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From sitting in his car crying before work every morning to becoming a successful digital artist, the story of Australian-based VR painter and sculptor Giant Swan is one of persistence, timing and pushing boundaries. 

In a world where a digital artist can now monetize their work through NFTs as opposed to cheap likes and comments on Instagram, Giant Swan stands out from the pack, being the first artist to put a 3D object on-chain and for his truly unique and immersive pieces that have captured the attention of collectors all over the globe, including renowned whales such as j1mmy.eth, Moderats Art and Whale Shark

“For me, crying in the car before work was a lot to do with knowing that you should be somewhere else. I knew I didn’t fit with what I was doing. To be where you suddenly belong, I think, is what every artist is probably striving for in some way,” Giant Swan says. 

After minting his first NFT on Nov. 30, 2019, on Known Origin, Giant Swan caught the initial wave of interest in digital art. He credits the likes of David Moore from Known Origin for helping him take the plunge. 

Dreamlike states 

You can get lost viewing Giant Swan’s art; the depth of his work often needs to be seen to be believed. OG Crypto artist Josie Bellini described it thus: 

“When I look at Giant Swan’s work, you can’t stop thinking, and you start to feel a certain way. I can see the blood, sweat and tears. I can see that he’s put his heart in his canvas and the way that every stroke he builds them in VR. They have so much depth and so much emotion to them.” 

Giant Swan states, “A really simple goal of my art has always been that I want you to experience it and feel like you had a dream, or you have to describe it like you try to describe a dream.” 

To create the art he does via VR, the Melbournian from Australia uses a PC VR headset and gaming rig, but said a basic Meta Quest VR headset could do the job for most people. 



“I create art by turning my movement into shapes and color. I do that by wearing a virtual reality headset that places me into an empty void. There’s no roof, there’s no floor, there’s no walls; it’s just endless. That movement can be filled with an endless amount of material shapes, color, density, size, and scale. I feel that until I have a space that I’m happy with,” Giant Swan says. 

Generations by Giant Swan
Generations by Giant Swan (Known Origin)

“From there, I explore that space to see how I can capture a story and share that with other people. I like to make art this way because traditionally, we look at computers of digital art and we judge it by its perfection.”

“It’s the pursuit of perfection we’re hiding or imitating how we look at the world until it’s digital or not. VR art lets us explore imperfection, and in that, it enables a very digital art medium to become one of the most organic digital art forms available. I’d be surprised if you could find someone else who does what I do now.”

Notable sales

Rapid-fire Q&A

How would you describe your style as an artist?

“I’d like to think that it’s a balanced emotional take on surrealism in art. Really thrash, almost impressionistic kind of take on 3D art. I love to hit gothic notes and symbolism. I like drawing from a lot of things, but I wouldn’t know how to name it. That’s why it’s Giant Swan style. That’s why people can pick me out in the crowd because you can’t put it in a bin.”

Who are the influences on your art career to date?

“I’ve got lots of influences, but to name a few. Ashley Wood worked on Tank Girl, which is a loose inky comic book style. Also Jamie Hewlett, who does all the imagery behind The Gorillaz and Tank Girl. 

“The Gorillaz were an influence on me in that you used to get their CDs and to get all the extra stuff out of it. You had to put it into your PC but they never said that; you just put the CD in, and you’d explore and find all the cool stuff. It was an experience. That really informs how I see my work. Now I want my work to be experienced.” 

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Is there an up-and-coming artist/s you think people should be paying attention to?

“There’s a Melbourne artist named Mysterious Al. He is a muralist that you’ll probably recognize the moment you Google him. He’s an incredible artist.”

Who is a notable collector of yours that makes you smile knowing they own one of your pieces?

“When I think of people like Pranksy, j1mmy.eth, Josie, Whale Shark, Moderats Art and Deej, it brings a smile. These are all big whales, but they are also entrepreneurs and extremely successful people. They all saw that in me before my works became really expensive.”

What’s your favorite NFT in your wallet that’s not your own NFT?

“My favorite NFT in my wallet is a pair of shoes for Cryptovoxels that n0shot made. It was so early in the crypto art culture we’d all meet up in Cryptovoxels. That was probably the first time sneaker culture really kind of teased its way into the space.”

