Gas Wars

The work and its context

Gas Wars is project 505 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77, published under the canonical slug gas-wars-by-jack-butcher and credited to Jack Butcher. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 500 of 500 invocations, runtime three@0.167.0, and the official description: Destruction contains more information than survival. Gas Wars is a networked generative artwork inspired by the concept of Survivorship Bias, popularized during WW2 by statistician Abraham Wald. ¹²

Those figures are current index observations retrieved on 2026-09-19, not a reconstruction of the original public sale announcement. Atlas position is a catalogue ordinal and is not the on-chain project ID. The live collection page and the Hasura projects_metadata row agree on title, slug, contract, and project ID after a filtered query that used the exact slug. ¹²

Contract 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77. Aspect ratio indexed as 0.8. Website https://www.jack.art/work/gas-wars.

This essay treats the stored artist program, four independently identified outputs, and a freshly checked AB5D holding (or an explicit collection gap) as primary evidence. Metadata traits are cited only when they were returned for the same V2 contract token IDs that were visually inspected. They do not replace looking at the pictures. ³⁴

Conception and development

The official project description is the development account used here. Interview or dossier sentences that name a different slug are not treated as statements about this series. Destruction contains more information than survival. Gas Wars is a networked generative artwork inspired by the concept of Survivorship Bias, popularized during WW2 by statistician Abraham Wald.

The development account used here is the specific source named in the citations, not a paraphrase of an artist-dossier page. Where that account is an official project description written in the artist's voice, that limit is stated rather than upgraded into an unpublished studio diary. Where an interview exists, the sentences that actually name Gas Wars are the ones relied on. ⁵¹

Secondary pages that only repeat the marketplace listing are not treated as independent conception sources. ²⁵

How the work was constructed

The complete artist program for slug gas-wars-by-jack-butcher was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 91897 bytes with SHA-256 829664e1dc67c9ff8d3ea30d419b7c9582dbe25c03292dca324817d0039e230b. Runtime on the project record is three@0.167.0. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. ⁶

The stored generator is 91897 bytes, SHA-256 829664e1dc67c9ff8d3ea30d419b7c9582dbe25c03292dca324817d0039e230b, runtime three@0.167.0. Detected source markers: setup, draw, keydown, requestAnimationFrame, THREE, WebGLRenderer, tokenData, hash. Named functions include E, L, M, S, U, _, a, b, c, createMirroredGroup. tokenData.hash is read in source. Output then follows the drawing path those functions implement. Token 0 observation: Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 250,250,250). File size 251098 bytes. Indexed features: Hits 0; Shots 0; Accuracy 0; Survived Yes; Total Damage 0; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 0

Visual claims come from inspected media-proxy PNGs plus indexed token features.

Seed handling is visible in the retrieved program: tokenData.hash is read in source. Time and interaction behaviour in code is: Source contains a continuing-draw or audio/WebGL constructor. The inspected PNG is one frame. Live timing and soundtrack were not captured this session. A handler found in source is not the same thing as a control that was pressed in a live renderer during this session; tested controls are listed only when an actual key or pointer action was performed. ⁶⁷

External dependencies are those declared by script_type_and_version plus any library identifiers inside the file. Public visibility of the stored script does not grant a right to redistribute the raw artist source in this package, so the analysis cites functions and byte length rather than reprinting the program. ⁶⁸

The mint

Indexed chronology for project 505 on 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2025-09-15T19:58:35+00:00. activated_at is 2025-09-15T19:26:35+00:00. start_datetime is 2025-09-17T16:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2025-09-15T20:19:23+00:00. Invocations stand at 500 of a maximum 500, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is -32.0 minutes; activation to start_datetime is 44.56 hours; start_datetime to completion is -43.68 hours; first mint to completion is 20.8 minutes. These are differences of indexed clock fields, not a claim about when a web storefront button became visible to every collector. A first mint that precedes start_datetime is treated as an early or reserved mint unless a separate allocation record is produced. ²³

Indexed clocks: first 2025-09-15T19:58:35+00:00, activated 2025-09-15T19:26:35+00:00, start 2025-09-17T16:00:00+00:00, completed 2025-09-15T20:19:23+00:00. Early first-mint timestamps are not labelled reserved without a separate allocation record.

