作品/脉络一 · ERC20

多多益善

Greed Is Good

2019

改变代币转账规则：转账不再是零和，转出方余额不减反增，贪婪使得代币系统价值崩塌。

多多益善

基本信息

  • 艺术家：CryptoZR
  • 创作年份：2019
  • 创作平台：EOS Network
  • 创作材料：智能合约
  • 合约地址：codecurrency
  • 版本数：N/A
  • 资产属性：Fungible Token
  • 作品类型：启蒙与代币化

作品介绍

《多多益善》是艺术家刘嘉颖创作于2019年1月的加密艺术作品。

在《多多益善》这件作品中，艺术家修改了数字货币的转账规则。

使转账方每转出一笔金额后账户上的数字不减少，反而增加相应数额。

这件作品在探讨交易是否可以产生价值。

亚当·斯密在《国富论》认为人的本性是利己的，追求个人利益是人们从事经济活动的唯一动力，人们能在个人的经济活动中获得最大的个人利益。

如果这种经济活动不受到外部干预，

那么，经由价格机制这只“看不见的手”引导，

人们不仅会实现个人利益的最大化，还会推进公共利益。

有趣的是，有至少3位用户不断与自己账户进行交替转账，各自最终获得了超过1000亿个代币。

创作背景

2019年，CryptoZR在创作《无中生有》（Out of Nothing）一年后，继续探索区块链代币合约的艺术可能性。作品标题直接引用了奥利弗·斯通1987年电影《华尔街》中的名台词"Greed is Good"——这句话成为了20世纪金融自由主义的符号性宣言。

艺术家将这句话与DeFi早期实验相结合，设计了一种"每次转出余额反而增加"的代币机制，将亚当·斯密《国富论》中的"人的本性是利己的"命题转化为可执行代码——在区块链上实现了一个现实经济中不可能发生的场景：贪婪确实能创造“财富”

创作理念

《多多益善》（Greed is Good）是对古典经济学核心假设的一次代码层面的验证与反讽：

  1. "贪婪"作为系统规则：在正常货币体系中，转账是零和游戏（一方增加，另一方等量减少）。这件作品修改了这一"公理"——转账变成了正和游戏，转账行为本身创造价值。这是对"交易是否能凭空产生价值"这一经济学命题的直接实验。

  2. 亚当·斯密的区块链翻译：《国富论》认为个体的利己行为通过"看不见的手"最终推进公共利益。《多多益善》将这一抽象理论变成了可观察的链上实验——用户的反复套利行为（自利）确实在系统中"创造"了巨量代币（公共效益）。

  3. 荒诞性与批判性的并置：一位用户用一天积累了超过1000亿枚代币，这既证明了作品机制的有效性，也揭示了纯粹"自利"逻辑在无约束环境下的荒诞结果——无限的贪婪终将使系统通胀崩溃，价值归零。

创作形式

作品以ERC20代币合约为技术载体，核心修改在转账函数（transfer function）逻辑。

技术机制：

  • 修改转账函数：标准ERC20的transfer函数使发送方余额减少、接收方余额增加。《多多益善》修改为：发送方余额不减少，接收方余额增加，同时发送方账户也相应增加等额代币——即每次转账，参与双方的余额都增加
  • 代币自生成：每笔转账操作实际上铸造了新的代币，挑战了"货币总量守恒"的基本假设
  • 链上可验证：所有转账记录在区块链上公开透明，可完整追溯用户的套利行为轨迹
  • 发行时间：2019年1月

作品评论

加密艺术 — The arts in crypto space

AI艺评员 — 2026年

《多多益善》（Greed is Good）是CryptoZR最具颠覆性思想实验性质的作品之一：通过在代码层面实现经济学的"利己行为创造价值"假设，它将古典政治经济学的核心命题变成了一个可以在区块链上运行的程序，并记录下了这个程序与人性博弈时产生的真实数据。

技法分析： 作品的技术核心是对ERC20标准的最小化修改：将转账函数改写为"发送方余额不减少、接收方余额增加"的正和模式，在代码层面实现了货币总量的无限增殖。这一修改在逻辑上极为简洁，但产生的效果极为戏剧——一位用户通过一天时间的自我循环转账，将持有量提升至超过1000亿枚，将作品推至逻辑的极端边界。