What’s hot elsewhere in NFT art markets 

Notable recent sales from Tyler Hobbs include an Incomplete Control and Fidenza that was sold via Sotheby’s and a pipe Chromie Squiggle that collector DGMD picked up. 

OpenSea in royalty race to the bottom

For the majority of 2023, amid a bloodbath for NFT collection prices, the creator royalties discussion has felt like a race to the bottom and OpenSea all but confirmed this with their announcements the marketplace will move to optional creator royalties on secondary sales. 

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This unpopular decision probably doesn’t come as a surprise, however, with Blur marketplace continuing to dominate market share. 

From Aug. 31, OpenSea will sunset the filter it introduced in November 2022 as a response to Blur and other marketplaces allowing collectors and traders to bypass creator royalties. At the height of NFT mania, the issue was heralded as the big game changer in an emerging new creator economy. 

OpenSea announcement on royalties
OpenSea announcement on royalties (X)

The technology remains the same, but when the market was booming — for most of 2020 through 2022 — paying out creator royalties along with OpenSea’s 2.5% marketplace fee was rarely questioned. 

OpenSea CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer said:

“In November 2022, we launched the Operator Filter: a tool designed to give creators more control by restricting the sale of their collections to Web3 marketplaces that enforce creator fees in secondary sales. It was meant to empower creators with greater control over their Web3 business models, but it required the buy-in of everyone in the Web3 ecosystem, and unfortunately that has not happened. So we’re making a few changes to our approach to creator fees.”

There doesn’t seem to be any great solution to be able to enforce royalties without compromising on true decentralized asset ownership, with many having their two cents on the matter, including OpenSea VC backer Mark Cuban, artists Matt Kane and Beeple and NFT influencer Wale Swoosh

Yuga to the rescue?

Arguably one of the most influential voices also had its say on the OpenSea announcement, with Yuga Labs — the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club and the owners of CryptoPunks, Otherside, Meebits and many other collections — coming out strongly against OpenSea’s decision. 

The statement from CEO Daniel Alegre already has most of the NFT community speculating that a Yuga marketplace will launch as part of the response. 

Yuga statement on OpenSea royalties
Yuga statement on OpenSea royalties (X)

13-year-old helping disadvantaged kids with Blueberry DAO x Nouns DAO

Evie-Rose - recipient of a new bike with Lilpurpberry.
Evie-Rose – recipient of a new bike with Lilpurpberry. (Variety)

In a heartwarming pocket of the NFT landscape, 13-year-old Lilpurpberry from Brisbane has embarked on a philanthropic initiative in collaboration with Variety children’s charity.

Blueberry DAO, backed by funding from Nouns DAO, was created by Lilpurpberry to build a treasury, including sales of Lilpurpberry’s NFT pixel art. The treasury is to support local children’s charities, and Variety was the first recipient, with funds being channeled to the “Bikes for Kids” program, which delivers brand new bikes and helmets to kids experiencing disadvantage who would otherwise miss out. 

Tweet of the week

Greg Oakford

Greg Oakford

Greg Oakford is the co-founder of NFT Fest Australia. A former marketing and communications specialist in the sports world, Greg now focuses his time on running events, creating content and consulting in web3. He is an avid NFT collector and hosts a weekly podcast covering all things NFTs.

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

Read more:
Yet another fiscal ‘black hole’? Here’s why this one matters

Success or failure: One year of Keir in nine charts

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Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

More on Rachel Reeves

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

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Why was the chancellor crying at PMQs?

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

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Reeves is ‘totally’ up for the job

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

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OKX CEO apologizes after ‘false positives’ lock users out of accounts

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OKX CEO apologizes after ‘false positives’ lock users out of accounts

OKX CEO apologizes after ‘false positives’ lock users out of accounts

The CEO of OKX says that “false positives” are among the biggest challenges the crypto exchange faces in ensuring global compliance.

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One year of Starmer: Nine charts that tell us whether Labour’s first year has been a success or failure

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One year of Starmer: Nine charts that tell us whether Labour's first year has been a success or failure

It might feel like it’s been even longer for the prime minister at the moment, but it’s been a whole year since Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a historic landslide, emphatically defeating Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives and securing a 174-seat majority.

