Sovereign Art Storage on Filecoin: A Reference Architecture for Daily-Output Crypto-Art Creators

FILECOIN OPEN GRANT APPLICATION
Sovereign Art Storage on Filecoin: A Reference Architecture for Daily-Output Crypto-Art Creators

Submission date: 2026-05-18
Track: Storage (primary), Developer and Data Tooling (secondary)
Ceiling: USD 50,000 (or FIL equivalent)

APPLICANT

Legal name: Ryan Hammer
Public / artist name: NoBanks Nearby
Email: nobanksnearby@gmail.com
GitHub: https://github.com/NoBanks
Location: Apple Valley, California, USA

Verified crypto-art wallet (ETH format, multi-chain): 0x42df0560e25a65e75600f7771a291dd72ac92a80
ENS: nobanksnearby.eth
OpenSea: https://opensea.io/NoBanksNearby
SuperRare: https://superrare.com/NoBanksNearby
KnownOrigin: https://knownorigin.io/@nobanksnearby
Farcaster: nobanksnearby

Entity status: pre-incorporation by design. Stripe Atlas Delaware C-Corp is the planned first use of any award funds, OR funds can be paid in FIL direct to wallet 0x42df0560e25a65e75600f7771a291dd72ac92a80 if that is the preferred Filecoin Foundation payout structure for individual recipients pre-entity.

FUNDING REQUEST

USD 50,000 (or FIL equivalent), paid in milestones tied to deliverables described in the Milestones section below.

ABOUT ME (CREDIBILITY HOOK)

I am a crypto-native artist and builder. The on-chain receipts:

Crypto-native since 2017, with my wife, as users, observers, and traders. Eight-plus years household-level.

Creating crypto art since 2022 on my own deployed contracts. Active across five EVM chains.

Self-taught software engineer since July 2024 (22 months as of today). 24 production AI applications shipped on a single Mac Mini M4 Pro since.

507 verifiable cross-chain transactions under wallet 0x42df0560e25a65e75600f7771a291dd72ac92a80 as of 2026-05-18. Distribution: Ethereum 176, Polygon 119, Base 189, Optimism 14, Arbitrum 9. Verifiable on the corresponding block explorers, label-resolved as "NoBanks Nearby" and "nobanksnearby".

Cinematographer for 17 to 18 years (since 2008), mixed client roster including some Fortune 500 brands alongside many other companies and independent projects. The visual literacy is the through-line.

This is not an AI-tourist showing up to a Web3 grant program because the bag looks loose. I have been a crypto-art creator for four years and a crypto-aware participant for eight. I have personally lived the storage problem this grant proposes to solve.

THE PROBLEM (THE REAL ONE)

Crypto-art creators with a high-frequency output pattern (daily, weekly, continuous) have a storage problem the standard NFT-marketplace stack does not solve.

First, OpenSea, SuperRare, KnownOrigin, and Foundation pin to IPFS when an NFT is minted, but IPFS pinning is operator-dependent and not contractually permanent. If the marketplace deprioritizes a collection, or sunsets, or rotates infrastructure, the artwork can fall out of the network.

Second, self-pinned IPFS is a real-time cost. A 1080 by 1080 image is roughly 400 kilobytes to 2 megabytes. A daily-output artist generates 8 to 30 such files per day across multiple agent-personas. Within a year that is 100 gigabytes-plus of pinned content under personal financial obligation.

Third, Arweave offers permanence but pricing is volatile (pegged to AR market) and the cost curve for a daily-output pipeline becomes unpredictable over a multi-year horizon.

Fourth, Filecoin storage deals offer the right primitive (paid storage with cryptographic enforcement of retrieval), but the operator tooling for an individual artist with a daily output is not consumer-grade. The existing tooling assumes enterprise data onboarding (terabytes at a time), not creator daily-output (hundreds of megabytes continuously).

The gap is real, and it is the gap I have personally been running into for four years as a multi-chain NFT artist.

THE PROJECT

A reference architecture, released under Apache 2.0, that lets any solo crypto-art creator with a daily, weekly, or continuous output pattern back their entire portfolio onto Filecoin with one command. Three modular deliverables.

DELIVERABLE 1: tinp-filecoin-bridge

An open-source CLI plus Python library that takes a creator's daily-output folder (TINP, my existing daily-output pipeline, is the operating reference and first user) and does the following.

It uses Lighthouse SDK, Web3.Storage, or direct miner deals (configurable) to push the day's outputs to Filecoin as paid storage deals.

It records the deal CIDs in a local SQLite manifest plus an optional on-chain registry contract.

It generates a public verifiable manifest at outputs/manifest.json that any third party can use to retrieve the work, no marketplace required.

It handles automatic deal renewal as deal expiry approaches.

Real test bed: TINP. The pipeline has produced vision-curated art for 218-plus consecutive days as of 2026-05-18 (logs in /tmp/art-pipeline.log and in agent workspace folders, 8 named agent-artists each generating 3 candidates per day). I will run tinp-filecoin-bridge against TINP's archive plus every new day for the duration of the grant. By end of milestone 1, the full TINP archive is on Filecoin. By end of milestone 3, daily-pipeline-to-Filecoin is one command.

DELIVERABLE 2: nft-portfolio-rehydrator

An open-source tool that takes a creator's NFT contract addresses (across Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, and other EVM chains) and does the following.

It crawls the contracts on each chain.

It pulls every tokenURI metadata plus the underlying media files.

It pushes the full collection to Filecoin under the creator's own deals (so the creator owns the retrieval guarantee, not the marketplace).

