From Silk Road to NFTs: Why Musician and Artist Tycho Sees Web3 as ‘Endgame’

Tycho first heard of crypto in the Silk Road days, calling the underground marketplace “the coolest thing in the world” at the time. Now, decidedly legal, he’s launching his own “Tycho open source community” using Polygon NFTs.

Tycho says he bought his first hardware wallet in 2011, but didn’t let Bitcoin on it. In an interview with Decryptthe artist – also known as Scott Hansen, or ISO50 from his blogging days lately – shared the story of how he got into crypto and Web3.

In 2016 he bought Ethereum and vowed never to sell it, just to see what happened to it.

“We should get this thing Ethereum,” he recalled telling musician Jakub Alexander at the time while on tour. “Bitcoin is old school, but Ethereum, this thing is cool.”

Then he almost forgot about his crypto for years while continuing to make music and visual art. Hansen designed all the artwork for his albums and constructed his distinct melodic, ethereal electronic sound – music that earned him two Grammy nominations.

“Our pact was that we would never sell any of it, and see what happens with it,” he said of ETH that he still “holding“Today.

In 2021, Hansen released some NFTs on Nice gateway and Open sea, which he calls “a learning experience”. Inspired by the likes of BeepJustin Blau (3 lau), and artist Reuben Wu, Hansen sees Web3 and crypto as a good fit for his community.

“We knew each other from speaking at graphic design conferences at the time,” Hansen said of Beeple, who recently collaborated with Madonna on a NSFW NFT collection.

Tycho’s community — which he says includes VFX artists, musicians and other graphic designers — first formed in the blogosphere, but has since spread to a token-gated Discord server.

Given its cooperative and professional members, it is not unlike it music producer Illmind also builds through NFTs with its “Squad of Knights,” which offers holders IRL perks like recording studio space and musical collaboration opportunities.

Hansen sees Web3 as a way for artists to get rid of social media intermediaries.

“Web2 social media platforms came around and kind of hijacked this whole thing,” Hansen said of how social media changed internet communities. “It doesn’t really feel like a two-way street anymore.”

When he learned about Medallion, a full-service crypto platform, Hansen was intrigued. He said he started working with the company because he found their terms appealing.

“What’s interesting to me about the Web3 site and leveraging Web3 for this purpose is that with Patreon, you just create a login,” Hansen said.

But with his “Open Source” community, which gives holders access to things like album previews and live streams, “the artist owns the data.”

Hansen said he always wants the NFTs — which act as access tokens — to be free, while additional benefits may cost money or crypto in the future.

“I think this was the end game, to create this kind of community space, this Web3 community,” Hansen said.

As for whether Hansen will release any music NFTs under his Tycho alias in the future, that’s something he says he’s exploring. Hansen told Decrypt he has “a couple of releases on the horizon” that he might turn into music NFTs, but that he doesn’t have concrete plans for yet.

When asked why electronic artists like Steve Aoki3lau, deadmau5, Dillon Francisand himself is so open to Web3 compared to artists in other genres, Hansen has some ideas.

“Electronic musicians in general […] have to be somewhat tech-savvy to even get into it, and I think you’re probably pretty into technology, just as a general concept anyway, if you’re going into this kind of music,” he said.

As someone with a background in computer science, digital graphic design and electronic music, Web3 and crypto felt like a natural thing for Hansen to explore.

In his view, Web3 hasn’t leveled the playing field—it’s still hard for new musicians to find success—but he believes Web3 will eventually become “the norm.”

“I don’t look at it […] like this as a utopian vision that it was kind of held up like in the beginning,” he said. “But I definitely think it’s another tool in the toolkit of artists, so anytime we have any other kind of influence I think it’s going to shift [the] force dynamic somehow.”