Over that time, Sir Keir and his party have regularly reset or restated their list of milestones, missions, targets and pledges – things they say they will achieve while in power (so long as they can get all their policies past their own MPs).

We’ve had a look at the ones they have repeated most consistently, and how they are going so far.

Overall, it amounts to what appears to be some success on economic metrics, but limited progress at best towards many of their key policy objectives.

From healthcare to housebuilding, from crime to clean power, and from small boats to squeezed budgets, here are nine charts that show the country’s performance before and after Labour came to power, and how close the government are to achieving their goals.

Keir Starmer leaves 10 Downing Street.
Pic Reuters
Image:
Sir Keir Starmer has been in office for a year. Pic Reuters

Cost of living

On paper, the target that Labour have set themselves on improving living standards is by quite a distance the easiest to achieve of anything they have spoken about.

They have not set a specific number to aim for, and every previous parliament on record has overseen an increase in real terms disposable income.

The closest it got to not happening was the last parliament, though. From December 2019 to June 2024, disposable income per quarter rose by just £24, thanks in part to the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

By way of comparison, there was a rise of almost £600 per quarter during the five years following Thatcher’s final election victory in 1987, and over £500 between Blair’s 1997 victory and his 2001 re-election.

After the first six months of the latest government, it had risen by £144, the fastest start of any government going back to at least 1954. As of March, it had fallen to £81, but that still leaves them second at this stage, behind only Thatcher’s third term.

VERDICT: Going well, but should have been more ambitious with their target

Get inflation back to 2%

So, we have got more money to play with. But it might not always feel like that, as average prices are still rising at a historically high rate.

Inflation fell consistently during the last year and a half of Rishi Sunak’s premiership, dropping from a peak of 11.1% in October 2022 to exactly 2% – the Bank of England target – in June 2024.

It continued to fall in Labour’s first couple of months, but has steadily climbed back up since then and reached 3.4% in May.

When we include housing costs as well, prices are up by 4% in the last year. Average wages are currently rising by just over 5%, so that explains the overall improvement in living standards that we mentioned earlier.

But there are signs that the labour market is beginning to slow following the introduction of higher national insurance rates for employers in April.

If inflation remains high and wages begin to stagnate, we will see a quick reversal to the good start the government have made on disposable income.

VERDICT: Something to keep an eye on – there could be a bigger price to pay in years to come

‘Smash the gangs’

One of Starmer’s most memorable promises during the election campaign was that he would “smash the gangs”, and drastically reduce the number of people crossing the Channel to illegally enter the country.

More than 40,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats in the 12 months since Labour came to power, a rise of over 12,000 (40%) compared with the previous year.

Labour have said that better weather in the first half of this year has contributed to more favourable conditions for smugglers, but our research shows crossings have also risen on days when the weather is not so good.

VERDICT: As it stands, it looks like “the gangs” are smashing the government

Reduce NHS waits

One of Labour’s more ambitious targets, and one in which they will be relying on big improvements in years to come to achieve.

Starmer says that no more than 8% of people will wait longer than 18 weeks for NHS treatment by the time of the next election.

When they took over, it was more than five times higher than that. And it still is now, falling very slightly from 41.1% to 40.3% over the 10 months that we have data for.

So not much movement yet. Independent modelling by the Health Foundation suggests that reaching the target is “still feasible”, though they say it will demand “focus, resource, productivity improvements and a bit of luck”.

VERDICT: Early days, but current treatment isn’t curing the ailment fast enough

Halve violent crime

It’s a similar story with policing. Labour aim to achieve their goal of halving serious violent crime within 10 years by recruiting an extra 13,000 officers, PCSOs and special constables.

Recruitment is still very much ongoing, but workforce numbers have only been published up until the end of September, so we can’t tell what progress has been made on that as yet.

We do have numbers, however, on the number of violent crimes recorded by the police in the first six months of Labour’s premiership. There were a total of 1.1m, down by 14,665 on the same period last year, a decrease of just over 1%.

That’s not nearly enough to reach a halving within the decade, but Labour will hope that the reduction will accelerate once their new officers are in place.

