Bicasso: Binance’s AI NFT Generator Gets Flooded with Requests Hours After Launch – Here’s How it Works

Author

Sam Cooling

Author

Sam Cooling

About Author

Sam is a financial journalist with a focus on cryptocurrency market news, based in London. With a Master’s Degree in Development Management from the London School of Economics, Sam’s passion for...

Author Profile

Share

Copied

Last updated: 

October 23, 2023

Why Trust Cryptonews

Cryptonews has covered the cryptocurrency industry topics since 2017, aiming to provide informative insights to our readers. Our journalists and analysts have extensive experience in market analysis and blockchain technologies. We strive to maintain high editorial standards, focusing on factual accuracy and balanced reporting across all areas - from cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects to industry events, products, and technological developments. Our ongoing presence in the industry reflects our commitment to delivering relevant information in the evolving world of digital assets. Read more about Cryptonews

As the AI narrative continues to fuel explosive market sentiment, Binance are determined to claim their slice of the pie.

On March 1, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) took to Twitter to reveal the launch of an exciting new AI offering.

Aiming at the growing AI-generated art sector, Binance Bicasso is an AI-based art generation platform. CZ described how Bicasso would enable users to curate and mint incredible AI art on demand.

“[Bicasso] turns your creative visions into NFTs with AI,” said CZ.

Bicasso Beta Test Completely Overwhelmed By AI Frenzy

The initial beta launch turned out to be something of a teaser, with a hard cap of only 10,000 NFT mints.

Here’s a fun new #Binance AI product called #Bicasso 🎨

You can turn your creative visions into NFTs with AI. Give it a try and show me what you make with it.

Beta version live now, limited to 10k mints.

➡️ https://t.co/QeQS7oh9uH pic.twitter.com/22Dllhg2sP

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) March 1, 2023

However, things quickly went awry with market sentiment around AI so intense that an absolute flood of volume overwhelmed the beta technology.

Indeed, just one hour into the Bicasso beta test – problems started to become apparent.

Team's on it. AI is busy…

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) March 1, 2023

CZ was quick to quell user complaints as he moved to explain how the AI app had become overloaded by a sea of requests. The Binance CEO pointed out that more clones needed to be deployed to handle demand as Bicasso was single-threaded.

The AI is over worked for the moment. Maybe space out your requests for a bit later please, until more clones come online… 😂 https://t.co/BBRevAdIUc

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) March 1, 2023

Single-threaded means that an application or script can only be run by one user at a time, on each machine that it has been deployed onto.

This is the opposite of multi-threaded programs. A multi-threaded AI bot would enable multiple users to run the same script at the same time without deploying on to more machines.

Bicasso Beta Sells Out in 2.5 Hours

However, despite the initial technical challenges of the Beta test – the brief teaser was a resounding success. Showcasing insanely high demand for AI art products in the NFT space.

This was attested to in a later tweet by CZ, which announced all 10,000 mints had been used – bringing the Beta test to an end. Bicasso has since changed to a whitelist registration page.

BICASSO first pilot just completed with 10K NFT minted in 2.5 hours. The AI was a little stressed out, but caught its breathe now. 😂 https://t.co/BBRevAdIUc

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) March 1, 2023

This entire Bicasso exercise seems to be a masterclass in product promotion from CZ.

By inducing scarcity via the 10,000 mint cap on the Beta, CZ was able to induce an absolute frenzy of attention and interest in Bicasso. No doubt, Bicasso’s whitelist will be very long.

AI-generated Art Continues to Make Strides

With February characterized by huge breakout industry narratives, AI projects are riding high on the back of significant market interest as a flurry of activity around ChatGPT, and Google Bard ignited the AI sector.

The AI narrative pump saw top blockchain-based AI platform Fetch AI (FET) surge a massive +72% and fellow AI altcoin SingularityNET (AGIX) skyrocketed +327%.

Bicasso follows in the wake of projects such as NovelAI, DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, which have all made huge inroads in the AI art generation market.

Fetch AI has also been targeting AI-generated art for a number of years.

In 2021, Fetch AI saw a similar beta test for the blockchain-based AI art generation platform CoLearn Paint.