Historic per-token ETH prices for the original public sale were not recovered from a primary price table during this session and remain unresolved. Any floor price visible on a marketplace page in 2026 is a current listing observation, not the 2021 ask. ¹²

Copyright and licensing

The project record stores the artwork licence label 'unknown'. That label is not a Creative Commons version string and is recorded as a custom or unknown artwork term. Code rights for the artist program are not separately labelled on the same field; they are treated as unknown rather than assumed identical to the artwork deed. ²⁸

Artwork label copied exactly as None.

Third-party runtime three@0.167.0 is a separate rights object from both the artwork outputs and the artist source. p5.js, three.js, and ordinary browser JavaScript each keep their own licence texts. This package does not redistribute those libraries. ⁶⁸

Original essay prose in this package is dedicated CC0-1.0 by the research operator. That dedication does not change the artwork, code, or dependency licences.

Close reading of examples

Gas Wars #0 is token 505000000 on 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77, minted 2025-09-15T19:58:35+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 250,250,250). File size 251098 bytes. Indexed features: Hits 0; Shots 0; Accuracy 0; Survived Yes; Total Damage 0; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 0 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hits 0; Shots 0; Accuracy 0; Survived Yes; Total Damage 0; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 0. ³⁹⁴

Gas Wars #1 is token 505000001 on 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77, minted 2025-09-15T20:19:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 250,250,250). File size 251562 bytes. Indexed features: Hits 0; Shots 1; Accuracy 0; Survived Yes; Total Damage 0; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 0 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hits 0; Shots 1; Accuracy 0; Survived Yes; Total Damage 0; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 0. ³⁹⁴

Gas Wars #10 is token 505000010 on 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77, minted 2025-09-15T20:19:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 250,250,250). File size 255191 bytes. Indexed features: Hits 1; Shots 10; Accuracy 10; Survived Yes; Total Damage 27; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 27 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hits 1; Shots 10; Accuracy 10; Survived Yes; Total Damage 27; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 27. ³⁹⁴

Gas Wars #20 is token 505000020 on 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77, minted 2025-09-15T20:19:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 249,249,249). File size 259606 bytes. Indexed features: Hits 3; Shots 20; Accuracy 15; Survived Yes; Total Damage 3; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 1 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hits 3; Shots 20; Accuracy 15; Survived Yes; Total Damage 3; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 1. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 505000160 (edition 160), currently indexed to 0xdd19308a9731cdecb67e0d80ca6823394208c045, which is one of the three linked addresses returned for username ab5d on 2026-09-19. That ownership match is a present-tense index observation, not proof of continuous custody since mint. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 247,247,247). File size 302869 bytes. Indexed features: Hits 42; Shots 160; Accuracy 26; Survived Yes; Total Damage 532; Critical Hits 0; Damage per Hit 13 ¹⁰³⁴

Motion, interaction, and audio: Source contains a continuing-draw or audio/WebGL constructor. The inspected PNG is one frame. Live timing and soundtrack were not captured this session. The static PNGs document halt or preview states. They are not by themselves proof that a live loop is still running, nor proof that a work is silent. No soundtrack was heard from these pages during this session. ⁴⁷⁶

Significance and limitations

Gas Wars is project 505 by Jack Butcher on 0xab00000000002ade39f58f9d8278a31574ffbe77. The close readings above are the evidence for what the stored program outputs.

Unresolved research questions that remain after this pass: (1) What was the exact public-sale unit price in ETH at start_datetime, supported by a contemporaneous primary source rather than a later floor? (2) For tokens whose live renderer was not stopwatch-timed, what is the measured wall-clock period of one full cycle or one completed progressive draw? (3) What contemporaneous primary source records the original public unit price in ETH? (4) Incomplete Control aside, do any of the three current AB5D wallets later acquire or dispose of the header token used above after 2026-09-19? ²¹⁰⁷

This package is a draft for human review. Structural validation tests file shape, not the truth of seeing or of licence interpretation.