Pixel City has minted 246 generative GIF NFTs on Algorand
Pixel City, a generative art collection by an artist trading as Ruiz Art, mints animated city GIFs on Algorand. There is a standing mismatch between what the project's own pages show and what its chain record shows: the server-rendered HTML of the gallery page answers 'SIN OBRAS MINTEADAS AUN' (Spanish for 'no works minted yet'), while Algorand's public transaction record describes hundreds of numbered, single-edition mints.
A City Computed at Mint Time
Generative art of this kind is computed by an algorithm at mint time rather than painted by hand, and the project leans fully into that premise. The mint page asks a visitor to connect a Pera wallet, runs a 'GENERANDO GIF' step once the fee is paid, and issues an asset. Ten generator parameters are exposed on the page, each sampling a different dimension of the scene that the algorithm then assembles into a short animation:
| Trait | What the generator varies |
|---|---|
| Palette | the color scheme of the scene |
| Weather | the weather conditions depicted |
| Time | the time of day shown |
| Density | how densely packed the cityscape is |
| Lights | the artificial lighting of the scene |
| Era | the historical period the city evokes |
| City | the layout and buildings themselves |
| Sky | the appearance of the sky |
| Atmosphere | the overall mood and haze |
| Stars | the detail of the night sky |
Each issued piece is an Algorand Standard Asset ([ASA](/glossary/algorand-standard-asset "A built-in mechanism that allows anyone to create and issue new tokens (like stablecoins, utility tokens, or NFTs) directly on Algorand's base layer, ")) — a token created directly on Algorand's base layer with a total supply of exactly one, rather than a record stored inside a smart contract. The collection follows ARC-19, Algorand's standard for NFTs whose metadata lives off-chain, typically on IPFS. Verified assets in the collection carry the URL template template-[ipfs](/glossary/ipfs "A decentralized file storage system where data is stored across multiple computers, making it resistant to censorship or loss. NFTs often use IPFS to ")://{ipfscid:1:raw:reserve:sha2-256}, which derives the artwork's content identifier from the asset's reserve address.
That indirection matters for animated art, which is heavier than a static JPEG: the GIF itself never has to sit on the chain, and if Ruiz Art wants to upgrade or correct a piece, the token can be pointed at new artwork by changing the reserve address — an update without re-minting, and without breaking the token's provenance.
What the Ledger Shows
Algorand's indexer — the read-only public record of every transaction — shows the mint account has created 246 assets so far, numbered 'Pixel City #001' through 'Pixel City #246.' The bookend pieces share the same [ARC-19](/glossary/arc-19 "An Algorand standard for NFTs whose metadata is stored off-chain (typically on IPFS) and referenced from the asset's URL field using a template, so th") template URL, the assets carry the unit name 'PIXEL,' and each has a total supply of exactly one. The collection has been minting steadily since early June: the first real transfer of 'Pixel City #001' moved the piece to a third-party wallet on June 8, and 'Pixel City #246' was created and transferred to its holder on August 6. In those two bookend assets the creator account no longer holds a copy, and each sits in a distinct wallet — the pieces went out to actual collectors rather than piling up in the mint address.
The ledger also shows the collection's secondary activity. On August 9 the mint account transferred several further Pixel City assets to an account holding 3,657 assets and associated with 4,132 created applications — the profile of an automated marketplace escrow. The transfers were accompanied by paired ALGO payments of 0.1225 and 0.5925, sub-one-ALGO amounts consistent with listing deposits and network fees rather than sale proceeds. An earlier report from this outlet documented that August inventory as listings on the third-party marketplace Downbad, an Algorand NFT marketplace.
The Project's Own Marketplace
Pixel City also runs its own secondary market. There a visitor connects a wallet, reviews holdings and active listings, and can list any piece at a price in ALGO. The market page has the same shape as the gallery: fetched without JavaScript, its HTML opens on 'NO HAY OBRAS EN VENTA AHORA MISMO' (Spanish for 'no works for sale right now'). The terms of that marketplace are explicit:
| Concept | Real-World Implication |
|---|---|
| Mint price | 20 ALGO per piece — roughly $1.65 at the August 10 price of about $0.0823 per ALGO |
| Advertised cap | 450 unique works |
| Token supply | exactly 1 per asset — every piece is a single-edition token |
| Listing escrow | 0.202 ALGO per listing (recoverable deposit plus network fees), returned when the piece sells or the listing is canceled |
| Platform commission | 2.5% of the sale price collected by the project's own market |
The mint confirmation page, meanwhile, points buyers outward as well as inward — after minting, it offers links to Algorand Explorer, Rand Gallery, Exa Market, Statto and Downbad, the general-purpose marketplaces where a piece can also be viewed or resold.
A Name Shared by Other Pixel Cities
Pixel City is not a unique name in the NFT world, and earlier projects should not be conflated with this one. A 'Pixel City NFT' concept was promoted on Medium in 2021, and a separate pixelcity.art hosts a 1,000-piece collection living on the Cronos chain; neither has any visible connection to the Algorand mint account or to Ruiz Art.
The project itself publishes little beyond the site: no announcements, no roadmap, and no social feed surfaced in searches. Operationally, the collection is served from the pixelcity subdomain of aetheralabs.es, and the bare aetheralabs.es domain failed DNS resolution at the time of writing — meaning the project's entire web presence is effectively that single subdomain.
The Bottom Line
The August 10 episode is a small case study in where the truth lives for an on-chain collectible. The site's empty states are an artifact of a JavaScript-loaded application that fetches its data from the chain after the page boots, not evidence of an empty collection; and Algorand's single-block finality means that once a mint transaction confirms, it settles instantly and cannot be reverted. The indexer, not the landing page, is the authoritative account of the project, and any reader can re-derive that account independently — the count, the numbering, the holders and the metadata template are all public.
Beyond that verification, Pixel City remains a small operation: one artist-run mint account, a collection that has so far produced roughly half of its advertised scope, and claims that are checkable in a way most art-world provenance assertions are not.
Source
- Pixel City mint page
- Pixel City gallery
- Pixel City market
- Downbad — Algorand NFT marketplace
- Pixel City NFT (Medium, 2021 — unrelated project)
- pixelcity.art (Cronos — unrelated project)
- Pixel City
- Privacy Policy - Downbad - Algorand NFTs Marketplace
Source: https://pixelcity.aetheralabs.es