Dave Krugman’s ‘DRIVE’ Series is a Glimpse Into World Building on the Blockchain

Dave Krugman, a Brooklyn-based photographer, crypto artist, and founder of ALLSHIPS, will release his latest collection, “DRIVE // LAP 2,” on Gemini’s Nifty Gateway platform on Wednesday. A collection of digital photos of vintage and unique cars, the latest drop from Krugman comes three years after DRIVE earned acclaim across the NFT ecosystem for its creative and commercial success.

To prepare for the latest launch, Krugman sat down with Gemini to talk more about the origins of DRIVE, the power of building a community on the blockchain, and what his audience can expect when his latest NFT photography collection goes live later this week.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nifty Gateway Studio: What was your inspiration behind DRIVE?

Krugman: When I'm thinking about DRIVE, I wanted to make this as collectible as possible. And to me, that means making a really consistent pattern, and making it really fun and playful and matching. When you see a DRIVE car, you know, it's a DRIVE car. That gives people the same experience as collecting the perfect seashells on the seashore that matches a certain pattern, right? I decided to start with cars, because cars are inherently collectible.

People collect everything- especially the iconography of Americana, and especially cars. So to me, it was a no- brainer. If I'm going to release a wider photo collection, I want to do a project of all matching cars, and it's very important that they're all shot from the same angle. They all are exactly the same size. They all have a certain sort of story embedded in that they're they're either vintage or they're weird, or they're in a cool setting,

There's something about each picture that has a bit of uniqueness, but it matches the whole cohesive set in a way that's very, very satisfying to the collector. So the collector gets to project their individuality onto their individual piece, but they're a part of the greater whole. And they're part of the community because of the gamification and world building that I've been presenting.

That's basically why I decided to start shooting and collecting cars. The other thing I think is notable about this project is that it's completely shot on iPhone. And the reason that's important, is because I wanted to show how accessible this art form is, particularly NFTs and crypto art and blockchain. You don't have to go out and spend $5,000 on a camera to be an artist.

Nifty Gateway Studio: Why was part of your goal to make this collection more accessible than the average NFT drop? How did you go about doing that?

Krugman: I did that very intentionally to make it as accessible as possible. The idea that you can be a thriving artist on blockchain, that was very important to me, too. Just to leap backward in time a bit. That was September 2021, the project went really viral, the top sale for DRIVE was like 23 ether for one car, the lowest sell was like 0.25. But all throughout that spectrum we did about 120, 140 eth in primary sales. And since then it's done, I think, around 100 eth in secondary sales. A few years went by, and I did a few more projects, I did another project called Drip Drop, which is 1,000 pictures of puddles in Times Square. That also did very, very well. And I could get into the philosophy of that, but it's less relevant. And now, it's just time to release the second season of DRIVE, you know, this iconic, early NFT project from the beginnings of the photo space on blockchain. And this time, we're really pulling out all the stops.

Nifty Gateway Studio: How are you going to get people bought in?

Krugman: We’re in an attention economy here, right, so the best way to drive value to your digital objects is to create incredibly engaging stories to draw people's attention. And so this drop is actually an exercise in world building. We filmed a full commercial, we have a 1-833 number that you can call and listen to the description of the drop that’s really funny and quirky. We have billboards, we have posters, we have merch, we have pens, we have pins, we have a fall merch line already lined up. The idea is that we’re we're actually just creating a used car business, we have a Yelp page, we’re taking this as seriously as if I was selling real cars. And the whole joke and like a tongue-in-cheek bit that we're doing is, why would you buy a real car when you can buy a picture of a used car on the blockchain? It’s hilarious.

Nifty Gateway Studio: How did putting this on the blockchain help you distinguish this project from a traditional art collection?

Krugman: The whole thing is just this gigantic, playful joke. And I think that what blockchain allows artists to do, is it's a scaffolding for us to build worlds on top of. I can put these tokens online in a way that's immutable and semi-permanent. Then that artwork and data structure becomes a skeleton that I can flesh out in various ways. Yeah, that is actually the fun and the joy of building in this blockchain layer. Otherwise, they're just pictures- they're just JPEGs online. Right? So it's all the lore and the story building and the community engagement that makes it so exciting.

Nifty Gateway Studio: Tell me about why you withhold some of the supply?

Krugman: The innovation of DRIVE is the fact that I withheld 20% of the supply. I did this so that every couple of weeks, I do what's called a DRIVE race. And the holders of the project can win an additional car by racing me. But racing me really means entering a photo contest that I do publicly on my Twitter timeline. And they have to take a picture in their own world in the style of DRIVE.

I pick my favorite one and it's a metaphorical drag race. If you win the ‘pink slip’ to my other car. And so because the floor price of Drive 1 is still at 1 ETH, that's incentive for somebody to go out with their iPhone, get creative in their own environment and create. So what this has actually done is created a community of people that are participating in the craft of photography. And they're like ‘I never knew that I would enjoy this so much. But you have incentivized me towards a creative lifestyle.’

Nifty Gateway Studio: It feels like putting these auctions on Nifty Gateway and the blockchain by extension really helps you grow your community:

Krugman: That's true. And, and the reason is because the social space is the same as the gallery space, right? So there's no physical walls or boundaries or barriers between me and my collectors, they have a direct line into my pocket, and I have a direct line into theirs. And that closeness, and that proximity of the art to the social space creates a dynamic that I've never experienced before. Not only does it make the markets move faster, it helps us build deeper and deeper relationships, some of my early collectors have become my best friends in the world. Some of them are supporting me in ways that nobody could even fathom. Because our incentives have been aligned for years by these tokens that they're holding.

I have thousands of invested advocates, they have equity in my brand. And then they're completely aligned with the idea of me doing more and more and more and pouring more resources into my art and into my storytelling, as well as the worlds I want to build because the more I succeed, the more the price of their assets appreciates. We just never had an incentive alignment tool and technology that is this powerful for artists in online spaces.

About Nifty Gateway Studio: Using the blockchain to enforce scarcity and prove authenticity, Nifty Gateway is the premier marketplace to buy, sell, and store your digital art and collectibles in the form of nifties, or non-fungible tokens (NFTs).