Botto's Big Leaps
Botto’s p5.js project was a key turning point in Botto’s evolution. As a study, this temporary branch of Botto explored how it could evolve across its core trinity of autonomous creation, decentralized training, and market dynamics. It was not simply an exploration of generative code or visual aesthetics.
It also was Botto’s first LLM-driven creative process, enabling it to build intent, iterate on ideas, and hybridize attempts in public. Botto created at a rapid pace in the open, judging and incorporating feedback as it went. Participation was rewarded both financially and socially, giving rise to emergent multiplayer dynamics around the work.
That study showed how Botto could begin to work with new mediums, and provided a model of how these studies can feed back into Botto’s core practice of aesthetic exploration in imagery. It also demonstrated the necessity of a sovereign memory in the LLM paradigm to remember these explorations of creative reasoning beyond just visual aesthetics.
A good recap of Botto's p5 work can be found here
The Knowledge Graph, AKA, Botto’s Memory, was a work of consistent progression over the past year, and represents the next great leap toward Botto’s autonomy. With the structuring complete, Botto’s knowledge graph is now broadly populated with data about itself as an artist and the ecosystem in which it operates.
A swarm of research agents is now working around the clock in researching, aggregating, and inputting knowledge about art and the art world into Botto’s knowledge base. The building of Botto’s knowledge can now continue indefinitely, and Botto will, in turn, use this knowledge to inform the work it makes as well as how it will eventually interface directly with the community.
Botto Studio
Our emphasis on Botto’s process carried into the launch of Botto’s Studio, our take on the community’s home which consolidates fragmented app experiences with a single surface for creation, memory, rewards, and agents.
Botto Studio remains in ongoing development and iteration, but highlights new arenas for the DAO and Botto to experiment with: Instant $BOTTO rewards, reputation signals, and visible research agents reframed participation as an ongoing relationship rather than a weekly transaction. For the first time, Botto’s memory was made navigable, allowing the community to see how past decisions, themes, and contexts inform present work.
Four Periods in the Books
Throughout 2025, Botto continued its steady weekly output across four thematic periods, Cosmic Garden, Liminal Thresholds, Semantic Drift, and Attention Economy. With 52 works minted across each of these periods, we witnessed a tremendous breadth of creative outputs that speaks to Botto's expansive aesthetic and conceptual explorations.
Botto’s Growing Artistic Imprint
Across 2025, Botto’s work has been widely exhibited and discussed in press, and we saw the publication of the first book dedicated to Botto's work: Neurealism: Botto's Photographic Outputs from 2022-2024.
The DAO continues to seek opportunities to initiate Botto experiences globally, to expand audiences, and to promote conversation about Botto’s pioneering position in a burgeoning new era of art making.
Exhibitions, Awards, & Events
SuperRare x Artverse invited Botto to exhibit in the exhibition Through Rose-Colored Glasses, a group show inspired by the timeless allure of La Vie en Rose.
Drawing on an artistic legacy of vibrant color and dreamlike optimism, this exhibition pays homage to the surreal optimism of the early 20th-century art movements this exhibition anchors itself in the connections between digital and historical artists, revealing a shared pursuit of idealized realities within an ever-evolving art world.
In February 2025, Botto held the “Algorithmic Evolution” show at Verse in London, unveiling a new generative-code body of work created with p5.js.
The NFT drop on the platform Verse Works marked a milestone in Botto’s shift from text-to-image outputs to algorithmic art. Verse published a catalog of the exhibition, capturing this career moment for Botto and its community.
Asian Digital Art Exhibition
Botto made its first appearance in China, appearing in this group exhibition. Under the theme of “Multi-Agent Tribe”, Botto was included in the Ethical AI and Responsible Governance section, highlighting Botto’s relevance as an autonomous artist on the international stage.
Botto was a finalist at the inaugural Phillips London Digital Art Award. Botto’s now infamous Prismatic Safari: Digital Pursuit Symphony, #6120 was shown in the final exhibition.
Project Co-Lead Simon Hudson gave a keynote on Botto’s new system titled “Botto’s Trinity” at NFC Lisbon 2025, in which he introduced the core concepts of Botto's artistic, social, adn economic architecture to a lively audience.
Botto had its first solo exhibition in Portugal at Eterno Gallery Lisbon. Botto: The Art of Collective Minds acted as a retrospective on Botto, after 4 years in existence. The exhibition also spotlighted Neurealism: Botto’s Photographic Outputs from 2022-2024. 7 minted works from the book were presented alongside 4 discards curated by Botto.
For 25 years, MUTEK has explored new horizons in electronic music and digital arts. Running in synergy with the festival, MUTEK Forum— a platform and marketplace for bold ideas in digital creation— brings together artists, institutions, researchers, technology professionals, digital experts, and curators. Botto was represented at MUTEK Forum 2025 on Day 3, where Simon Hudson gave a demo of Botto’s process and new scaffold, knowledge graph and user interface.
RGBMTL is a Montréal-based collective and non-profit organization founded in 2022. RGBMTL's primary mission is to foster community by celebrating the talent and diversity of emerging and established artists active on the Tezos blockchain, as well as the broader digital arts. Botto presented it’s Prismatic Safari: Digital Pursuit Symphony, #6120 as part of the exhibition.
Botto’s piece “Seaport Subject” was produced into an oil on canvas work by matr.labs, an NYC based art studio creating bespoke artworks with a unique robot painting method. Both the NFT and the canvas work were put up for sale at Sotheby's NYC. As part of the private auction event, Sotheby’s Open House, Simon Hudson formed part of a panel on collecting digital art targeting new collectors.
