my Artistic", [EthCC] Livestream 5, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRoeALMTAyM
- "Jeff Davis: Generative Artist and CCO at ArtBlocks", Signum Growth, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxg5B5pAuYk
- Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast, "#170: Art Blocks - Erick Calderon, Jeff Davis, Jake Rockland (Visual Art) (pt. 1 of 2)", 16 May 2022, and part 2 (#171). https://www.artsentrepreneurshippodcast.com/episodes/170-art-blocks-erick-calderon-jeff-davis-jake-rockland-visual-art-pt-1-of-2
- Titles and channel names are as returned by YouTube's oEmbed service on 20 September 2026. The videos were identified but not watched for this draft.

### Criticism, collecting and market

[^S02]: Richard Whiddington, "Sotheby's Is Selling a Mother Lode of 37 More NFTs From the Collection of Bankrupt Hedge Fund Three Arrows Capital", Artnet News, 31 May 2023. https://news.artnet.com/market/grails-nft-sothebys-largest-ever-live-digital-art-sale-three-arrows-capital-2312378
[^S08]: Sotheby's, "Grails: Property from an Iconic Digital Art Collection Part II", lot 7, Construction Token #114, New York, 1 to 15 June 2023. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/grails-part-ii/construction-token-114
[^S09]: Sotheby's, "Digital Art Day Auction", lot 29, Construction Token #114, December 2024. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/digital-art-day-auction-3/construction-token-114
[^S10]: Artnet price database, "Jeff Davis, Construction Token #114, 2020" (paywalled; not read). https://www.artnet.com/artists/jeff-davis/construction-token-114-0HyMPDQilbwxUtWSwKYHZA2
[^S11]: Richard Whiddington, "A Crypto Spring? Sotheby's $11 Million NFT Sale Renews Hope for the Battered Market", Artnet News, 16 June 2023. https://news.artnet.com/market/sothebys-grails-sale-part-two-nfts-2322721
[^S12]: VERSE, "Construction Token by Jeff Davis", series page. Read 20 September 2026. https://verse.works/series/construction-token-by-jeff-davis

### Licensing and earlier AB5D text

[^S13]: Creative Commons, "Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International" deed. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
[^S14]: AB5D, "Construction Token by Jeff Davis", earlier series essay, citing the Processing.js 1.4.6 licence (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/processing-js/processing-js/v1.4.6/bundle/LICENSE). https://ab5d.xyz/series/construction-token-by-jeff-davis/

### Further reading

- Sander Lutz, "5 Questions With SCENE: Jeff Davis", Decrypt, 18 November 2023. https://decrypt.co/206527/5-questions-with-scene-jeff-davis
- Art Blocks Community Wiki, "Construction Token" (returned 403 when fetched). https://artblocks.wiki/Curated/construction-token
- Art Blocks, Construction Token project page. https://www.artblocks.io/collections/curated/projects/0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a/2