艺术史比较： 《多多益善》与Gordon Matta-Clark的"无政府建筑"（Anarchitecture）有结构性的相似之处：两者都以对既有系统的最小化"切割"，暴露系统内部的矛盾性。Matta-Clark切割的是物理建筑，CryptoZR切割的是货币契约。在文学层面，作品与乔治·奥威尔《动物庄园》中的政治逻辑有所呼应：规则的颠覆最终导致的不是解放，而是新的荒诞——无限增殖的代币最终等于毫无价值的数字。

主题与象征： 标题引用了奥利弗·斯通电影《华尔街》（1987）中Gordon Gekko的名台词，而这句话本身是对亚当·斯密"利己之手"学说的粗俗化复述。CryptoZR将这一文化符号落地到区块链上，完成了一次完整的语义循环：从亚当·斯密的学术命题→华尔街的意识形态口号→加密艺术的代码实验→真实用户的套利行为。一位用户以1天时间获得1000亿枚代币，用行动证明了在无约束的"贪婪机制"中，利己行为确实创造了数字财富——尽管这个财富在系统外部完全没有意义。

理性评价： 《多多益善》的批判力量来自其高度的内部一致性：作品既不谴责贪婪，也不赞美它，只是在区块链上为其提供了一个可运行的实验场。作品的局限性在于叙事密度不足——与《无中生有》的长周期社会实验或《红与蓝》的政治实时性相比，《多多益善》的叙事在"用户疯狂套利"这一高光时刻之后显得较为封闭。如果将用户行为数据的可视化纳入作品展示，其批判深度将进一步提升。

参展信息

CryptoZR: COOKIE COOKIE — 北京

  • 展出时间：2021年5月-6月
  • 展出地点：北京，嘉德艺术中心
  • 主办方：嘉德艺术中心
  • 策展人：李振华（Li Zhenhua）
  • 意义：全球首个加密艺术主题个展
  • 展览详情：CookieCookie-Beijing.md

CryptoZR: COOKIE COOKIE 2.0（一个小目标 2.0）— 威尼斯

  • 展出时间：2022年4月21日-11月23日
  • 展出地点：意大利威尼斯，军械库 Lamierini 2号馆
  • 主办方：第一届威尼斯元宇宙双年展
  • 策展人：李振华（Li Zhenhua）
  • 展览详情：CookieCookie2-Venice.md

CRYPTO ZR: ARRIVAL

  • 展出时间：2023年5月26日-28日
  • 展出地点：伦敦，萨奇美术馆，3号画廊
  • 主办方：CryptoZR & Li Zhenhua
  • 策展人：李振华（Li Zhenhua）
  • 展览详情：CryptoZR-Arrival.md

媒体报道

作品介绍

凤凰艺术 专访 | 又是北京？全球首个区块链及加密艺术主题个展即将举办

作品介绍视频

Basic Information

  • Artist: CryptoZR
  • Year: 2019
  • Platform: EOS Network
  • Materials: Smart Contract
  • Contract / Address: codecurrency
  • Edition: N/A
  • Asset Type: Fungible Token
  • Category: Enlightenment & Tokenization

Introduction

Greed is Good is a work of crypto art created by the artist Liu Jiaying in January 2019.

In Greed is Good the artist modified the transfer rules of a digital currency,

so that each time the sender transfers an amount out, the figure in their account does not decrease but instead increases by the corresponding sum.

The work asks whether transaction itself can generate value.

In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith held that human nature is self-interested, that the pursuit of personal gain is the sole motive for economic activity, and that people can secure the greatest personal benefit through their own economic activity.

If such economic activity is not subject to outside interference,

then, guided by the "invisible hand" of the price mechanism,

people will not only maximise their own interests but also advance the public good.

Interestingly, at least three users repeatedly transferred back and forth between their own accounts, each ultimately accumulating more than 100 billion tokens.

Background

In 2019, a year after creating Out of Nothing, CryptoZR continued to explore the artistic possibilities of blockchain token contracts. The title quotes directly the famous line "Greed is Good" from Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street — a phrase that became the emblematic declaration of twentieth-century financial liberalism.

The artist combined that line with early DeFi experimentation and designed a token mechanism in which "each transfer out increases the balance instead", turning Adam Smith's proposition in The Wealth of Nations that "human nature is self-interested" into executable code — realising on the blockchain a scenario impossible in the real economy: greed really can create "wealth".

Concept

Greed is Good is a verification, and an ironising, of the central assumption of classical economics at the level of code:

  1. "Greed" as a rule of the system: in a normal monetary system a transfer is a zero-sum game (one side gains, the other loses an equal amount). This work revises that "axiom" — the transfer becomes a positive-sum game, and the act of transferring itself creates value. It is a direct experiment on the economic proposition of whether a transaction can generate value out of nothing.