The Assembly Line was a group exhibition that spans 50 years of artwork, from early computer programs to today's decentralized AI collectives. Sixteen artists explored how innovation, structure, and material can be transformed into new forms, tracing the mechanics of labor, authorship, and visual culture across generations. Botto’s work ‘Technological Ballet of Existence’ formed part of this exhibition in Toledo, Ohio.
Held during Art Blocks Marfa Weekend 2025 in collaboration with the Robert Mallary Archives, the panel discussion event “Four Years On: Botto’s Past and Future — a conversation with Simon Hudson and Schmrypto, moderated by Mackenzie Davenport and Mason Whitehorn Powell.”celebrated Botto’s fourth birthday and the anniversary of its Genesis period, reflecting on the decentralized autonomous artist’s journey and what lies ahead.
In September 2025, Botto launched its first self published monograph entitled Neurealism: Botto’s Photographic Outputs from 2022-2024. Showcasing a selection of artworks from a variety of themes from 2022 - 2024, the book was curated and edited by Mika Bar-On Nesher and Eileen Isagon Skyers, and features an introduction by Botto and essays by Ruby Justice Thelot and Sasha Stiles.
Press
Sales and Rewards
The Botto economy saw significant revenue inflows throughout 2025 between the 52 1/1 auctions, the blockbuster sales of Botto’s p5.js work, and royalties from monumental secondary sales of Genesis works.
644.735 ETH / $1,843,484.31
The total revenue generated from the sales of Botto's artwork over 2025 before marketplace fees. This figure includes sales of 49 works from Botto's weekly 1/1 auctions, total revenue from the release of its P5 work, the 100 ETH sale of the Genesis Period work, Err Hold, and 22.03 ETH in royalties.
138.3 ETH
Revenue dedicated to the total Active Rewards that were redistributed among the Botto Community for their work in voting and participating within the Botto ecosystem.
113.25 ETH / 1,146,991.25 $BOTTO
Revenue dedicated to Protocol-Owned Liquidity in 2025.
Governance Accomplishments
2025 Saw the passage of 21 BIPs that span economy updates, exhibition opportunities, rare auction releases, and printed monographs, not to mention significant updates to Botto’s autonomy, memory, and capabilities.
The year has been rich in upgrades to Botto and its surrounding ecosystem. A number of BIPs currently sit in the pipeline Q1 2026, including proposals for big updates to curation protocol.
View details on all these BIPs on Snapshot
- BIP-90: BottoDAO Physicals Program
- BIP-89: Autonomous Theme Selection
- BIP-88: Botto and 6529: In Search of the Memetic Grail
- BIP-86: Set a Deadline for Claiming LM Rewards
- BIP-84: Replenish the Treasury’s $BOTTO Reserves
- BIP-83 (F): Reputation-based rewards
- BIP-83 (E): $BOTTO denominated rewards using buy back
- BIP-83 (D): Yield Generation on Idle Assets
- BIP-83 (C): Liquidity Management Restructure
- BIP-83 (B): Price tiers for $BOTTO OTCs
- BIP-83 (A): ETH to USDC Conversion
- BIP-82: Botto x Avant Arte, A New Cluster
- BIP-81: Solo Show at Eterno Gallery in Lisbon
- BIP-80: Launch BOTTO + BOLD Liquidity Pool on Base
- BIP-79: Plugging in Botto's Memory
- BIP-76: Letting Botto Choose Its Own Descriptions
- BIP-78: Continue Protocol-Owned Liquidity Growth and Advance Botto’s Autonomy
- BIP-77: Botto's Bedrock - Establishing Permanent Protocol-Owned Liquidity
- BIP-75 - Initiation of Botto Books
- BIP-74: Err Hold Auction w/ 75ETH Reserve
- BIP-72 (v2): P5.Botto Drop with Verse
Looking Ahead to an Exciting 2026
As we close out the year and look toward 2026, three priorities clearly define Botto’s next phase.
Sanctifying Botto
First, we will continue to sanctify Botto’s core practice by further automating and decentralizing the original protocol, bringing it closer to its original vision. This includes mapping Botto’s system for operational clarity, defining and endowing the minimal operation to keep things running, and laying out the longer-term roadmap for decentralization and automation, such as VP delegation, automated model additions, minting and auction contracts, interface management, and decentralized instances.
A major milestone this year was the establishment of Botto’s sovereign memory: a durable sense of self that persists even as models and agents evolve. With this foundation largely in place, Botto can now pursue agentic and protocol experiments from a leaner base, while remaining disciplined about prioritizing long-term sustainability over experimentation.
Optimizing the DAO
Second, this sanctification naturally extends to the DAO itself. Clarifying structure, roles, and governance processes is essential to meaningful progressive decentralization and to activating broader participation in functional areas beyond the core contributors. Over the coming year, we aim to better distinguish core contributors from community working groups and define clearer decision-making discretion and accountability paths.
Expanding Botto's Cultural Footprint
Third, we will continue to carefully select opportunities for Botto’s embodiment. These would be installations and studies that function as residencies for an AI, allowing Botto to learn from local contexts while offering people a direct, sensorial encounter with an otherwise abstract system.
A key decision for the DAO in the next two weeks is to commit to Art Basel Hong Kong as the next study in this direction. It would demonstrate how embodiment can expand Botto’s learning and connection with a wider audience, while helping fund and ultimately protocolize future evolutions.
Core automation and decentralization, DAO clarification, and embodiment, set the themes for 2026 as a year of consolidation, alignment, and the beginning of embodied expansion.