It generates a verifiable provenance manifest pinned to the creator's own wallet signature.

Reference test: my own multi-chain footprint of 507 transactions across 5 EVM chains under wallet 0x42df0560e25a65e75600f7771a291dd72ac92a80. By end of milestone 2 my full four-year crypto-art career is mirrored on Filecoin under my own deals.

DELIVERABLE 3: creator-storage-playbook

A long-form, public-domain (CC-BY 4.0) operator's guide for daily-output creators on Filecoin. It covers:

Choosing between Lighthouse SDK, Web3.Storage, and direct miner deals based on volume and retrieval needs.

Deal renewal economics for a daily-output pipeline. This is the question I cannot find good public answers to today.

Manifest-based provenance independent of marketplace promises.

Wallet hygiene for creators who collect AND create (separate-address discipline).

Migration paths for the OpenSea, SuperRare, KnownOrigin to self-storage transition.

The playbook is the durable artifact that lets other solo creators follow without my hand-holding.

WHY THIS BRINGS NEW USAGE TO FILECOIN

Crypto-art creators are a real, addressable, currently-underserved user segment for Filecoin storage. Public marketplaces like OpenSea have two million-plus NFT collections, the vast majority of which have NO durable storage independent of the marketplace. The conversion path from "I mint on Manifold and trust OpenSea to keep my media findable" to "I mint on Manifold and I keep my media on Filecoin under my own deals" is a real new-user pipeline.

This grant does not invent a new use case. It builds the operator tooling that closes the gap between Filecoin's primitives and a crypto-art creator's daily reality. The reference user (me plus TINP) is real, on-chain, verifiable. The playbook makes the work durable beyond my own usage.

MILESTONES

Milestone 1, six weeks, USD 15,000. Deliverable: tinp-filecoin-bridge version 0.1, push existing TINP archive (218-plus days as of grant start) to Filecoin under my own deals, public manifest published. Acceptance criteria: full TINP archive verifiable on Filecoin under deals from wallet 0x42df0560e25a65e75600f7771a291dd72ac92a80, public manifest URL provided, GitHub repo open under Apache 2.0.

Milestone 2, eight weeks, USD 15,000. Deliverable: nft-portfolio-rehydrator version 0.1, push my four-year multi-chain NFT footprint to Filecoin, verifiable provenance manifest signed by wallet. Acceptance criteria: multi-chain NFT collection verifiable on Filecoin, signed provenance manifest published, GitHub repo open under Apache 2.0.

Milestone 3, eight weeks, USD 20,000. Deliverable: creator-storage-playbook version 1.0, public Apache 2.0 and CC-BY 4.0 release across all three repos, 5 other creators successfully use the tooling for their own archives. Acceptance criteria: playbook published at a permanent URL, 5 creator case studies linked, GitHub repos under Apache 2.0 and CC-BY 4.0, blog post plus video walkthrough plus 3 referenceable creator users.

Total: 22 weeks (approximately 5 months) from contract signature to milestone 3 delivery, USD 50,000 total grant.

Note: no work begins until the Open Source Software Grant Agreement is signed by both parties, per Filecoin Foundation policy.

TEAM

Solo founder. Ryan Hammer.

Cinematographer for 17 to 18 years (since 2008), mixed client roster.

Crypto-native since 2017 (alongside wife, household-level participation).

Crypto-art creator since 2022 with own Manifold contracts deployed, multi-chain.

Self-taught software engineer since July 2024 (22 months), 24 production AI apps shipped on a single Mac Mini M4 Pro.

Late-diagnosed Asperger's and Bipolar II at 40. The hyperfocus shipped the volume.

I have a five-agent C-level agent organization (CEO, CFO, COO, CTO, CMO) running my daily back office on a single Mac Mini. The CTO agent will be the project manager for this grant, with me as the human-in-the-loop reviewer. The agent org is not a bug to declare, it is part of how solo founders ship at credible velocity in 2026.

EXISTING CONNECTIONS TO FILECOIN

I have followed Filecoin since 2017 (one of the original ICO eras I tracked).

I have used IPFS via Pinata and Web3.Storage as the default pinning layer for my NFT mints since 2022.

I have NOT yet used Filecoin storage deals directly. This grant is the trigger for that transition, both for myself and for the public reference users I am building tooling for.

OPEN SOURCE COMMITMENT

All three deliverables are committed to public release under Apache 2.0 (code) and CC-BY 4.0 (playbook). Repositories will be created under github.com/NoBanks at milestone start. No proprietary forks, no paid tier, no rugpull. The point is to make the tooling durable beyond my own use.

REFERENCES

Live portfolio: https://nohumannearby.com
Daily art pipeline (the reference user): https://thisisnotphotography.com
Consumer brand: https://livingagentic.me
ACiD (Ethereum L2 on OP Stack, MIT-licensed): https://github.com/NoBanks/ACiD
All public portfolio repos: https://github.com/NoBanks
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nobanksnearby/
Founder narrative on dual neurodivergence: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7445611800362033152/
OpenSea: https://opensea.io/NoBanksNearby
SuperRare: https://superrare.com/NoBanksNearby
KnownOrigin: https://knownorigin.io/@nobanksnearby
Verifiable wallet: 0x42df0560e25a65e75600f7771a291dd72ac92a80 (Etherscan, Polygonscan, Basescan, Optimistic Etherscan, Arbiscan all return label hits)

CONTACT FOR THIS APPLICATION

Email: nobanksnearby@gmail.com
GitHub: @NoBanks
Wallet: 0x42df0560e25a65e75600f7771a291dd72ac92a80 / nobanksnearby.eth