VERDICT: Not time for flashing lights just yet, but progress is more “foot patrol” than “high-speed chase” so far

Build 1.5m new homes

One of Labour’s most ambitious policies was the pledge that they would build a total of 1.5m new homes in England during this parliament.

There has not yet been any new official data published on new houses since Labour came to power, but we can use alternative figures to give us a sense of how it’s going so far.

A new Energy Performance Certificate is granted each time a new home is built – so tends to closely match the official house-building figures – and we have data up to March for those.

Those numbers suggest that there have actually been fewer new properties added recently than in any year since 2015-16.

Labour still have four years to deliver on this pledge, but each year they are behind means they need to up the rate more in future years.

If the 200,000 new EPCs in the year to March 2025 matches the number of new homes they have delivered in their first year, Labour will need to add an average of 325,000 per year for the rest of their time in power to achieve their goal.

VERDICT: Struggling to lay solid foundations

Clean power by 2030

Another of the more ambitious pledges, Labour’s aim is for the UK to produce 95% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

They started strong. The ban on new onshore wind turbines was lifted within their first few days of government, and they delivered support for 131 new renewable energy projects in the most recent funding round in September.

But – understandably – it takes time for those new wind farms, solar farms and tidal plants to be built and start contributing to the grid.

In the year leading up to Starmer’s election as leader, 54% of the energy on the UK grid had been produced by renewable sources in the UK.

That has risen very slightly in the year since then, to 55%, with a rise in solar and biomass offsetting a slight fall in wind generation.

The start of this year has been unusually lacking in wind, and this analysis does not take variations in weather into account. The government target will adjust for that, but they are yet to define exactly how.

VERDICT: Not all up in smoke, but consistent effort is required before it’s all sunshine and windmills

Fastest economic growth in the G7

Labour’s plan to pay for the improvements they want to make in all the public services we have talked about above can be summarised in one word: “growth”.

The aim is for the UK’s GDP – the financial value of all the goods and services produced in the country – to grow faster than any other in the G7 group of advanced economies.

Since Labour have been in power, the economy has grown faster than European rivals Italy, France and Germany, as well as Japan, but has lagged behind the US and Canada.

The UK did grow fastest in the most recent quarter we have data for, however, from the start of the year to the end of March.

VERDICT: Good to be ahead of other similar European economies, but still a way to go to overtake the North Americans

No tax rises

Without economic growth, it will be difficult to keep to one of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ biggest promises – that there will be no more tax rises or borrowing for the duration of her government’s term.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said last month that she is a “gnat’s whisker” away from being forced to do that at the autumn budget, looking at the state of the economy at the moment.

That whisker will have been shaved even closer by the cost implications of the government’s failure to get its full welfare reform bill through parliament earlier this week.

And income tax thresholds are currently frozen until April 2028, meaning there is already a “stealth” hike scheduled for all of us every year.

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One year of Keir: A review of Starmer’s first 12 months in office

But the news from the last financial year was slightly better than expected. Total tax receipts for the year ending March 2025 were 35% of GDP.

That’s lower than the previous four years, and what was projected after Jeremy Hunt’s final Conservative budget, but higher than any of the 50 years before that.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) still projects it to rise in future years though, to a higher level than the post-WWII peak of 37.2%.

The OBR – a non-departmental public body that provides independent analysis of the public finances – has also said in the past few days that it is re-examining its methodology, because it has been too optimistic with its forecasts in the past.

If the OBR’s review leads to a more negative view of where the economy is going, Rachel Reeves could be forced to break her promise to keep the budget deficit from spiralling out of control.

VERDICT: It’s going to be difficult for the Chancellor to keep to her promise

OVERALL VERDICT: Investment and attention towards things like violent crime, the NHS and clean energy are yet to start bearing fruit, with only minuscule shifts in the right direction for each, but the government is confident that what’s happened so far is part of its plans.

Labour always said that the house-building target would be achieved with a big surge towards the back end of their term, but they won’t be encouraged by the numbers actually dropping in their first few months.

Where they are failing most dramatically, however, appears to be in reducing the number of migrants making the dangerous Channel crossing on small boats.

The economic news, particularly that rise in disposable income, looks more healthy at the moment. But with inflation still high and growth lagging behind some of our G7 rivals, that could soon start to turn.


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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