The concept of this work is a hybrid allusion to the widely known Hans Christian Andersen folk tale, and the Soviet twist of “В синем море, в белой пене…”, which it self contains many references. If you don’t speak Russian, that’s ok, the concept is best experienced by watching the original influence from my childhood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWxkS5Q19LU



Although I emigrated from Saint Petersburg, I was born in 1982 near Moscow, in a shithole city called Serpukhov which is nowhere near a sea. We had to use our imagination for everything as kids. In the West, children played with Gameboys and Nintendos. In the Soviet Union, we had “Ну, Погоди!”. That’s only if your parents were successful financially as a butcher, taxi driver, or prostitute. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that sort of privilege.

 Living under socialism was horrific. Any man promoting it should be castrated, but in retrospect, I see the beauty in all of the subversive creativity it unintentionally produced. There is a reason you see so many successful Russian people today in the West. We know how it feels to live in poverty, and what it means to be free.



Tovarisch Buterin is just the latest example. Even in the post-pandemic world, Russia is a bleak place with a large contingent of brainwashed people consuming state media, and thinking government will protect them when it goes wrong. Putin does what he can, but there is no viable replacement for him with such a willfully ignorant populace. Vitalik may have never witnessed Soviet times, but he still experienced the lasting negative effects of socialism that eventually lead to him creating Ethereum.

I think it’s easier to find solutions when you experience the problem.

 For the same reason I arm myself to defend against threats the police might not respond to, I now make tokenized smart contracts of my artwork. The hodgepodge of legal systems throughout the world and various copyright treaties have proven to offer no protection whatsoever for my livelihood.