In the past few years, we have witnessed the emergence of a new digital medium: the blockchain. Since its inception, the blockchain has been the locus of a wide variety of unique artistic practices, from JPEGs to performances, all enveloped within a hyper-commodified ecosystem. This course will critically examine the blockchain as an artistic medium and will contextualize blockchain-based art within a greater history of art and technology. Blockchain-based art offers us a chance to reexamine and challenge old notions such as authenticity, uniqueness, and reproduction, providing an opportunity to see how art and new media theories hold up against this burgeoning medium and the slew of artistic expressions utilizing it. Students will read seminal texts from the fields of media and new media studies, philosophy of art and technology, and art history and theory, alongside case studies ranging from the middle-ages to the 21st century. The course will be organized in three sections, Medium, Performance, and Commodification, and will conclude with a curation of a digital exhibition of blockchain-based art. In these sections we will explore topics such as: materiality and ontology of the digital; generative, performative, and interactive art and theory; and the social and economic dimensions of art. At the conclusion of this course, students will be familiar with critical terms, ideas, and theories from a variety of overlapping fields, and be able to critically analyze and discuss art on the blockchain.