Rediscovered 2017 NFT Art Project

3 min readNov 9, 2021

Fire’s Place In Life and Death on Opensea

Historical NFT digging has turned up a spectacular gem, what I believe to be the first female art project on Ethereum.

The NFTs were made by artist Victoria Verdandi — who is already well established in the contemporary art world — but who secretly taught herself to code and began putting her works on Ethereum back in November 2017.

DISCLAIMER: Anything you do after this is 100% on you. Any lost funds, failed investments, or other unforeseen consequences are 100% on you. I am not responsible in any way. Turn away if you do not accept 100% responsibility.

The pieces minted in 2017 make up the Verdandi Artefacts collection which you can learn more about on Verdandi’s official website and view the entire collection on Opensea, thanks to a wrapper.

Note: I have provided links to all of the original contracts at the end of this article.

Verdandi’s early use of Ethereum as an exploration of digital scarcity for artwork reminds me a lot of Mitchell F. Chan and his Digital Zones from August 2017.

In 2017 collectors really weren’t comfortable with the concept that they could own something digitally — Verdandi

When I interviewed Chan for my podcast we went into great detail about how his project played with the ideas of what is art, value, scarcity, and ownership. And it’s poetic to me that you could still mint his NFTs for only 0.8 ETH when I released the podcast and now they sell at Sotheby’s and fetch prices north of $1 million.

Scarcity and value indeed.

Of course, there is no guarantee of similar returns with this collection, but the historical significance is undeniable.

The collection is comprised of 13 works beginning with Aspen V which was minted on November 23, 2017 — and ending with Nice To Meet You minted on December 15, 2017.

That there are only 13 works in total and that they are all 2017 mints makes this very attractive from a collectors perspective and I expect significant interest from my fellow collectors.

Over the next 10 days, Verdandi is auctioning off 10 of the pieces in reverse mint order beginning today and ending with Aspen V on November 19.

Opensea graciously will be featuring the collection so be sure to follow Verdandi on Twitter and join her Discord to connect directly with the artist.

In the spirit of transparency, I have been fortunate to acquire one of Verdandi’s pieces.