2025 - A Good Run
January 20, 2026
By Afzal
Another year of trying to make it as an artist
Reflection
I’m writing exactly a year later since the last letter. I try to write every week, or at least every month, but since I’ve started practicing and posting art every day for the last two years, I’ve become too lazy to write. I have ideas, but as I said, I’m just lazy. I’ll try to change that this year. So in this letter, I want to reflect on the last year as an artist. If you’ve read my previous letters, you might know about my identity crisis as a designer and my quest to make it as an artist. I’m completely aware of the fact that I don’t really have an audience for this newsletter, so here’s the complete archive for anyone who’s reading now and would like to read more about my journey and other ideas. Let’s take a look back. After two years of trying, we finally have something. Last year I decided I wouldn’t just upload art on socials, but would also mint them. What stopped me before was the fear of gas fees. If the artworks weren’t collected after a certain point, minting them would become unaffordable. But thanks to L2s, we now have many cheaper options, and minting on Base is almost free. And thanks to the Foundation team, we got Rodeo built on Base, easy to use, almost like Instagram. So last year I made the decision to finally start minting and to use Rodeo as the platform. Turns out that was a really good decision. e/very days (my daily art practice) 2025 was collected by 93 collectors, with two collectors owning over 100 artworks each. Huge thanks to every one of them. What’s even crazier is that collectors include the likes of Jack Butcher, Hiten Shah, and more.
If you had told me that by the end of 2025 I would have almost 100 collectors, I might not have believed you. But here we are. Minting them was the best decision I made.
Other than the daily art practice, not many projects were finished in 2025. But two notable things happened. I became a permanent artist on Opepen and got curated on Punkism.
This was all about creation.
Regarding my personal collection, the best thing that happened is that I finally acquired a piece from one of my dream collections, Checks VV. After collecting an Opepen in 2024, I can now proudly say I own two of Jack Butcher’s best works.
These might not look huge, and I haven’t even made much money from these art projects, but I don’t care. It’s super huge for me.
If you’ve read my previous letters, you might already know how much this matters to me. After creating into the void for years, there are finally waves. And I’m sure this isn’t stopping here. More is yet to come.
Next Chapter…
So what’s next? Nothing special. It’ll be usual. I’ll continue creating art every day, work on those stupid ideas, write that letter, and more. But here’s something that’s going to be different. e/very days 2026 will move to Ethereum L1 from Base. Yes, while I’m very grateful to Rodeo and Base for everything they’ve done, and e/very days 2025 wouldn’t have been successful without them, I don’t agree with their current ideologies. And who can resist the urge to create on mainnet? I’ve deployed the contract for e/very days 2026 using Mint Protocol by Team VV: Jack, Jalil, YGG. Much thanks to them.
The risk factor: I’ve established a collector base on Rodeo, which will be lost after moving to the mainnet. I’ll need to form a new collector base from scratch. And more importantly, Mint Protocol isn’t a marketplace like Rodeo, so there isn’t much marketing happening from their side. This is a healthy risk in my opinion. It will allow me to form my own collector base that isn’t platform-dependent. Gas fees could be unpredictable. Currently, mainnet gas is as low as L2s, but it can fluctuate. And as I said, the reason I started regular mints so late was the fear of gas fees becoming unaffordable at some point. But it’s okay. I think a little bit of uncertainty should be there.
Here’s the final piece of e/very days 2025. It’s very special to me. It features the names of all the collectors. The count of each name equals the number of pieces owned by that collector.
There wasn’t much insight in here. Just me, me, me.
Thank you!
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