On-chain art is generative code that is completely stored on the blockchain. With most nfts, the information stored on the blockchain is an address that points to a cloud server where the actual art piece – image or video – is stored. This is in most cases necessary as the data for those art pieces is too large for the blockchain. Blockchain cannot not store too much information, it would be expensive and energy inefficient. On-chain art is generative art that is created by short snippets of code. This code generates the art piece. This snippet can be directly stored is then the blockchain, so the art piece lives completely on the chain and is therefore called on-chain art.

This form of generative art ist mostly created with visual programming languages like Processing (based on Java) or OpenFramework (based on C++).