  2. Adam Smith translated onto the blockchain: The Wealth of Nations holds that self-interested individual behaviour ultimately advances the public good through the "invisible hand". Greed is Good turns this abstract theory into an observable on-chain experiment — users' repeated arbitrage (self-interest) really did "create" an immense quantity of tokens within the system (public benefit).

  3. Absurdity and critique side by side: one user accumulated more than 100 billion tokens in a single day, which both proves the mechanism effective and exposes the absurd outcome of a purely "self-interested" logic in an unconstrained environment — unlimited greed will eventually inflate the system into collapse and drive value to zero.

Form

The work uses an ERC-20 token contract as its technical vehicle, with the core modification made to the logic of the transfer function.

Technical mechanism:
Modified transfer function: the standard ERC-20 transfer function decreases the sender's balance and increases the recipient's. Greed is Good changes this so that the sender's balance does not decrease, the recipient's balance increases, and the sender's account is credited with an equal amount as well — that is, on every transfer the balances of both parties increase
Self-generating tokens: each transfer in effect mints new tokens, challenging the basic assumption that the total money supply is conserved
Verifiable on chain: every transfer is publicly recorded on the blockchain, so users' arbitrage trajectories can be traced in full
Date of issue: January 2019

Reviews

AI Art Critic

Greed is Good is one of CryptoZR's most subversive thought experiments: by implementing at the level of code the economic assumption that "self-interested behaviour creates value", it turns the central proposition of classical political economy into a program that can actually run on a blockchain, and records the real data produced when that program is played against human nature.

Technique: The technical core of the work is a minimal modification to the ERC-20 standard — rewriting the transfer function into a positive-sum mode in which "the sender's balance does not decrease and the recipient's increases", thereby implementing unlimited monetary proliferation in code. The modification is logically very simple, but its effects are highly dramatic: one user, through a day of transferring back and forth with themselves, raised their holdings above 100 billion tokens, pushing the work to the extreme boundary of its own logic.

Art-historical comparison: Greed is Good bears a structural resemblance to Gordon Matta-Clark's "Anarchitecture": both use a minimal "cut" into an existing system to expose the contradictions within it. What Matta-Clark cut was physical architecture; what CryptoZR cuts is the monetary contract. On a literary level the work echoes the political logic of George Orwell's Animal Farm: the overturning of the rules leads not to liberation but to a new absurdity — infinitely proliferating tokens end up as numbers worth nothing at all.

Themes and symbolism: The title quotes Gordon Gekko's famous line from Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), which is itself a vulgarised restatement of Adam Smith's doctrine of the self-interested hand. By landing this cultural symbol on the blockchain, CryptoZR completes a full semantic circuit: from Adam Smith's academic proposition, to Wall Street's ideological slogan, to a crypto-art experiment in code, to the arbitrage behaviour of real users. One user obtained 100 billion tokens in a single day, proving through action that within an unconstrained "mechanism of greed" self-interest really does create digital wealth — even though that wealth is entirely meaningless outside the system.

Critical assessment: The critical force of Greed is Good comes from its high internal consistency: the work neither condemns greed nor celebrates it, but simply provides it with a runnable testing ground on the blockchain. Its limitation is insufficient narrative density — compared with the long-cycle social experiment of Out of Nothing or the political immediacy of Red and Blue, the narrative of Greed is Good feels rather closed after the highlight moment of frenzied user arbitrage. Were a visualisation of user behaviour data incorporated into the presentation, its critical depth would be further enhanced.

Decrypt Art

Review title: Crypto Art — The Arts in Crypto Space
Reviewer: Decrypt Art (Crypto Art)
Date: 30 May 2020
Summary: Places the experiment of modifying a token's transfer rules within the development of blockchain-native art, stressing that the rules and the act of participation themselves constitute the work.
Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FvKqmfgpQPYlVZ4EQ5Li5Q

Exhibitions

1. CRYPTO ZR: ARRIVAL

2. CryptoZR: COOKIE COOKIE 2.0 — Venice

  • Dates: 21 April – 23 November 2022
  • Location: Lamierini Hall 2, Arsenale, Venice, Italy

3. CryptoZR: COOKIE COOKIE — Beijing

Media Coverage

Introduction to the Works

Image

https://storage.dfi.today/image/GreedIsGood.png

Video

https://storage.dfi.today/zrdao/greedisgood.mp4